LETTER TO THE EDITOR

‘Dear Pacific Palisades’

Dear Pacific Palisades,

This month, I begin my second round as Pacific Palisades Community Council chair. I’m humbled to have been asked to step into this role again and be affirmed by the sitting board of the council to serve as chair for the upcoming one-year term alongside Jenny Li as vice-chair, Beth Holden-Garland as secretary and Randy Young as treasurer.

I take on the role with a formidable team of officers at my side and an exceptional set of outgoing leaders who have collectively served the council for decades. I have served alongside each of these remarkable individuals and have learned from them at every turn. I thank them all, and I congratulate David Card, my predecessor, on his new role as chair emeritus.

Six years ago, I wrote an entirely different letter with the same salutation. Then, as now, I thanked the people who stepped into leadership alongside me, like George Wolfberg, who agreed to serve as board vice-chair, and my predecessor, Chris Spitz, who had guided me through my early days as Primary Education representative and on to founding the Pacific Palisades Task Force on Homelessness, and finally, serving as PPCC vice-chair then chair.

I promised, then as I do now, to preserve the interest of this community and work hard to bring us together over important issues while making room for all voices in the spirit of collaboration, not division.

At the start of my term then, the big issues were the Baseline Mansionization Ordinance, the construction of Caruso’s Palisades Village and, as now, homelessness. We tackled all those issues, and as history will tell, managed each in a way that left us better as a community.

At the time, we were preparing to hold area and at-large elections, as we will again this fall, and began our online voting platform that year with a hybrid ballot offering—as we will again this year. I pledged to increase our outreach by launching an e-newsletter, increasing our social media presence and developing our website so more people could learn about our work and refer to our positions on behalf of the community with a few clicks of a keyboard—all of which we accomplished with the help of many hands.

This year again, we have bold plans. We will continue to strengthen community outreach and engagement, focus on quality-of-life matters that Palisadians count on us to support, welcome the voices of young people and youth groups active in the community, and commit to helping our organizational members get their message out to Palisadians and bring their good work to the forefront of community awareness.

As always, we will keep an eye on important policy matters that stand to impact our unique community, and most importantly, continue to monitor and support the expected opening of the George Wolfberg Park at Potrero Canyon.

My fellow officers and I would love to hear from you, so please email us at info@pacpalicc.org. We will continue to meet by Zoom and hopefully transition to a hybrid model of convening soon. We look forward to meeting you all!

Maryam Zar
PPCC Chair

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