Accomplished pilot, city leader and dedicated father and husband, Ed Lipnick resigns from the Planning Commission for health reasons.
As people stood to applaud him, recently retired Planning Commissioner Ed Lipnick was pleased to know he served the Malibu community well.
Lipnick retired from his post on the Planning Commission for health reasons. His announced departure saddened his colleagues, City Council members and the community because his work ethics and his knowledge are considered matchless.
“You were the core and heart of the commission,” Mayor Jeff Jennings said, as the city leaders honored the departing commissioner at the onset of a joint City Council and Planning Commission public workshop session on Oct. 2. City leaders commended him for his four years of service on the Planning Commission.
“As the appointing council member, I never had to think twice about your decisions,” Councilmember and former Malibu Mayor Joan House said. Other speakers who addressed Lipnick during the emotional farewell echoed these sentiments of respect.
While he expressed that his work on the commission brought him great satisfaction, Lipnick noted that he learned a lot about politics. “Politics is how we settle our differences,” he said.
Still, he was surprised by how contentious the Malibu planning process can be. Lipnick said he was surprised at the depth of the opposition most planning projects face and he said that even when projects get approved, they often get stuck in a myriad of agencies afterwards. That is especially true for commercial developments.
As he spoke about his work on the commission, Lipnick noted that even as he was happy to help the city move in the right direction, the work was tough at times, because it required listening to people complain about projects they did not understand.
“I enjoyed it very much and learned a lot about myself through the job, especially being chairman for a year. I liked making decisions for a while as opposed to giving information to those who make the decisions,” Lipnick concluded, referring to his job as a researcher.
“Lipnick is the epitome of morality,” Councilmember Ken Kearsley said. “He is honest and fair and he showed class.”
“You raised the bar in looking at the issues objectively and you established new standards to look at the law,” Councilmember Andy Stern said, who served on the commission with Lipnick for several years.
“One of the things that shows how fine a gentleman Lipnick is and how he cares about Malibu,” said Richard Carrigan, Planning Commission chair said, who will miss Lipnick’s workmanship. “He was always fair and balanced and he was pleasure to work with.”
Before he served on the commission, Lipnick was chairman of the telecommunication committee. Professionally, he worked in information science research, where he was a systems analyst for the Rand Corporation, a Santa Monica think tank.
Lipnick also worked as a research associate for the University of Southern California School of Medicine in conjunction with the Rand Corp. His duties led him to do research in computer technology that applied to medicine and government policies.
Lipnick was also a writer for a number of years; he and his long-time friend, Councilmember Sharon Barovsky, wrote screenplays and television scripts. While they never had anything produced, they had some success selling their material, Lipnick noted.
Lipnick moved to Malibu 40 years ago and was married for 20 years with his first wife, Reina, who died in 1990. At the time, the couple was in the process of adopting a teenage son, and despite the loss of his wife, Lipnick completed the adoption.
His second marriage of six years is to Diana, who already had two daughters. The two met in Malibu when they were both docents at the Getty museum.
As a hiking aficionado, Lipnick enjoys the outdoors and has traveled extensively, including to Nepal, where he hiked in the Himalayas. As a pilot, he flies his own “beach bonanza” airplane.
At the conclusion of the meeting, Lipnick encouraged Malibu residents and city leaders to work together to produce appropriate development because, even though he considers himself an environmentalist, he agreeed that “people do have the right to use their property.”