Turner Looks Back at Her Presidency

When in the Village, at the park or driving along Sunset Boulevard, most residents may not immediately notice the influence of Janet Turner’s time as Pacific Palisades Community Council president’but that’s just the point.

Turner, whose background is in television and film, brought that experience with her when she became Council president in July 2010. Using her skills as a savvy producer, Turner kept Council members focused on the town’s beauty and quality-of-life issues that need ongoing nurturing and defense.

‘Working with City Hall is like working with the TV networks,’ she said during her last Council meeting as president. ‘You don’t want to bite the hand that feeds you too hard, but sometimes you have to be firm and make them know that their thinking will be a detriment not only to you, but also to their own interests.’

During Turner’s two-year presidency, the Council managed to keep protections in place for Pacific Palisades in the City’s Core Findings ordinance, removed advertising banners from Sunset, protected the town’s PRIDE benches and worked towards creation of a citywide cell-tower ordinance to help protect neighborhoods from cell-tower blight.

These goals were largely accomplished because of committees like the Land Use Committee and the hard work of many Council members involved, Turner told the Palisadian-Post.

In television and movies, she noted, teamwork is an essential component of accomplishing one’s goals, and ‘I knew that working as a team, the Council could do great things.’

Informed by her work on film and television productions where multiple teams of experts such as grip, electric, art direction and wardrobe work cohesively toward one goal, Turner further enhanced the Council’s committee system.

Under her leadership, the Council incorporated the Cell Tower Committee’originally formed by Councilmember Richard Cohen’into the Land Use Committee.

She also created the City/State Budget Committee, the Public Safety Committee, the Beautiful Palisades Committee and the Climate Change Adaptation Committee, which has been tasked with preparing Pacific Palisades for the effects of climate change along the coast, such as high tides and coastal flooding.

These standing committees were put in place to focus on major areas of concern, said Turner.

‘They research the issues, meet with the parties involved while being sure to look at both sides of any issue, tell the President if they think it should’come before the entire Council,’recommend a course of action to bring’to the Council’and propose a motion on which’the Council discusses and votes,’ Turner explained.

‘Getting people to talk to each other’ is the key to finding solutions to any problem, she said. ‘Being a television producer, I knew you have to get all the parties in the same room and look at the problem from different aspects.’

One of Turner’s most important accomplishments came during the Los Angeles Fire Department budget cuts in July 2011, when Fire Station 69’s manpower was reduced by 12 firefighters and Engine 69 was put on reserve duty.

LAFD officials said they would replace Engine 69 with an extra ambulance, but Turner wasn’t satisfied. She argued that the ambulance would having roving responsibilities beyond Pacific Palisades and that a smaller crew would be working at Station 69 (Sunset at Carey), which would mean not enough firefighters available at all times to man the Jaws of Life.

The Community Council lobbied everyone from the City Council to the fire chief for two extra firefighters. ‘We saved the Jaws of Life by insisting that there be the manpower available to always run it,’ Turner said during her last Council meeting as president.

Turner also cited her efforts to keep corporate advertising out of the Palisades Recreation Center, a situation she will continue to monitor along with Council Secretary Jennifer Malaret, a member of the Park Advisory Board.

Looking back at her many accomplishments as president, Turner said: ‘Everything was a team effort; I just like to think I was good cheerleader.’

Politically, Turner will continue serving on the Council as president emeritus while also volunteering as newsletter editor of the active Pacific Palisades Democratic Club.

A graduate of Temple University in Philadelphia, Turner owns Helfgott-Turner Productions with her husband, Daniel Helfgott, a television and movie writer, producer and director, who she met in college.

Turner said she is currently in talks with a celebrity couple about a reality show in the style of the Osbornes, developing a series of specials on atrocities against women around the world and is raising funding for a feature film called ‘Left to Die,’ which she calls ‘the last untold story of World War II about American soldiers who were put in Nazi concentration camps.’

An animal lover with a new member of the family, a Tibetan terrier named Kipling, Turner is also seeking sponsors for a project she developed with ASPCA entitled ‘Meet Your Match,’ which matches people with a pet.

When asked if she would consider a position in public office on top of her other endeavors, Turner said: ‘I have had so much fun running the Community Council and being a community advocate that’I would consider public office if the right opportunity presents itself.’