By Sarah Lombardo
He may be going to Malibu, but former City Manager Harry Peacock won't be rushing out to buy sunblock.
"I can't really walk around and say, 'Hey, it's Malibu, dude,' " Peacock said. "They really have a full plate in terms of things they have to work on."
Peacock, fired in late February by a unanimous vote of the Saratoga City Council, will be starting a new job on Monday as city manager of Southern California's Malibu. The Malibu City Council officially voted to accept a contract for Peacock last Monday, and Peacock accepted the job.
But working in a beach community won't be all fun and games for Peacock, who said he is very excited about the position and about moving back to Southern California. With his new city facing budget, creek pollution, traffic and growth problems, it sounds like Peacock's tasks in Malibu will be a lot like his tasks in Saratoga. Only the scenery will be different. It's a situation many feel is more than a little ironic.
Also ironic is that Peacock, fired after 12 years on the job, will be making $4,000 more a year than he was in Saratoga, where his yearly pay was $93,000.
But, Peacock, 55, won't have much time to concentrate on the irony of it all. He has that "full plate" to deal with. Peacock said his biggest task will be helping the council work out its budget in Malibu.
"It's budget season, and they've got to put it together," Peacock said. "And they don't have nearly the same kind of computer equipment we do to make it not so much a labor-intensive task."
Although Malibu has almost twice the annual budget of Saratoga at $13 million--and only half the population--Peacock said the city has been struggling to overcome a number of disasters that have plagued the area in recent years. Fires, floods and earthquakes have left the 6-year-old city awash in problems and Federal Emergency Management Agency paperwork.
In addition, a flooded road, shut down for nearly a year, means Peacock will have to try to assist the council through a county and city squabble to get it fixed the way the city wants it done. And a polluted body of water local surfers call "polio lagoon" means that Peacock and the council are facing a cleanup of a local creek that is suspected to have been polluted by residents' septic tanks.
"Malibu incorporated because they didn't want sewers," Peacock said. "We have to find a way that is acceptable to the community to clean the lagoon up."
And then there are a new city's growing pains. Peacock said the council is still working on defining itself as a government. Council members and residents have yet to really determine what level of service the city should provide and how they see themselves as their own city.
"There are a lot of political issues," Peacock said. "It's going to take a while to sort out everything."
On top of everything else, Peacock may also have to sort out the council members themselves. "The council is divided, and they are very open about that," Peacock said.
But with packing up his and his wife's things, moving, selling their house and looking for a new one, Peacock said he isn't worried about the job he'll do in Malibu.
"Hey," he said, "either I will do a good job, or I'll fall down flat on my face."
This article appeared in the Saratoga News, March 19, 1997.
©1997 Metro Publishing, Inc. All rights reserved.