Councilman Jon Erickson proposed the Removing Infrastructure Roadblocks item. (photo by Jon Viscott)

The West Hollywood City Council unanimously passed an item on Nov. 3 that seeks to streamline infrastructure projects. In recent years, numerous high-profile city projects have come before the council, raising awareness about the number of hurdles infrastructure changes must go through before breaking ground. 

Though the vote itself went without dissent, several councilmembers provided input that altered Councilman John Erickson’s item, titled “Removing Infrastructure Roadblocks.” 

“This is in no way, shape and form about removing community process,” Erickson said. “This is exactly about making sure that there are guidelines to direct to standardize protocols for these projects.” 

It included directives for clear timelines to be set for each phase of a project, along with community engagement standards and the removal of duplicative votes. It also included a “safe streets first” protocol, that would prioritize routine maintenance projects. 

An initial provision that would have required a four-fifths majority vote to reverse approval for projects drew the most discussion from the council. Councilwoman Lauren Meister said that “you can’t just say this, and then not do that,” referring to a supermajority only being necessary for project reversals. 

“I think that this is not democratic,” Meister said. “This is not the way West Hollywood works. And this is not how our community wants this to be.” 

Several public commenters also took issue with this proposed provision. 

“The idea of requiring a four-fifths supermajority to reverse infrastructure decisions isn’t about enhancing efficiency or governance, it’s about insulating bad, unpopular decisions,” resident Kyle Brazeal said.  

This provision was removed before the final vote. 

“I just want to make sure with all of this we continue to be a flexible city,” Meister said.   

While the seeming back-and-forth between proposals, commissions, City Council and public feedback can make a process grueling, Vice Mayor John Heilman explained why it is drawn out, emphasizing that routine projects typically are completed “very efficiently.” 

“The bigger projects where there’s something new proposed or a major change, they’re not designed to be efficient,” Heilman said. “I think cities oftentimes get criticized for not being business-like and not being efficient. We’re not supposed to be efficient – entirely. Getting a lot of public input, businesses don’t have to do that. The CEO just says, ‘Do this,’ and it gets done. But we’re not a business in that respect. We’re a public agency and public input is critical.” 

Byers emphasized that she felt the item was simply about efficiency. 

“We’re trying to create more efficient processes that I don’t think are about removing community engagement whatsoever,” Byers said. “I think it’s really about helping create a set of expectations throughout the process of when community engagement will happen, and that it doesn’t become this ad hoc expectation that there’s another meeting that can always happen, but that this is the finite timeline.”  

Some public commenters were in favor of expediting public processes. Resident Andrew Solomon used the example of Weaver’s Walk on Melrose Avenue, which has been in the planning stages for 11 years and is just now under construction. 

“Nothing should take this long in a city of 1.9 square miles,” he said. 

Other items at the Nov. 3 meeting also brought public process into the conversation, among them an approved alteration to the Sunset Strip off-street signage policy and a plaque that would commemorate immigrants who have been “disappeared” by ICE, which was moved forward, as well. 

“I just always want to make sure community is driving this,” Erickson said. “And right now what I know the community needs is funding for legal services, food, rent assistance and many other things.”  

The approval of the return of the Sunset Strip Music Festival also brought up discussion of public process, with Erickson raising the concern that it would be sacrificing staff resources that would be of better use for the public elsewhere. The festival, which operated between 2008-14, was a large-scale music event that brought in high-profile acts and shut down sections of Sunset Boulevard. 

“Now … asking staff to put on a music festival … I’m going to vote for this, but I have grave, grave concerns and I don’t want them to come true,” Erickson. “And I think that for every time we say ‘process, process, process’ and then we don’t speed up things and work on our bureaucratic, frankly, bloat that slows everything down … we all know that [staff] is not coming back to us with a contract for a producer until February.” 

But Meister argued that the concert would help the Sunset Strip. 

“We’ve had at least three-to-five items on how to invigorate Sunset [that] have done nothing, and this is doing something,” Meister said.