Kevin Niles organized the award ceremony.
Photo courtesy Rich Schmitt
The Pacific Palisades Community Council held its annual awards dinner on December 9 at the lower Bel-Air Bay Club. Recipients were Chris Spitz for Citizen of the Year and Scott Cullen, Rick McGeagh, Matthew Rodman, Ingrid Steinberg and Krishna Thangavelu as Sparkplugs.
Past Citizen of the Year Jimmy Dunne hosted the banquet.
Photo courtesy Rich Schmitt
The event was not held in 2020 because of Covid. Given the ongoing Covid constraints this year, the PPCC decided to have a hybrid celebration. Awardees and families attended the in-person event, hosted by Club member and past Citizen of the Year Jimmy Dunne, and a Zoom connection allowed everybody else to join on a computer.
In October, residents submitted nominations for Citizen of the Year, which is for a person whose contributions to Pacific Palisades have been both a recent effort resulting in a substantial benefit to the community, and a steady history of service to the Palisades.
Residents could also nominate Golden Sparkplugs, whose contribution to Pacific Palisades has been a recent effort resulting in an important benefit to the community.
A Community Council committee of Kevin Niles, David Kaplan, Sue Kohn, Sharon Kilbride and Mary Mueller examined all of the nominations before making the selections.
Mueller’s daughter Madi Rindge, a singer, writer and producer, sang “American the Beautiful” and “Walking on Sunshine” to start the evening.
PPCC Chair David Card served as master of ceremonies and thanked the committee for their work, and Niles, who was Citizen of the Year in 2019, for planning the event.
Certificates were presented to each of the honorees from Congressman Ted Lieu, State Senator Ben Allen, Assemblymember Richard Bloom, L.A. County Supervisor Sheila Kuehl, L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and City Attorney Mike Feuer.
Kilbride, the 2015 Citizen of the Year, quipped that the honorees would have to build an addition to their homes just to have an empty wall to display their certificates.
(See additional stories about each of the honorees.)