Members of Resilient Palisades, an environmental organization was admitted to the Pacific Palisades Community Council in March and assigned to a category in April.
We all know about gender reassignment, but the Pacific Palisades Community Council has now introduced a new concept: organizational reassignment.
Members voted to reassign the new environmental organization, Resilient Palisades (RP), as a civic organization at a meeting on April 14. RP had been admitted to the PPCC in March.
Although RP’s mission clearly states that it brings residents together to “address the climate and ecological crisis,” it is now reassigned as civic and will rotate with the Civic League.
At the April meeting, the PPCC also reassigned PRIDE, which had been designated in the civic category to business.
PRIDE helps maintain medians.
PRIDE, which was founded in 1992 and focuses on street beautification, median planting and maintenance, was reassigned to business and commerce. Will that affect their tax-deductible nonprofit status?
Circling the News contacted Council President David Card and asked why Resilient Palisades had not been added to the environmental category with Temescal Canyon Association (TCA), the sole organization in that category.
For those who have not kept up with the PPCC, which states they are the “most broad-based community organization in Pacific Palisades and has been the voice of the community since 1973,” the organization is not a neighborhood council, does not follow the Brown Act (which means all emails and phone calls between members need to be public), and voting is always interesting.
The PPCC, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization, consists of area representatives and nine organizational representatives who sit on the board.
Residents do not vote for nine organizational representatives, nor do they vote directly for the executive positions, which include president, vice president, treasurer and secretary. Of the 25 members on the PPCC, a resident only votes directly for two people: an area representative and one at-large representative.
Back to organizational dysphoria. The Chamber of Commerce is the sole organization under business but is dying a slow death while waiting to possibly merge with the Malibu Chamber. So, the PPCC decided to move PRIDE to that category in order to have at least one voting member going forward.
The home construction at 837 Haverford is under review by the Civic League.
With PRIDE out of the civic category, Resilient Palisades was slotted in with the Civic League, an all-volunteer nonprofit that reviews construction plans for homes in Tract 9300.
The sole group in the environmental category is the TCA, which was founded in 1972 and is dedicated to the preservation of the Santa Monica Mountains.
Card was asked why Resilient Palisades was not placed in the environmental group. Did members of TCA not want to share a rotating seat with RP? He did not respond by press time.
CTN reached out to Area 8 Representative Reza Akef who said, “Resilient Palisades definitely deserves a seat at the Community Council. I applaud their work and I’m excited to learn more about them.
“However, the bylaws committee’s justification for not categorizing them as an environmental group [with TCA] perplexes me,” he said, noting that a member of the executive board of the PPCC explained at the meeting that all groups could be considered environmental.
George Wolfberg, who, working for the City of Los Angeles, helped create Neighborhood Councils. Yet, the Pacific Palisades Community Council had worked so well that he strongly felt it should remain as an independent entity. He proudly continued participation in PPCC for the rest of his life, never wavering from that opinion.