🌊 The Malibu Current with Councilmember Haylynn Conrad

📅 April 27, 2026

Hi friends,

This past Sunday, neighbors broke ground on the new wing of Malibu Urgent Care, and a community art project I have been preparing for months found its first real home there. Tonight, the Council gavels in at 5:30 PM, and a statewide "Best of the Best" award will be presented to our Community Services Department in front of all of us. Tomorrow night, the City hosts one of the most important workshops of the year on how Malibu evacuates in an emergency.

This edition covers all of it, plus a small business worth standing behind, and a quiet but consequential vote from earlier this month that should not get lost in the noise.

🏛️ This Week at City Hall

🔹 Regular City Council Meeting tonight, Monday April 27 at 5:30 PM: The Council convenes in Council Chambers at Malibu City Hall. Meetings are hybrid, so you can join in person or tune in from home. Tonight's agenda runs long: the 2025 Housing Annual Progress Report, the Westward Beach Road embankment repair contract, a renaming resolution for the Charmlee Wilderness Park Nature Center, a Council letter of support for SB 1343, and quarterly renewals of the local emergency declarations for PCH, the Franklin Fire, and the Palisades Fire. If any of it matters to you, your voice carries weight in that room. Please use it.

👉 View tonight's full agenda

🔹 A statewide "Best of the Best" award headed our way: Tonight, a representative from the California Park & Recreation Society will formally present our Community Services Department with the prestigious "Best of the Best" Marketing & Communications Award for their "Assorted Sounds of Malibu Recreation" video series. The campaign blends the calming sounds of brewing coffee at the Senior Center, water at the Community Pool, and birdsong at Charmlee Wilderness Park with footage of the parks, programs, and people that make this city work.

→ 🎯 My take: State recognition for Malibu's communications team is no small thing. In a year defined by recovery, the way the City connects with residents has mattered more than ever, and the team behind these videos has set a real bar. I am proud of them, and looking forward to seeing the award handed over tonight.

👉 Read about the CPRS award

🔹 Special Council Meeting Thursday April 30: Like-for-Like Disaster Rebuild Policy: Three nights after tonight's regular meeting, the Council is back in chambers for a special meeting with one item on the agenda: a Like-for-Like Disaster Rebuild Policy and Self-Certification Pilot Program. This is exactly the kind of policy that decides whether rebuilds in this town move at the pace families need or stay stuck in the slow lane.

→ 🎯 My take: I have been clear since the April 5 edition of this newsletter that rebuilding smarter has to mean permits that move responsibly without moving carelessly. A like-for-like framework with a self-certification pilot is a real attempt to do both, and I want to hear from rebuild families and design professionals before Thursday. If you have feedback on the policy, please reply to this email or come to the meeting.

👉 Read the April 30 Special Meeting agenda

🛡️ Safety, Preparedness & What's Ahead

🔹 Updated Safety Element adopted, finally: On April 13, the City Council adopted a comprehensive update to the Safety Element of the General Plan, the state-required document that identifies risks like wildfire and flooding and sets policies to protect residents, property, and infrastructure. Malibu's previous Safety Element had not been comprehensively updated since 1995. Thirty-one years.

→ ⚡ Why this matters: The new framework reflects modern best practices for wildfire risk, evacuation planning, sea level rise, and climate impacts. Just as importantly, adoption helps Malibu qualify for the State's Fire Risk Reduction Community List, which can unlock grant funding and may support insurance availability for residents whose policies have been disappearing or repricing in the wake of recent fires.

→ 🎯 My take: A Safety Element from 1995 was never going to be enough for the Malibu we live in now. The fires, the highway, the climate realities, none of that looked the same three decades ago. Getting this on the books is a foundation. Turning policy into actual evacuation routes, vegetation requirements, and access standards is the work that happens next.

👉 Read the City's full announcement

🔹 Mass Evacuation Plan Workshop tomorrow, Tuesday April 28 (6:00 to 8:00 PM): The City's public workshop on the draft Mass Evacuation Plan is at City Hall Council Chamber tomorrow night. Attendees will be able to identify their evacuation zone, hear how evacuation decisions get made in real time, and weigh in on the draft plan before it advances. No registration required.

→ 💡 Why I keep raising this one: This is the workshop. The one I have been pointing to for weeks. After what this community has lived through, an evacuation plan cannot be a binder on a shelf. It has to be something every household understands before the next emergency, not during one. I want to see Council Chamber packed.

👉 Read the workshop details

💼 Small Business & Local Economy

🔹 Wiley's Bait & Tackle, a coastal mainstay we want here: I had the chance last week to spend time with Ginny Wiley of Wiley's Bait & Tackle, who lost her shop in Topanga. Ginny has been part of the fabric of the coastal community for years, the kind of anchor every small commercial corridor needs to feel like a real place rather than a strip of franchises.

→ 🎯 My take: I want to see Wiley's land in Malibu. There is something right about a tackle shop on this coast, and something even more right about saying yes to a small-business owner who has earned her place along this stretch of California. If you have ideas on locations, or know a property owner with the right space, please reach out.

🎨 The Infinite Ocean & Friends of Malibu Urgent Care

🔹 Sunday's groundbreaking, and a project that has been a long time in the making: This past Sunday, Friends of Malibu Urgent Care broke ground on the new wing adjacent to the existing facility, the long-awaited expansion that will bring an MRI room and other essential services right here to Malibu. Years of fundraising made this real, and Dr. Katz and the Friends of Malibu Urgent Care team deserve enormous credit for the patience and persistence it took to get a shovel in the ground.

→ 🎨 The Infinite Ocean: Sunday also marked the launch of The Infinite Ocean, a community-driven art project presented by Keeley Studios and Friends of Malibu Urgent Care. Attendees were invited to write down what they love about the ocean on a special card, becoming part of a living artwork. Those notes are being digitized and woven into a complex visual pattern that will form the base layer of a painting made with my "ONE OCEAN" paint, a custom medium infused with ocean water and sand collected from around the globe. The finished work will live in the new MRI room as a testament to community and a reminder of the calm of the ocean.

→ 💙 Why this matters here: Healthcare is care, and care is felt. If a wall in the new MRI room can carry a piece of this whole community, every name, every memory of the ocean folded into the paint, that is a small but real way of saying you are not alone when you walk in. Grateful to everyone who showed up Sunday, and to everyone whose words are now part of the work.

👉 View the Infinite Ocean announcement (Instagram)

📅 Dates to Know

🔹 Monday, April 27, 5:30 PM: Regular City Council Meeting, Malibu City Hall (tonight)

🔹 Tuesday, April 28, 9:30 AM: Malibu Arts Commission Regular Meeting, City Hall Multipurpose Room

🔹 Tuesday, April 28, 6:00 to 8:00 PM: Mass Evacuation Plan Community Workshop, City Hall Council Chamber

🔹 Thursday, April 30, 5:30 PM: Special City Council Meeting (Like-for-Like Disaster Rebuild Policy), Malibu City Hall

🔹 Through Friday, May 1: "Heading Home" exhibition, Malibu City Gallery at City Hall

🔹 Monday, May 4, 6:30 PM: Regular Planning Commission Meeting, Malibu City Hall

🔹 Monday, May 11, 5:30 PM: Regular City Council Meeting, Malibu City Hall

🔹 Tuesday, May 12, 6:30 to 8:30 PM: Horse & Large Animal Emergency Evacuation Meeting, Fair Hills Farms, 2735 Santa Maria Rd, Topanga

🐝 One Last Thought

There is a line I keep coming back to from Sunday: we all are one, and we can overcome anything.

It is the idea that drove The Infinite Ocean, and honestly it is the idea that drives most of the work this newsletter tracks each week. A Safety Element that finally catches up to the Malibu we actually live in. A workshop tomorrow night where neighbors get a real seat in how an evacuation works. A statewide award for the team that keeps the rest of us informed. A small-business owner looking for a way home. And a wall in a soon-to-be MRI room carrying the words of everyone who came out on a Sunday afternoon to help build something better.

None of this is dramatic on its own. Set side by side, it is the picture of a city that keeps choosing to take care of itself, in big ways and quiet ones.

If you are free tomorrow night, please come to the Mass Evacuation Workshop. If you are in town tonight at 5:30, the Council meeting is yours too. And whatever this newsletter sparks, an idea, a question, please hit reply and say hi.

Thank you for the part you play in this place.

Together, we're building a community and better future that works for everyone. Thank you for staying connected!

Haylynn Conrad
Councilmember, City of Malibu
hconrad@malibucity.org