Pacific Palisades Community Council Accepting Award Nominations

The Board Passed Two WRAC-Recommended Motions at its October 14 Meeting

By SARAH SHMERLING | Editor-in-Chief

During its most recent board meeting on October 14, Pacific Palisades Community Council revealed its 2021 Awards Selection Committee and passed two motions recommended by Westside Regional Alliance of Councils.

Each year, PPCC doles out Citizen of the Year and Golden Sparkplug awards to members of the community—typically during an in-person gala, but, due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, expected to be a virtual meeting in 2021.

PPCC Chair David Card announced that Kevin Niles, David Kaplan, Sharon Kilbride, Sue Kohl and Mary Mueller would serve as this year’s PPCC Awards Committee, which will be responsible for reviewing all nominations received from the community and, along with input from the PPCC board, selecting the award recipients.

Nominations are being accepted now through October 31 at 9 p.m. and must be sent to info@pacpalicc.org.

The Citizen of the Year Award is designed to honor “long-term, steady, reliable and continuing outstanding volunteer service as well as a recent extraordinary accomplishment by an individual that resulted in a substantial benefit to the Palisades community at large,” according to PPCC.

The Golden Sparkplug Award will honor “those citizens who ignite original ideas and projects into community action that benefit Palisadians throughout the community,” PPCC wrote. “The project must have been initiated, in progress or completed during the current or prior calendar year.”

When it comes to the Citizen of the Year, the recipient must be an adult resident of the Palisades at the time of the work, while the Golden Sparkplug is open to adults and youths who reside, own real property or operate a business in the Palisades at the time of the services.

This year’s award recipients will be announced during the board’s November 18 meeting and handed out during a presentation on December 9.

WRAC-Recommended Motions

The first WRAC-recommended motion PPCC considered calls for Councilmember Mike Bonin and other members of City Council to “cooperate with WRAC member councils in promptly bringing resolutions to designate sites, such as schools and parks, for enforcement under the city’s ‘anti-camping’ ordinance (i.e. no camping within a certain radius of these sites).”

The second motion supports WRAC, which is comprised of 14 neighborhood councils and community councils across the Westside, including PPCC, neighborhood council colleagues in “opposing certain amendments to the Code of Conduct pertaining to certified [neighborhood councils].”

“The proposed new rules would allow the city agency that oversees NCs—the Department of Neighborhood Empowerment—to summarily suspend elected NC members for alleged violation of applicable rules, without due process,” according to information shared by PPCC.

PPCC, which was formed in 1973, has elected over the years not to become a certified neighborhood council, in part due to “Draconian and/or unnecessarily burdensome and bureaucratic city-imposed rules, policies, and processes,” the community council shared.

“With respect to the motion recommended by the WRAC board regarding requested revision of proposed amendments to the DONE Code of Conduct for Neighborhood Councils,” reads the motion, “PPCC agrees in spirit with the motion and specifically agrees that Neighborhood Council members should be afforded due process and that DONE should not be granted sole discretion to immediately suspend a member based on an alleged violation of applicable rules.”

Both motions were passed by the board during the meeting.

A full version of the motions, as well as more information about the upcoming awards, is available at pacpalicc.org.