Meet The Candidate: Doug Stewart

MALIBU, CA — Doug Stewart said that Malibu is currently facing an unprecedented series of “Black Swan” events - ones that have a distant shot of actually happening, but once they do, everyone says they should’ve been anticipated.

The 72-year-old businessman and Malibu Public Safety Commission Vice Chair says that his background in finance and governance make him uniquely qualified to lead the city through COVID, fires, more natural disasters to come, and what he says is the “worst financial crisis in its nearly 30-year history.”

Stewart does not mince words when it comes to the city’s budget situation. “We’re looking right now at probably about a $5 million deficit,” he said, citing City Manager Reva Feldman’s forecast. “You talk about tough times - if this was your household and I suddenly said you’ve got to cut a third of your expenses out, it’d be tough to do.”

Stewart, a Memphis native who was managing director of the Sierra Nevada Investment Group, says the solution will come from a mix of cutting spending, including restructuring City Hall, and finding new ways to raise revenue.

“There’s no one silver bullet - you’ve got to look at everything from income - how do we increase our revenue when our sales tax is in the absolute tank,” he said. “We’ve got to help get the sales tax revenue up, we’ve got to get our transient occupancy tax up, fines and fees need to be looked at carefully... and then you’ve got to look at your expenses, and that’s gonna be tough...I think everything has got to be on the table. There’s no such thing as ‘this isn’t touchable.’”

Budget crisis aside, Stewart lists “public safety” as his top priority. For Stewart, this comes down to traffic, parking, and fire safety. Like many other candidates, Stewart said that fees and fines need to be more strictly enforced on Pacific Coast Highway for speeding and illegal parking. “If you’re gonna growl, make sure you’re willing to bite,” he said.

He said that the Public Safety Commission is working on improving traffic enforcement by the Sheriff and adding additional coverage from California Highway Patrol. Stewart also feels that more Volunteers on Patrol are necessary, and he is working to improve towing capacity for illegal parking. He approves the city’s recent moves to limit street parking at night on alternate sides of PCH.

To address the issue of homelessness and RVs parked permanently alongside PCH, Stewart says that the city needs some kind of temporary, inconspicuous homeless shelter so the city can work out a compliance agreement with the Martin v. Boise decision, which requires a municipality to provide shelter if it asks to remove people. He is also amenable to a Safe Parking program, which would allow a designated parking lot to provide supervised overnight parking for the homeless.

“It’s probably no more than five or ten cars...it’s one of those places you wouldn’t even know they were there,” he said. “It’s a very vetted program - there are several around Los Angeles County...it’s pretty innocuous, and it helps transition people.”

On the issue of fire safety, Stewart, who serves on the CERT team in addition to the Public Safety Commission, said that the top three priorities are a better evacuation plan, better alert systems, and better preparation for fire trucks.

Stewart lists an improved evacuation plan as one of his top priorities. “We have to realize that the Woolsey Fire experience had the effect of training our residents NOT to evacuate,” he wrote on his website. “This is a bad idea for many, but now we have to work to prepare people to both harden their homes as well as work with them to know how to survive if they choose not to evacuate, or evacuate late.”

Stewart said that he wants to improve the updating system about evacuations, especially so residents can receive updates if the power goes out. “Improvements can be made to the City’s dormant AM radio station as well as KBUU,” Stewart wrote. “This will require a better EOC process (Emergency Operations Center) which will likely improve our ability to control the repopulating process.” Stewart said he feels like the city has made important improvements, like a backup generator and better cell phone communication.

He also said that the city needs to make it as easy as possible for out-of-town firefighters to navigate the area. “We’ve got to make sure that we’ve set the city up as well as we can,” he said. “In front of every fire hydrant, there’s supposed to be a blue watch dot on the center line on the side of the fire hydrant. So if you’re in a fire truck driving in the dark or the smoke, your headlights will pick that up any time and see that … it’s stuff like that we’ve gotta do.”

Stewart also feels that a plan for the old City Center is a top priority, and feels that it needs to be some kind of multi-purpose community space. “It could essentially be a multipurpose event center, for lack of better terms, that could also house meeting rooms, display areas for exhibits, performance areas, etc.” he wrote. “While this is a long-term goal, I believe that without a vision of where we want to go, we will never have such a place.”

Stewart feels that his blend of business expertise and public safety experience make him a good choice for a city in the midst of several long-term crises.

“I developed a reputation early on - when things needed help, I got called into it, and it became pretty clear that for a while I was kind of the go-to guy, if someone needed to fix something, I was the one.”

This article originally appeared on the Malibu Patch