Council on Monday night honored retiring Strategic Initiatives Manager Corri Planck for her 15 years of service and dedication to West Hollywood.
Planck “changed the lives of countless residents,” Mayor John M. Erickson said, and has been “a champion for many in our community, and a true embodiment of public service.”
‘Those who know me understand that this is one of the least comfortable places for me to be, talking about my work and the people I’ve had the privilege to do it with,” Planck said. “It’s been my great good fortune to work for the city, as it has been for many of us. West Hollywood is a dream I didn’t even know I had, and I’ve tried to never take for granted what a magical place it can be.”
Over her 15-year career in City Hall, Planck wore many hats: council deputy to former Councilmember Abbe Land, program administrator, social services supervisor, Strategic Initiatives manager, acting director of the Human Services and Rent Stabilization Department and Human Services manager.
Her fingerprints are visible on many of the city’s most notable and consequential programs — Aging in Place, Guaranteed Income for Older Adults and the West Hollywood Care Team — but the biggest mark she leaves on the city is her work spearheading how WeHo addresses homelessness, a seven-year effort which culminated in the multi-million dollar Holloway Interim Housing Program scheduled to open in the former Holloway Motel by the end of the year.
Planck thanked City Council for “supporting all of our sometimes crazy ideas and ensuring we have the funds and resources to implement them,” and she gave a shoutout to her colleagues and team members, whom she honored as “dear friends” and “dedicated public servants.”
Planck’s many achievements include the 2014 report on the status of women in West Hollywood. She played a pivotal role in launching the Los Angeles County Lesbian and Bisexual Women’s Health Collaborative. She helped create a middle school option for West Hollywood parents and children, assembled a Family and Teen Summit, led the city’s Housing First work, and even officiated weddings when they were legalized in California. She developed numerous programs and initiatives addressing the needs of those experiencing homelessness, including ensuring LAHSA identified sexual orientation and HIV status in its annual survey.
Planck thanked her wife, Dianne Hardy-Garcia, and their two daughters for accommodating the demanding schedule of the job.
“My family has put up with a lot over the years—too much time on the phone and on the computer, for sure,” Planck said. “Particularly, to my wife Dianne, who understands that a text message from a council meeting or a commission or advisory board meeting saying, ‘They’re on the last item,’ is actually meaningless in determining when I would get home. I simply couldn’t have done what I’ve done without her encouragement and love.”
Planck, her wife and their two daughters as children.
$314,595 per year, the very embodiment of Public Service.
It’s funny how the same people who complain endlessly about the homeless population are the same people who complain endlessly about all proposed solutions. I see you in the comments. Get a grip.
There is only one real solution: get them out of town. Clean people who want to work and shop and pay bills and rent should have the luxury of living in a city. Those who don’t need to be out of the city and into the desert. If you have a better workable solution, please post so I can forward to the right people.
I’m gay but I have to ask: Is it competence or just being gay that gets you a job in WeHo?
It’s neither. It’s really how well the applicant plays the kiss-up games with the Council who agrees to pay their absurd salaries.
If these programs are to be championed, perhaps the city needs to do a better job promoting what they actually are and how they help. Aging in place? How does the city help? I have many neighbors who could use assistance.
Erickson, Shyne, and Byers have no concern for the aging WEHO population. This includes overpaid bureaucrats. They care about one thing. Their social media pathetic self-promoting images and woke nonsense are all about feeding off the public troth. VOTE them out…
She is just another overpaid bureaucrat in a corrupt city. Watching John “thank you so much” Erickson reminded me of a pilot of a cringe Worthy reality show that wasn’t picked up. The audience was filled with his fan base and I’m surprised he wasn’t in pink again with pearls to complete the picture.
In a city that prides itself on having lots of community involvement, there wasn’t a single speaker in the parade of sycophants, who said a word of truth about the reality of homelessness now being far worse in the city, than when she started 15 years ago. I’m disgusted no one had the courage to step up and say a word of truth, (me included). Perhaps she is getting out because she sees the writing on that wall, that maybe in another year or two, when there could be twice as many crazies on our streets, she may have actually… Read more »
You should go live somewhere else in another part of America and see how much more fabulous it is there. Also, maybe go do more volunteer work instead of wasting all your energy on this thread
I foresee a contractor job in this lady’s future along side Oscar Delgado.
It’s hard to dispute the accomplishments of someone that’s obliviously dedicated, but when I acknowledge that in this city of approximately 37,000 and 1.9 square miles, she makes more than the Governor of California, that homelessness is at staggering numbers and increasing every day here and that millions more dollars are continually thrown at the same problem over and over without solution, I have to ask where is the oversight? Where was the stop gap? where were the progress reports to the city council at public council meetings? Where the hell were the results? The council has some explaining to… Read more »
I agree with your assessment. This woman–and so many others at city hall–have profited immensely while the residents of West Hollywood suffer from the relentless plague of homelessness in our community.
I’d love to know how many of the 24 bureaucrats whose total pay package exceeds $300,000/year actually live in the City of West Hollywood. It would be a fascinating exercising in understanding how far removed they are from the often indifferent and imperious method by which they manage OUR city, and the impact it has on West Hollywood residents. I’d also love to know what the amounts in the “Other Pay” column represent. Some are six-figure amounts.
However one feels about Corri Planck’s job performance, these pageants attendant to retirements, and indeed installations, are a wasteful squandering of public funds and human resources. People working on the public purse, or elected to be good stewards of the public purse, have a shameless inability to look at how out of touch such regal performances are with the reality of the world.
Always thought it was so odd to witness the seemingly endless ceremonial congratulations of public employees. The City must have a Self-Congratulatory Department busily churning away creating the commendations, awards, prattle adorned pomp and circumstance. Service is best described as a dedication to making things better for a person or a circumstance because one is able to do it without expecting a crown on their head or their name on a wall or building. The benefit is felt by many and the doer feels a special inner strength and personal gratitude for having done so. This energy cannot be bought… Read more »
Yet another overpaid WeHo bureaucrat.
2022 pay and benefits: $314,595. That’s more than the governor ($290,120).
https://transparentcalifornia.com/salaries/search/?q=Corri+Planck
And she has the arrogance to claim to have done a great job, when in reality she is a total failure and has irrevocably hurt the city.
For once I have to partially agree with Mayor John Erickson that Planck “changed the lives of countless residents”. He thinks for the better, but the sad reality is Planck helped change things for the worse. The City’s plans on homelessness have been an utter failure in every possible way, by any possible measure. And to see this parade of people giving tributes which are the exact opposite of the reality anyone can see with their own eyes, is what I would call “Trump-like”. Luxury housing in one of the most desirable locations to live in, in the entire country,… Read more »
I think we can all agree that homelessness has become worse and worse in West Hollywood every year that this women was in her power position. Rather odd to hear her bragging about so-called accomplishments while presiding over the decay.
It is not her fault that the homeless problem has gotten worse. It is the country’s problem.
Partial agreement. She is doing what she is instructed to do by the City Council, which is a lost cause and money wasted until they get real serious. This is not trying to cure anyone, but rather move them out. Way out into the desert. The City Council fantasizes about saving the outcasts who don’t want to be saved. It’s their expensive dream. The more $315,000 per year worthless staff they can hire, the more they think they are all like Mother Teresa. The sad fact is they are destroying everyone’s life inside cities, for their own sick twisted dreams… Read more »
All politicians are to blame for the homeless catastrophe in our city and country. Don’t let this one off the hook for no reason.
I emailed Corri after she had brought out the West Hollywood care team plan, because after the presentation at the DAB and after reading about it, I neither saw nor heard anything about helping homeless people with disabilities.
So, I asked her in my email, what were the plans for not only helping people with mental disabilities, but people with physical disabilities?
I never heard anything back from her.
I will say, however, that some of the people who were on her team, like Derek Murray, really helped me in many other ways.
Thank you for calling out hypocrisy.