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Haylynn Conrad Newsletter — October 30, 2026
🌊 The Malibu Current with Councilmember Haylynn Conrad
📅 October 30, 2026
Dear friends and neighbors,
At 10:30 Tuesday night, while most of Malibu was checking the weekend forecast, a resident hit send on a letter to every member of your City Council and our City Manager. The ask: give every homeowner and property owner in Malibu a clear right to install a private water tank or pool to help defend their property when the next fire comes. I have read plenty of late-night emails in this job. Few have landed this close to the center of what I believe, which is that we pour our energy into reacting to disasters and not nearly enough into preventing them.
There is more below on where that idea goes next, because this week refused to slow down: we honored one of the hardest-working people at City Hall on Monday, rain is crashing trick-or-treat night, and there are exactly four days left to cast a ballot. Here is where the week landed.
🔥 Fire Resilience: The Right to Defend Your Home
🔹 A resident-led push worth taking seriously: This week's letter to the Council asks the City to guarantee property owners the ability to install private water storage, whether a tank or a pool, as a tool against wildfire. I have expressed my support for bringing this conversation to the Council agenda, and I meant it. The Bryson Fire reminded us that minutes and water are the two things you never have enough of. Water stored on your own property is both.
→ 💡 What this means: An idea becomes policy through an agenda item, staff analysis, and public comment, and the details will matter: siting, safety, permitting. I will share the date the moment this is scheduled so you can weigh in directly.
→ 🎯 My take: Rebuilding faster for the families who lost everything, and hardening homes before the next wind event, are the same project. There is no reason Malibu cannot set the standard for fire resilience in this state. Prevention is cheaper than grief.
🌧️ Storm Watch: Rain Crashes the Halloween Party
🔹 Half an inch to two inches by Sunday: The City's Thursday advisory, citing the National Weather Service, puts shower chances at 40 percent today, 50 percent Saturday, and 90 percent Saturday night, tapering off before 11 AM Sunday. The concerns are familiar ones: minor flooding, coastal erosion, and possible mud and debris flows in the Franklin and Palisades burn areas, plus the chance of power and signal outages. Headlights on, full stops at dark signals, and never drive through flowing water.
🔹 Sandbags, four ways: Filled sandbags are available at the Malibu Equestrian Park at 6225 Merritt Drive. Sand and empty bags are out at Camp 13 at 1252 Encinal Canyon Road, Fire Station 70 at 3970 Carbon Canyon Road at PCH, and the Zuma Beach main entrance, and every LA County fire station stocks empty bags. Please leave the beach sand on the beach.
🔹 Sacramento just put PCH on its winter list: On Tuesday, Governor Newsom signed an executive order directing state agencies to prioritize protective work on Pacific Coast Highway ahead of the forecast El Niño, and creating a Highway 1 Task Force to flag high-risk areas and fast-track projects. PCH is our Main Street and our evacuation route, and I will keep working to make sure Malibu's trouble spots are at the top of that task force's list, not buried in an appendix. One more resource: Tuesday's second El Niño workshop, with County Fire, the Sheriff's Department, County Public Works, SCE, and SoCalGas, is already posted online if you missed it.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: This weekend is a dress rehearsal with the full cast: rain, tides, burn scars, and holiday traffic. Run your routine now, while the stakes are an inch of water instead of ten.
👉 Read the City's executive order announcement
👉 Watch the workshop and get storm-ready
🗳️ Your Vote: Four Days, Four Locations
🔹 Three more vote centers open tomorrow: Starting Saturday, October 31, you can vote at the Malibu Library, the Christian Science Church at 28635 PCH, and Malibu High School at 30215 Morning View Drive, all open 10 AM to 7 PM through November 2 and then 7 AM to 8 PM on Election Day, Tuesday, November 3. The 11-day center at City Hall keeps its daily hours through the finish line, the Library's secure drop box takes ballots around the clock, and mailed ballots just need a November 3 postmark. You can even register and vote the same day at any center.
→ 🎯 My take: I will never use this space to tell you how to mark a ballot. I will happily use it to point out that every vote center has a roof, so the rain is not an excuse. This weekend, the costume is optional. The ballot is not.
👉 Read the City's voting guide
👉 Find every vote center and drop box
🏛️ City Hall: Seven Years of Yolanda Bundy
🔹 A tile well earned: On Monday night I stood with my colleagues as Mayor Bruce Silverstein presented Community Development Director Yolanda Bundy with a City tile marking seven years of service. Yolanda arrived in October 2019, straight into the Woolsey rebuild, and has carried residents through every emergency since, personally helping assess more than 300 beachfront properties along the way. Her department's shelf now holds the 2025 American Planning Association Resilience and Sustainability Award and the 2025 International Code Council Code Official of the Year honor, but the truest measure is simpler: behind so many rebuilt Malibu homes is a public servant who refused to let the paperwork win. Thank you, Yolanda.
🔹 The rest of Monday's docket: The agenda ran from the City Hall solar project to the Capital Improvement Program overview, which is exactly where my push to point our dollars at infrastructure gets tested line by line. The full record and replay are posted, and we return to the dais for our next regular meeting on Monday, November 9, at 5:30 PM.
👉 Browse agendas at the Agenda Center
🛍️ Economic Development: Rainy Days Are Local Days
🔹 Our shops do not get a weather delay: Between a fire, two storms, and a construction season that will not quit, Malibu's businesses have carried a brutal October. A wet Halloween weekend is actually the perfect shop-local weather: coffee between showers, soup at a counter, gifts bought early while the registers are quiet. The Farmers Market is set for its usual Sunday run, November 1, 10 AM to 3 PM at the Malibu Library parking lot, and the forecast clears just in time, with showers expected to wring themselves out by late morning. One heads-up for commutes and deliveries: PCH paving continues on weekdays from 6 AM to 3 PM between Malibu Lagoon and the county line, weather permitting. Every receipt printed in town this weekend is its own kind of storm prep for our business community.
👉 Browse City business resources
📚 Education & Youth: A Pool Worth Showing Up For
🔹 The campus aquatic center reaches the Planning Commission Monday: On Monday, November 2, at 6:30 PM in the Council Chambers, the Planning Commission takes up the coastal development permit for the Malibu Middle and High School Campus Aquatic Center at 30215 Morning View Drive, item 5A on the agenda. The soccer fields taught us how this works: facilities for young people happen when families walk into the room and say so, season after season. I was raised by a public school teacher, so I take it personally when we invest in the places where kids grow. A pool on that campus is one more reason for a Malibu kid to stay a Malibu kid.
🔹 A weekend that moved: The third annual Malibu Moves Running Festival filled Zuma Beach on October 24 and 25 with kids' dashes, a 5K, a 10K, and a half marathon, with capacity for roughly 3,000 participants. The event has pushed more than $110,000 to youth-focused nonprofits in its first two years, with around $40,000 more anticipated this round for partners like the Malibu Education Foundation, the Emily Shane Foundation, Girls on the Run of Los Angeles County, and the Sarah Shulze Foundation. My favorite detail: the Party Pacers run at the very back so nobody finishes alone, and the last finisher earns the Resilience Hero Award. That is the most Malibu trophy I have ever heard of. And to everyone who packed the Bu Bash costume catwalk last Friday: the photos alone were a sugar rush.
👉 Read the aquatic center staff report (PDF)
👉 Read The Malibu Times recap of Malibu Moves
🌊 Environment: Rules for the Wild Parts of Town
🔹 Habitat protections get a hearing Monday: Also on the Planning Commission's November 2 agenda, item 5D covers how the City administers mitigation protocols under our Local Coastal Program for Environmentally Sensitive Habitat Areas and protected native trees. In plain English: when a project touches sensitive habitat, these are the rules for how that impact gets offset. If you are rebuilding, or if you simply love the canyons and creeks that make this place itself, this quiet item deserves your attention, and it has mine. Environmental sensitivity is not a box we check here. It is the whole point of living where we live.
🔹 Free native plants, nine days out: The Native Plant Giveaway returns to Legacy Park on Sunday, November 8, at 9:30 AM, and the timing is perfect: this weekend's rain will leave the ground soft and ready for roots that hold hillsides together for decades. And surfers, you know the drill: once the storm passes, give the ocean its customary 72 hours before paddling out.
👉 Read the Planning Commission agenda
👉 Explore environmental programs
🤝 Get Involved: Two Meetings in the Next Two Weeks
🔹 Planning Commission, Monday, November 2, 6:30 PM, City Hall Council Chambers: The aquatic center and the habitat policies above make this one of the fullest commission nights of the fall, and public comment is open to everyone.
🔹 Public Safety Commission, Wednesday, November 4, 5 PM, City Hall: Fresh off the Bryson Fire and heading into storm season, there may be no better room in town for your questions, your worries, or your ideas.
The Parks and Recreation Commission returns Tuesday, November 17, at 6:30 PM, and the Arts, Public Works, and Harry Barovsky Memorial Youth Commissions post their next agendas at the Agenda Center. These rooms are where Malibu policy actually begins, and the application to serve sits open all year. If you have been waiting for an invitation, this is it.
👉 Browse upcoming commission meetings and agendas
👉 Apply to serve on a commission or committee
📅 Dates to Know
🔹 Tonight through Sunday morning: Rain moves through, heaviest Saturday night, with half an inch to two inches possible. Sandbags, drains, and evacuation plans before dark, please.
🔹 Saturday, October 31: Halloween. Vote centers open at the Malibu Library, the Christian Science Church, and Malibu High School, 10 AM to 7 PM. Wet roads and dark costumes are a bad pairing, so take the driveways and curves at a crawl, and clip something reflective on the kids.
🔹 Saturday night into Sunday, November 1: Daylight saving time ends at 2 AM. Set clocks back an hour before bed, and remember the evening commute on PCH goes dark an hour earlier starting Sunday.
🔹 Sunday, November 1, 10 AM to 3 PM: Malibu Farmers Market, Malibu Library parking lot, Civic Center Way.
🔹 Monday, November 2, 6:30 PM: Planning Commission Regular Meeting, City Hall Council Chambers, including the school aquatic center and habitat mitigation policies.
🔹 Tuesday, November 3: Election Day. Vote centers open 7 AM to 8 PM, and mailed ballots must be postmarked by this date.
🔹 Wednesday, November 4, 5 PM: Public Safety Commission Regular Meeting, City Hall.
🔹 Sunday, November 8, 9:30 AM: Native Plant Giveaway, Legacy Park.
🔹 Monday, November 9, 5:30 PM: Regular City Council Meeting, City Hall (hybrid), agenda posting at the Agenda Center.
🔹 Wednesday, November 11: Veterans Day. To the veterans among our neighbors, thank you for your service to this country and this community.
🔹 Looking further out: The Parks and Recreation Commission meets Tuesday, November 17, at 6:30 PM, and a special Council meeting is posted for Wednesday, November 18, on the appeal of a coastal development permit at 25200 Pacific Coast Highway.
🔹 Ongoing: Sea Level Drive remains closed under an evacuation order while repairs continue. Severe erosion hazards persist from Westward Beach Road into Point Dume State Beach, where County crews are making emergency repairs; the road has stayed open, but give the work zones room. PCH paving runs weekdays between Malibu Lagoon and the county line, the speed camera warning period arrives this month, and fiber construction continues on Malibu Canyon Road, Webb Way, Stuart Ranch Road, and Civic Center Way through December.
👉 Browse the full Malibu city calendar
🐝 One Last Thought
A letter sent at 10:30 PM. A single sandbag on a garage threshold. One ballot dropped in a box between rain showers. A seedling pressed into wet November ground. None of these look like much on their own, and together they are the entire operating system of a town that intends to still be here, still be itself, fifty years from now. Civic life is mostly small acts done on time.
So pick your small act this weekend: vote early, stack the sandbags, circle Monday's Planning Commission on the calendar, or just check on the neighbor whose driveway floods. And if something in your corner of Malibu needs a champion, a fix, or just a second set of eyes, write me at hconrad@malibucity.org. I answer my own email, and this week proved again how far one late-night letter can travel.
Keep the porch light on, Malibu.
Haylynn Conrad
Councilmember, City of Malibu
