Due to a procedural glitch involving the lack of a membership quorum, a July final vote by Pacific Beach Town Council on a proposed name change for the group had to be postponed.
“At some point, we had to have 10% of our total membership of about 370 there for the vote and, because it was a hybrid meeting, and some people left early, we had to have at least 37 votes and that was razor-thin,” said Marcella Bothwell, PBTC president.
As a result, Bothwell said the town council opted to delay the vote on the name change to the community association and place it under review by its governing committee. She added the committee needs more time to evaluate the situation and determine the best course of action moving forward.
Prior to the July vote, all PBTC board members were sent information explaining the reasoning behind the group’s proposed name change.
“The PBTC desires to increase community awareness of the organization’s mission and accomplishments, and to grow membership,” read the statement. “A major obstacle to this effort is a widespread misunderstanding of what the PB Town Council is, how it operates, and who may participate. Much of the confusion stems from the name, ‘Town Council.’”
The statement proceeded to note that many residents infer that the town council is governmental, a lower-tier subgroup of the San Diego City Council, and therefore do not understand that PBTC is actually an all-volunteer membership organization.
Bothwell said the name-change proposal was far from a slam dunk.
“We’ve spent two years on this and some people want to do a name change,” she said. “But there are other people who do not want a name change.”
Ellen Citrano, a former PBTC office assistant and a current member of its board, said she had been undecided on the issue.
“I have wavered regarding the name change,” she admitted. “But I don’t feel there is any proven information that would indicate younger people joining, or people understanding the organization any better. In fact, when our board member asked his children who are young adults if they would consider joining the board or the association, they both said no.
“Over the past year, we have had quite a few people in their 40s and 30s join as members and they seem to get the concept. So I’m a bit of a traditionalist and I like the old name,” Citrano said.
“People need to be informed and need to come together to a decision,” Bothwell said of the delayed name-change vote. She added: “We thought we might need to look at this in a different way. So we took it back to the governance committee.”
The vote on the name change is also too important to be taken lightly, notes Bothwell. “We need more than 40 people to make this decision,” she said. “It’s too important to the community.”
One possibility would be to expand PBTC membership voting on this issue via a mail-out ballot to members, said Bothwell. “That may be best,” she said. “People can send it back. At least they would have had the opportunity (to vote).”
PBTC is dark in August, which means the September meeting of the group would be its earliest opportunity to re-vote, in-person on changing their designation from Pacific Beach Town Council to Pacific Beach Community Association.
