The voter turnout in Palms Elementary School was abysmal, all the candidates were elected, there were no surprises, and the election workers had a good chance to get acquainted with each other or to finish reading the Sunday Times or play computer games.

Twenty-eight people showed up to vote; six ballots were received by mail. There are about 28,000 people living in Palms. Six of them got up enough nerve to be candidates.

God knows how much it cost the city to run the election, with two Palms-wide mailings, hiring an independent election administrator and paying a custodian to open and close the elementary school.

Well, it must have cost a fair share. Not to mention the hundreds of hours of the volunteers' time that might have gone to better use in their own personal lives.

Todd Robinson was elected vice president by a vote of 25-0. June I. LaMoy was named treasurer by 20-0; Billie Silvey, nonprofit organization representative, 20-0; Mate (Matt) Gaspar, Overland residential representative, 5-0; John Riordan, Pacific Electric business rep, 2-0; and Neal James Anderberg, Palms Depot business rep, 2-0.

The poor showing was not unusual for second elections in L.A.'s neighborhood councils. Or third or fourth ones, for that matter. Once the first blush of enthusiasm for organizing a council wears off, so does the urge to run for or vote for the members of the governing body.

Palms's first election last year resulted in 157 votes being cast. But that was mostly the result of the candidacy of two candidates from the IMAN Center, the Iranian Muslim Assn of North America. They brought in the voters.

This year, there were no favorite-son candidates and no favorite-son voters. Only friends and relatives, for the most part. A few were attracted by the hundreds of cards sent out by real estate agent Lori Donahoo publicizing the vote.

At almost the last minute, two candidates agreed to be write-ins: LaMoy was recruited as treasurer by President Pauline Stout. Gaspar was brought in by a last-minute e-mail that The Sun sent to about 700 people on its mailing list.

Robinson was elected vice president once before — last year. But just a few days later he became president when founder Len Nguyen resigned to go to work for Council Member Bill Rosendahl.

Robinson himself resigned as president on March 1 this year, and Stout took over for the balance of his unexpired term. That left Robinson able to run for vice president this month.

Silvey left her position as Overland residential rep to be elected this time as nonprofit rep. Anderberg also made a switch: from Studio residential representative to Palms Depot business rep. See the maps just below to make sense of all this.

The reason for the low turnout? It's not for lack of diligence on the part of the city or the people on the Election Committee.

The city paid for two mass mailings within the district (although the delivery was really spotty in some areas). We know that President Stout walked our portion of the 90302 Zip code to gather adddresses for stakeholders south of Venice Blvd., but many of those first-class mailings were returned as undeliverable because they were adressed to "Palms 90302" rather than "Culver City 90302."

One would have to simply admit that neighborhood councils are not at the top of most people's attention list. In fact, voting in general is not a great turn-on in most parts of the U.S.A., except maybe for American Idol.

One solution is now being discussed by some Palms representatives: Switch the Palms elections to every other year, instead of yearly. That would focus our attention on this important community function instead of making it just one more ho-hum activity.

Certainly more can be done to organize our business districts: The idea behind their separate representation was to get all the small and large businesses together to work on problems common to them.

For example,the routing of the next phase of the Exposition light-rail line is of great importance to business owners and property owners along Venice Blvd. (one of the proposed routes) or at the Motor-National intersection (near a proposed light-rail stop).

Now that Palms has its full complement of active business reps (Riordan, Anderberg and holdover Donahoo) perhaps they can get all of Palms's commercial interests organized and active on behalf of our community — a kind of Chamber of Commerce under the umbrella of the Palms Neighborhood Council. That would help a lot.

The city's rules for certification of neighborhood councils include the following:

As you can see from the map at the top, the Palms Council already has shared or overlapping boundaries with the Mar Vista Community Council covering Palms Middle School and Charnock Road School.

The Outreach and Communications Committee of the Palms Neighborhood Council came up with a list that included some dubious locations, and the Council's Representative Assembly kicked the list back to the committee for further study.

(Full disclosure: The Sun's editor is a member of both the Assembly and the Outreach Committee.)

Upon reflection (and debate), the committee came up with the following locations for those famously blue L.A. signs that mark the point where one district leaves off and another begins

1. Facing Downtown: Venice Blvd. at Exposition-Robertson, just after the 10 Freeway exit road, on the right shoulder.
2. Also facing Downtown: Palms Blvd. at National, just after you drive under the railroad overpass, on the right shoulder.
3. Facing Culver City, Inglewood, LAX and points south: Overland at Washington, on the right shoulder (in front of where Washington Mutual used to be).
4. Facing the ocean: Venice Blvd. at Sepulveda, in the median (the Culver City boundary actually being on the south side of Venice in that area).
5. Also facing the ocean, with a couple of hills and many trees in the way: National Blvd. at Overland, where the Arco-Richfield gas station was at one time, on the right shoulder.

This list of locations will be presented to the Palms Representative Assembly at its June 7 meeting.

For a Westside Village angle to this story, click here for our Westside Village page.