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Haylynn Conrad Newsletter — September 4, 2026
🌊 The Malibu Current with Councilmember Haylynn Conrad
📅 September 4, 2026
Dear neighbors,
Tomorrow morning, nearly 3,000 American flags will rise across Alumni Park at Pepperdine, one for every life lost on September 11, 2001. Twenty-five years later, that hillside of red, white, and blue above PCH still stops me every single time I drive past it. If you have a few hours between 10 AM and 2 PM on Saturday, you can help plant them.
That is where this holiday weekend begins, and the week behind us earned it: volunteers filled the sand at Surfrider on Saturday morning, AYSO kicked off its season at Bluffs Park, and the Community Lands survey closed Monday with your voices in it. Here is the full rundown, plus a Saturday on the bluff I hope you will circle in ink.
🇺🇸 Remembrance: 25 Years, Nearly 3,000 Flags
🔹 Waves of Flags installation is tomorrow, Saturday, September 5, 10 AM to 2 PM: Volunteers of all ages are invited to Alumni Park at Pepperdine to help install the 25th anniversary display, with nearly 3,000 flags honoring each life lost in the September 11 attacks. Individuals, families, businesses, and community groups are all welcome, and helpers are needed again on Friday, September 18, from 10 AM to 2 PM to respectfully retire the display.
→ 💙 Why this one matters: A quarter century is long enough that many of our students were not yet born in 2001. Planting a flag with your kids is how a town passes memory forward, hand to hand. I hope Malibu families turn out in force for this one.
👉 Sign up for a Waves of Flags volunteer shift
🛍️ Economic Development: Make This Weekend Count Locally
🔹 Labor Day weekend is the last big swell of the summer season: For our shops, restaurants, and small operators, this has been a bruising construction summer of cones, detours, and reduced speeds along PCH. Three warm days of foot traffic can genuinely change a business's month. If you are hosting, celebrating, or just hungry this weekend, let a Malibu business be the answer. That choice is not charity, it is how this town keeps its character.
🔹 And a last call for Kristy's: After 15 years of feeding this community, Kristy Apana serves her final plates at Trancas Country Market on Wednesday, September 9. If that room holds a birthday, an anniversary, or an ordinary Tuesday you remember fondly, there are only a few days left to say thank you in person. Aloha, Kristy, and thank you for every one of them.
→ 🎯 My take: We say goodbye to a beloved restaurant the same week we ask you to shop local, and that is not a coincidence. The surest way to have fewer goodbyes like this one is to show up for the businesses still here, now, while the cones are still up.
👉 Explore City business resources
⚽ Education & Youth: AYSO 759 Is Off and Running
🔹 Opening Day filled Bluffs Park last Saturday, August 29: From 8:30 AM to 2:30 PM, the fields were wall-to-wall cleats, team banners, breakfast burritos, and smoothies as AYSO Region 759 kicked off its season. This league runs entirely on the heart and hustle of its board, coaches, team parents, and volunteers, and on the food vendors who kept everyone fueled. To every one of you: this town's kids are lucky to have you, and so are the rest of us.
→ ⚡ Why this matters: Youth sports are one of the few places where the whole town shows up on the same morning for the same reason. That web of sidelines and snack schedules is community infrastructure just as surely as any road, and it deserves the same care.
👉 View the Opening Day post (Instagram)
🌊 Environment: From Surfrider's Sand to Point Dume's Bluffs
🔹 Thank you, Surfrider clean up crew: Last Saturday morning, August 29, volunteers joined The Malibu Project and Heal the Bay to comb Surfrider Beach and haul away what the summer crowds left behind. Every bag off that sand is a small act of protection for the ocean, the wildlife, and the break that made this town famous. To everyone who traded a slow Saturday for a bucket and gloves: you are exactly what stewardship looks like.
🔹 Now join me on the bluff, Saturday, September 12, 9 AM to 12 PM: I am inviting you to Point Dume Natural Preserve, 29245 Cliffside Drive, to pull invasive plants and help our coastline stay healthy. Invasive species crowd out our native plants and throw the whole ecosystem out of balance, so every root we pull genuinely makes a difference. My thanks to Restore Malibu Creek for getting this effort started.
→ 🎒 What to bring: Long pants, closed-toed shoes, sunscreen, water, and a friend. Three hours, big payoff.
→ 💙 Why this one is personal: The ocean and these bluffs are a big part of why our family put down roots here 17 years ago. Giving a morning back to a place this beautiful never feels like a chore. It feels like paying rent on a view we could never afford otherwise.
👉 View the restoration event details (Instagram)
👉 Explore the City's environmental programs
🌳 Community Engagement: The Survey Is Closed. The Work Is Not.
🔹 The Community Lands survey wrapped up Monday, August 31: Thank you to every resident who took ten minutes to weigh in on the preliminary design concepts for our five City-owned properties, more than 61 acres in all. As a member of the ad hoc committee on our community lands, I can tell you your responses are not going into a drawer. Staff will compile the results, and they will directly shape the concepts that come back to our commissions and the Council. I will share what we learned right here as soon as the numbers are in.
🔹 The Farmers Market keeps its Sunday rhythm at City Hall: The market returns this Sunday, September 6, from 10 AM to 3 PM at 23825 Stuart Ranch Road while the work to return it to its longtime home near the library continues. The location is temporary. The farmers are not, and neither is my commitment to landing a durable, permanent solution. Keep showing up wherever the tents are.
→ 💡 What this means: Both of these are the unglamorous middle chapters of long stories. Your job in a middle chapter is simple: stay engaged, and I will keep you posted on every turn.
🏛️ Get Involved: Malibu's Commissions
🔹 With the Community Lands survey closed, the conversation moves into commission rooms: Planning, Parks and Recreation, Public Safety, Public Works, Arts, and the Harry Barovsky Memorial Youth Commission are where ideas like those 61 acres get shaped before they ever reach the Council dais, and every meeting welcomes public comment. If you have ever wondered whether one seat can steer this town, spend an evening watching a commission work, then consider taking the next step: the application is open year-round.
👉 Browse upcoming commission meetings and agendas
👉 Apply to serve on a commission or committee
📅 Dates to Know
🔹 Tomorrow, Saturday, September 5, 10 AM to 2 PM: Waves of Flags installation, Alumni Park, Pepperdine University. Volunteers welcome for the 25th anniversary display.
🔹 Sunday, September 6, 10 AM to 3 PM: Malibu Farmers Market at its temporary Malibu City Hall location, 23825 Stuart Ranch Road.
🔹 Monday, September 7: Labor Day. City Hall is closed.
🔹 Tuesday, September 8, 6:30 PM: Regular Planning Commission Meeting, City Hall Council Chambers, shifted from Monday for the Labor Day holiday. The Commission's regular first-and-third-Monday schedule resumes Monday, September 21.
🔹 Wednesday, September 9: Final day of service at Kristy's, Trancas Country Market.
🔹 Saturday, September 12, 9 AM to 12 PM: Habitat restoration volunteer morning at Point Dume Natural Preserve, 29245 Cliffside Drive. Come pull invasive plants with me.
🔹 Monday, September 14, 5:30 PM: Regular City Council Meeting, Malibu City Hall (hybrid).
🔹 Tuesday, September 15, 6:30 PM: Parks and Recreation Commission Regular Meeting, City Hall Multipurpose Room.
🔹 Friday, September 18, 10 AM to 2 PM: Waves of Flags retirement, Alumni Park, Pepperdine University. Volunteers welcome.
🔹 Other commissions this cycle: The Public Safety Commission held its regular first-Wednesday meeting this week on September 2; its next regular meeting is Wednesday, October 7, at 5 PM in the City Hall Multipurpose Room. The Arts Commission next meets Tuesday, September 22, at 9 AM, and the Public Works Commission on Wednesday, September 23, at 3:30 PM, both at City Hall. The Harry Barovsky Memorial Youth Commission resumes its school-year schedule this fall in its regular first-Thursday, 7 PM slot, next on Thursday, October 1. Check the Agenda Center for posted agendas.
🔹 Ongoing: Westward Beach Road and the Point Dume Beach parking lot remain closed; the beach is still open on foot from the Zuma side. PCH work zones continue with reduced speeds and doubled fines, and the speed camera warning period is expected to begin in late September. Drive like it.
👉 Browse the full Malibu city calendar
🐝 One Last Thought
Twenty-five years ago this month, the country learned in the hardest way possible what showing up for each other means. This week, Malibu practiced it in small ways: buckets on the sand at Surfrider, banners at Bluffs Park, ten quiet minutes spent on a survey about land most of us will never outlive. Tomorrow we practice it again, one flag at a time.
So here is my short list for your long weekend: plant a flag Saturday, eat and shop like our local businesses depend on it, and put September 12 on the calendar so I see you on the bluff with your gloves on. And if something in your corner of Malibu needs a push at City Hall, write me at hconrad@malibucity.org and tell me about it. Your notes are the best part of this job.
Have a safe and slow Labor Day weekend, Malibu.
Haylynn Conrad
Councilmember, City of Malibu
