Every day, Marquez Knolls resident Janet Turner looks out her window at the neighbors’ third-story addition blocking her view of the ocean and is reminded of how she became involved in the community. ’You might think that something unpleasant has happened to you, but it is really a blessing in disguise,’ Turner said of her neighbors’ decision to expand their home in 2005, which led Turner to become a community activist. ‘I found that I love helping to build my community and make it the place it is.’ On July 8, Turner will oversee her first meeting of the Pacific Palisades Community Council. She is taking over the helm from Richard G. Cohen, a senior vice president with Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, who served two years. In a recent interview, Turner explained that when she first learned about her neighbors’ plans, she invited the other neighbors over to her house on the 600 block of Lachman Lane and asked them to help her launch a campaign against the project. ‘Almost all my neighbors showed up. I was impressed because they were all busy people,’ Turner said. ‘That was my first sense of that inner joy of being so much a part of the community.’ After filing two appeals with the city, Turner and the other homeowners lost their case. Turner told the Palisadian-Post in a recent interview that her block on Lachman Lane falls under the city’s general municipal building code, which doesn’t protect views. Her street also does not have any CC&Rs (covenants, conditions and restrictions). Despite losing, Turner discovered the importance of the Community Council during the process. ‘It was pretty difficult to be noticed, but once the Community Council was willing to hear us, the city finally began to take us seriously,’ said Turner, a television and movie producer. ‘It shows how important a community council can be. The Council sifts through complaints and lets the city know what might be legitimate.’ Recognizing that the Council has the power to help change city codes, Turner ran for representative of Area 3 (the Marquez Knolls and Bel-Air Bay Club neighborhoods) and was elected in October 2006. She now looks forward to the L.A. City Council passing the Baseline Hillside Ordinance, which is currently being developed. She recalls L.A. City Councilman Bill Rosendahl promising that after this anti-mansionization ordinance is approved, he will propose a view-protection ordinance, so she is hopeful that it comes to fruition. In 2006, Turner also joined the Marquez Knolls Property Owners Association (MKPOA), and has been a board member ever since. Over the past four years, Turner has advocated that a Palisades High School police officer, who pepper-sprayed several community students, be temporarily removed until after the investigation. When her neighbors complained about traffic flow and safety, she encouraged Marquez Elementary School Principal Phillip Hollis to rework the school’s traffic plan. Turner has also helped residents of Charmel Place successfully keep a T-Mobile cell tower out of their residential neighborhood. ‘I feel that neighbors should have a say to what’s going on,’ she said. ‘The mobile companies do have more than one location to choose from.’ As Council chair, Turner imagines that she will continue to face cell-tower issues. She also anticipates that the city’s budget crisis will be ongoing, so she would like to form a budget committee comprising Council members who can make recommendations to the city. ’It will be important for us to ring in on where we stand on what is being cut and not,’ Turner said. ‘Fire and police are our biggest concerns.’ She would also like to improve communication with the community about the Council’s activities. ’I would like to make myself available to organizations, churches and schools to tell them about the work of the Council. I would really like people to get involved.’ As Turner works to accomplish these goals, she will also be busy producing movies and television shows. A graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, Turner started her career working for talk shows. She pre-interviewed guests, selected visuals and props and wrote interview questions for the hosts. She worked for ‘The Merv Griffin Show,’ ‘The John Davidson Show’ and ‘The Home Show,’ interviewing celebrities such as Barry Manilow and Sean Connery. Turner made her first movie about Geraldine Jensen, founder of the Association for Children and Enforcement of Support (ACES), a child-support advocacy organization. She came up with the idea while working on ‘The Home Show.’ ’Geraldine was going to be a guest on the show, and after I read her life story, I thought, there’s a movie here,’ Turner said. In 1994, Turner produced the movie, ‘Abandoned and Deceived,’ which aired on ABC in March 1995. Lori Loughlin of ‘Full House’ played Jensen. ’Thousands of women have called ACES as a result of the movie,’ Turner said ‘It’s very gratifying.’ Today, Turner owns a production company, Helfgott-Turner Productions, with her husband, Daniel Helfgott, a television and movie writer, producer and director who she met in college. They have just created a pet series with the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals that will be launched in syndication in January 2011 by Associated Television International.’ Turner and Helfgott are also working on a movie about how the U.S. government hid the fact that Americans were sent to Nazi concentration camps as prisoners of war. The movie, ‘The Last Untold Story of World War II,’ is based on Mitchell Bard’s book ‘Forgotten Victims: The Abandonment of Americans in Hitler’s Camps.’ Turner said she makes movies based on real life because she believes it is important to fight for justice. ’I have internal optimism that you can get things changed,’ she said.
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