2021 Citizen of the Year and
Golden Sparkplug Honors
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Citizen of the Year CHRISTINA SPITZ
Chris is awarded Citizen of the Year for leading the charge to stop the City’s plan to install a homeless village at Will Rogers State Beach. During this past year in the midst of the pandemic, she has been in full trial prep mode seven days a week: she researched the law and the facts, sent out over 30 complex position letters to City, County and State officials, and drafted innumerable public records requests, in the successful effort of proving the plan’s infeasibility.
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Golden Sparkplugs
INGRID STEINBERG
In 2019, Ingrid, through a network of friends and neighbors, founded Resilient Palisades as the Palisades’ first environmental organization dedicated to educating, empowering, and supporting local emissions reduction and the establishment of new community alliances and infrastructure to make the Palisades more resilient in the face of unprecedented environmental challenges. Ingrid, the current organization President, helped to establish Resilient Palisades’ four community teams: Clean Air and Water, Zero Waste, Clean Energy Resilience and Plant-Based Solutions.
KRISHNA THANGAVELU
As a formidable and passionate grass roots organizer, “KT” brought together multiple coalitions and civic leaders, including PPCC, PPRA and PPTFH, to ensure public access and safety in the fight against the proposal to turn Will Rogers State Beach into a site for homeless housing. She formed the Facebook group “Protecting Parks and Beaches” and galvanized the formation of a nonprofit “Beaches and Parks 4 All” to speak in a bi-partisan voice with a compassionate, reflective point of view.
MATTHEW RODMAN
A Golden Sparkplug awardee in 2017 for his important work on school safety and traffic reduction at Paul Revere Middle School, Matt has headed up the July 4th Celebration in Pacific Palisades for the past 4 years and will chair it again in 2022. Even in the midst of COVID regulations in 2020, he arranged for WW II plane flyovers on July 4th and he was instrumental in bringing back and orchestrating our 4th of July Parade and Fireworks in 2021.
RICK MCGEAGH
In addition to a lengthy list of charitable work and contributions, plus many years serving on the Pacific Palisades Baseball Association Board, Rick has been instrumental in cleaning up his Will Rogers neighborhood and significantly decreasing its fire vulnerability. Rick spends hours every weekend raking and hauling away dead leaves and trash, and he has worked tirelessly to obtain cooperation and support from the City of Los Angeles and State Parks in his endeavor to improve fire safety for his entire neighborhood.
SCOTT CULLEN
Scott single handedly began a project in 2019 to radically improve the median between Radcliffe Ave. and Temescal Canyon, turning it from an eyesore into a lushly planted spot. Since then, Scott has continued to provide plants, which he rescues from local construction sites, to hand water the area and to personally maintain it, all on his own time
and at his expense -- a true community volunteer.
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We salute Chris, Ingrid, Krishna, Matt,
Rick and Scott for their amazing
contributions to the Palisades community. _______________
The Awards Committee will present a full report
on the honorees' accomplishments at the
PPCC Board meeting on November 18, 2021.
We thank the Committee for their service.
The awards will be presented on December 9th at the PPCC
Board Meeting and 2021 Awards Presentation, via Zoom.
The community is invited to celebrate with the honorees!
Event details coming soon.
