Malibu May Meter Parking on PCH : Revenue: Money would help the fledgling city pay higher-than-anticipated bills. Surfers, residents voice dissatisfaction.

Malibu city officials, new on the job, desperate for dollars--and, in the view of some locals, reneging on promises to keep the beachside community pristine--are considering installing parking meters along portions of Pacific Coast Highway.

“We’re not too stoked on it,” said surfer Ron Davis, voicing the sentiments of many.

To Davis and others, the meters are exactly the kind of urban intrusion they feared when Malibu incorporated one month ago.

“Malibu is kind of a mellow, laid-back spot. We’re anti-L.A., and now this is catching us up,” Davis said.

What next? outraged residents wonder. Paved sidewalks? Toll booths?

It all started two weeks ago, when Capt. Don Mauro, who heads the Malibu sheriff’s station and has been negotiating with Malibu officials over police protection for the city, suggested parking meters as a means of raising urgently needed city revenue.

More than 1,000 meters could be placed along Pacific Coast Highway at major beaches, and more could be installed along other roads near the coast, Mauro said. The City Council ordered its staff to study the idea and seek a meter permit from the California Coastal Commission--if it decides in the coming weeks to install the meters.

Mauro said he made the suggestion with a tinge of regret. “There was an almost immediate lament for the good old days--before incorporation,” he said.

“It’s thrown everybody into a tizzy,” said City Councilwoman Missy Zeitsoff. “Everybody’s hair is rising.”

Zeitsoff, who has not yet decided where she stands on the issue, and the four other members of the council won their seats on a platform to keep Malibu a rural paradise. But because of the proposed parking meters, Zeitsoff said, some residents now see her and other city officials as the despoilers.

City officials said that critics of the meters are forgetting one important, if unpleasant, reality of Malibu’s new status as a city--bills.

A bona fide city since March 28, Malibu has not prepared its first budget. But the Sheriff’s Department stunned council members recently when it estimated that law enforcement and traffic control for the fiscal year that begins in July will cost up to $3.6 million. That is about $1 million higher than estimated, City Manager Bruce Spragg said, and it amounts to more than half of the city’s estimated expenditures.

“Nobody likes parking meters,” Spragg said. “We don’t want to ram them down people’s throats. But we’ve got to look at ways to keep the budget balanced.”

Spragg said that Hermosa Beach earns more than $1 million a year from parking meters and said it was his responsibility to make sure that Malibu at least considers such a revenue source.

Much of it would be collected from tourists, beach-goers and surfers. On a hot weekend day, 100,000 or more “day people”--five times the city’s population--descend on Malibu, according to Wally Millican, an official with the Los Angeles County Department of Beaches and Harbors.

The way Councilman Mike Caggiano sees it, meters would be a means of raising revenue from out-of-towners. “It seems only fair that we should make non-residents help pay for services,” he said.

Tentative plans call for charging $4 for five hours of parking. “We’d undercut the county by $1” at large lots such as Zuma Beach, said Mayor Walt Keller, alluding to Malibu’s long, nasty fight with the county to obtain cityhood.

On Friday, residents attending a meeting of the city’s transportation task force worried that masses of eager beach-goers, determined to avoid the meters, would simply park in some of Malibu’s most exclusive neighborhoods.

Others worried that the fees would prevent poor people from using Malibu’s beaches.

Everybody agreed that a landscape bristling with meters is downright ugly, but Zeitsoff asked: “What can we do? Make them look like dolphins?”

Dolores Welch, owner of The Godmother of Malibu cafe, predicted that meters would hurt business and said she would consider chopping down any that are placed in front of her restaurant.

“There’s going to be a revolt in Malibu over this,” she said.