City Council - Regular Meeting

All right, we're going to go ahead and get started. I'm going to call tonight's meeting to order. I'm going to ask our city clerk to do the land acknowledgement to start.

Thank you, Mayor. The West Hollywood City Council acknowledges that the land on which we gather and that is currently known as the City of West Hollywood is the occupied, unceded, seized territory of the Gabrielino Tongva and Gabrielino Quiche peoples.

Thank you, Melissa. I will officially call the meeting to order, and we have a special guest tonight who is going to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance, and that is Nikolai Mameva. If I could ask Nikolai to come forward and lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance tonight.

I pledge allegiance to the flag of the United States of America, and to the republic under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.

Great job. Thank you. Thank you, Nikolai. We do have a number of adjournment requests tonight, and I'm going to ask my colleague, Councilmember Erickson, if he could start tonight.

Mayor. Roll call first.

I'm in such a hurry tonight. You're so excited. Overzealous. Thank you. Melissa, can we have a roll call, please?

Yes. Council Member Byers. Here. Council Member Erickson.

With a cupcake, too.

With a cupcake? Yeah. Oh, you didn't share.

Well, there's more in the back. If anyone wants cupcakes, I clearly don't eat them, but I will tonight.

Council Member Meister. Here. Vice Mayor Heng.

Here.

Mayor Hellman.

Here.

And we have a quorum.

Thank you. And now we will turn to the approval of the agenda. I believe that there are some items that staff has requested at least one be removed from tonight's agenda. Can you let us know which one that is, Melissa?

Yes, Mayor, that is item E4, which is the planning update and street closures for the Sunset Strip Music Festival. That item will be tabled to the October 5th meeting.

Great, thank you. Now let's go through, and I know we ordinarily do this in reverse order, but I'm going to try to go through it. in the order on the agenda. Any interest in moving E3, the business task force update and recommendations to consent?

I'd like to keep it for discussion.

Oh, keep it for discussion, fine. How about F1, the agreement for professional services with American Global Security?

I just have a question that I would like to answer on the record, and then I'm happy to move and have that conversation.

Well, let's just leave it on the regular agenda then. How about item F2, the approval of council discretionary funding?

Yes, and I will be recusing myself under one item, but since it's on consent, I'll do whatever Lauren Langer tells me to do in that consent. Okay, great.

How about item F3, joining regional and global networks to advance biodiversity conservation? No objection. That will be moved to consent. How about F4, designated local cultural resources signage program? Okay. No objection. That will move to consent. How about item F5, a resolution to initiate local cultural designation for the Worley building?

I just have questions on that.

You have questions on that?

Yeah.

Okay, we'll leave that. How about F6, preparations for the Super El Nino? Okay, no objections to moving that to consent. And then F7, I would like to keep that on the regular agenda. Are there other items that people want to try to move to consent or remove from the consent calendar? Council Member Meister.

Yeah, thank you. I'd like to pull B14, City Conflict of Interest Code.

Okay. ARE THERE OTHER CHANGES TO THE AGENDA? OKAY. HEARING NONE, WE WILL GO AHEAD AND ENTERTAIN A MOTION TO APPROVE THE AGENDA AS AMENDED. MOTION HAS BEEN MADE AND SECONDED. WE'LL TAKE THE ROLL.

AND I'M RECUSING MYSELF UNDER ITEM F2, ITEM 3. YES.

And I'll be abstaining from item B10 on the consent. I know that's not what we're doing right now. I just want to make a note.

I didn't hear you. Which item? B10. B10. Okay. Great. All right. So we now have an agenda. So thank you, everyone. If you wanted to speak on any item that has been moved to the consent calendar, your slip will be taken at the beginning of public comment. All right, now let's move to Levine Act disclosures. Council Member Ericson, you already made yours. Are there other disclosures? No other disclosures. Now we'll turn to adjournment motions. Council Member Erickson.

Thank you so much. I have two tonight, Mayor. One I just found out about, so I'll send this to Justin afterwards. It's in memory of Kathleen McGraw-Negretti. She was a good friend of Sahar Andrade, who I know many of us up here know. And from Sahar just now, she was a ball of love that loved everyone no matter what. So I'm blessed we could adjourn in memory of her as well as then if we could please adjourn in memory of Donald Leach, locally known as Cowboy Don Leach. He was a longtime West Hollywood resident and a regular at Gold Coast, haven't heard that name in a while, bar on Santa Monica Boulevard. He was recognized for his signature cowboy hat as well as his humor and his regular appearance in appearances at the Gold Coast where he often told jokes and interacted with patrons. He was a familiar, eccentric presence in West Hollywood's social scene. He will be missed by many. Sending all my love to the friends that are deeply impacted by that. Thank you so much, Mayor.

Thank you. Council Member Meister.

Thank you, Mayor. I would like to adjourn tonight's meeting in memory of the victims of the tragic bus and helicopter crashes that occurred in Chatsworth on September 15th. These heartbreaking incidents took the lives of bus passengers Gage Wieda and Daniel Castillo, as well as helicopter pilot George Marcineau, NBC4 and Telemundo 52 aerial photojournalist Aliana Moreno, and bystander Edie Gutierrez Mejia. The bus crash also injured at least five others. The sudden loss of these individuals has deeply affected families, colleagues, and communities across the region, especially those who work closely with the members of the news crew as they carried out their essential work. documenting our world. As we hold space for this profound grief, the city extends its deepest condolences and stands in solidarity with all who are mourning, family, friends, coworkers, and people across Los Angeles whose lives were touched by their actions daily. To Robert Kovacic, my friend, my heart hurts for you and your colleagues. May their memory be a blessing. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you. And I would request that we adjourn in memory of the victims of the Venture End shooting in Tucson, Arizona. On August 31st, in the parking lot of this business, a gunman fatally shot two patrons before taking his own life. Vincent Anthony Siqueiros and Cameron Davis Capora. Investigators later determined that the shooter acted alone, but they recovered information indicating that the attack was motivated by hate towards the LGBTQ plus community. Both victims were beloved members of Tucson's LGBTQ community and regulars at the venture and a long standing bar for LGBTQ residents of Tucson. As we honor their lives, we reaffirm our unwavering commitment to standing with and protecting the LGBTQ plus community, and we extend our deepest condolences to the families and friends for this tragic loss. That is the last of our adjournments tonight. We do have a number of proclamations. The first one tonight is for the young man who led us in the Pledge of Allegiance, Nikolai Mameva. If I could ask Nikolai for you to come forward so we can thank you and honor you for leading us in the Pledge. Thank you. Thank you. We also have a proclamation tonight recognizing Disability Awareness Month. This is something that we recognize every October and National Disabilities Awareness Month has been celebrated here in the City of West Hollywood for many years. On October 1st, 2026, the Disabilities Advisory Board will partner with the city and Cedar Sinai to organize a health and wellness fair at Plummer Park. This will provide free seasonal flu shots, blood pressure education and screening, and emergency preparedness resources. And the health fair is not limited to people with disabilities. Anyone in the community can attend. On October 28th, 2026, the city will host the 28th Annual Disability Service Awards and broadcast that ceremony, especially on that day. The Disability Service Awards will extend recognition to this year's honorees for their continued dedication to equality and awareness for people with disabilities. So on behalf of the council, we declare October Disability Awareness Month. And I believe that Yola is here representing the Disabilities Advisory Board. I think others are here as well. So if all the members can come forward so we can present them. Yes, Rick is here as well. So please join me in thanking the Disabilities Advisory Board.

Good evening, Council, Mayor and Council, and honored guest. I am Yola Dore, and I'm a member of the Disabilities Advisory Board. I want to invite all of you to come this October 1st to our very wonderful and wonderfully planned by staff as well, health fair, which will have so much to offer. And I think you would be surprised at everything that is in case when the Cedar staff and West Hollywood staff and all our elected officials visit with you. Now, also on October 1st, I want to remind you, and this isn't so pleasant, our taxes go up that day. Our taxes will be 11%, the highest taxes in the country. So the Disability Advisory Board, the Human Services Commission, and many things thanks to you have a lot to offer the citizens of this community that might have special needs because of that tax increase. So we have a lot to tell you about. Our meeting is tomorrow night, always the fourth Wednesday, and our televised meeting is right here, October 28th. We hope to see you there. Thank you so much, and thank you for your proclamation.

Thank you for your work, Yola. You're good, Rick? All right, great. Thank you. We also have a proclamation tonight for ovarian cancer circle. Ovarian cancer is a serious disease that affects many women and families each year, and the ovarian cancer circle has been working to increase awareness of the disease, as well as to provide funding for advocacy, education, community outreach, and helping to shine a light on a disease that is often difficult to detect in its earliest stages. Part of the inspiration for the ovarian cancer circle was one of our employees in the early days of the city of West Hollywood who was diagnosed with ovarian cancer and we lost her while she was still in her 20s. The color teal that you will see with this bookmark is the color that is used to raise awareness about ovarian cancer. We will be lighting up the lights in City Hall with this color. We also want to add our voice to encourage everyone to understand ovarian cancer, to know the symptoms, and to be advocates for those with the disease. I believe we have somebody here. There you are. Thank you. Come forward, and we will present this to you. And we have a photo of our employee, Robin. Thank you for being here. So hang on a second. We're going to give you the proclamation, and then you'll talk. All right.

Hello. Good evening, Mayor Hellman, Vice Mayor Hang, and esteemed city council members. My name is Paulinda Babini, and I am the proud founder and president of the Ovarian Cancer Circle, an organization I founded for my beloved daughter, Robin Babini.

This is Robin.

There's a picture of Robin. On behalf of the dedicated circle team, including Vice President Natalie Mignon and myself, I want to extend our deepest gratitude to Mayor Hellman, Council Member Erickson, for your continued support for once again recognizing September's ovarian cancer awareness month and lighting the lanterns on Santa Monica Teal. This marks the ninth consecutive year of this recognition, and your commitment to bringing attention to ovarian cancer is deeply meaningful. We are truly grateful. One of the pillars of the Circle's mission is raising awareness. We work tirelessly to educate women about the symptoms of ovarian cancer. including frequent urination, bloating, constipation, feeling full after eating less than usual, and shortness of breath. These symptoms, and they're on the bookmark. Anybody like a bookmark? We'll give you one. These symptoms are easily mistaken for other more common conditions, which is one reason ovarian cancer is often difficult to detect. Knowing the symptoms and recognizing the changes in your body and talking to a gynecologist can be critically important. Oops. It is important to remember that ovarian cancer remains a serious threat to women's health. It's the fifth leading cause of gynecologic cancer death in the United States. This is why awareness is simply important, it is essential. Being aware is not only part of our mission, we are also passionately committed to funding innovative research. The Circle is proud to support the groundbreaking work of Dr. Sanaz Mamarzadeh at UCLA's Geo Discovery Lab. Although Dr. Mamarzadeh could not be here with us tonight, she is incredibly grateful for this recognition and for the continued attention being given to ovarian cancer. For 17 years, the Ovarian Cancer Circle has worked to turn grief into action. During this time, we have raised more than $1.5 million to support research focusing on better understanding this disease and developing more effective treatments. Ovarian cancer deserves a much more prominent place in our public conversation. Every woman deserves to know the symptoms. Every family deserves hope. And every researcher working toward better treatments deserves our support. I truly believe if I had known then what I know now, my daughter Robin would be here today standing beside me and sharing her story. Thank you very much for the time it took to give us a proclamation and help us raise awareness for ovarian cancer. And Natalie, our vice president, is gonna say a few words also. Thank you.

Hello, Mayor Haldeman and council members. Actually, this is one of my first times coming up here. I never come up here. I'm always in the background. But I've known you guys for a gazillion years and I just wanted to take a moment to express my gratitude in some words. I want to take a moment to thank Mayor John Howman for being very instrumental and supportive and committed to the ovarian cancer circle, because we go way back since, like, the 90s. I walked into your office back in 2011 with a heart full of purpose, and honestly, we didn't really know what we were doing, but his assistant at the time, Fran Solomon, welcomed me into her office, and at that moment, that became part of the journey that continues to this day. I knew Robin and having worked together, I wanted to make sure her memory continued to live on. But I also knew that this was much bigger than me and bigger than one person. I wanted to become an advocate for women and girls to raise awareness, keep the conversation going, and help make sure that women's lives, health, and stories are never overlooked. Women are the womb. We carry, we nurture, we bring forth life. The womb is more than an organ. It's the first home, a cradle, and a sanctuary, the place where life can begin its journey into the world. We need to keep fighting this insidious disease to find a test, a cure. And Mayor Hauman, I'm giving this special tribute to you because I know this is your last hurrah. So thank you, Mayor Howman, for recognizing the importance of this cause and standing with us along the way. Your support has helped us raise memory, keep Robyn's memory alive while continuing the work of advocating for women and girls. And thank you, John Erickson, as well, and the entire council, for your continued support. Appreciate that.

Thank you, Natalie.

Mayor, may I just say that Natalie and Paul Linda for all the work that they do Natalie does work in our parks and recs department and while she works and is well known to everyone in the community she then when she gets home goes and gives so much service to the community for what the work of you've been doing for so long. And I just, I mean, Natalie and Paulinda, Paulinda, obviously we love you. It's a crime not to love you, but Natalie, you know, I just want to say you just, I love all of our employees. I don't have favorites, maybe some, but you're definitely on the top for giving back to the community in every single way, even when you get done at five o'clock. So thank you for what you do as well.

Agree. Thank you, Natalie. Vice Mayor Hang has two presentations tonight as well.

Thank you, Mayor. I am honored to present a proclamation to the West Hollywood Recovery Center and the Log Cabin in recognition for National Recovery Month and National Addiction Professionals Day, which is September 20th. Each September, we observe National Recovery Month to honor individuals in recovery to promote awareness of evidence-based treatment for substance use and mental health conditions. Additionally, National Addiction Professionals Day is recognized annually on September 20th to celebrate the essential work of those dedicated to addiction support. The West Hollywood Recovery Center and the historic Law Cabin embody these values by providing welcoming, community-centered spaces for 12-step groups and offering vital resources that help residents and families navigate addiction and find healing. The City of West Hollywood proudly commemorates these observances and honors the West Hollywood Recovery Center and the Log Cabin for their enduring service, leadership and commitment to fostering recovery, resilience and community care. I'd now like to invite representatives from the West Hollywood Recovery Center and Log Cabin to come up to the dais to accept this recognition from the city and to take a photo with myself and my colleagues.

Thank you.

Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council, staff, thank you so much for this opportunity. On behalf of the Board of Directors of the Recovery Center, we are so grateful. The continued support that we get from all of you to the recovery community is profound. People come to our spaces for recovery, for safety, for fellowship, for just community. And you've all just been so dedicated in making sure that we have that. And people don't come for the coffee or the fluorescent lighting or the wobbly chairs. They come for the community that we have at the Recovery Center and Log Cabin and 90 years of the cabin. No matter where we travel in the world, when people find out we're from Los Angeles, they say, do you go to the Log Cabin? We are known globally. That space is known globally. 12,000 people come through our doors a month and to be able to give to that community and support them in a meaningful way through your support, not just with the space, but with events. Councilman Hank, you've been a champion for events and for What do you need? How can we make it happen? And there's so many people in this room from the city that have done the same thing, that support us and tremendously work for creating the new campus that we have starting soon. So thank you on behalf of the board. Thank you on behalf of the recovery community. And we'll see you around campus.

And thank you for the work that you do. It's so important. Thank you.

and I have a second presentation to recognize two groups, the Trevor Project, as well as Partners in Suicide Prevention from the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health in recognition for National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. Tonight, the City of West Hollywood also proclaims September as National Suicide Prevention Awareness Month, and in doing so, I'd like to honor two organizations, the Trevor Project and Partners in Suicide Prevention at LA County DMH. The Trevor Project plays a vital role in advancing suicide prevention by providing life-saving crisis support, advocacy, research, and educational resources for LGBTQ plus young people, helping ensure that every young person feels seen, valued, and supported. Through 24 seven crisis services, community training programs, and national leadership, in suicide prevention for LGBTQ plus youth, the Trevor Project continues to make meaningful contributions toward building a safer, more affirming world where young people experiencing emotional distress receive the care and understanding that they need. And the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health also plays a vital role in advancing suicide prevention by providing comprehensive mental health services, crisis intervention, outreach, and community-based programs that support individuals experiencing emotional distress or mental health challenges. The Partners in Suicide Prevention Program, PSP, offered by DMH is designed to increase public awareness on suicide and reduce stigma associated with seeking mental health and substance abuse services. Now I'd like to invite representatives from these organizations, first from the Trevor Project and then from Partners in Suicide Prevention to come up to the dais to accept this recognition from the city and to take a photo with myself and my colleagues.

Good evening, all. My name is Nolan Scott, VP of Marketing and Content at The Trevor Project. And on behalf of our entire team, I am deeply honored to accept this recognition from Vice Mayor Danny Hang and the City of West Hollywood. The Trevor Project was founded in 1998 here in WeHo. So this commemoration is a beautiful full circle moment after nearly 30 years of building a better future for LGBTQ plus young people and being there in some of their darkest moments as a safe space. LGBTQ plus youth face disproportionate risk for suicide. That is not because of who they are. It is because of the discrimination they encounter each day. Our message to them is clear. You do not need to change. Your environment does. September is Suicide Prevention Awareness Month. But at The Trevor Project, our commitment continues 365 days a year. Inclusive, vibrant, Firming cities like WeHo show our young people that they are seen, they are valued, and there is a place for them in our world. When we unite to uplift and protect our youth, we show them that we are here to persist, to progress, and to build the bright and hopeful future they deserve. Thank you for this honor, and thank you for standing with us.

On behalf of the director of the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, Dr. Wong, and our senior deputy director of prevention and child well-being, Dr. Bird, thank you, Mayor Hillman, Vice Mayor Hang, and members of the West Hollywood City Council for this meaningful recognition of our work in suicide prevention, intervention, and postvention across LA County. We know that LGBTQ plus individuals continue to experience disproportionate risk to their mental health and well-being as a result of stigma, discrimination, hate, marginalization, and systemic and structural inequities. This recognition reminds us of why this work matters so deeply to us. Our commitment is not only to respond when someone is in crisis, but to build systems of prevention, early intervention, healing, and support where LGBTQ people can feel seen, affirmed, safe, and valued. The Department of Mental Health remains unwavering in our commitment to standing alongside the LGBTQ plus and other marginalized and oppressed communities, partnering with organizations, advocates, and community members themselves to ensure the culturally responsive and affirming mental health services are accessible to all. We are deeply grateful to the City of West Hollywood for your partnership, your leadership, and your continued commitment to the well-being of all community members. Together we can create communities where hope is stronger than stigma, connection is stronger than isolation, and every person knows that their life matters. Thank you very much. Thank you.

I apologize that we have so many proclamations tonight, but we only have one meeting this month. I do have our last proclamation, and that is for the Hollywood Food Coalition. This year, each month, I have been donating my salary as a council member to one of the local organizations that's serving our community, and this month I am donating to the Hollywood Food Coalition. The Hollywood Food Coalition actually started here in West Hollywood and it has been working for decades to combat food insecurity in Los Angeles and West Hollywood. Its mission is to nourish the community It has a vision of universal food equity. The organization provides rescued food, nightly meals, and essential services to unhoused and food insecure neighbors. Just this weekend, the Hollywood Food Coalition had a successful smash hunger pickleball fundraiser right here at West Hollywood Park, which helped support their vital programs. I also, as we honor the Hollywood Food Coalition, I also want to honor and give a shout out to Arnali Ray, the executive director of the Food Coalition. Thank you. She has been the executive director for the last four years, and she's guided the organization through significant growth transition. She led a multi-year transition to a shared warehouse facility. She also helped ensure that the Food Coalition had the resources to respond quickly to the January 2025 fires. reaching more than 25,000 families who were without food and nutrition. She's a founding board member of Hollywood Forward, and she has provided great leadership. But I want to acknowledge everyone involved with the Food Coalition. I see Linda is there with you, and I know you have others who are here tonight. So please all join me in thanking the Hollywood Food Coalition for all of their incredible work.

Make sure you tell everyone how to volunteer because I believe Mayor Heilman and I have and other people have up here, but it's quite the fun time.

Thank you for that. Good evening, everyone. Thank you so much for this wonderful honor. My name is Denali Ray, as John just shared, and I'm the executive director at Hollywood Food Coalition. On behalf of the organization, I'm honored to accept this proclamation alongside our staff, our board members, volunteers, donors, and all these other partners who have contributed to our work. As John said earlier, our story starts right here in West Hollywood. And when the city called on the residents to do something for hunger and homelessness, that's exactly what we did. We created a meal for people that couldn't afford to eat. And that's still who we are today. What began in 1987 as volunteers handing out sandwiches on a street corner turned into a nightly meal service led by a professional chef, a team that connects people into services, and a food rescue operation that rescued 3.2 million pounds of food last year and also serves about 240 organizations. Now more than ever with cost of living going up and benefits getting limited and cut, we need to be there for people. We need to step up and really help our community. I want to thank Mayor Heilman and this entire city council member for your leadership and partnership. It's wonderful to see also council member Byers and council member Erickson, who we've worked with closely over the years. I also want to echo Natalie in recognizing Mayor Heilman's leadership. Since the beginning of the council, you've done so much to advocate for marginalized communities, and it really is a very, very inspiring leadership. So it's the same principles that we were built on. And I just want to thank the whole council for standing with organizations like ours to help the communities that need it the most. This proclamation really shows what's possible when a city calls on its people and its people answer.

So thank you again for this honor.

We're so thrilled. And if you want to come volunteer with us, we love having volunteers. You can look us up on our website at hofoco.org.

Thank you.

Thank you, Arnali. So we are done with proclamations for tonight. And those of you who were recipients, you don't have to stay for the rest of the meeting. We won't be offended if you leave as we move in to the business section of our meeting. We are now going to move to our public comment period. And Melissa, how many speakers do we have in chambers and how many on Zoom?

We have 17 individuals in chambers, one citizen position slip and no one in Zoom.

Okay, we're gonna start with the speakers that we have here who are speaking on consent calendar items. Our first speaker is Anita Goswami to be followed by Tom DeMille and then Ed Holman.

Hi there, Anita Goswami. I'm a resident of West Hollywood First, B6 quarterly econ data. I appreciate that item because that report shows that hotel vacancy remains at over 20%.

Hang on a second, Anita. Can you pull the mic down a little bit? Sure. And can I ask people not to have side conversations? Thank you, Anita.

Okay. I appreciate B6, the quarterly report, because I see hotel vacancies remain at over 20%, and I've been tracking this now for several years. So keep that in mind when you're looking at applications for new hotels. I'm super happy to see B14, anything to support more transparency and ethics. B10, which adds 125 from Measure M, to figure out the EIFD to support the Metro K-Line Northern Extension. I look forward to the analysis and active public involvement. Meanwhile, where's the TODAP? Local control is also on the- Excuse me.

Can we stop the conversation? You can do that next. Let's hear from the speaker first. Thank you.

All right. Thank you. Meanwhile, where's the TODAP? Local control is also on the Cal City's agenda later this week, where the city of Murrieta is leading the resolution because there's many cities across the state that are standing up for local control. and standing up against Sacramento's tyranny of blanket land use decisions, tyranny of taking away parking requirements, and tyranny of unrealistic arena goals, the tyranny of one size fits all. So I hope that the council members who represent West Hollywood at Cal Cities will remember to support the people of this city, those hundreds of us that have come out against SB 79 for a TODAP, because it has to be we the people against a state government that has taken away local decisions. We need to be standing up for our own city. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Anita. Tom DeMille is our next speaker, to be followed by Ed Holman.

My name is Tom DeMille. I'm a candidate for city council for the fifth time in 35 years. Mr. Erickson and Ms. Byers, you're not worthy of my vote on November 3rd. You might have helped the food bank, but you've made the rest of the city a disaster and a cloud of crap over us for too long. Please step aside. Again, my name is Tom DeMille. I'm a candidate for city council, and I will build the Sunset Music Icon Walk of Fame throughout our sidewalks on Sunset, filling all of our hotels and restaurants and clubs for the next 100 years. I'll do the same with the Gay Icon Walk of Fame in the Boys Town and the Rainbow District and Girls Town and Trans Town and everyone's welcome there. What they're not welcome to do is to fight and to brawl and to people are worried about the coyotes We have armed suspects going through our neighborhoods all night long. That's what I'm worried about when I'm elected. We're going to make these streets safe again. We're going to fill our hotels and our restaurants. Our bartenders will be able to afford a down payment on a house. Our dancers. We have some of the best entertainers in the world here. And they can't afford to live in our city, in my city, in our city. And that's got to change. I'm looking for your vote because I'm the man that never took a dime why all these, I don't know what they are, have taken billboard money, millions of dollars. It's deplorable. What I'd like to do is get elected and support our new mayor, Danny Hang, because he's gonna need all of our support. He's gonna need all the residents to come and help us and to hear you all. The day of pushing you aside is over. I'm Tom DeMille and I ask for your vote. Thank you very much.

Thank you. Ed Holman to be followed by Andy on B11.

Now we can't hear you. Before my time starts, I wanted to apologize for the confusion. I thought I was coming up later.

No, we'll blame Melissa.

Can we restart my time, please? Yeah. Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Members. Ed Holman, 30-year resident. I'm here tonight to spread awareness and to ask for the support of the City Council regarding a piece of legislation currently in House and Senate that directly impacts our community's ability to age in place safely and with dignity. It's called the Medicare at Home Act. Right now, our nation's health care system has several... coverage gaps. Traditional Medicare covers short-term skilled medical care after surgery or hospital stay. However, it does not pay for standard daily home care, such as helping with bathing, meal preparation, or medical management that helps keep our older adult population independent. Unless someone exhausts their life savings to qualify for Medi-Cal, middle-income seniors are left to pay out of pocket or rely entirely on exhausted family caregivers. The Medicare home... The Medicare at Home Act helps fix this, introducing Congress as House Resolution 10020 by Representative Debbie Dingell from Michigan and simultaneously in the Senate as Senate Bill 5270 by Senator Andy Kim of New Jersey. This legislation creates a dedicated benefit under Medicare Part B to cover up to 20 hours a week of non-medical care. personal care for those needing assistance with daily activities. By embedding long-term personal care into Medicare, this addition helps to prevent our neighbors from being forced out of their homes and into expensive care facilities simply because they need a help with daily living. I urge this council to support the Medicare at Home Act, advocate for its passage, and continue standing up for policies that help our residents age in place in the community they love. Thank you.

Thank you, Ed. Andy, to be followed by Victor Omachenko.

just have notes this evening okay good evening uh mr mayor mr vice mayor city council members my name is andy i'm a member of the unhoused community i wish i had been able to make comments two months ago but there were other housing issues that people wanted to uh rage about so i just want to give an update of my progress into home someplace I can lay my head and call home. It started about four weeks ago when I was referred to the Holloway. I'm eligible. I should have had that, you know, been able to stay there. But as you all know, I have filed a formal complaint, a civil rights complaint, grievance, against this facility. While it is voluntary that you can go into it, there aren't many options for single residency shelters. So I had no problem being there, but after three weeks of feeling like a teenager, a criminal, worse security than any facility I have been a nurse in, a jail cell, like, it's really obnoxious that all of these measures were taking my dignity away to walk in this facility and get a bed. I'm not a criminal. I don't have a history, so I shouldn't be treated like a criminal when I walk into a facility to get a bed. The people that are there, literally there are four people, five, six, seven, maybe seven people because there's a weekend crew who literally sit for two shifts and stare at a computer screen of video cameras. They don't have the skills for behavior health. They don't have the skills for helping people who normally don't have a budget, don't have a time schedule, don't know, don't really do calendars because that's where their mental health is. These people are not skilled to help them. And just what I didn't put in my complaint, because it wasn't part of the grievance, I'm sorry. There is a gentleman there who didn't do anything that first week. So he's been a good friend, and I've been trying to help him move forward. The second week, simple, free reward incentives, instead of punitive, to help him move on and get into housing. It makes a difference. I'm asking that you don't pass this

Your time has expired. Thank you, Andy. We appreciate it. We did get your letter. Thank you. Our next speaker is Victor Omichenko to be followed by Stephanie Harker.

Victor signed up online, but I don't see him in chambers.

Okay, so then we'll turn to Stephanie Harker. I thought I saw Stephanie earlier. We'll come back to see if they're here. Our next speaker is Kathy Blavis. Oh, Stephanie, I didn't see you getting up there. Kathy is blocking your pathway.

I know it was my dark glasses. Good evening, council. staff members. And hi, Jackie, how are you? Stephanie Harker, City of West Hollywood. I wanted to speak about the Disabilities Advisory Board and the upcoming October, which is Disabilities Awareness Month. I think that so many of us don't think about, aren't aware of certain things even though at some time in each of our lives we will be disabled. Nobody gets away with it. Your eye, you have an injury to your eye, you fall and break your ankle, or you become permanently disabled. And awareness just has to be, has to, has to be first and foremost. So I hope everybody will participate in creating the awareness for October. I also wanted to talk about the upcoming election. Each time an election rolls around, I just keep hoping, keep hoping my mailbox is not gonna be full of of hit pieces and angry partial lies. I hope that all of the candidates will try and rise above that level of disgusting behavior. You know, it's actually slander to call a candidate or mentioned candidates in terms of being called, they don't believe in safety because they're against bike lanes. It's ludicrous for one thing. It's not who we are. It shouldn't be who we are. And I hope that people will rise above it this time around and just run on your merits because you all have good merits. It's just who people are going to vote for. Thank you.

Thank you, Kathy Blavis, to be followed by John O'Brien.

Good evening, Kathy Blavis, City of West Hollywood. With regard to Disability Awareness Month, I just hope people pay attention the entire year and not just one month of the year. Disability is, as Stephanie said, can happen to anyone at any time. Their award ceremony needs to be well attended. I hope you will all come. It's always very meaningful and very celebratory. On a different note, I'd like to congratulate Councilmember Meister on receiving the President's Award from the West Hollywood Beverly Hills Democratic Club. To say she deserves this recognition is an understatement. Lauren has never been afraid to speak the truth, stand her ground, or do what she believes is right for our city and its residents. She has always approached public service with thoughtfulness, integrity, and a genuine commitment to the community. I was and remain so proud of her, and beyond that, I am incredibly proud to call her my friend. As we approach this upcoming election, I hope the following words from her acceptance speech stay with all of us. They remind us that it means what it truly means to listen to your community, stand up for what you believe, and never lose sight of the people you were elected to serve. From her speech. Democrats need to go back to embracing the big tent. Democracy works best when there is diversity of thought, when different experiences, different perspectives, and different ideas are all in the room. The danger comes when the extremes, whether on the left or the right, decide that everyone who doesn't agree with them doesn't belong. We are witnessing this on a national level, and on a state level, and yes, even on a local level. And this is dangerous because... Kathy? Yes?

Your time has expired. Just finish that sentence.

Because once we start pushing people out of the tent, we stop persuading, we stop building coalitions, and eventually we lose the ability to get anything done. Thank you kindly, Mayor Heilman.

John O'Brien, to be followed by Richard Giesbrecht.

Good evening, council people. Each of you has been given a four-page packet of my health concerns about my fractured spinal and widening of the tent and to be able to sit at the festival. And so there's medical documents showing I had an illness. And I am here tonight because I still have that West Hollywood Sheriff's ticket that was given out to me for sitting at the festival and speaking to people with shade over me. And so I'd like to have that removed. And I think people here may know my history. I was in the first Pride Committee in New York. I was a leading participant in the Stone Rebellion. I've been a leader of the gay and lesbian community for 60 years. And I think I should have had more respect than I received. So I did nothing to cause any injuries, harm. people who know me knowing I'm not into violence. And I ask that that ticket be resolved because otherwise I have to go on October 5th and I will not pay. I will go to jail first and I don't want to get COVID in the jail. So I appreciate that. Thank you.

Thank you, John. Richard Giesbert to be followed by Bill Kaiser.

Good evening, Richard Giesbred, citizen of West Hollywood since 1995. I'm deeply troubled, even revolted, by the Occupied West Hollywood's recent article detailing allegations about Lindy Horvath's conflicts of interest. They're described in Political Escape Velocity, how Lindy Horvath monetized her city council seat. Horvath voted on our billboard program 78 times without a single recusal, though her sole reported outside income came from Leroy and Rose, a billboard advertising agency related to those billboards. More recently, Councilman Erickson voted to hand nearly $180,000 in city contracts to his own employer, Planned Parenthood. Council Member Byers currently is under state ethics referral for voting on housing policies, apparently backed by the housing lobby that pays her. The only votes against referring that conflict to the Fair Political Practices Commission were Byers and Erickson. Previously, Horvath had voted against a rule to stop council members from taking paid work. connected to policies they shape. Recently, Byers, Erickson, and Hang voted against TODAP, a city planning matter, inviting builders to create disorderly development across 80% of West Hollywood. So it comes as no surprise that Horvath and fellow traveler Abberland were here lurking about the city councils. So we're with City Attorney Langer to evaluate the validity of these billboard ordinances. For example, Horvath voted to digitize a billboard to the tune of $96 million.

Thank you, Richard.

A part-time seat on our council.

Richard, your time has expired. Thank you. Bill Kaiser to be followed by Robin Borner.

Hello, I'm Bill Kaiser, a former longtime resident of West Hollywood. I'd like to speak first on the procedures for picking booths at the Pride Festival. Our group, Out Against War, under the umbrella organization Interfaith Coalition for Peace and Justice, applied timely for a free booth. After a long delay, we were denied, but we were not offered a paid booth, even though on our application we had indicated we would pay. We were later told there would be a secure free speech space at the festival. When we arrived with our special guest, Stonewall veteran John O'Brien, we saw that was not the case. We set up in a safe area and he was greeted by many festival goers eager to learn about his hope to revive a grassroots movement against the fascist Trump regime. trying to erase our people's history and culture. He was confronted by six armed sheriffs and then cited. I think more damage would have been done to him. He probably would have been carried away had there not been a large number of spectators who were there to protest his censorship. I would ask the city council to please help rescind this citation that he has been given. John O'Brien has done so much for our community and movement.

Thank you. Your time has expired. Robin Borner to be followed by Anthony Voulin.

This boot I have here today represents the fascism under this current presidential administration. But no need to worry, Mayor Heilman, Vice Mayor Hang, and Councilwoman Meister know the perfect way to fight against one of the most corrupt presidencies in US history, bootlicking. something countless liberal leaders have done without fail. By supporting Flock, the three of you have proven that East Beverly Hills, oh, I'm sorry, West Hollywood is a champion of progressivism amidst the wealthy conservative communities of the West Side. You did it, you finally solved racism. By allowing these Flock cameras to be installed, we don't need to worry about the safety of the black and brown community because this administration will be sure to detain all of them and send them to Guyana. WeHo is a sanctuary city where everyone is equal, equally monitored by flock cameras. Mayor Heilman, Councilwoman Meister, despite our shared Caucasian complexions and good credit scores, though I'm sure your credit scores and bank accounts are much bigger than mine due to your spines being as weak as the musician Ed Sheeran when it comes to standing up to billionaires and corporate interests, none of us are fully immune to being monitored by flock, and all it takes is one wrong reading to have armed officers surrounding your vehicle, or arresting innocent people of every political leaning, every race, and every creed. Flock cameras are not reliable. The elections are coming up, and all of you have a chance to change things for the better. Burbank City Council voted to agendize a discussion on the banning of flock in all ALPRs in their city. You still have time to do the same. I've said it before, and I'll keep saying it again for every city council meeting. Flock Weho.

Thank you. Your time has expired. Anthony Voulin to be followed by Tony Valenzuela. We have about six more. I'm just going to go through them if that's okay. Yeah, Anthony.

Good evening, council members and Mayor Hireland. I think we're all very excited that the election is coming up for various reasons, and we know that what happens at a city level affects our lives sometimes more than it does of decisions that are made at a state and federal level. We have 14 people running for city council, which is amazing for West Hollywood, and there's three seats that are available. This Sunday at 2 p.m., I'd like to invite everyone to Beaches Tropicana for a candidate forum. You'll have a chance to meet candidates, to listen to them. If you haven't had a chance to do that, this will be a great opportunity to mix and mingle with your neighbors and meet some of the candidates. This Sunday at Beaches Tropicana at 2 p.m., I'll be producing and moderating this event, and it's focusing on business, housing, and public safety. The RSVP list is already pretty full, but if anyone would like to come and bring any of your neighbors, please do RSVP. The link is wehocandidateforum.com, and it will be recorded. So if you're not able to make it, feel free to go to the same link, wehocandidateforum, 24 hours later, and you'll be able to watch and listen to the candidates that are there. So thank you so much.

Thank you, Anthony. Tony Valenzuela, to be followed by Mike Nuttall.

Hello. I'm Tony Valenzuela. I'm the executive director of One Institute. I'm here to talk a bit about the Circa Queer Histories Festival, which is starting on October 1st. The City of West Hollywood has generously sponsored the Circa Festival since it started in 2023. And you have again this year, and I'm very grateful for that. I am calling, I'm here to appeal to the council to help us close a gap of an additional $20,000 to match the sponsorship level of last year. As you know, the arts community, including one institute, has been hurt very badly in the last couple of years because of federal funding cuts and also local cuts. So Circa is a vast LA countywide arts and humanities programming series showcasing the trailblazing histories and vibrant cultural contributions of the queer communities through the lens of present day challenges and triumphs. Through exhibitions, performances, readings, screenings, lectures, and more, Circa features queer and trans artists, activists, and educators leading the movement for LGBTQ plus liberation. The 2026 edition of Circa features over 45 programs, about 40% of which are in the city of West Hollywood and its vicinity. Some of those WeHo programs include an exhibition at the One Gallery on 50 years of gay rodeo archives, There will also be a marathon of five-minute performances at Stories the AIDS Monument called Action Equals Life with Los Angeles Contemporary Exhibitions. Celebration Theater will be hosting a conversation at the One Gallery on Art in the Revolution, Queer Theater in 1982 and Today. And the Center's Remberg is hosting a lecture with the scholar Jules Gil Peterson on Trans History from the Mid-20th Century. Dozens of other programs are taking place throughout LA County. In four short years, Circa has become a fixture of WeHo in LA's queer and transcultural landscape, performing our community's brilliant artists and educators seek to inspire us through men's contributions of queer history throughout history. Thank you so much.

Thank you, Tony. Thank you. Mike Nuttall to be followed by Bonnie Hyde.

Hi there, Mike Nuttall, TriWest Area. I'm here to talk about the Aquatic Center and support the hourly employees again. Cortez Jordan and Kim Hubbard of the Aquatic Center did their annual firings again. They got rid of very qualified individuals, not because they're bad employees, but these individuals have a voice and aren't considered loyalists. One of the individuals was told they gave out incorrect information and danced too much. If incorrect information is enough to fire someone, then Stephanie Martinez, the park's manager, and Cortez Jordan, the supervisor, should have been fired a long time ago. Stephanie lied directly to my face and accused me of things I never did, and it was easily proven with video evidence. But that didn't matter. They just wanted rid of unionizers. Then, to make everyone else look like a liar, she's the first to send emails out to tell her lies and get her story out first. She views lying as an acceptable form of communication. She is the one who oversees parks and recs. No wonder why the city gets so many complaints about that division. Cortez Jordan, the aquatic supervisor, is busy making sex videos that his entire staff gets to see. All of his videos and pictures got onto the iPad for everyone to see. HR knew about it. So if you're going to make sex videos, shouldn't you make sure that your employees aren't exposed to them? He can make poor decisions left and right, nothing comes of it. Why? Because he is loyal to Stephanie Martinez and does whatever she wants. He even told everyone that he didn't want to hire Kim Hubbard, the aquatics coordinator, but Stephanie made him. These lifeguards deserve to have a voice at the table. They deserve to get protections from people like Stephanie and Cortez. And they deserve to have the right to unionize and bring up these issues via collective voice. The city is treating the hourly workers poorly, and we're watching it happen. Thank you.

Thank you. Bonnie Hyde to be followed by Yola Doré, and then Steve Martin, and that'll be our last speaker.

Good evening, Council. Bonnie Hyde here with my LA Kids Book Festival co-founder, Brett Glattman. We are here today to present a very special gift for the city. This is a canvas from a local artist from the LA Kids Book Festival that's held annually here in the West Hollywood Park. and it's specially designed to showcase the location of our festival, which is the West Hollywood Park with the Pacific Design Center in the background, and the design of the painting has a lot of words from our actual authors and attendees, so it's a very special piece that we wanted to present to the Council to thank you, Mayor Heilmand and Vice Mayor Heng, for donating your discretionary funds to support our festival, and your commitment for children's literacy and diversity truly is commendable, and we thank you year after year to the Council for supporting us. And Brett, did you want to tell us a few words?

The painting was created by a digital artist named Xavier Ruffin, who has a great story himself, who was an unhoused youth and who grew up to be a great artist, owns a creative agency. Around the trim of the painting is about 70 words of encouragement and phrases that are contributed by the exhibitors and authors and illustrators of the event. And then around that, too, at the event, we left yellow trim for people and attendees to write additional words of encouragement. And again, we just wanted to give this to you. All right. And just really quickly, it was a huge success, the event. We had thousands of attendees. We had people registered from the event from over 250 zip codes. We had people attending from San Francisco, from Vegas, and vendors from all over the country, and huge performers like Blippi and Mika, the LA Clippers, and we look forward to continuing this and doing it again next year.

Thank you. Do you want us to come down and accept that? Thank you. We'll take one brief moment to come down and accept this from Bonnie. Thank you. Thank you. Yola, did you withdraw your slip? All right. And then Steve Martin is our last speaker. Thank you, Steve, for your patience tonight.

Well, John, thank you for your patience for 40 years.

It's wearing thin.

Steve Martin, West Hollywood. It was very heartening to see everybody honored earlier in the meeting because it reflects the sense of community that people really care about and people really love about West Hollywood. That said, we've been in a very interesting time on how West Hollywood works. 40-some years ago when I was much younger, I walked precincts and knocked on doors to create this city because people wanted to have a voice and feel connected. Unfortunately, This city council has done a lot to make sure that people don't feel connected and that they don't feel listened to. And there's a vision of processes been set up to keep people out of the loop and to make sure that their voices aren't heard. It's hard for me to think back 40 years that we promised people they were going to have a voice to think that council members would actually go to Sacramento and lobby for laws that actually hurt our community. things like SB 79, and then come back and have the chutzpah to tell us our hands are tied. And I just think that most people feel that's a real betrayal. And they feel that way because it is. I just read recently that the billboard companies are setting up a $60,000-plus independent expenditure campaign for Councilmember Byers, Helen Krieger, and Jonathan Cottrell. And I know the billboard companies want to move into Santa Monica Boulevard, but it just seems so blatant that influence peddling is just so open in a city that we had such high hopes for. And I just think we need to get back to where we started from. Thank you. Thank you, Steve.

Melissa, you have citizen position slips.

Yes. Thank you, Mayor. Kevin Burton in support of items F4 and F6 that were moved to consent.

Great. Thank you. We will now turn to our city manager's report. Welcome back, Jackie. We missed you.

Good evening mayor, vice mayor, council members and members of the community. It's good to be back. I just have a few updates. The first one is on El Nino preparedness. As you know there was an item on tonight's agenda about El Nino preparedness and I'd like to briefly note that the city is already beginning work on its preparedness strategy for the upcoming El Nino season. Staff across all departments will be coordinating an operational planning emergency preparedness and steps that we can take now to be prepared for the potential impacts of El Nino. I urge everyone to visit our website to learn about information And we'll also be developing communication strategy to ensure residents, businesses, and community members have clear practical information about how to prepare and what resources are available. The outreach will begin in the coming days and weeks. and will continue to provide updates as conditions develop throughout the fall and winter. Regarding community safety, the City of West Hollywood, in partnership with the American Red Cross, will be hosting a free CPR, first aid, and AED certified training at our wonderful West Hollywood Aquatic Center on October 10th. If you are interested in signing up, please contact the Community Safety Department at safety at weho.org. Regarding arts, I have two brief updates. WeHo Reads, tomorrow, Wednesday, September 23rd at 6.30 p.m. in the library community room, WeHo Reads presents four acclaimed Los Angeles writers for an evening of readings and discussion exploring how memory, imagination, and the craft of writing can reshape personal, political, and civic histories through historical fiction and poetry. For more information, please visit weho.org forward slash wehoreads. And finally, regarding free theater, we invite the community to attend the final two Free theater in the parks performances of Jane Austen unscripted this Saturday and Sunday at 4 p.m. at Kings Road Park. Actors from Imperial Theater take suggestions from the audience to build a brand new spontaneous story on the spot and perform in the style of a Jane Austen novel. For more information, please visit our city calendar for additional information. And Mayor, this concludes my updates for tonight.

WE HAVE A QUESTION FROM COUNCIL MEMBER ERIKSON.

SO JACKIE THANK YOU WELCOME BACK. I'M SORRY THE MAYOR HIT YOU AND YOU HURT YOUR SHOULDER. My question is more maybe a comment that you could make sure. I did go see Jane Austen in the park. It was really lovely. However, it was quite terrifying when spiders all fell on residents that were sitting there because it's underneath a tree, which was lovely and shaded during a heat wave. But maybe if some, I didn't know it until a nice resident was like, oh, there's bugs all over. And we all kind of started noticing, so. maybe if wherever it's staged is a little bit different. I will say I do love Jane Austen, but I don't love spiders as much. I agree.

I love Jane Austen. Yes, I know. So maybe just for the Parks Department, they could find a little bit of a different location for that. Thanks for the update. Yeah, we'll take a look. Thank you.

Okay, any other questions for our city manager? If not, we will move on to our consent calendar. And Melissa, what is the fiscal impact of the consent calendar as it's been amended tonight?

Thank you, Mayor. The fiscal impact on tonight's consent calendar with the addition of items F2, F3, F4, and F6, and the removal of item B14, is $836,457 in expenditures, $20,150 in revenue, and $14,666 in waived fees. And before we adopt tonight's consent calendar, Councilmember Erickson, I know you had a recusal for item F2, but it was only one part of F2. Can you indicate that for the record before we adopt?

Yeah, it was F2, item 3.

Thank you so much. And I also want to note for the record Council Member Beyer's recusal on item B10.

Okay. The consent calendar is a series of routine items that we approve with a single motion. There's been a motion to adopt the consent calendar. It's been seconded. And let's have a vote. And the consent calendar is approved tonight. Thank you. We will now turn to our first item. We have no public hearings, no legislative items. We have our quarterly update on development and I see Nick Marisich and Jennifer are present to give us a report. Do we need a report or we just want to ask questions? Council, we're okay with just questions? Okay. You have no questions? Council Member Meister, I see you scrolling, so it looks like you do have a question.

No, I had a question on the Maimonides. The address you have is 855- 5 Beverly Place, and that's, I believe, Los Angeles. I thought their office address was 310 Huntley.

We'll look into that and correct it.

Thank you. Okay, we do have some public speakers on this item. So why don't we take them and then we'll see if there is further discussion. David Ruiz to be followed by Don Searle and then Anita Goswami. Is David Ruiz here? David Ruiz. How about Don Searle? Don Searle, David Ruiz. How about Anita Goswami?

Thank you. Hi, everyone. Thank you. Anita Goswami. I'm a resident of West Hollywood. A lot to unpack in the quarterly status report. And first, I just want to say thank you. I appreciate staff putting this together. I've been seeing it. evolve over the last couple of years, and I appreciate the information you're doing. A couple of these, several of these actually, like the 9048 Santa Monica Boulevard, are holes in the ground. I'm hoping that it doesn't turn into a giant mud puddle when the rains arrive. I know that the whole, you know, talking about El Nino coming up, guess what? We've already had to deal with that lake on that corner. when we have so many projects going on and those rains arrive, are those mud puddles going to turn into mosquito breeding pools? So I just ask that that be kept in mind. There's unexpected impacts. Secondly, these projects are evaluated and administered on an individual basis. I ask that associated impacts, for example, construction traffic impacts, be considered on a holistic basis. Construction vehicles take up more space on our narrow and often already packed streets. So when we get projects that are very close to each other, those are unexpected impacts that become just on a comprehensive basis, snowball. And I ask that that be taken into consideration because I don't see that happening much. It's not necessarily in the purview of of the planning department to actually look at that specifically. But again, this is why we're talking about it here on a holistic basis for all departments to work together on that. Thirdly, billboards are taking over and I just would like to see more about billboards on a list like this. Thank you very much.

Thank you, Adita. And the other speakers didn't come forward, so that's the last speaker we have on this item. Is there any council questions or discussion?

I have a question. So on... the billboard issue with regard to Santa Monica Boulevard. Do we have a policy yet or a CTA or because we're seeing projects coming in with billboards and yet I don't think we've finalized any policy.

Thank you, Councilmember Meister. We did bring an item to the Planning Commission. to consider a zone text amendment related to billboards on Commercial Boulevard other than Sunset. And at this point, the next step for that is to bring it to the council, but we don't have a date for when that will come forward to the council at this time.

Okay, so then.

So to answer your question, no, there is not a, there has not been a ZTA to specifically establish a policy for billboards on Santa Monica.

Okay, because it just seems like the cart is coming before the horse here.

Just a follow-up question, anyone can apply for a development agreement anywhere in the city and that could include billboard, it could include additional density or additional height. That is already an existing opportunity even without a zone text amendment, correct?

That's correct, Mayor.

Okay. So I imagine the people who are applying now are applying based on a proposed development agreement.

Yes, and there need to be legislation to introduce a new billboard requires legislative action. The council has to vote on those things, but the code does allow for those to be applicant requests.

But I agree with Council Member Meister. It would be good for us to have the broader policy decision as opposed to having sort of one-off applications.

Well, and also when you're figuring out the benefit of a development agreement, you know, what the negotiation for the benefit, which is typically with billboards monetary, if we don't know what the standard is, then how do you value something that's maybe outside of the standard? We don't even know what the standard is.

All right. Any other further input for staff?

Yes. Yeah, I think Anita makes a really great point, actually. I think that billboards themselves are looked at as in terms of development and or stall development. I think having a selection of ones that are coming before the council, I think are a benefit to the public. But I also think it would be beneficial for me on like a lot of things where I'm like, what's happening on this corner? What's happening at this site? And I think it just makes for and provides for more transparency. I know you guys don't always have it because you're in negotiations and that might be fine for how you're still saying it's happening. But I myself don't really know when a lot of these things are coming before me. I have to call you and I don't need to call you and I don't think we're even allowed to call you anymore. So there's that, but I think that ultimately for the public's awareness it would be helpful instead of me having to bother Jackie or Steve.

Great.

We received an email from Victor. Thank you, Victor, for sending that with some comments and questions. And I guess it just made me start thinking about the Melrose Triangle. And we talked about El Nino. What is the plan with that? Because El Nino is coming and we don't see them filling up that hole. And what could be the potential impacts of that, of, you know, a hole? And El Nino doesn't sound good.

That's a great question. I don't know that I have any specific information to share tonight other than that the city is continuing to require the property owner there to backfill the excavated area. As noted in our report tonight, there is an application for a new project on that site, and that's under review at this time. But in the meantime, the city is continuing to require that the excavated area be refilled. And I don't know, a turn to the city manager, if there's any more detail to share on that.

That is correct with regards to that particular project. Every weekly they do provide an update on how many trucks have been delivered to the site with the dirt that it's requested to backfill the hole there now. So they are moving forward with that and have continued on a regular basis.

But I think they need to come to us with a plan. They're not going to have it all filled up, especially if they're planning a project that maybe it's only two levels of parking instead of six levels of parking underground, but it's still going to be a major hole. I think that we need to ask them for their plan for El Nino, which is coming.

Okay. If there are no other questions or comments, this is a receive and file only. Thank you for the update. We appreciate that. Our next semiannual update is the community safety update. And I see Danny Rivas and Anita and see Fanny. I see a lot of people here.

Do we want to do the other item with this as well?

Do you want to, Danny, is it possible for us to also handle item F1, which is for the global security community safety officer?

Absolutely, Mayor. We can definitely do that. Do you want to do that after this item? I just had a question for the person.

Why don't we do that item first and see if we can get that out of the way quickly? Okay.

Absolutely. Is the applicant or the individuals here? Hi. I'm going to ask you a simple question. Hi. So something that is of awareness to many of us and that we know that professional services, can you confirm that you have no contracts currently with the Department of Homeland Security and or ICE?

YES, I CAN CONFIRM THAT.

THANK YOU SO MUCH. THAT'S ALL I HAVE SO FAR, MAYOR.

THANK YOU. OKAY. AND I DON'T THINK, WERE THERE OTHER QUESTIONS ON THE SECURITY CONTRACT?

YEAH, I DID HAVE ONE. AND I APPRECIATE YOU BEING IN THE ROOM TONIGHT. THANK YOU. I THINK IT'S MORE APPROPRIATELY A QUESTION FOR STAFF, THOUGH. I KNOW THAT IT HAD BEEN SOME TIME SINCE WE CONDUCTED THESE INTERVIEWS And for the public who were just jumping into this item really quickly, we're looking at item E2, or I'm sorry, F1, the Agreement for Professional Services with the American Global Security for Unarmed Community Safety Officer Services. So it had been some time since the council last discussed this. We've mentioned it many times, but I know a lot of the work happened in 2025. And since then, and since naming the potential partner, I just did a little research myself, and I saw that there was a class action labor wage violation issue that occurred in March 2025. So my issue was more about making sure that we're protected as a city in the contract and just wanted to make sure that that had happened and that the city wouldn't be on the hook for any sort of violations like that in the future. I noticed that there was language on page seven of the contract. It was item 17 around following our minimum wage laws, but I wanted to see if there's other places in that contract where we were protected should other issues like that happen with a specific vendor.

Thank you, Council Member Byers. So the contract that the city signs does have liability clauses in there that protects the city. With that, like you mentioned, the living wage is a requirement that we hold our vendors to. We do monthly due audits on every single invoice. So if those... If wages were not being matched, they would be noted immediately. It would not be something that would run on for a long time. With all of our vendors, we do monthly audits of all of our invoices.

Thank you, Anita, for that information.

I had hoped that we would hear this after the rest of the semiannual safety update, just again, given the time. that has passed since we've started having a conversation on initiating for this service. But I recognize in the plan and the proposal that's outlined, there are extensions for this contract for three years. It's a one-year contract with potential extensions. So I just will name that that, for me, is a good sort of balance in this. looked to bring the service online as a way to offset and support the sheriff deputies and also augment the ability to have more support in the community. And as I've seen, and as I've read it, crime has continued to change and be different in the community. I just wanna make sure from the time this idea was conceptualized to where we're at now, it still makes sense. So that was sort of my thinking as we approached the discussion tonight, but that's all I had for the discussion, thank you.

OK, so are we? We've been discussing F1. Are we prepared to take a motion on this now? Okay, so there's an emotion emotion to approve the recommendation. Is there a second a second by Vice Mayor hang? Is there any further discussion? All right, we'll go ahead and take a vote here. And it has been approved. Thank you. So now we can move back to E two, which is an update of public safety.

Thank you. Good evening, mayor, vice mayor, members of the council, city staff, and members of the public. I'm Anita Shandy, public safety manager, joining me this evening for our semi-annual community safety update for January to June, 2026. We have Danny Rivas, director of community safety, Abe Duran, neighborhood and business safety manager with the city of West Hollywood, Captain Fanny Lapkin, Lieutenant Ashley Turner, and Sergeant Omar Lovano of the West Hollywood Sheriff's Station, Fire Chief Drew Smith from the Los Angeles County Fire Department, and Valerie Chavez, General Manager, and Matt Prochokovitz, Regional Manager of Operations from Allied Universal Security Ambassador Program. All of our presenters, along with their teams, have contributed to the report before you this evening and are available to answer any questions following their brief presentations. We will begin with the Fire Chief, Drew Smith, to provide an update on the fire statistics.

Well, thank you to the City Council, and I just want to start by saying that the Los Angeles County Fire Department is proud to be your fire department. We've been here since, as you know, the 1920s, and I think we're here to stay. So thank you for your support, and to you and the citizens of West Hollywood. So looking at our year end and last year's of where we're at, just as a reminder for people that may be new in the audience or don't know about your wonderful fire department that's with you. The city of West Hollywood is primarily served with three shifts with 20 personnel. However, with that compliment, with our executive staff and fire prevention, And overhead, we have 28 firefighters and staff on duty each day in the city of West Hollywood. And so you can multiply that by three is what we serve out of the West Hollywood stations, which is Station 7 and Station 8. I am the assistant fire chief, so I represent the city of West Hollywood as the fire chief for you. From January, June 2026, fire personnel responded to 3,657 total calls. Of these, 2,967 were for emergency medical calls, 81% of all those calls. In addition, there were 49 total fires, one of which was a vehicle fire, and 13 were structure fires. And the remaining were a combination of outside rubbish fires, tree fires, dumpster fires, dryer fires, or cooking fires. which of all caused no financial or significant damage or injuries. Other responses included hazardous materials calls, public assistance calls, elevator rescues. In addition, station and fire personnel routinely conduct fire prevention inspections, plan checks, and these average between 25 to 35.

Can you pull your mic a little closer? Thank you.

Thank you. I heard it fine. That sounded great. Thank you. So we have the figures that we have for comparatively speaking for January of 2025 through January, June 2026. And so I didn't see anything out of the ordinary, but just as a perspective, we run between 20 to 21 average calls a day in the city of West Hollywood. And in emergency medical calls for 2025, comparatively speaking to 2026, we had a 10% increase. 70% of all the calls for 2,649 were medical calls, comparatively to 2026 is 2,967. Still within the range as I've seen as your fire chief for the past eight years on fire. So for 2025, 71 as compared to 49, which was down for 2026. One thing that we are not doing now, we've had a change in our fire reporting system. We have changed from NFERS to NIRIS. And so there's different data that we can extract and become more fine-tuned in the way that we conduct that. And the one thing that we're also reevaluating is when we have to do property loss and damage estimates, we have found what we estimate compared to what potentially insurance companies estimate can be completely different and so becomes somewhat of a, challenging issue sometimes when they look at a fire report. So that's why those dollar values are not listed anymore in what is now the nearest reports that we do. As far as West Hollywood City news, we have a CERT class that is going to graduate tonight. We have 10 residents from the city of West Hollywood that are graduating that. So show of hands, anyone in the room a CERT member? Outstanding. Thank you to be involved because we know as we're talking about all risk emergencies, we're talking about significant rainfall potentially with EL NINO. IT TAKES ALL OF US IN A TIME OF AN EMERGENCY THAT CAN OVER SIZE AND BE OVER OUR CAPACITY BY YOUR PUBLIC SAFETY PROFESSIONALS. SO THAT'S WHEN THE COMMUNITY INVOLVEMENT IS WHAT WE REALLY REALLY LIKE THAT PARTICIPATION AND SO THANK YOU FOR THAT. AND WITH THAT I WILL STOP AND SEE IF THERE IS ANY QUESTIONS FOR MY WONDERFUL CITY COUNCIL OR MAYOR.

Questions Councilmember fires thank you thank you so much I really noticed that the number of building fires in this period has increased is there any information that you have about what's happening that may be able to help you know people in their buildings stay safer and prevent that from happening so one thing I would need to do is look at actually start.

looking at what months they happen. Because it does tell a story based upon if we have more calls, let's just say as we get into fall and winter because now people are starting up those heaters or they're using space heaters. So I'd really have to look at what months and see if I see any grouping that brings a correlation to the why. But I can say over the course of since I've been here, we've seen these numbers before. But that's a hard one to track just the way that people navigate their lives. So it can be challenging. I know that we've had talks before with lithium ion batteries and having faulty chargers to do it with. different devices we have in our homes. We've seen it upswing nationally with that. So there could be a link there, but I'd really have to look at what months they happen and really dig into the fire report on the determination of cause.

And I know in the past hoarding, you know, sort of overcrowding of some spaces had become issues and we had invested more into social service care that could be supportive. So I would be curious about some of that data. It does seem like a really large uptick. Okay. And if there are patterns that are helpful to this council, that information is useful. Thank you. That's all from me, Mayor.

Yeah, Council Member Meister.

Yeah, I was just going to suggest, I think the American Red Cross used to do fire safety. They had a fire safety program, and they'd actually go to households and help people to make sure their homes were safer. So I don't know if that's something that would be for the city to look into or the fire department, but we might want to look at, even if we just look at materials that they have online online, that we can share with people, with our residents.

And we can share that on that West Hollywood city space on any of that. And we're very good about providing when we get into different times of the year. But also just knowing if any of our residents have a concern, we will go to your house and look at some of those safety features for best practice. We will do that. We do that pretty routinely in West Hollywood with the residents. Either call the station or come by the fire station. We do those one-on-one. I don't want to call it an inspection. It's not an inspection when somebody wants us to give them an overview of the living space.

Council member Erickson.

A number of things that we always try to prepare for, but we don't. Also, thank you for all that you do. We adore you. You're also adored throughout LA County. I have to say, wherever I go as president of Contract Cities, Captain, you are, your name comes up in great high esteem. So I don't, it is, you know, especially when people from Lomita know your phone number by heart. So I don't know what that means, but there you go. Are there any other vacant properties or other areas that we should be looking out for that you've noticed or identified? I know our code proactively goes out, but oftentimes it's all the things that we don't think of that could happen during an emergency or in an emergency. I know being on the east side, there were a number of vacant properties that did catch fire or are filled with coyotes that maybe not anymore, currently, who knows anymore. But are there places that we should be hypervigilant of that you've noticed or have gotten more complaints of? And maybe that's a question for Danny to look into, but anything on your radar?

So I can say that when our jurisdictional engine companies and firefighters are out there, they have something in notice. They contact the jurisdictional battalion chief and then we will make a phone call to Danny Rivas on see what direction, who the property owner is, if they need to do any clearance or what needs to happen with that if we need to take special attention to any of those vacant lots. So that's something that... DANNY AND I WOULD HAVE A CONVERSATION ABOUT IT AND FIND OUT WHAT THAT PLAN WOULD BE MOVING FORWARD. BUT I DON'T HAVE ANYTHING RIGHT OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD TO SAY, OH, THIS IS ONE YOU GOT TO LOOK OUT FOR OR DON'T HAVE THAT. GOOD QUESTION. THANK YOU.

VICE MAYOR? I JUST HAD ONE QUESTION. A NUMBER OF OUR PROPERTIES HAVE BEEN DESIGNATED TO BE IN A HIGH-RISK FIRE ZONE, AND I KNOW THAT there were going to be directions from the department to property owners. I know there's also an effort at the state level to try to have some of those areas changed in terms of the designation. What is the status of the department's work in that area?

So that is the zone 0. So if those deemed in a very high fire danger severity zone will have to comply with a zone 0 compliance. What does that mean that there's no combustibles when the first 5 feet of your structure and or if there is something within the first 5 feet within the first foot it needs to be a foot or less so but. Not all communities are treated the same. The makeup of the city of West Hollywood as compared to Westlake Village, as compared to Malibu or Calabasas or unincorporated areas, they're all, those make other difference. So we have to look at the fire code and then what is going to be at best for the city of West Hollywood. One thing that I can say, If you are proximal to open space and we have high risk days, those are when the east winds blow, that we have Santa Ana winds and we have a fire east of us or north of us in the hillsides, those embers can travel up to two to three miles in the air. And so that's just reality. I don't want to scare anybody, but that is how Uh, we have structure losses from those embers that land on anything that could potentially be combustible. So that's what we're looking at is how do we minimize that risk? Or I like to use the word, our vulnerability in our, around our homes from stuff to catch fire, then cause a larger fire that gets into a structure. So the, how that is going to look for West Hollywood is still subject to us to look at how we're going to interpret the code and how that enforcement needs to be. It's not going to happen overnight. We will have a transition on how that needs to look.

Great.

Thank you. Yeah. Great question. Thank you.

Thank you, Danny or Anita. What's next?

Thank you, Chief Smith. Next, Abe Duran will provide a brief update on the Neighborhood and Business Safety Division and code enforcement.

Great. Thank you, Chief Smith.

Thank you.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Councilmembers. This report is the neighborhood and business safety division report for the first six months of the year. Service requests that we received over the first six months was 3,546 requests. We did receive general construction concerns, which was a decrease from the year prior. Also, we received construction noise complaints at 209, which was 4% increase from the year before. General noise concerns requests were at 293, which is a 13% decrease from the year before. Also, short-term rental concerns that came in were about 42, which was a 25% decrease from the year prior. IN REGARDS TO NEW BUSINESS LICENSES, WE HAD 27 NEW REGULATORY BUSINESS LICENSES ISSUED WITHIN THAT SIX MONTH PERIOD. SPECIAL EVENT PERMITS, IN THAT SIX MONTH PERIOD WE ISSUED 215 SPECIAL EVENT PERMITS. AND SPEAKING OF SPECIAL EVENT PERMITS, RIGHT NOW WE'RE ALREADY PROCESSING ALL THE SPECIAL EVENT PERMITS THAT ARE BEING SUBMITTED BY THE BUSINESSES FOR HALLOWEEN. We have a deadline, although it's October 5th, so we're still encouraging all our business partners to start submitting their special event permits for Halloween. And to answer Councilmember Erickson's question in regards to the coyotes, we have abated the coyotes of a Spalding. We worked with the property owner and he diligently resolved that matter, so they are no longer on the property.

Could you, for the public, I put it out on my social media. I'm sorry, Mayor. Could you, before you go off, just tell people the difficulty with the coyote situation and tell everyone who has to call who, who will say no. When they say no, you've got to call. Walk us through the hell that you had to go through.

Well, it was a process because we definitely needed to work together with the property owner on this and getting these abated and and finding the right proper, this is not an animal control issue, it's not an LA County, it's getting a specialty animal, somebody that handles wildlife, that was working with the property owner, and it was a process. They had set up cameras, they had to do some hazing in order to get the family out of the property. It wasn't easy, but within, I think it was a two week period that we were able to abate the coyotes from the property. We also had asked the owner to secure the outer perimeter to try to avoid from the coyotes coming into the property. And so far successfully we've done that. And of course we have neighbors in the surrounding area that will report to us if they do see them, but they have not seen them. They've seen them around the neighborhood, but they have not seen them around the property. Any questions?

Any questions? Yes, Danny. Vice Mayor Hank.

Thank you, Mayor. I understand that our code enforcement officers work very hard. I believe we're the only city where you're operational seven days a week. Is that right?

That is correct. Yeah. And we work all the way to 12 o'clock in the morning on, you know, between Monday and Wednesday. And then we're looking at three in the morning, all the way to four o'clock in the morning, all the way to Sunday.

And I see that you're working very diligently supporting our small business community. New business licenses, you indicated 27 new applications.

And that was in the six month period, correct? Yes.

BUSINESS LICENSE RENEWALS, 270 BUSINESSES. I BELIEVE THAT'S A 30% INCREASE. AND TEMPORARY BUSINESS LICENSES, YOU PROCESSED 33, AND IT LOOKS LIKE YOU BROUGHT THREE CASES BEFORE THE BLC.

THAT IS CORRECT, YEAH.

SO YOU GUYS ARE VERY BUSY. SO THANK YOU FOR KEEPING OUR CITY RUNNING.

THEY'RE AN AMAZING TEAM. BEEN HERE FOR JUST SHORTLY, A LITTLE OVER FOUR MONTHS, AND COMING FROM THE LARGEST COUNTY IN THE STATE. TO COME INTO THIS ONE OF THE SMALLER CITIES I WAS SHARING THIS WITH DANNY IS PROBABLY THE LARGEST VOLUME OF CALLS THAT WE GET HERE BY FAR SO IT'S IT'S A LOT OF WORK OUR 12 OFFICERS ARE ALL OUR STAFF IS JUST EXTREMELY GREAT AND THEY'RE CONSTANTLY WORKING SO THANK YOU THANK YOU I MEAN YOU THREE THOUSAND FIVE HUNDRED FOURTY SIX REQUESTS IN A SIX MONTH PERIOD THAT'S IN THAT'S WITH THE ONE PERCENT INCREASE SO THAT'S A LOT OF WORK THANK YOU YEAH YOU'RE VERY WELCOME YES COUNCIL MEMBER ERIKSON

So I've been noticing some things that have been successful specifically around street vending. We're not getting as many complaints anymore. When I actually am up past 10 p.m. and I do be able to go out and see our amazing code officers, I haven't been noticing people in the same way before. What changed?

You know, I think a lot of it was the educational concept. You know, we have code enforcement that they're working with the sheriff's department, making contact with these local vendors, providing them the education that they needed so that we could provide that pathway if they wanted to be a legitimate, you know, mobile vendor. And so that was one of the good things that we've done. And you're right, Councilman Erickson, we have not seen the same amount of complaints coming in, nor our code officers are seeing the same amount of vendors out in the Rainbow District.

And I believe, and Captain Lapkin will probably talk about this, that because of our EPT teams, which have focused on this as well as cracking down on people, selling buzz balls, which as like a person who grew up when buzz balls were like a thing is terrifying to me that the next generation is like doing this again. But that's a whole nother social commentary. I'll leave alone. But you've been able to arrest people that you found illegally selling alcohol and other things, correct? I believe, yes, the sheriff. Okay, great. So thank you. I just wanted to make sure, because I know that was a big topic in the community, but something that I've noticeably seen a difference on. And thank you for that educational component, because as someone who's talked to some of the street vendors themselves, they, before and after, I've noticed a visible difference because of that outreach that you've done. So thank you. You're very welcome.

Thank you. The one comment I had, and we have gotten a complaint from a couple of residents about equipment that has been newly installed and it's working properly, but it is generating a lot of noise. And I don't know if that's something that your department or your division can be looking into. are our existing code standards for equipment noise, are they appropriate or do we need to investigate and possibly change those standards?

I've had these discussions with my boss, the director here, Danny, and at this moment in time, I don't think that there's really a need to us to change our ordinance. The fact is that right now we're We were just a couple of weeks when we were dealing with this extreme heat where we had all the HVAC systems running. Maybe people just don't get used to the noise because they've been turned off for quite some time, and then all of a sudden they start turning on. But we don't see it as an issue, to be honest with you. It's something that... You know, when we're out there addressing an HVAC system, we go out there, find out if it's faulty. If it's faulty, then, of course, we would want to let the business owner to do the proper repairs, right? But we will still respond to those complaints. But nonetheless, these are just operational electrical machines.

Great. Thank you. If there are no further questions, Anita, and thank you for you and all of your division FOR ALL THE WORK YOU DO. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU ABE. NEXT WE WILL TURN IT OVER TO VALERIE CHAVEZ, GENERAL MANAGER WITH ALLIED UNIVERSAL SECURITY TO PROVIDE A BRIEF UPDATE ON THE SECURITY AMBASSADOR PROGRAM.

GOOD EVENING MAYOR, VICE MAYOR AND COUNCIL MEMBERS. I'm Valerie Chavez, General Manager with Allied Universal, overseeing the City of West Hollywood Security Ambassador Program. I'll provide a brief update on the program covering from January through June, 2026. During the first six months of the year, our security ambassadors recorded a total of 48,431 community interactions and service-related activities through the city. While that represents a slight decrease of approximately 4.7% compared to the same period last year, we saw some significant changes in the type of service our ambassadors provided. One of the biggest increases was in hospitality assistance. Our ambassadors provided 22,695 hospitality contacts representing an increase of approximately 68% compared to last year. We also completed approximately 13,700 business contacts, more than 6,300 contacts with individuals experiencing homelessness, approximately 3,700 calls for service, and 270 safety escorts. We also responded to more than 1,100 instances involving improperly parked scooters. Another area where we saw an increase was coordination with our public safety partners. During the reporting period, ambassadors had 335 instances involving sheriff deputy assistants and 210 involving fire and EMS. Beyond the numbers, our focus continues to be maintaining a highly visible, proactive, and approachable presence throughout West Hollywood. Our ambassadors provide proactive patrol, community engagement, welfare checks, hospitality assistance, safety escorts, and referrals to available resources. We continue to work closely with city staff. This allows us to review operational trends, identify priority areas, and make adjustments to our deployment strategies when needed. Another success I would highlight is our collaboration during mayor city events. During events such as West Hollywood Pride, LA Marathon, and SIGLAVIA. Our ambassadors work alongside city staff, LASD, fire, and other public safety partners to maintain visibility and support safe events operations. Our ambassadors receive training in areas including de-escalation, crisis intervention, LGBTQI plus sensitivity, Narcan administration and overdose response, engagement with individuals experiencing homelessness, bicycle patrol training, driver training, customer service, cultural diversity and sensitivity, situational awareness, report writing, and emergency response. Training does not stop after onboarding. We continue reinforcing these expectations through daily briefings, supervisor led coachings, field exercises, and refresher training. We also assign refresher training on a monthly to bi-monthly basis to ensure our ambassadors continue developing their knowledge. Moving forward, our focus remains on proactivity, visibility, professionalism, accountability, and excellent customer service. We will continue reviewing our activity data, working closely with city staff, and adjust our deployment and training based on the needs of seeing through the community. Thank you all and I am happy to answer any questions.

Great. Thank you. Are there any questions? Yes. Council Member Meister. Yes.

Thank you very much for the report. What I was wondering is, it seems to me that the areas where the activities that are more proactive, for example, the business contacts or unhoused contacts, that that's decreased, whereas the activities that I would think are reactive, in other words, people are approaching you, like hospitality assistance or safety escorts, those seem to me to be more reactive, right? On the business context, it's gone down over 40%. What do you attribute that to?

We are constantly encouraging our team to make contact, be approachable, more proactive, and we are constantly looking at trends to see how we can improve more. And that's throughout the city, whether it's on the west side, mid-city, and east as well too.

So that's basically, is that, so is my premise right, that it's more of a proactive and so you?

That is correct, yes. All right, thank you. And Council Member Meister, I'll also add, these statistics are being compared to a previous vendor. Allied Universal did start their contract in October of last year. So it's kind of just training the ambassadors to actually document their interactions that maybe sometimes they weren't capturing, just kind of getting them to that mindset of every interaction needs a documentation. So we're trying to close the gap on these statistics.

Yeah, and especially I would look at, even though it's not a huge number, but the unhoused contact, I think that's something that definitely needs to be followed up on.

Vice Mayor Heng?

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the presentation. So the unhoused contacts, you have 6,355. Of that 6,000, how many were repeat contacts? Do we know?

I don't have the information in front of me, but I can definitely gather some information and share it with the city to share that information back.

And then can you sort of explain the difference between a hospitality contact and a business contact?

Absolutely. Hospitality contact will be more customer service oriented, where business contact, we are going directly into the businesses to make sure things are okay. It's also customer service, but it's more business related. Whereas hospitality, it could be a visitor, a resident, per se.

So I've noticed that I'm seeing an overall trend. If you look at attachment B, the unhoused contacts have gone down. EVERY MONTH FROM JANUARY OF 2026 UP TO JUNE 2026. LIKE IN CITY WEST, IT WENT DOWN BY 10%. MID CITY WENT DOWN BY 13.5%. EAST SIDE WENT DOWN BY 33%. DO YOU HAVE ANY IDEA OF WHY THAT TREND IS GOING DOWN?

We've noticed that as well, too. As mentioned, we are still proactively patrolling any unhoused member that we encounter, whether it's on the west, mid-city, or east. We make that contact out to the homeless concern line. It could be a number of reasons. It could be either they are taking the extra help, the resources, or other things, per se.

I mean, but the critical response framework is already being deployed, right?

That is correct.

Okay. All right. Thank you.

Council Member Erickson. Thank you so much. Can you confirm or deny that Allied Universal has contracts with the Department of Homeland Security and or the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency?

I personally wouldn't have that information as my focus is just within West Hollywood.

Can you, Danny, get someone who can answer that question? I can answer it for you, but...

I will look to Matt, are you capable of being able to respond by chance if you're aware of that, or is that not something that you're? Yeah, so we don't have a representative here at this point, but something we can definitely look into.

Sure. I can save my things, because there's probably commentary after that, so I'll wait. Thanks.

Other questions? My question, and I don't know whether it's you or the predecessor, but I do notice sometimes the ambassadors are on their phone and we've gotten a couple of complaints about that. And they may be doing legitimate things like contacting the outreach teams for our homeless organizations or contacting a supervisor but i i do notice sometimes the ambassadors who are stationed at locations and they're just looking at their phone and you know if we're trying to have hospitality contacts it makes them appear like they're not available so i know that that's something that all businesses have to work at. So I just wanted to throw that out as something that you may need to address as part of the training.

Yes, thank you for sharing that. We do have a zero self personal cell phone tolerance. We also have cell phones with a distinguished orange case. Those are our work cell phones. That's what they utilize to record the data, whether they are recording an incident report, documenting a business contact or anything else. However, I am constantly reminding the team to make sure that we are abiding by such. Personal cell phone use should only happen during their breaks or unless it's an emergency, but thank you for the feedback. We'll make sure we remind the team.

Great. Thank you.

Yes. Thank you very much. Danny, how much do we, how much is the contract again? Roughly about 5.4 million a year. And it's yearly? Correct. And what's the contract basis? I can't remember from whenever we approved it.

Is it a two-year, three-year, four-year, five-year? It's a three-year with, I believe, two one-year extensions.

Great. Thank you. So to piggyback onto my comments, Allied Universal through their prominent subsidiary G4S Secure Solutions does hold major contracts with U.S. Department of Homeland Security and ICE and Customs Enforcement. This is something I've been worried about by trying to get into more of the data myself over the past several months, but specifically they deal with transportation and mass deportation support, armed ground support, so the company provides specialized vehicles and armed guards to shuffle immigrants between detention centers and deportation flights. Custom monitoring personnel are contracted to escort, monitor, and secure detainees while they were in federal custody during transit. They also maintain DHS facilities management with protective services, for example. um and on-site security as well as then there's been a lot of controversy about this i've been trying to get into some of these records myself and going through some of my contacts so i thought this was the appropriate time to bring this up i myself in good consciousness cannot support a contract that further penalizes immigrants whether they're in west hollywood or not by providing lucrative dollars, $5.4 million of the public's money. I think Steve Martin said it best in the back. We fought for a city that fought for everyone, something I think we all deeply agree on. I've been a big proponent of our unarmed security ambassador program. I think it works. I think the work of your your, I don't want to call them officers because they're ambassadors. I've seen it firsthand. They are trusted. I know a woman that walks down to the 7-Eleven almost every day and the individual walks her back up to her home because that's the care they take into. So it's nothing about the workers that you actually are having. But I do believe that this city should no longer contract with Allied Universal based on the principles of who we are. I think that we should find some way to get out of this contract. I think that, frankly, we have other services available and we should create a citywide policy that does not allow for contracts with anyone right now with the fascist dictator in office. But specifically, as something Council Member Meister said, that was alluded to this past weekend, that if we are going to be a party of the big tent, that big tent has to include immigrants and those people that cannot afford as well as fight for themselves right now in this way. I think that most importantly, if I'm looking at anything right now, anything that has to do with the detention of immigrants who have been, frankly, rounded up by ICE Gestapo agents across the country is something that we should not be supporting financially, whether it's getting their funds directly or the work that we're doing. So I would actually ask my colleagues to send this item back to our public safety department for them to figure out whether city attorney, a way to get out of this contract, something that we should be doing based on the values alone. And I think that this is a moment that our city has to look up and understand, are we fighting for immigrants? ARE WE FIGHTING FOR THE COMMUNITY MEMBERS THEMSELVES THAT NEED US? WE CANNOT BE THE CITY THAT LIKE WHEN HE WAS COUNCILMEMBER BEFORE VICE MAYOR ON JULY, MAYBE YOU WERE VICE MAYOR AT THAT POINT, BUT ON JULY 4TH LAST YEAR THAT RUSH TO THE PALM CARWASH TO SEE ICE THUGGISHLY TAKE AWAY MEMBERS OF OUR COMMUNITY. to then support them financially through whatever subsidiaries are owning them. So I don't know if this is allowable, but I would love for the council and I'm happy to make an official motion to send this back in whatever way to our city attorney to get out of this contract and to find other unarmed patrol services that do not authorize or give money to anyone with ICE or DHS at this time, and or to develop a larger policy to not have that as part of any of our stipulations moving forward. I think that is who we are as a city, who we were founded as as a city, and I'll leave it back to the discussion for my colleagues and the mayor, but that is something I would like to do. If that's proper tonight, I don't know if it was properly agendized. I'm happy to bring back an item. but something I would love the council unanimously to agree upon because we all stand with immigrants and it's time to actually do it and not give any money to any organization that funds DHS or ICE in any way, shape, and form.

Thank you. Vice Mayor Hang. Oh, no, that's from before. Okay, that's from before. We do have a public speaker. I just saw the slip. I'm sorry. Stephanie Harker.

Stephanie , West Hollywood.

Is that screen available again, the additional activity? I think it said something like, thank you, additional activity, 1,138 scooter responses. I'm assuming that's the fact that the ambassadors have been tasked with reporting scooters that are sticking out and creating ADA violations and creating hazards for the disabled and for children. I do think that that side of that has to be looked at. It's like we're asking these people to basically do Lime, Scooter and Bicycle, their work of reporting these. I report them whenever I see them, but the ambassadors use the same app. sometimes it is moved quickly, sometimes they are not removed from the sidewalks. I called one in, or I sent one in one night last week, and I was walking, doing my steps, and I got a text from, or an email back that said the scooter had been removed, and I wrote back right away, and I said, no, it hasn't, I'm standing right next to it. So it said that that had limed, I understand, gets these reports and the fact that they're having to have the security ambassadors take that as part of their job, I think is wrong. Again, I think Lime doesn't take responsibility enough and we should do something about that as well. Thank you.

Thank you. Steve Martin.

There's a lot of views on immigration, and Trump isn't the first president that has ever deported anyone, but I think what we've seen in this administration is a level of willful cruelty that is really unprecedented, even, I mean, I knew people that were part of the Japanese internment that didn't put up with this sort of indignity. And it's not just indignity and plucking people up off the street. It's denying them food, access to water, toiletry, sending people to South Sudan. I mean, this is just a crazy, crazy thing. And I understand they want people to self-deport. But this isn't who we are. We can have our laws. We can enforce our border. We can have an orderly system. But we don't pick people up when they're going to court and they're part of the system. So I have to say I agree with Councilmember Erickson. It's very difficult to be having a contract with anybody who's a cog in that machine. And I know people have differences on immigration, but I do think we have commonality about our respect for human rights. So anyway, I agree with the suggestion. Thank you.

Thank you. I have a feeling that our city attorney is going to tell us that the issue of the contract was not on our agenda tonight. So we will not be able to take any action with respect to a contract with this particular organization. If we are going to look into this issue, I think it's important for us to look at all of the various entities that have a relationship with our federal government. That would include things like Microsoft, right, that we use for our computers that pretty much everyone does. Probably our cell phone providers also have a contract with Homeland Security. If we're going to look at those entities that are doing business, we need to look at all of them and see whether, you know, we would be punishing ourselves by trying to make a statement about those entities that work with the federal government. I appreciate you bringing this forward or raising this concern, and I look forward to us having a discussion at a future meeting when this is properly agendized.

Mayor? Yeah. Is it possible, and maybe the city attorney can ask, if the council agrees, can we give direction in this item for that to come back at a different item so we don't have to have... Andy and Justin start furiously typing an item tonight, because I will be, I have a short timeline up here, but I want to make sure that we can thoroughly look at this, but would love to see if the council itself agrees upon that already, because frankly, I don't want to waste the public's time if three of my colleagues or not all of our colleagues want to do something such, as robust or not as robust as the mayor would highlight.

Yes, you can give direction for staff to put something on a future agenda, and then we can report back with information and assessment of how many contracts, and we can come back at least with an interim step of what that would look like. And then the council can give direction on where to go from there.

May I add, if we're giving that direction, because Council Member Erickson mentioned contracts and sort of reviewing the whole gamut, I think this is also a filtering process up front, how in our procurement and our bidding process are we putting different standards and qualifications in place so that we're not entertaining bidding from vendors or providers that would sort of fall into this. And so I think we could have a different filtration system up front that could help us moving forward, rather than, as the mayor is saying, a very complicated and comprehensive backwards-looking review, too.

Okay, so we'll have this agendized for a future meeting.

Hopefully before November. Please. Thank you.

Thank you. All right. We will now move on. Thank you. And I believe our last presentation is from the Sheriff's Department.

Yes. Thank you, Valerie. Also, a quick update to share regarding Vision Zero. On May 4th, 2026, the City Council received a demonstration of the city's new interactive WeHo Target Vision Zero dashboard. The City Council also authorized staff to proceed with establishing a new speed zone on Herrett Street between Hammond Street and San Vicente Boulevard, reducing the speed to 20 miles per hour. This change will take effect in coordination with other future speed limits. Changes. Lastly, we invite West Hollywood Sheriff's Station Captain Fannie Lapkin to provide an update on the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department data.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council Members, staff. I'm presenting stats from January through June of 2026. The overall, I'm going to make it short, not get into too many details. Part 1 crime has decreased 11% in the overall city, but they are primary concerns of different crimes that have increased. Examples are residential burglary, grand thefts, and robberies that that have increased throughout the city. What we have done is we look through our stats on a weekly basis to see where our crimes have occurred. We've done extra operations, extra patrols, our cops team, our entertainment policing team, Our detective division and undercover units have assisted us in numerous operations, which that in turn has been an increase in 34% in arrests. They vary from part-time crimes, DUI arrests, narcotics arrests. Additionally, the part two crimes, it shows that there's an increase in our part two crimes, but there's a little, just clarification, part two crimes look like they've increased because we have increased the arrest in narcotics arrest, DUI arrest, public intoxication, and vehicle related offenses. So that number, when it shows that it has increased, it's actually a positive that it has increased because of the arrest that we've made in those. Traffic safety, I'm happy to report that our traffic unit has increased the citations by almost 69%. Our traffic collisions have decreased with 2%. DUI investigations have decreased 11%. DUI arrests have increased 18%. Pedestrian collisions have decreased 34% and bicycle collisions have decreased 14%. We attribute that to the citation increase and the effect of patrolling that our traffic units are doing. I want to make an announcement. We have a brand new deputy, Met Deputy. Our Deputy Garcia has retired. We wish him the best. 25 years in our department, and we wish him the best. But we have a new deputy. His name is Robert Luebano. Sounds just like our Sergeant Luebano, but he is our new MET team deputy, and he's going to be showing his face here on one council and public safety just to introduce himself and community events as well. I WANT TO PROVIDE TWO UPDATES. ONE UPDATE IS ON OUR DFR PROGRAM. WE HAVE A LITTLE BIT OF CHALLENGES OF THE NEW FEDERAL REGULATIONS THAT HAVE BEEN IMPLEMENTED. SO OUR DEPARTMENT IS TRYING TO NAVIGATE SOME OF THOSE IMPLEMENTATIONS TO GET OUR DFR PROGRAM UP AND RUNNING. And also, we have finally completed our wellness room. This week was the last of the things that needed to be done. So again, thank you to Mayor and all council members for helping us with that. And we're going to be coordinating a grand opening for our wellness room and our gym, which helps our deputies with all the different, there's different modalities, there's different things that our deputies can take home to help with the stress that they have during the job. And I am open to any questions.

Okay, questions for Fannie? Council Member Erickson, yes.

Thank you so much, Captain Lapkin, and thank you for all that you do for our community. So part one crime is down 11%, which is great. Now, I always get this question from residents when they're like, see a headline and they're like,

Crime is, you know.

I'm sure I'm being recorded for other campaign purposes, so I won't say what I'm gonna say, because you'll probably see it on your TV screen in the future near you. But people like to say a lot of things about West Hollywood. But frankly, when compared to our numbers, to other cities or LA, which surrounds us, when two, three, or four things happen here, and the previous month or quarter, they were really low, that's a big spike in that specific incident, for example, right? So, when we see shocking headlines like that, it's because, in most cases, you're coming back and reporting to us that crime is down except for a few incidences, which, frankly, have a lot of factors to deal with them. These robberies, are they still occurring in the Rainbow District and other areas?

Predominantly, it's the Rainbow District, and unfortunately, that has to do with people being taken advantage of, unfortunately. Their alcohol is a factor, and they befriend people or whatnot. Yeah. But with that being said, you know, of those of the robberies in 18 cases, we've arrested individuals because thank you for our community. See something, say something because they get a license plate. They they they follow from a distance to identify who was the person that assaulted an individual. So it's been it's a community effort where the reasons why our arrest are up is because our community is helping with that.

And thank you for that. And yes, I do see that in that way. And I think it's really important that the community does know that while things may be pointing in a specific direction, your arrests have been quite significant for people that are doing horrible things. In regards to working with our clubs and other nightlife operators, Danny, Fanny, Danny or Captain Lapkin, What is our ongoing communication with them? I know we have quarterly or if not bimonthly meetings. I mean, they themselves do safe bartending training, but they also have nighttime prevention techniques, their own private security, all of that. Can you just refresh the community so they're aware of some of those tactics that they do or that you do with them?

I could tell you that we meet with them and we talk about trends, we talk about different things that occur. Also our entertainment policing, our team is embedded with the businesses. For example, you mentioned the hot dog vendors. It was a partnership with code enforcement, the businesses, and education. It's educating the vendors of where they can and cannot be and how not to block entrances, different things that worked and we were seeing the results. So it's collaborative with the businesses And our entertainment policing, they contact the managers, they contact security, and if they have an issue, they call them. And then we've increased foot beats on the weekends for those specific reasons, and we've noticed a decrease in incidents because of the increased foot beats.

Wonderful. My only other question, well, I just want to first say thank you as well. You know, I was able to talk about this earlier this week, but, well, it's only Tuesday, but earlier this last weekend, but your continued vigilance around our Jewish community safety plan with the high holidays and everything else was well received by members when I was walking around the community, so thank you for doing that. But additionally, Danny, this is a question I have for you, something that I've been thinking about regarding our MET team. Is it possible to include a peer support trained person during off hours to allow response outside of the typical 9 to 5 social worker hour? And if so, what is that type of fiscal impact?

So in terms of adding like another Met unit in the later, so the two challenges with that, the first is, you know, having the ability to add any additional sworn or even non-sworn staff to our sheriff's contract. is something that we're incapable of doing, but let's just say that we had our existing kind of met unit deputy willing to work overtime. The second challenge is gonna be getting the licensed clinician who is an employee of the county department of mental health. And so they typically do not work in the later evening hours or even the weekends. So it's mainly kind of like a Monday through Friday daytime schedule, which creates that hurdle.

Can we backfill that with the WeHo Cares or someone from our WeHo Cares team?

We've never explored that or looked into that, and I don't know, you know, the differences in credentials and kind of the training and everything that goes into that, but it's definitely something that we could look into. Wonderful.

And then I'm just going to use my comments here then real quick, but specifically I just want to say with the MET team, there is a, for the public, there is a seven-minute average response time next to the regional average of 46 minutes. That's incredible. So thank you for the work that you're doing, Captain Lapkin. That's something that when I was reading this very long agenda packet late last night again, it really stood out. That's incredible, incredible work. So thank you. Thank you, Mayor.

Thank you, Vice Mayor Hange.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you for the very comprehensive presentation. I just had a couple questions. Attachment A, Appendix 4, the east side had an increase in BURGLARY RESIDENTIAL BURGLARY AND HUNDRED FIFTY PERCENT AND OTHER BURGLARY OTHER BURGLARY OF THIRTY SEVEN AND A HALF PERCENT WHAT WHAT ARE WE DOING TO HELP ADDRESS THAT YOU KNOW ESPECIALLY FOR OUR EAST SIDE COMMUNITY MEMBERS.

So like I mentioned earlier, so when we see a crime, especially a residential burglary, we have our residential burg team contacts the residents. They check that location to make sure that they're visible. And then we focus our patrols and our operations on that specific area. But unfortunately, I mean, it's something that we've been very lucky in arresting. I have a number here of... for a residential burglary seven arrests because again our community members have been great in in calling us a lot of the time unfortunately we respond after a resident comes home and they discover or it's after the fact and and because we are so small they easily leave our area before we even arrive. So we're conducting, so every week we look at our stats and we decide what operations we're doing based on those stats. So patrol checks, education for our residents, making sure that Lights are on. If they have brush that covers doors. So if somebody has a question on what they can do to make their home safer, our cops team is the ones that go out there and actually walk through the residence and provide suggestions.

I mean, there's no better eyes and ears in a neighborhood than the residents who live there, right? So they know what's suspect. If you see something, if you hear something, say something, 1-800-CRIMESTOPPERS, or there's a number you can text, and it's all anonymous. I noticed that on appendix 17 of attachment A, hate crimes went up. There were 12 incidences that was listed in the report. say hate crimes for sexual orientation.

Yes, I don't have the specifics on that, but they have. So the incidents, you've got to remember, an incident is not attached to a crime. So it's somebody making a statement and giving your sexual orientation. So we write hate incidents because you want to be able to document that. It's not related to a crime, so that's when we have hate crime, when actually a crime is attached to that. So those are just incidents where somebody uses somebody's sexual orientation in a negative way.

And then for Part 2 crimes, what exactly is vehicle boating laws, misdemeanor?

Vehicle boat, it's vehicle misdemeanor law. So it could be a boat, but we don't have boats here. So they're misdemeanor violations for all intents and purposes. But the way our stat code is written, it's either for a vehicle or a boat. But we don't have boats here.

But is this like a crashing into somebody or?

No, no, it's just misdemeanor violations. So it could be reckless driving. It could be something. They're just violations.

I was just curious because it went from 28 to 41. I was like, what is this boating thing? No boats. I ALSO WANT TO ECHO WHAT COUNCILMEMBER ERIKSON WAS SHARING WITH THE SEVEN-MINUTE AVERAGE TIME COMPARED TO THE 46-MINUTE REGIONAL TIME IN THE COUNTY OPERATIVE MET AREAS. IT'S INCREDIBLE. I REALLY APPRECIATED THE MET SUCCESS STORY THAT YOU INCLUDED IN HERE. I THINK THAT WE FOR ME AS A COUNCILMEMBER I APPRECIATE READING THESE SUCCESS STORIES THAT OUR PROGRAMS ARE ACTUALLY WORKING. AND YOU KNOW I AM FOR ONE IN AGREEMENT WITH COUNCILMEMBER ERIKSON THAT IF WE'RE ABLE TO BEEF UP OUR MET TEAM, OUR MET UNIT, I THINK, YOU KNOW, THAT'S SOMETHING THAT HOPEFULLY THIS COUNCIL CAN EXPLORE IF WE GET BUY-IN FROM THE DEPARTMENT WITH OUR CONTRACT AS WELL. SO THAT IS ALL MY QUESTIONS. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. COUNCILMEMBER BEYERS.

THANK YOU. THANK YOU SO MUCH, CAPTAIN. MY QUESTIONS ARE NOT SPECIFIC TO YOU, BUT MORE SPECIFIC ABOUT THE ALPR LICENSE PLATE READERS. I APPRECIATE THE DATA COMING INTO THE PACKET. And I noticed first that the information there, it only includes information where it has led to issues happening. So I think over the last few months that we've heard from members of the public coming with concerns, the sort of national attention that flock and license plate readers are getting in general, that there is information that isn't leading to significant you know incidents or arrests being made and people want to know to what extent that's happening so I know this is our first semi-annual safety update with this information on it can we commit to making that sort of public information public in our next reporting

No, absolutely. There's a few things that we need to add on this report that we're trying to figure out how we're going to do it. Because, I mean, if you remember, Captain Mulder used to say that our computer systems are put together by paperclips and duct tape. So a lot of this work is manual input. So we're working on trying to figure... figure out ways that we can report the number of searches that we need. Also, the data retention. We cover the numbers of public safety, but also any violations of the policy, which we do audits on a monthly basis. Those are the things that we're working on to try to make sure that we do incorporate that. But also, just know that... I think we need to go back to the basics and have an understanding of how the ALPR cameras work. So the ALPR cameras work based on three categories, whether it be stolen vehicles and wanted vehicles for felony charges. So there's an alert that gets to the deputies' vehicles. That alert, the deputy has to confirm that that alert is still valid. So they either confirm it on their MDC, which is their mobile digital computer, or through our sheriff resources or through our radio. And normally we'll put it on our computer systems, and it'll tell you what's your status on radio. whatever it is, that means that that license plate is valid. So we're not just taking the information from the Alper system, we have to verify it in our own systems. Once it's verified, then the deputies provide, they're not gonna stop anybody until it's verified through our systems. So I think that's number one that we need to make sure that there are no myths. We don't pull people over just because the ALPR system told us that this individual is wanted for stolen vehicle, not individual, let me rephrase that. This vehicle is wanted because it's stolen or because the vehicle was used in a robbery, in a burglary or whatnot. We still have to verify that that is valid. once we conduct a traffic stop then we verify that that vehicle it's still because sometimes it's a stolen plate on a wrong vehicle so there's different ways without getting into the details how we verify that that plate belongs to that vehicle so once we do that that that's when the steps move forward to whether we're going to arrest somebody or there's been one incident where the vehicle was stolen it came back stolen but he was the owner he never called the local, which was LAPD, didn't call him and say that he recovered his own car. So what we do is we take it out of the system right then and there so that he doesn't leave and somebody else pulls him over. So those are the things we do with that. But, yes, we do conduct monthly audits, and the only people that have access to our ALPR system is West Hollywood Sheriff Deputies. That's it.

Thank you. All of that information, I think, really helps the public feel a sense of comfort that you are putting safeguards in place, especially as our own sheriff's station here in West Hollywood. But I think it still doesn't get to the bigger issue that the public has the most concern with, which hasn't been specifically about your department's use of the system. It's that the system itself is going to produce faulty data. And I think as a council that's making decisions about where we invest the public's resources into tools that we ideally are supposed to help the public, we want to ensure that that's what's really happening. And so the first step of that process that you named where you get information and then you verify, I think it's important that this council knows what information and how many times you get information that you verify isn't actually accurate. Because that would mean that we have paid for a system that is at some degree producing data that is inaccurate. Data that if not for safeguards that you just specifically described putting in place would lead to improper action with community members here in West Hollywood. And that's a concern at least for me on this council. So I absolutely want that data as clear as day here. And I understand the challenges that the county and the sheriff's department has in creating that data. And I want to make sure we are giving and supporting you in tools Because that's what I'm hearing this community ask for consistently is an understanding of what information the systems we have in place are producing and at what stage that information is starting to break down. Because I certainly wouldn't want to start messaging to the public or to your department that you are part of an issue chasing trails that don't need to happen. I want to make sure you have the proper tools in place to do the work properly. And right now, the public outcry around flock specifically is so loud that I don't have that sort of trust. And the only way I do is by following data. So that's why I want to get back to the report and make sure that we're, and everything you named, the monthly audits, all of that. I really appreciate you wanting to put that in there. And if the department has that prepared ahead of a semi-annual safety update, I don't think we should wait six months to start proving to the public that. that the systems we have are working in the way that you have stated that they're intended. So that's the first statement, and thank you. The next thing, and it's the last thing for me, is just related to the contract itself. And I know because of Council Member Erickson's attempts We're not going to be able to review any contract tonight, but I do want to ask this council to support direction to staff to come back because members of the public have addressed some discrepancies between the staff report and the contract itself, specifically naming the indemnification piece where flock would be held accountable for inaccuracies or missteps that lead to the public coming to hold this body accountable. And so I want to ensure that that and other issues that have been identified by members of the public are cleared up. So that's something I want to ask that this council give direction to staff to do as soon as we can, because those issues have already persist since the time that this vote took place at the end of July. And I want to make sure we're not waiting any more time before we have a contract that the public can understand how it's meant to safeguard them, whether or not they believe and support what FLOC is here to do and ALPR and its existence and the mass surveillance of it all. At the very least, we can have a contract in place that we can point to and have the public understand. So those are my comments. And just, again, thank you for the information tonight.

Thank you. Council Member Meister.

Thank you, Mayor. So I was looking at the numbers. I think Vice Mayor Hang mentioned them as well about burglary increasing on the east side and center city about 20%, and then grand theft increasing on the west side at 19%. And I'm just wondering at what point, it seems to me that maybe there's a focus at night, like the deputies are on the east side or they're on the west side, and that's why we keep seeing these numbers kind of flip-flop a little bit because we had a problem on the west side with burglaries, and then I'm sure there were more patrol cars coming out for that. So I guess... what I'd like to ask is at what point do we say, you know what, we need more deputies? Otherwise we can't cover the entire city and we're gonna continue to see these numbers flip-flopping as we focus on one area and then the other for whatever is happening at the moment, whether it's the burglaries or the grand theft. So that's something, I don't know if you want to respond to that or...

I'm going to be biased and say yes, we can always use more deputies, more eyes are going to be able to assist us and we can be in more places at once. But again, like, you know, Director Reeves mentioned, I mean, we have a moratorium and even if we have, you know, a wish list to have the number of deputies, I mean, we... Hire deputies on overtime. We do what we can. We've done numerous operations where deputies are working the overtime for specific operations, whether it be for the grand thefts that we're dealing on the east end. So we do the undercovers. People go in there. And again, it is... It's a guessing game. We're trying to figure out what we're doing. But as we look at our stats on a weekly basis and sometimes on a daily basis, if something occurred and then we see it back to back, we're changing our strategies. But, yeah, I mean, it is a challenge. But, you know, we have our deputies that are more willing to work. Like I see, you know, I mentioned over 34% or 30% an arrest that had been increased. It's because of dedication of our deputies that are out there committed to a community. Right.

And I think then if we can't get more deputies because there's the freeze or there aren't enough applying to work to be deputies, I think then we have to think about what other You know, what are our alternatives? You know, is it private security to handle certain things like being in residential areas and patrolling? You know, things like that. Yeah, go ahead.

I'm sorry. And I know, like, we just voted on the community services officers. That's going to be a huge thing for us because... That's going to take away from deputies taking low-level reports, reports that a security officer, for all intents and purposes, can take. They're going to be trained by us, and they're going to be taking those steps to take those reports so that our deputies are free to actually go out and conduct patrol checks, to be out in the areas where the high crime area for that week is, and to be more visible. So this is a huge step for us, to have somebody... take the low-level reports that need to be taken because there are victims that want to, we need to write a report. The security officers are going to help with low-level reports, traffic reports, fingerprinting. There's going to be a list of things that they're going to assist our deputies with. I think that's a step in the right direction.

So, and I do think that we need to look at a combination of things. It may not just be the CSOs, it may also be that we have to think about, again, private security if we can't get more deputies. And then the other thing I would mention also is that if this, if council majority were to look at, you know, look at these things and say we want to change the tools, what other tools are available to us to make deputies more efficient and to make the whole process more efficient so that our deputies are out patrolling and doing their jobs and not dealing with you know, where they're getting the help that they need technology-wise is my point.

You took the words right out of my mouth. The technology platform that we have, I mean, the drone program is going to help our deputies have eyes on the sky. I mean, I said it the last time, eyes on the sky. But we're going to have a drone who's going to actually be on scene and give the deputies the intel and the information that they need to get resources there or not get the resources they need. Instead of needing five deputies, they only need one because The drone is telling them play by play. The deputy who's actually flying the drone is telling the deputies who are responding what is occurring. So that's one aspect. Our live feed cameras that we have is another tool that helps us. And one of the incidents that we mentioned before is the bank robbery. Our deputies were in the real time watch center when the call came out. They used the cameras. They focus on the description of the individual that had robbed the bank and they identified and told the deputies where he was at. So those are the tools that can help the deputy solve these crimes. And, you know, and the out and the out per cameras is a system that when we get alerts, it's alerts again on stolen vehicles. It's vehicles that are wanted for felonies, robberies, burglaries, kidnappings. We're not looking at misdemeanor. We're not looking whether you have a warrant for unpaid tickets. That's not what the system is for. But again, we have to make sure that we verify before we even conduct a stop. So those are great tools that we have in place, and some of them that sooner than later we'll have our EFR program.

Good, okay, the other thing I noticed is that, and I believe you mentioned about the citations, so we had an increase of 69% for citations and traffic collisions were down significantly. So is that all related?

Yes, it's a correlation of you increase the hazardous sites, what we call the moving violations, and then a decrease usually in traffic collisions. Same thing with our DUI, traffic collisions and DUI arrest.

And then we saw an increase and this concerns me in possession of controlled substance and then there's been meth sales have doubled since 2025. So what are we doing to address that?

So we have our narcotics team, and that's because of the arrests that have been done by our narcotics team and our deputies. That's the reason why the numbers are up, because of the proactiveness that the deputies are doing. Our narcotics team that does surveillance and undercovers on various locations, or sometimes individuals just want to tell us where their dealer is.

So again, it's really a lot of this is about us having enough deputies to be working on these. issues or narcotics specialists or personnel, sworn personnel to be able to work on this. And I don't know if that means that we need to lobby. Who do we lobby to try to get more deputies? Do we lobby Sheriff Luna? Do we lobby the Board of Supervisors?

I think they're proactively working on hiring. I know that the Board of Supervisors have increased the number of patrol academies or deputy academies so that we increase the number of deputies that are hired. So that's one of the points that we have to hire in order for people or deputies to get out of the academy and then come out to patrol. I know the Board of Supervisors and Sheriff Luna are working together to try and increase our academy classes, and that's step one. And then that kind of filters down to us.

Yeah, and I would just say that before we start moving resources, we need to make sure we have resources to replace them that are going to be effective. I just also just want to end with the volunteers. THAT WORKED 1,522 HOURS, WHICH WAS WORTH OVER 63,500. JUST WANT TO THANK THOSE VOLUNTEERS. THANK YOU, MAYOR. I'LL PASS IT.

THANK YOU. VICE MAYOR HANG, YOU HAD ANOTHER COMMENT?

THANK YOU, MAYOR. I JUST HAD A QUICK QUESTION. I KNOW THAT COMMUNITY SAFETY WORKS WELL WITH THE NEIGHBORHOOD WATCH GROUPS, AND YOU CONDUCT QUOTERLY MEETINGS, I THINK, WITH THE DIFFERENT GROUPS. ARE THERE ANY OPPORTUNITIES TO, LIKE, uh like input some sort of a training to the neighborhood watch associations like so they can like teach them you know uh what to look for something doesn't look out of the ordinary in the neighborhood so that way because they're the eyes and ears right so if they see something that they suspect they can immediately call each other call 9-1-1 because they're the eyes and ears

Yeah, and we do that when we visit the neighborhood watch meetings. We talk about the trends that are happening during that quarter, and we do. I mean, anytime we, again, we can go to the residents, and we can always tell them the things that we want them to do safely. We want you to be good eyes and ears, but we don't want you to get yourself in a position where you become the victim. So we do. We do talk about look at distinct characteristics. The shoes, because they're not going to take off their shoes. Do you have specific tattoos? They can take out an outer garment, but they're not going to be able to take off their shoes or specific belt or specific earring or whatnot. Those are things that we talk, you know, and we explain to our, you know, whether it be our neighborhood watch or even just when we're doing the community academy. These are the things that we need to look for.

Great.

Thank you. Thank you, Council Member Erickson. You had another question?

Yeah. No, and I also think it's important for the public to know is that if anyone's getting more deputies, although we might want them, as President of California Contract Cities, we're probably not gonna be the first city to get them, sadly. And I ain't no fan of you laugh, not you didn't laugh in a way that, oh, that's bad, but like you chuckle because you understand the bureaucracy and what just happened. So I understand Council Member Meister's point, but ultimately we are not high on that totem pole, right, in the ways that the process will work. And I think it's important to know that every contract city wants more deputies in some way. I say this every year. And there hopefully will be a different trend I think as we see things moving in a good direction as we've been continuing to get those reports. But just I don't want the public to think that there's this ability to do it and that even if there was I don't even think we would see that within a while for us.

That is way beyond my pay grade. Yes. So, I mean, in all honesty, it would have to be how, once we lift the moratorium, and how that would work with the contracts. Because you're right, we're not the only city that would want more deputies.

Thank you. I had just one question. Thank you for fielding all of our questions tonight. I was made aware of an armed robbery that occurred, I believe it was on September 7th on Lapeer. you were able to identify the suspect and make an arrest and recover items related to the robbery. Can you tell us a little bit more about that incident and how you were able to capture the person who came into our community and committed this armed robbery?

Without getting too many into the details because it's an active case, the Alper cameras were used to identify the vehicle and get a license plate and we worked from there to identify. There was also another vehicle that recorded without mentioning vehicles that recorded the incident that had all that information as well. and working together with our Alper cameras, our LIFE cameras, and the support of Beverly Hills as well. We were able to identify the vehicle. We were able to conduct a search warrant and arrest the individual and recover items that were taken.

Great. This is a receiving file, an update. So I think we're now done. Correct, Anita? All right. We're going to take a 10-minute break here. We will come back in 10 minutes. Thank you, everyone, for your patience. We only have four items left, and we'll try to get through them quickly. Yes. We are going to go ahead and get started again. The city manager is on her way. She doesn't have to run. This is our next item, which is the business task force update and recommendations. Do we need a full staff report? Okay, so Council Member Meister would like probably a basic report of the key recommendations.

Well, good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, and Council Members. My name is Paula Kesperdet, Business Development Manager. Join with me tonight with Laura Byrie, the Director of Economic Development, and Laura D'Ambrosia, our Business Development Analyst, to go over item E3 very quickly. So we're going to breeze through this, but the task force was founded in 2024 as approved by the council along with our economic study. It was one year in duration with six meetings. The foundation of the meeting started with the four focus areas that you see here on the screen. So the first meeting was our introduction meeting with some of our business partners from the West Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, Visit West Hollywood, our business improvement districts, as well as the Los Angeles County Economic Development Corporation. And this provided the roadmap for the future meetings that will be moving forward. As a result, the Business Task Force provided eight recommendations across the four focus areas that you see here on the screen. Just going to read through these recommendations very quickly. The first one under focus area number one was to explore opportunities for financial assistance and technical support programs, including loan funds, incentives, and advisory resources to support business attraction and retention. Second recommendation is to create a commercial vacancy program that includes public facing dashboard with duration of vacancy and location and other voluntary items. Recommendation number three is to explore targeted strategies to fill commercial vacancies that incentivize landlords who fill commercial vacancies and potentially de-incentivize landlords that leave properties vacant for long periods of time with carve outs for small mom and pop landlords. Under focus area number two, there are two recommendations, which is to incorporate voluntary demographic information fields on the city's business tax form to support targeted outreach data tracking and alignment with our plan and our economic study goals. To form a home based working group in partnership with the Chamber to conduct a time limited study to better understand home based business sector. And under focus area number three, there are two recommendations. One is to establish the Creative Industries and Event Activation Working Group with the Chamber of Commerce to identify event opportunities, explore shuttle partnerships, and connectivity improvements to enhance our visitor experience. And the second recommendation under this focus area is to streamline the city's permitting process for special events pop-ups, including improvements to the application materials and other online resources. And finally, under focus area number four, that was to create sustainable economic strategies, which is to conduct an updated study on the impacts of the West Hollywood minimum wage and sales tax policies. And I do want to just note for the record that of the recommendations, this was the only recommendation where there was not unanimous support from the business task force. But with that, that concludes staff's recommendation. the staff's presentation, sorry.

Thank you.

We do have one public speaker.

Do we want to hear from the public speaker first? Cody Christianson.

Good evening, Mayor, Vice Mayor, Council. I'm Cody Christensen, candidate for West Hollywood City Council 2026, long-time resident, and this past year, I had the honor to serve on the West Hollywood Business Task Force. I've worked in our small businesses for years, so I know how much heart goes into opening the doors each morning. Serving on this task force gave me the chance to sit with people from across our business community and ask a simple question. What would actually help? We didn't always come in with the same answers, we didn't always agree, but we listened, asked city staff for information, and worked through the challenges together. The recommendations before you reflect that effort. They include support for businesses trying to open or stay open, better information about vacant storefronts, clearer rules for events and pop-ups, and a study of how the city policies affect the cost of doing business. We were also grateful that the Chamber of Commerce agreed to work with us ALL THE RECOMMENDATIONS YOU SAW THAT HAD THEIR NAME IN IT. BEING PART OF THIS GROUP WAS AN INCREDIBLE EXPERIENCE. I'M PROUD OF WHAT WE ACCOMPLISHED TOGETHER, AND I BELIEVE IT CAN HELP THE WHOLE COMMUNITY. PLEASE APPROVE ITEM E3, GIVE OUR WORK A PLACE IN THE CITY'S PLANS, AND GIVE OUR PROPOSALS THAT NEEDED FUNDING A REAL HEARING IN THE FUTURE BUDGET PROCESS. WE FOUND ANSWERS TOGETHER. NOW WE HAVE A CHANCE TO PUT THEM TO WORK. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, CODY, AND THANK YOU AND ALL OF THE MEMBERS FOR THEIR SERVICE. VICTOR OMACHENKO?

Good evening, Council. Victor Omolchenko, West Hollywood resident. Well, I note, after a year's work, there were nine members on this committee, and two of them are among candidates for our City Council. Mr. Christensen, who just spoke, and I believe it's Mr. Cottrell, Jonathan Cottrell of Jim Barr, Cody Christensen of Cake and Art, so they have experience in business, and I thank them, and I thank all the members of the Business Task Force. for coming up with their recommendations. While supporting our local business community is vital, we continue to have a glaring blind spot in our commercial districts, storefronts that remain dark, blighted, and deliberately kept vacant year after year by absentee landlords waiting for those wind-filled profits and tax breaks. Years ago, Councilmember Lauren Meister courageously brought forward the idea of a commercial property vacancy task, pointing back to then to San Francisco as a pioneering model. At the time, critics doubted its viability, but looking at the evidence today, we see that vacancy taxes do work to crack open stagnant real estate. So San Francisco's commercial vacancy tax, which scales up significantly the longer a space sits empty, has proven to be the most avoidable tax imaginable. As local officials note, landlords don't have to pay it if they simply rent their storefronts. at realistic market rates. Neighborhood districts across San Francisco that implemented the tax saw substantial improvements and drops in commercial vacancies and millions raised to fund small business support. In our dense, vibrant city, I think we need to look at this. We cannot afford to let commercial Landlords hoard empty spaces as tax write-offs while neighborhood vitality suffers. I urge you, our city council, to look very seriously at these recommendations and to direct staff to study a commercial vacancy tax modeled on San Francisco's success. Let's give our small, independent businesses a fighting chance by forcing landlords to either rent or reset. It is about the money. Thank you.

Your time is expired. Thank you. Vice Mayor Hang, to be followed by Council Member Erickson.

Thank you, Mayor. Thank you very much for the comprehensive presentation. Were all of the focus areas and all the points unanimous?

So the focus areas that were presented as the foundation for the business task force were unanimous by the business task force. However, the recommendations that fell within those focus areas, it's just number eight that was not unanimous.

And can you kind of briefly go over what number eight is?

Yes. So number eight was conduct an updated study on the impacts of the West Hollywood minimum wage and sales tax policies, including indirect cost impacts and business closure data.

So that was the only one that did not have a unanimous consensus on it. Well, I appreciate the work that the business task force completed. I know it's a lot of time and energy that was spent. And I agree with... points one through seven. I don't agree with point number eight. And that, as you just stated, to conduct an updated study on the impacts of the minimum wage and sales tax policies, including indirect cost impacts and business closure data. You know, we've heard concerns from businesses about rising labor costs along with increases in rent, insurance, utilities, goods, taxes, and other operating expenses. Those concerns are real, and I think we should continue listening to them. However, the city's minimum wage ordinance was amended in 2024 following a qualified voter initiative. and its core provisions are now voter protected. Under the municipal code, we cannot simply vote or reduce or weaken these provisions and change what would reduce those protections would require approval of West Hollywood voters. And I don't want us to spend money and resources studying the economic impacts of a policy without also understanding what tools would actually be available to us based on the results. If we receive a report showing that labor costs are contributing to business closures or making it more difficult to operate in West Hollywood, we still do not have the authority as a council to respond by reducing the voter protected portions of the minimum wage ordinance. And I do not think that we should commission a study simply for the sake of producing more data if the council does not have a clear path to act on its primary findings. I'D RATHER SPEND MY TIME AND OUR FOCUS FOR RESOURCES ON THE AREAS WHERE THE COUNCIL DOES HAVE THE ABILITY TO PROVIDE MEANINGFUL RELIEF, SUCH AS FEES, PERMITTING PROCESSES, REVIEWING OUR BUSINESS REGULATIONS, GRANTS, AND OTHER INCENTIVES THAT WE CAN OFFER FOR SMALL BUSINESSES. THANK YOU.

THANK YOU, COUNCIL MEMBER ERICKSON.

Thank you so much, and thank you to the members of the public that spoke. I also want to just offer a thanks to Councilmember Schein, who actually authored this, I think, many ages ago, and now we're seeing it into fruition. So sorry, Sepi, it only took 36 years. My question are, so in regards to item number eight, Were the commissioners not informed that they have no purview of that item or not aware of the municipal code change in the way that the voters, it's voter referendum, referendized?

Yeah, to summarize the sentiments that were happening from the business task force, staff gave them an overview of the minimum wage as part of that and did inform them of the changes to the ordinance which require a voter ballot if there were reductions to the minimum wage ordinance. However, the business task force and the members of the business task force stated that the cost of labor was one of the top things that they kept hearing from another business. And they wanted to see, in effect, if the minimum wage ordinance was causing issues to, that would relate to business closures. So they recommended to look at a study for staff to look at that study and provide that data.

And how much would a study cost?

You know, we have not conducted a I'm guessing like all studies. It's a couple hundred thousand dollars Typically studies of those magnitude.

Yeah, so then you would do a study you come back to us and you'd say but by the way There's nothing you can do because the voters only have control of this So we would have wasted two hundred plus thousand dollars in that way my comments not yours so who on the task force wasn't aware of this and Like I see there's one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. There are nine members. You said the vote was broken down. What was the vote?

The vote was eight, well, sorry. The vote was, let me grab the meeting notes just so I'm not... So of the business task force members that were present at the meeting itself, there were seven business task force members at this final meeting, which the recommendations were approved. There was one business task force member that did not vote for this item.

There was one that did not vote for this item. Who was it?

That member was Jonathan Quattro.

Okay, so one council candidate understood the law and the other one didn't. Okie dokie. My questions about the minimum wage task force though is like, We have, this is a voter referendize, we five to zero sent that and said that if the voters ever want to change it, they can. When you say they've heard from businesses, like I can hear from a business that they want to paint their storefront pink. It doesn't mean that it's hindering businesses. Was this based on substantial facts or data? I mean, I see cost of insurance, commercial rent, price of goods, all of those other things. And even, Laura, correct me if I'm wrong, on our own minimum wage surveyor survey, whatever way it occurred, the minimum wage was like number four or five when it came down to actual issues that FM3, I believe, authorized?

Yes, the city council requested that FM, we conducted a study to survey businesses and FM3 was the one that was hired to do that study. It was not ranked as the number one reason for businesses to have concerns. It was one of the reasons that businesses have costs that have increased over time.

Yeah. How much going around when we're looking at how much it costs to pay people, is there any, I remember when we did the minimum wage item, people said essentially like, well, we're already paying people $20 an hour. And you're like, oh, okay. So it shouldn't be that big of a problem then, right? I mean, it's kind of getting into the understanding of like they couldn't even, we had a labor shortage at that time because people couldn't get people to come here for those jobs. Did the task force look at labor shortages compared to anything that's going around in our area? My understanding is, and this is going in and being a good secret shopper, that businesses are actually turning down employees that want to transfer to West Hollywood locations because of our minimum wage ordinance. So do we have a labor shortage in West Hollywood? They didn't study that, I'm guessing.

No, the Business Task Force did not specifically talk about labor shortages as it relates to minimum wage or any type of application process.

So people are able to be employed here in the city of West Hollywood due to the minimum wage increase because people are making not a living wage, because that's like $35 an hour, but somewhere around that to my understanding. Okay, great. So then additionally, I agree with the comments that Vice Mayor Hang said earlier I'm very concerned that people don't understand the law on the books. So I think that's a whole nother philosophical conversation that they should have with themselves and their Lord. But ultimately, I think that when we look at the stuff that they are doing, we see actual tangible things that need to be occurring here when it comes down to some of their recommendations that I think are based in stuff based on your staff report we've already looked at. So it's good to see that it's reiterated in that way. But ultimately, I don't support wasting money on another study that will have no impact on what we can do unless the voters themselves bring it forward. And I would hope individuals that would like to understand that better read the laws actually on the books before anything else. Thank you.

Council Member Byers.

Thank you. I wanted to name under one of the first items, you asked for other voluntary info from businesses that'll help create a sort of vacancy dashboard. I love this idea. I think as we hear about the vacancy tax idea that's been pushed and visited in the past, this to me is the sort of right move for a city to be able to facilitate the information exchange in a different way to promote that to people who may be prospective businesses. Part of what I'd be interested in seeing just as I hear from businesses new tenants into some of these older buildings, the extent of the build out or the sort of transformation of the space. So I don't know how much information would be able to be voluntarily provided. And I'm sure the dates of the last tenant are interesting because code changes and things like that provide obstacles or opportunities for people to create those updates. But that would be something I would imagine would be helpful. And I'm sure you're thinking of other things beyond what I am, but I'm really excited to see that dashboard. I hope we'll get a presentation of what it looks like at some point. I know you shared more information to us about vacancies, but this will be a different tool that we'll have to leverage. So that's interesting to me. And then just appreciate the comments from my colleagues. I too had some concerns around this item number eight on the list, this minimum wage study. So I'd be glad to not see that move forward as part of this recommendation, just to unburden the amount of time I think you all in the exit interviews you've conducted with businesses that have shuttered or have chosen to close has been really useful. And I think there's other pathways to continue to get that sort of feedback and information for businesses that are experiencing the challenges. I also think that this council is really aware that we're in a moment of real economic challenge for businesses. We've invested really appropriately in that. And I would want to make sure the investments we put in the city that understand that there are economic circumstances challenging, they're going towards fixing those, not just looking at them and studying them. Thank you. That's all for me.

Council Member Meister.

Thank you, Mayor. Yeah, I think all of these recommendations are going to be helpful. I particularly am interested in the ones under the focus number one, specifically the commercial vacancy registration program and exploring incentives and disincentives for landlords. And I appreciate Victor bringing up San Francisco's commercial vacancy tax, which I tried to bring forward, I think, at least two times, if not three, and maybe I'll go for a fourth before the end of November. Regarding the study that everyone seems to be focused on, I kind of looked at that and said, why do a study when we already know what council majority is going to do with it? So I, you know, I think of it less about what, THE LAW IS AND WHAT THAT SAYS. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN WHEN THEY SAY THAT? AND THAT IS THAT THERE'S OBVIOUSLY STILL A CONCERN THAT COUNCIL POLICIES ARE HURTING BUSINESS. AND THAT'S WHAT I WOULD WANT TO ADDRESS AS WE MOVE FORWARD. SO THANK YOU.

THANK YOU. VICE MAYOR HANG YOU JUMPED IN AGAIN.

Thank you, Mayor. So we're already doing some of this work, right? I mean, like point number six, focus area three, task force, discuss opportunities to strengthen visitor-oriented events. We're already doing that with the Olympics. We did that pretty much for the World Cup. Streamlining. Streamlining. Point number streamlining, like special event permits for pop-ups. I think I have an item coming up very soon that sort of addresses that. So some of this work is already being done or in the process of being done.

Yes, in the staff report, we itemized out just some examples of where we found some of the recommendations in alignment with our current plans and our current work plan. The task force's recommendations in comparison to some of that may go into a little more detail in some cases, or they might be more newer concepts and kind of combination of multiple factors as a result of it. But yes, in a lot of aspects, these are items that we are already working on or moving towards improving.

Thank you.

So first of all, I want to thank the members of the Business Task Force for their work in bringing forth these recommendations. I support the recommendations. There are certain aspects that I think may turn out to be unnecessary. For instance, the information about vacancies. There's already information. If you want to locate a vacancy in West Hollywood, All of those are typically listed on LoopNet or something like that. So I don't know that commercial property owners and brokers are necessarily going to provide all of that information to the city when it's already being provided on a real estate site where people can access it. So I don't know that it is necessarily the case that we need to duplicate the efforts that are already available through those kind of websites. But I have no problem with the city exploring and thinking about how that would look. On item number eight, there is no consensus to include that in the recommendation. But I do wanna say that I think the reasons for excluding that are not valid. What the task force is asking us to do, at least the majority of the task force, was to study. And we study things all the time. And there's nothing in the law that prohibits us from conducting a study. There's also nothing in the voter approved law that would prevent the city council from making a recommendation or putting forth a ballot measure to alter the existing law. But clearly there is not support to move forward with item number eight. So I would suggest that we go forward with approving recommendations one through seven. And if there's a motion to that effect, we can take a vote and move on. Yes, you can.

Just about the registration program, as I was thinking about that, I think for me it was less about the, you know, for others to, you know, find places to rent and more about information for us to see if there are any trends. you know, what are the patterns, you know, in areas and it just more accessible to us and to interested parties. So that's, that's how I looked at that. And, and as opposed to like, yes, it was, you know, you can see it on loop net or wherever.

How would that be different than from the reports that we typically, I think we just got one at the last meeting, updating us on our vacancies and our percentages compared to other cities?

It would be a dashboard so that the public could see it as well.

Okay.

I think, right? Okay.

All right that's different than how I interpreted the recommendation, but there is a motion to adopt recommendations one through seven that motion has been seconded if there's no further discussion let's go ahead and vote. That is approved. Thank you, everyone. We'll now move to item F5, which is the Worley Building. I don't know that we need a staff report on this. We do have a couple of speakers on this. Does anyone need a staff report on this?

It's my report.

Yeah, you don't need it, because you wrote it. Okay, let's take the public speakers, and then if we have questions, we can ask. Council Member Meister, Victor Omichenko, to be followed by Christina Morris. Victor, you're waving your speaking on this item.

I'm looking for my statement, but I'll just say this.

Thank you, Council Member Meister, for submitting this beginning step, an initiative step to designate as a local cultural resource in our city. This fine example of a streamlined, modern building Built, I believe, in 1940, 1941. I first spotted it when I was walking with my colleague, Roy Oldenkamp, years ago. And we looked in and we said, wow, what a building. The curve, the shape, and that. And then when we found out what was happening inside of it, the recovery community meeting there. Now we have the June Mazur lesbian archive situated there. This building really does, I think, deserve cultural resource status designation in our fine city. It has appeared already on the list of potentially eligible buildings for historic reservation. And so I thank you for looking into this and initiating this process for designation of the historic Worley building that not only is a fine example of architectural integrity of a streamlined modern building, but also has had a place in the social history and cultural history of our city. So thank you very much.

Thank you. Christina Morris.

Good evening, Mayor Heilman and council members. My name is Christina Morris, and I represent the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the nation's only nonprofit preservation advocacy organization that's dedicated to protecting the places that matter most to the American people. My primary role at the National Trust is leading the Where Women Made History initiative, intended to identify, elevate, and celebrate all of the many ways that women have shaped our shared history. And while women represent nearly 51% of our population, their achievements are largely, if not entirely, excluded from local landmarks, national historic landmarks, and all other formal means of marking significant places of history. The sad reality is that in the best of cases, 5% of designations of all types in this country are made in recognition of women of all identities. With my partners at the LA Conservancy, we are tackling this glaring disparity by creating a more gender equitable approach to landmark designation that makes the recognition of women, LGBTQ+, and BIPOC women the norm, not the exception. And it's called the Los Angeles Women's Landmarks Project, and it's intended to be a model for other communities across the country to change how they recognize women as a part of their community's history. I had the pleasure of presenting on this at your Historic Preservation Commission back in March and encouraged the designation of the Worley Building for its connection to the June Maser Archives. as one easy and obvious way the city of West Hollywood could lead by example. And I'd like to thank Councilmember Meister for bringing this item to the council, and I wholeheartedly support approval of this resolution to initiate preparation of a cultural resource designation. This will formally acknowledge the June Mazur Archives over three decades of leadership as a prominent archive of lesbian, queer, and feminist history, and I hope this is only the first of West Hollywood's designations for women, not the last. Thank you very much.

Thank you. That's our last speaker but I believe we have some position slips.

Yes, Mayor, we do. Stephanie Harker and Kathy Blavis in support of the item.

Thank you. Council Member Erickson, I think you had a question about this?

Yeah, I'm generally supportive of this, but I think for the reasons that were just stated, I don't want this to ever inhibit the city's ability to expand that building. I mean, it's very limited. I talk to the Mazer archives quite a bit, and they have no space. And As the only archive west of the Mississippi, if I'm not mistaken, for lesbian history and queer women's history, it would be a shame if we hindered ourselves the inability to invest in the future of what that could look like. And especially after the log cabin expansion project, with that moving forward and the parking lot as well as the capital improvement project. The Whirly building itself being something that we own and having that ability to make sure it is even further preserved as something for the future of historicity, in my opinion. And so while I'm supportive of making sure the building never goes anywhere, the city owns the building. So unless five or three of us on here were like, you know what? Screw the Whirly building. I don't think any of us is going to do that, right? I think what I'm interested in is how do I expand the Worley Building or how do we continue to add on to the space that is needed? And when you start designating stuff as cultural sites, you really hinder yourself in that ability to do so. So that is my only hesitation because if I had money to give right now as a city, I would hope we would invest in queer history in that way, as well as the sober recovery community history that needs that space a lot because they don't have it right now because the log cabin is so limited. Winter is coming, to quote some other things, but they're going to have to use it all in a different way. And I brought a whole group of teenagers from Ripon, Wisconsin to go into the Worley building there were 15 of us and it was like sardines that we actually had to be in those things and the Mazer Archives is renting space really expensive space at I believe UCLA when in reality they could probably be saving that money if we actually expanded it so that's my only I really applaud you for bringing this forward because I think it's important that we save the resource but I don't want us to ever stop and I think we're seeing that in a lot of different things with good intentions

So just in response, I would say two things. And one is that, A, this item initiates the nomination process and it goes before a whole process with the Historic Preservation Commission. So this doesn't mean that it's designated. It means it starts the process. Also, I'm sorry that Kim from June L. Mazur Lesbian Archives isn't here because she's actually very supportive of this item. And I think for them to be included as part of the history of this building and an institution that is significant, not only because of the LGBTQ plus aspect, but also because especially women aspect. And as the speaker mentioned, that only 5% of LGBTQ designations are call it out to women's history so I would say that that that would be something that would be important for to be part of that review process which the historic preservation Commission would would be able to look at and then I would also say that you know historic buildings do get modified and at various points and there is a process and it goes before HPC and they can get a certificate of appropriateness. And so I wouldn't say that it totally stops something from happening, but it does, make it a more thoughtful process.

And thank you for that. But I think in my response, I think if we were to have Kim here and say, hey, Kim, we're going to spend $10 million to expand the building, she would herself go, oh, great, a capital improvement project I don't have to fundraise for. So, of course, she's supportive of preserving the space because she doesn't want the space to go anywhere. And just for the record, it's not going anywhere. But in addition... if you classify it as and then you get a certificate level of appropriateness the costs of improving that to the city are exponential i mean they are it is very expensive and maybe jackie could talk to us a little bit about the differences or helen or or steve's or helen we haven't picked on you yet this meeting so i mean you know why not but um you know i mean uh plumber park to improve fiesta hall's roof and air conditioning is it a little bit more expensive than what we would have to do i I'm sure you'd want to talk about that, which, by the way, was my item, and I'm happy we did it. But I'm just saying that the cost overrun to the city in a really fiscal time is really impossible. And... Sure.

You know, sometimes we have to think about the historic value of certain things, and that should be a priority over... other things, so I think this is part of the history of this city, and I think it's important that we do have some respect for cultural and historic spaces, and I would hope that at least it could go through the process like I said, this is not being approved tonight as a historic site, but at least it gives it the opportunity to bring the public to discuss it, the Historic Preservation Commission to review it, and for all opinions to be brought out about this, and there might be some people who go and have opinions like yours, but at least it's a public process, and I think that would be WORTHWHILE OF DOING, IF WE INITIATE THIS TONIGHT.

YEAH, ALL I'LL SAY, AND THAT I KNOW COUNCILMEMBER BEYERS HAS COMMENTS, IS THAT'S A FEDE COMPLI. LIKE, I KNOW HOW THE HISTORIC PRESERVATION COMMISSION'S GOING TO VOTE ON THIS. I THINK YOU DO AS WELL. I KNOW THAT IF IT COMES BACK TO US, WE WOULD HAVE THAT HARD CONVERSATION AS WELL. BUT ULTIMATELY, Involving the public, great, do it, wonderful. I think, what does a capital improvement project for the Worley Building look like? I don't want to give Steve a heart attack with another capital improvement project or Helen, because I know they're like, we want to retire. But, you know, ultimately, no one is saying that we don't want this as a cultural designation of historicity. I think the best part about the Worley Building is that it's there and we want to expand it and make it better. as well as make sure we maintain the costs and the taxpayers' costs who give us those dollars, as we're reminded of every day, to make sure we're stewarding in the right way. And so I appreciate the item. I respect the item. I just think that it's putting us down a path that I just don't want to set up the community for us to actually have to come back and look at this in a different way and say, sorry, our hands are tied. I would love to have given the maser. multiple more rooms and spaces and an archive, but, oh, I can't because of blah, blah, blah. So those are my only comments.

Yeah, thank you, Mayor.

Yes, Councilmember Fiers.

Thank you. Yeah, I can appreciate the item here, and I was a little confused as we got... comment from the Women's Advisory Board, who was also excited that we're gonna be designating something in the history for women. But I think there's some confusion. I think it's helpful to know that part of the interest in doing that is because of the organization that's housed there. But the building itself is named not for a woman, named for a man. It's been around for a long time. And to Council Member Erickson's point, as far as preservation, I think we're really well secured that it will be taken care of because it's owned by the city. So the next questions I thought of when it came to this preservation were the costs. I wasn't able to find information, but I see in the staff report that the city purchased the building and then in 2017 a set of extensive renovations were completed. So I think that's really wonderful that that happened. And from this moment on, that building is as modern as those renovations were in 2017. So I wouldn't want to be in a situation where we're right now making a decision to keep that building as it is and take that away from the opportunity for the public to have different conversations about how that is used and what else could happen to that space. I think the vision the city has had to have different nonprofits housed there is valuable, but I think growth will be a question that they have to, at some point, ask themselves. That is an archive. If history continues, it'll only continue to grow. And I think if the idea of creating permanence and archives in the city is what we're interested in doing, then it's unrealistic to think about the building as the container and fix that container. We have to create a more flexible and accommodating model. I think we wouldn't have looked at the auditorium in the middle of West Hollywood Park and wanted to preserve that without looking at the park we have now and everything that came with it. I don't think anybody's asking for a capital improvement project to start at the Worley Building Any of the decades generations to come but I think the idea is that if it were to happen We would be right now deciding what those cost implications look like and restricting that from happening in a much easier way So it's something I'm not super interested in doing and I thought it was really interesting council member Meister you had the item tonight about putting signage and different markers up for history in the city and And I think the Mazer itself could qualify for that. And it could qualify differently than the building itself would need to in order to recognize that we have that history here in the city. So I think we're on two paths right now in tonight's agenda about how we honor and recognize and uphold history. But something as permanent as a building investment in a building and its permanence, to me, isn't the way we preserve history. We preserve history through stories, through markers, through so many more things. And if we preserved every single building because of the history it had, WE WOULDN'T BE BUILDING A FUTURE EITHER FOR THE CITY AND SO THOSE ARE TENSIONS I HAVE WHEN I LOOK AT THIS ITEM I HAVE A LOT OF INFORMATION AND QUESTIONS ABOUT THOSE COSTS THAT WENT INTO IT TO REALLY HELP ME UNDERSTAND SO IT'S WHERE I'M SITTING WITH THIS ITEM AND THE LIMITED INFORMATION I HAVE TONIGHT THANK YOU VICE MAYOR HANG THANK YOU MAYOR THANK YOU COUNCILMEMBER MEISTER FOR BRINGING THIS ITEM FORWARD I REALLY APPRECIATE THE INTENT OF THE ITEM I

I DID STRUGGLE WITH IT JUST A TAD, AND, YOU KNOW, COUNCILMEMBER ERIKSON HAD ASKED THE CITY MANAGER, YOU KNOW, FOR YOUR PROFESSIONAL INPUT ON IT, IF IT IS DECLARED A HISTORIC RESOURCE, AND I JUST WANTED TO GET YOUR THOUGHTS, BECAUSE JOHN HAD ASKED YOU THE QUESTION.

I will actually ask Steve who is more familiar with this. I mean, there are definitely additional costs that are involved in improving historic properties. But Steve, if you have additional information you'd like to share.

And while Steve's coming forward, my guess is that the only aspect of this building that would actually be preserved would be the exterior because the interior has been so substantially altered as a result of our work, but predecessors who owned the building, but I'll let you answer the city manager's question.

That's correct, Mr. Mayor. Steve Campbell, Assistant City Manager. It is incrementally more expensive to do work on historic structures, and it varies. I wish I could give you, say, 25% or something like that, but I just can't do that. It depends on the work. We have done a substantial amount of work in the building, and there are some remaining items that need to be done, like replacing windows and upgrading some of the the smaller things that I think are easily achievable with a certificate of appropriateness. When we did the original renovation work, we actually added a piece to the building and went through that process because we knew that it was culturally significant. So it is in line with all of those things. I'm not sure if I'm answering your question directly enough or not, but it is more expensive, and we're experiencing some of that in Plummer Park with the buildings now.

So I want to weigh in here. I want to thank my colleague for bringing this forward. My initial reaction when I read it was, why do we need to do this right now? But as I read the item, I think this is a wise thing to do. This is a historic building in the city. The fact that it's city owned doesn't mean that it shouldn't be designated as a historic resource in the building or in the city. The arguments that I've heard from my colleagues that it will increase costs That's really an argument to get rid of the historic preservation ordinance altogether, because every time we designate any building, it is going to increase costs for the owner of that building. But I think there is an importance in recognizing our history, not only the activities that have occurred in the Worley building, both when the city owned it and previously, but also preserving the architecture, which is a unique example of a particular type of architecture in the city. So as I read this item, this is simply initiating the process by which it would be considered for historic preservation. That requires an evaluation of its historic status. And I might also point out that if we don't do it, any member of the public can initiate this process and it is likely gonna get preserved because as council member Erickson said, we know what the commission is likely gonna do and what they should do. I think without us knowing a lot about the history, I think we're all pretty clear that this is going to meet the standard for designation. So why not just initiate it ourselves, let the commission review it, and determine whether it does meet the legal standard and be done with it? Because if we try to do work on the building or... If we were to try to demolish it or demolish a portion, somebody like Victor is going to come along and his organization is going to say, wait a minute, this is historic and we're going to file an application to have it designated. So I'm supportive of the item.

Well, then why don't, why don't they? I mean, like, if you want the public to be leading this process, I mean, I hear the reverse every single day on this. Like, we do something and the public's not involved and we get accused of all these things, right? And then now it's the reverse. Like, the big bad council's coming in here and saying, like, oh, you've got to do this. And now the public can be involved. It's kind of like... And I just don't know which way we want. So my opinion then would be to have Victor, who I'm terrified of when he comes up with his facts and his figures and everything and his songs, because I love you, Victor. But let the community then designate it as a cultural resource site. That's why the process was there for, right? And I think in that way, the community is the one that's able to drive it versus us saying it in that way. I'm going to vote no on this item just because of my comments, not because I don't think it's valued and worthy, but if this is something that the public should be so caring about, then do it. And the fact that they haven't done it yet. And also, we all know what the Whirly Building looks like, right? I mean, like, I just literally got a message from someone saying, are you really talking about preserving that ghastly-looking building? And it's just like, well, I don't have that type of an opinion on it. But, like, I mean, the shell of the building itself is what we're talking about. And so let the public initiate this process versus us doing it. And it is going to come back to us, and then we're just going to have to have the same fight over and over again, which is fine. But, you know, anywho, I'm going to be voting no.

Are we going to vote now?

Well, there's a motion and a second, and let's see if there is additional discussion on this item.

So I'm personally, I'm really struggling with this item. I appreciate its intent. I think council member Erickson makes a very compelling argument, but after hearing your argument, IN TERMS OF PRESERVING HISTORY, THAT DOES MAKE SENSE FOR ME AS WELL. AND MY CONCERN WITH THE ITEM IS, YOU KNOW, IF IN THE FUTURE THE COST, I MEAN, THE ASSISTANT CITY MANAGER SAID THAT THE COST WOULD GO UP IN TERMS OF ANY REPAIRS OR THAT WOULD LIMIT THE CITY'S ACTIONS IN TERMS OF IF THE CITY EVER WANTED TO MAKE IT BIGGER, IS WHAT COUNCILMEMBER ERIKSON WAS SAYING. SO I KIND OF, I REALLY AM STRUGGLING, BUT I DO APPRECIATE THE HISTORICAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE PROPERTY. AND IN HEARING SOME OF THE FOLKS COME TO PUBLIC COMMENT AND SPEAK ON IT, ESPECIALLY THE person from the organization that came earlier, it is swaying me to support this project. But you are hindering future councils.

Just for the record, this will hinder future council from investing public dollars in a smart way. And it is the exterior. So if you need to replace a window, Steve, right, don't you have to do some things in order to replace something that impacts the exterior there?

We're already doing it because of the potential that it's historic.

Okay, historic, done, there's a sign, there's a plaque, you can't touch it, the exterior is historic, good, great, grand. Now we have broken windows and all this other stuff. What's that process look like for you? I mean, you're not getting what you want, Councilmember Meister. I understand you're upset about this, but what's the process? I want to know the city implications of this process for the taxpayer dollars that you deeply care about so much.

We would go through a process with a recognized historical architect that's skilled in these type of replacements. They would do a design bid build and replace it with like-kind windows. As part of the process, we'd have to go to HPC and get a certificate of appropriateness and those type of things. There are some studies that have to go along with all this, et cetera. And if Helen wants to add more items, I'm sure she does this a lot, so.

For me, part of the trouble in bringing an item like this as a council member-led item is that there's so much information I wish I could continue to ask staff and have and send back, and we don't have that. And so as Steve's so generously in front of us answering some questions tonight about the process, my concern is about making a decision now around a designation of a building that will create an increase in rise in costs that would otherwise not happen when on the very same agenda tonight, We have an item around signage. to designate for local cultural resources, a program that is new, that is being financed by this council and your discretionary agenda.

And it has to be designated to get the sign.

Does it? Because it's a brand new program that hasn't actually started yet. And so we could design and design that as you would like, I think.

It's not a brand new program. We have signs on a number of buildings, and it just stopped. So it's not a new program. It's basically a program that says, we need to bring this back. There were signs. About 30% of our historic properties did have signs, and then staff, it just stopped. That's why the item was brought forward, to continue that. This just initiates a process. It doesn't designate it. It initiates a process. I understand.

And that's a tremendous amount of work to put our staff through for something I right now don't have enough information to in good faith do to them. So that's why. And it's a good process.

That's why we have a historic preservation commission. And that's why we have, let's see, our planning department, I believe it's called current and historic planning. Right?

understood and neither of those bodies are responsible for the budget and that's been the primary amount of concerns up here is about the future costs that we're putting a council to to make changes to a city property when we own so few city properties one that is such an important aspect to the park this is this is where we're at so i think it sounds like we can move forward with the vote

So we have no problem imposing those costs on private property owners when we designate their properties as historic?

No, I think those are problems.

Those are problems, and we've fought about those problems up here quite a bit. All right, there's a motion and a second. I think we've gone on long enough. Let's see if there's support. And... The vice mayor is still undecided, so we may have to defer this. He's voting yes. uh the motion passes so this matter is approved this will be referred to our staff to initiate the process thank you uh for that discussion uh we have one other item b14 and melissa is suggesting that this could be deferred if council wants to or there's a desire to defer it and i know that that was something that you had pulled So are you we're okay with that?

Yeah, that's fine We have until the end of the year to adopt the new code of conflict of interest code That's item b14. We still have item f7 Correct.

Yeah and then I know that Council Member Meister had pulled that item, so perhaps staff will have an opportunity to address whatever issues or concerns. So we do have one last item, thank you, F7. And oh, I see Allison is here. Who's giving the staff report? Do we need a staff report on F7? doesn't appear that we need a staff report but maybe if you could just give us the two minute summary

There we go, thank you, sorry. Good evening council members, I'm Alison Bartle. I'm the project development administrator, also joined by Steve Campbell, our assistant city manager. Over the past year, the Westside Cities Council of Governments has worked with steering committees of staff from Beverly Hills, Culver City, Santa Monica, and our West Hollywood to study whether a regional housing trust is feasible. It produced a strategic plan, the joint powers agreement, and bylaws, and each member city is now considering them independently. I would like to introduce our consultant team. Next to me I have Riley O'Brien, he's the COGS program director, and then Dima Galkin is with Harrison Associates, and I'll turn it over to them for maybe one more minute of update, if we can power through it. I think everybody feels pretty comfortable with the item, and then we can go to questions, but maybe I'll give them a minute.

Sure. Yeah. So we've engaged on this item with the Western Cities Cog Board over the last year. And this is actually furthering efforts that have gone on for several years to explore and ultimately develop a regional housing trust fund. We presented a joint powers agreement to Santa Monica City Council, Beverly Hills City Council, and to the Cog Board on August 13th. Got some really helpful feedback, and we were able to finalize that joint powers agreement. Santa Monica approved it two weeks ago. Culver City approved it last week. So your vote today would officially form the Westside Cities Affordable Housing Trust. And then we are hoping Beverly Hills City Council will adopt the trust and join the trust as well next month. We're hoping to have two or possibly even three trust board meetings within the next couple of months. And this will get more affordable housing funding out the door as efficiently as possible. And that's all. Happy to take any questions.

Are there questions? Council Member Meister.

What are the alternatives if the trust fund isn't approved?

So if the trust is not approved today, the trust would not form until a third city were to adopt the joint powers agreement. And essentially that would, you know, we would, seek to revise the joint powers agreement to address any additional concerns. If there is no longer a desire from the remaining member cities to join a regional housing trust, we would be back to the status quo in which the West Side Cities COG would still be obligated to distribute funds from the L.A. County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency. So these are affordable housing dollars coming from the Measure A sales tax. And we would likely recommend as COG staff to distribute them in a way similar to how the COG board distributed those funds over the last year, which is through a grant process. Essentially, the trust would enable issuance of loans, but the Alternative would be a grant program for affordable housing.

So what is the advantage of having the trust fund? I mean the trust, housing trust.

Yeah, so the primary advantage is being able to issue affordable housing dollars as loans, which affordable housing developers tend to prefer loans. Most funding applications, including the applications for state affordable housing low-income tax credits, are structured around loans. The expectation is that most developers have local loans that then allow them to access those state funds. And so there is an alternative where some developers are able to convert grants into loans, but that adds administrative burden for those developers. But the primary advantage is that those funds would recycle back into the Affordable Housing Trust, so it would expand the impact of those funds. They can go further. And we estimate here, I have the numbers, which I can pull up in a moment, that the loan... Proceeds could potentially generate about an additional $150,000 per year on average, and that could add up over 55 years to about $8 million additional.

And how much more staff time is going to be required of us and of the COG staff?

So for city staff, we don't expect much. really any additional staff time now that is really that the staff time Allison Simon the time of other staff from the city and other cities has really gone into forming and developing this trust and essentially their their staff the city staff role will shift to an advisory role you know a kind of review and approval role of recommended actions which is essentially a continuation of the status quo of their role with respect to the car and As far as COG staff, as many of you know, the Westside Cities COG does not have any permanent full-time staff. The consulting firm that I work for, Estolano Advisors, is under contract as the executive director for the Westside Cities COG. We have been under contract in that way for the past 12 years. And we propose essentially the continuation of the COG staff as the... entity facilitating the regional housing trust so that we could facilitate both joint power agreements in parallel.

So how is the decision making going to work?

So the decisions would be made by the trust board of directors, which would be very similar in structure to the West Side City's COG board of directors. Two main differences are that the trust would not include the city of Los Angeles or the county of Los Angeles at this time. They are eligible to join in the future, but they had indicated throughout this process a lack of a desire to join at this time. A lot of that has to do with the fact that they are both the city of Los Angeles and Los Angeles County are direct recipients of funds from Measure A, funds from the LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency, whereas the COG receives funds on behalf of the four smaller cities, including West Hollywood. So that's why the Trust, the Affordable Housing Trust, would be focused on those four smaller cities. The Trust Board would also include two non-elected appointed board members, and that is a result and a requirement of the state law that allows cities to form regional housing trusts without separate state authorization.

So I guess my question is, because right now, when we have a representative on, you know, who's representing the city on the COG, you know, or even SCAG or wherever, when big decisions are being made, they are not coming back to the city about those decisions. And I would think on something like this, especially since we have our own housing trust fund and we know what's involved with that, that that would concern me that you have four you know, representatives that are just making these decisions if they don't come back to the cities that they are representing.

I guess just to respond to that concern, I would... It's not completely clear how that differs from the existing function or operating procedure of the Westside Cities COG. I will say that, you know, the... The board of directors, you know, our understanding of the way that we operate is through a both consensus-based model trying to operate, you know, find ways that all member cities can agree and that is exactly how the Westside Cities COG operates and how the Affordable Housing Trust would operate. One thing I want to make very clear is that the trust has no land use authority whatsoever that is explicitly prohibited in the bylaws and in fact any developments funded by the trust. need to already be pre-approved by the cities in which those developments are located. But I guess I'm curious if that answers your concern or if you have more detail about the relationship.

Well, because I feel like it's the same as how the board runs now, then why add another layer of bureaucracy?

Understood, understood. Well, I will say, again, the primary reason is that The West Side Cities COG is not able to issue loans as part of its joint powers agreement. The current agreement that established the COG does not include that ability to issue affordable housing loans to affordable housing developments. And so this would be a parallel entity that would unlock that additional tool, essentially.

And Dima, did you want to add? Yeah, thank you, Riley. Thank you for the question, Councilmember. What I'd like to add is that the Veterans and Affordable Housing Bond Act of 2026, which will appear on the November ballot, if approved by voters, it will allocate $200 million towards the renewal of what's called the Local Housing Trust Fund program. And that program, if the housing trust is formed, would provide the West Side City is a competitive advantage to pursuing additional funding through that program, up to $5 million per year.

Is that funding not available to individual cities that have housing trust funds?

It's available to individual cities who have trust funds, but if the West Side Cities Formal Housing Trust Fund were formed, the cities themselves plus the regional trust fund could both or all of them could secure funding through that program.

But we do have one. So West Hollywood already has a housing trust fund.

I will say that we're seeing a movement towards regional housing trust funds, and so part of the report is also the ability to unlock potentially new sources. So there's going to be a staff on the trust that manages the trust of experts, including housing experts, and one of their jobs, in addition to using the Measure A funds, is to unlock additional capital. So we're starting with the $7 million, if we all joined, in the initial NOFA, and that's If all four cities join, we've got about $7 million to issue the first NOFA, notice of funding availability. And that source could be a single source for a project to go from not penciling to penciling and push it over the edge. Whereas if West Hollywood controlled a smaller portion, that project may have to continue to chase soft additional costs to pencil. So by collaborating, we're hoping to also reduce the number of sources of project needs to be funded, which speeds up the development timeline.

I have one last question. Yeah. At least now. City of LA, county, they don't want to participate. So how do we ensure then that projects are in our four cities and not in unincorporated county or city of LA? Okay.

So that is written directly into the joint powers agreement. I believe it states clearly that all developments funded by the trust must be located within the boundaries of member jurisdictions.

Okay.

Thank you. Thank you for bringing this forward and all the work that's been done on it. I have to say that my initial reaction when we were having these conversations was Why do we need it? We've had a housing trust fund for many years. We sort of were a leader in that, along with Santa Monica. And the reference to technical assistance, I'm thinking, no, we don't really need it. We have Allison and other people who have expertise. The aspect of this that has convinced me that this is desirable for the city is what you were describing, the ability to apply for state money that there will likely be a preference for a collaborative like this or a regional trust fund over individual cities. in terms of the dollars that we have right now, it wouldn't sway me because right now we don't have that much. We could just pass it through to the cities. But the ability to acquire more funds through the state funding or through possibly through charitable organizations. I think this makes this a worthwhile endeavor. I do share some of Councilmember Meister's concerns. I do want to ask the board, will those automatically be the COG members or will each city have the opportunity to appoint a separate person. It could be the same, but not necessarily the same as the COG representative.

Yes, thank you for those comments and question. The representative does not need to be the same delegate and or alternate assigned to the Westside City's COG. So Culver City did, and one of the actions tonight is to appoint that delegate and alternate to the Housing Trust Board. So Culver City did appoint the representative Mayor Freddie Pousa and Vice Mayor Bubba Fish as the delegate and alternate to the trust board. They're also the delegate alternate to the COG board. Santa Monica City Council on the other hand actually appointed their current COG delegate Dan Hall as the alternate to Councilmember Natalia Zernitskaya who is not actually on the COG board at all or not a delegate or an alternate. But Councilmember Zernitskaya from Santa Monica is the delegate to the trust. So short answer is no, you don't need to appoint the same person.

I think Council Member Meister was the one who held this. I don't know if there are any other questions or comments. Can we go ahead and take a motion to approve and then separately we can have a discussion as to who we want to appoint? Okay, there's a motion and a second. Let's go ahead and vote on this. There we go. It is approved four to one. And now let's have a conversation about appointing somebody if we're ready to do that tonight. If not, we can defer this to our next meeting.

I'm happy to appoint Chelsea Beyer. She's our lead on SKEG and everything else, La Casa, Las Masas, all the different La Casa, the Lasas that I would rather have the same person doing it constantly because I know, especially in contract cities, all of those same council members are on the same boards for the regional reps, and it provides a lot of clarity for their local cities. So I'm happy if Chelsea wants to continue to serve as she serves on all the... things that you were already doing because I just think that especially with two of my colleagues leaving and the vice mayor will have to become mayor and then he has to serve on hot things like the sanitation district and other things that will take up a lot of his time so anywho and I won't be here so there you go are there other nominations at this point

I'm happy to accept. Thank you, council member.

Okay. Um, and we need an alternate, right? So I would nominate vice mayor hang to serve as the alternate.

I will second that one.

Is there any objection?

All right.

Oh, OK. Yes, I know Councilmember Meister is opposed to the item, but let's go ahead and appoint Chelsea as the delegate and or the board member rather from West Hollywood and the vice mayor as the alternate. We're missing one. OK, it is approved. And that, I believe, completes our agenda for tonight. Are there any additional public comments tonight?

Yes, we have three individuals signed up.

Okay. Jonathan Reyes to be followed by Audrey Henson and then Victor Omichenko. Jonathan Reyes, thank you. Audrey Henson and then Victor Omichenko.

Hello, thank you. This city is very important to me. And just like we're talking about the world building, there are some things that you don't change. They're supposed to be in place, just like the fountain project. It should stay as it is. That was the main purpose for me coming here. I did mention about the unhoused app that is being formed that I'm not okay with. It doesn't help. It only targets And then I heard other comments tonight that made me really worried. There is some stuff that we do need to... We're talking about people moving forward and changing things and making things modularly modern. But if they're the same, isn't there the saying, if it ain't broke, don't fix it? So why make it newer? Why are we trying to change things that are just fine the way they are? And so that building that they're talking about, fix it from within. We have the French market that is coming back, the French Quarter. And what happened historically? It was kept there because it's important. How many times Do you want to go to a Denny's? But instead, you take your family to the French Quarter. And the offices and the businesses and all that it brings with it, it's very important to keep things as they were. I'm not building a wall. I'm not doing any of that stuff. But it's just there's an importance to history. And so changing a building or knocking it down or even just cutting the sidewalk on Fountain, let's not do that.

Thank you. Your time has expired. Audrey Henson, to be followed by Victor Omichenko.

Hello. Good evening. I'm Audrey Henson, a West Hollywood resident and journalist covering data sovereignty. I care deeply about safety, and I'm very grateful to those who are protecting us, including those who are in this room tonight. We've heard a lot about what these cameras can do tonight, investigate crimes and find people. But as we know, council members, being found is not always the same as being protected. Think of someone escaping an abuser of a former partner. Their safety may depend on that person never learning where their car was parked last night. And yet, from December 2023 through February 2026, 14 out-of-state agencies accessed West Hollywood's ALPR system without city officials knowing. If the city does not know who can access their data, it cannot assure residents that it is being used for an authorized purpose. While valid credentials tell us how someone entered the system, they do not prove that the search itself was valid, which is why authorized access must not be the beginning of oversight, or why authorized access must be the beginning of oversight, not the end of it. I appreciate Captain Lapkin's statement that access is restricted to audits that occur monthly, but I'd be curious to know if those are independent audits of individual searches or reviews produced by the department operating the same system. Council Member Byers is right. Residents should not wait six months for information to be reviewed, especially if it's being reviewed every month. So publish monthly aggregate reports showing queries outside access, violations, and corrective actions. FLOC gets aggregate data in perpetuity, so surely residents can get aggregate accountability once a month. In addition, I would like to take Councilmember Beyer's proposal one step further and direct the City Manager to return within 90 days with a City data risk and literacy plan covering vendor controls, independent verification, and the staffing needed to enforce those protections. If the City cannot demonstrate these safeguards work, then we should bring the FLOC agreement back before Council. because if West Hollywood is going to invest in collecting data, then it must build the capacity to protect it. Thank you.

Thank you. Victor Omichenko.

Good evening again, Victor Omolchenko, West Hollywood. I wish I could have been here when you were having your discussion on E1, the major update on development projects, but I was up on my bike above the Sunset Strip where serious community controversy is brewing already about two rather large projects. But tonight, I want to sound the alarm on a major trend we are seeing across West Hollywood, and that is creeping billboardism. The Sunset Strip was purposely designed as our iconic venue for signage. But now, without any formal ordinance or underlying city policy, digital billboards are sneaking down onto Santa Monica Boulevard and La Brea Avenue. Consider that this week on Thursday, the Design Review Subcommittee is evaluating a massive 100-foot two-way digital billboard at Ferring's Robertson Row project. We seem to be seeing a lot of ad hoc decisions being made that threaten to turn our residential adjacent corridors into walls of visual blight and pollution. And billboards may be a source of revenue. I do talk about the money. But they can utterly overwhelm our streets. And we urgently need a comprehensive public policy discussion before these seemingly ad hoc approvals change our city forever. Finally, despite these development pressures, I want to end on a very positive note. I want to sincerely thank the council for your vote tonight, even in a tight three to two split, to initiate the cultural resource designation process for the historic, streamlined, modern Worley Building, preserving our architectural heritage as well as our cultural history. It really, really matters deeply. So thank you very much.

Thank you, Victor. That's our last public speaker. We'll now turn to council member comments and meeting attendance reports. If there are none, we can just adjourn.

Sure. I attended the contract cities board meeting and executive board meeting and thanks for your support in the biodiversity and El Nino preparedness item.

Thank you. Council Member Byers.

That was pretty fast. I can't beat that. But I attended the Southern California Association of Governments Regional Council Meeting, the Community Economic and Housing Development Policy Committee Meeting, and the RENA Subcommittee Meeting, as well as the LA County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency Renter Protection Homelessness Prevention Meeting. I'll wish everyone a very happy first day of fall and Libra season. All from me. Thank you.

Council Member Meister.

Yeah, I don't have much to report. I just want to say Shana Tova to our Jewish community and those observing, and just looking forward to next Saturday, the 26th, for the Vanderpump Dog Foundation World Dog Day. That's always a great event, and I'll see you there.

Great. Vice Mayor Heng.

THANK YOU MAYOR I ATTENDED THE RIBBON CUTTING FOR A BEATS THE NAILS AND BEAUTY IN WEST HOLLYWOOD I ATTENDED THE RIBBON CUTTING FOR CORSTON I ATTENDED THE RIBBON CUTTING FOR NEW LIFE MEN'S CLINIC I ATTENDED THE RIBBON CUTTING FOR PAR FOR GOLF AND I ATTENDED THE PRIDE HOUSE CHAMPIONS EVENT AT BEACHES TROPICANA And I wasn't able to make the meeting with the French and or the Swedish consul, but I want to thank our mayor for attending those meetings and working very diligently to bring the world to West Hollywood for the Olympics. Thank you.

THANK YOU I ATTENDED THE SANITATION DISTRICT MEETING I ALSO WAS PRESENT FOR THE NEW LIFE MEN'S CLINIC BUSINESS OPENING AS THE VICE MAYOR SAID WE HAD A VERY PRODUCTIVE MEETING WITH THE CITY OF STOCKHOLM AND THEY'RE INTERESTED IN DOING SOME PARTNERING WITH US PARTICULARLY AROUND MUSIC AND ENTERTAINMENT attended a meeting with representatives from Paris about the upcoming Olympics and ways that we could partner. And I also attended the pickleball fundraiser sponsored by the Hollywood Food Coalition. And that's it for my reports. We are now adjourned. Thank you, everyone.