The new city is progressing at an infant’s pace, learning to crawl, but frequently bumping into walls. : West Hollywood, One Year Later

Until a year ago, Frank Wittenburg was a regular in the sprawling offices that make up Los Angeles County’s seat of government.

His mission was always the same: to call attention to the problems that afflicted his neighborhood in the then-unincorporated slice of county territory known as West Hollywood.

Armed with photographs that he had taken, he would complain about infractions of the county code--infractions that included crude storefront signs, mattresses stacked for sale on the sidewalks and cars parked illegally because restaurants failed to provide adequate lots.

But Wittenburg, who met with little success in his forays to county offices, no longer has to trek downtown to register his complaints. Now, he drives less than a mile from his house to the blue pastel shopping gallery that houses West Hollywood’s City Hall. There, he can corner officials of the new city. To his delight, they listen.

It has been a year since West Hollywood incorporated, a year since a coalition of homosexual and elderly renters rejected county rule and elected the first City Council in the nation dominated by a gay majority. The victorious coalition was quickly rewarded--gays with a series of pioneering rights laws, senior citizens and tenants with a rent control law considered one of the strictest in the country.

Despite an obsession with proving its uniqueness and a proclivity for controversy, the new city government has spent most of its first year absorbed with the more mundane daily realities that have long concerned activists such as Frank Wittenburg.

West Hollywood is progressing at an infant’s pace, learning to crawl, but frequently bumping into walls. After floundering in its early months, the inexperienced council has in recent months finally begun to lay the foundations of a city government and alter the lives of the city’s 36,000 residents.

The new city government had immediate advantages: Smaller, leaner, more accessible to its inhabitants and bolstered by projections of a $7.4-million first-year budget surplus, it was equipped to take on tasks that the more remote and cumbersome county government apparatus had long ignored. Even many of the city’s most influential developers and businessmen, who opposed cityhood or remained neutral during last year’s tumultuous incorporation campaign, now agree on its merits.

The campaign officially ended last Nov. 29, the night the City Council formally declared the city’s existence. That same night, the council imposed a temporary rent freeze (later replaced by a permanent law), banned discrimination against homosexuals and declared moratoriums on almost all construction.

It was the last night of unequivocal success. In the ensuing year, the city’s new council and its hand-picked staff of aides, professionals and volunteers have seen gains repeatedly offset by new setbacks.

The city’s files bulge with correspondence from homosexuals pleased with the council’s symbolic stance on gay rights, but a consultant is being paid to find ways to correct West Hollywood’s “gay image” problem. Increased manpower at the county Sheriff’s Department has brought a swift reduction in crime, but some elderly residents are still too frightened to attend night council meetings. For tenants, incorporation brought rent control; for landlords, it brought a blizzard of questionnaires and stern mimeographed warnings.

The city has provided gay organizations with just under $300,000 for AIDS research and counseling and it has officially recognized domestic relationships between homosexuals, complete with certificates suitable for framing. It has given taxi coupons to senior citizens who needed transportation and taken away anti-gay matchbooks from patrons of Barney’s Beanery. And cityhood has brought campaign debts, notoriety, gossip, a private therapy session and a federal indictment to a council that already faces its first reelection campaign for three of its members next April.

“One day we’re going to become very boring,” said Valerie Terrigno, the councilwoman and first mayor whose life was complicated dramatically last month by a federal indictment on embezzlement charges. “I can’t wait.”

She may have to. Boredom is not much of a threat in the 1.9-square-mile urban village where landlords painted more than two dozen apartment buildings red in defiance of rent control “communism” and where the mayor and deputy mayor quibbled in public over why the deputy mayor showed up at private parties with his hair dyed blue.

Yet for all the snide remarks and media attention, an area that had once served as little more than a neon-shrouded passageway from the manicured lawns of Beverly Hills to the cluttered flats of Hollywood was groping toward cityhood.

Its first months were the most difficult. And to many outside the government--and a few inside--it appeared that the five novice council members added to the difficulties.

At first, there was only the council, a few volunteers and a handful of county staffers who transferred under contract to the new city. They worked out of makeshift offices in Plummer Park on the city’s east side. Russian immigrants who used the park to play dominoes and gamble peeked in, staring about in confusion.

It often seemed that the confusion was contagious. A temporary city hall was needed, but the council members were dissatisfied with all of the alternatives. Nothing was done for months, while the staff grew and space dwindled. (In mid-May, the council finally signed a three-year lease to occupy the second-floor of a Santa Monica Boulevard shopping gallery.)

“They should have been solving vital management problems then,” said Ron Stone, the civic activist who founded the incorporation campaign in the winter of 1984. “Instead, they were preoccupied with less important social issues that could have waited. The votes would have still been there.”

After the passage of the gay rights bill, laws were passed protecting the right of Sabbath worship for Orthodox Jews and other faiths and prohibiting discriminatory dress codes at taverns. Barney’s Beanery, the city’s last bastion of militant heterosexuality, defiantly dispensed matchbooks reading, “Fagots Keep Out.” But the city threatened legal action and owner Irwin Held gave in, muttering about the council’s lack of a sense of humor.

The council members still defend those early moves as essential to the character of the new city. “It was a statement that had to be made,” said Councilman Stephen Schulte recently. “We are different from other cities and our attention to social issues shows that as well as anything.” But even Schulte wondered aloud whether the council had “lost sight of its nuts and bolts issues.”

The most pioneering of the rights laws was the symbolic domestic partnership law, which gave homosexuals and unmarried heterosexuals the right to register their relationships with the city.

The night before the partnership law took effect on March 25, AIDS counselor Dan Morin and registered nurse Dennis Amick loaded their two miniature schnauzers into Morin’s Dodge convertible and drove to Plummer Park to be first in line. After a brief ceremony, they left with a certificate, later framed.

Symbolic Recognition

“We both felt it was time for gay men and women to be accorded the symbolic recognition that heterosexual couples are accorded by getting married,” Morin said later. “We felt the more society recognized that, the more seriously these relationships will be taken.”

The rights laws have their critics, especially among incorporation leaders who failed to be elected to the council or are no longer involved with the government. “The council took up months of time on rights issues when they should have just voted on them quickly and got them out of the way,” said Robert Conrich, a gay activist who was an early incorporation supporter.

Almost a year later, the domestic partnership law has inspired only 72 registrations in a city where it is estimated that 30% of the 36,000 residents are homosexual. And Amick and Morin, who had combined their last names as a further gesture of their companionship, became one of two couples who dissolved their partnership.

The men, who now live apart, both insist that the partnership law was not an exercise in frivolity. “I still think it has value,” Amick said. “It’s just not for everyone.”

Rent control, however, was. With a tenant population estimated at more than 85% of the residents, West Hollywood had long been ripe for strong controls on apartments. The phasing-out of county controls earlier this year was perhaps the most important catalyst for the incorporation campaign.

Once cityhood was assured, rent control was inevitable. What form it would take was not certain at first, but by June it had become apparent that West Hollywood’s law, despite a few innovations, would be as strict as those passed in Santa Monica and Berkeley.

Staunch Supporters

Rent control’s most ardent lobbyists came from the Coalition for Economic Survival, a politically wily band of tenant activists who had deep wells of support among some segments of the city’s elderly and Jewish populations. The coalition was represented on the council by John Heilman and Helen Albert, whose votes reflected those sympathies unswervingly.

Early public hearings on the issue required hard gaveling. Landlords complained about “communists.” Tenants responded with less ideological, but equally baleful epithets. One Russian immigrant landlord shook his head angrily at one meeting, muttering, “What next? They’ll be building a stop on Fairfax (Avenue) for the Moscow subway.”

One of the loudest voices belonged to Joel Weissman. The wiry, tense landlord, who owns 29 units in West Hollywood, was convinced that socialism was at hand. Enraged by what he saw as curt treatment of landlords by council members, he responded with jeers. He soon gained the distinction of being the landlord most frequently ejected from rent control hearings. In protest, he showed up at a council meeting wearing a red, white and blue gag.

Weissman found himself opposed during the hearings by one of his tenants, Alan Breiman, a teacher and coalition member who had taken rent control to heart. During the hearing period, Breiman canvassed other tenants in Weissman’s building in the 1400 block of North Hayworth Avenue, urging them to sign pro-rent control petitions.

Feud Festered

Weissman ordered him to “quit bothering the other tenants.” Breiman responded that he was within his constitutional rights. The feud festered and led to a fracas one night when two tenants accused Breiman of depositing the carcasses of dead rats in front of their doors. “We’ll never be able to prove anything but there it was, in front of my door,” said Lisa York, who lived downstairs from Breiman. The teacher scoffed: “This is paranoia.”

The law that resulted limited rent increases to 75% of the consumer price index and allowed restricted increases when apartments were vacated. For landlords, the limited vacancy decontrol provisions were not enough. “Sure the tenants think it’s great,” lamented the apartment owners’ leader, Grafton Tanquary. “But we’re the victims of discrimination, pure and simple. Who wants to be a landlord?”

As controls were put into effect, the shift of economic and political power from landlords to tenants was pronounced. Aided by a city provision that allowed them to have their apartments refurbished, tenants have begun deluging landlords with requests for painting and new drapes and carpets. “They used to be requests,” Tanquary said. “Now they’re demands.”

The city’s new rent control administration has made demands of its own, ordering landlords to register their apartments with the city and fill out extensive questionnaires aimed at streamlining the rent control process. Some apartment owners, like Weissman, are withholding information, claiming constitutional privilege. But at least 75% have grudgingly registered properly rather than face legal action. “The city is playing hardball,” Tanquary said.

Forced to Coexist

While the bitter relations between Joel Weissman and Alan Breiman may be extreme, the two have been forced to coexist. Weissman, who would like to sell his apartment building but can’t--the apartment real estate market has dropped and values are down as much as 25%, real estate dealers say--still must collect the rent. And Breiman, who says he has grown tired of gaping holes in his carpet, still endures Weissman’s anger.

“There’s no relationship,” Breiman said. “We have to deal with each other, but if circumstances were different, I don’t think either of us would.”

Despite the simmering volatility of the landlord-tenant relationship, the rent controls has appeared to have few other economic side effects thus far (although some businessmen fear it will eventually crimp the city’s efforts to gain financing for bond issues). “I don’t think rent control has hurt anyone outside landlords,” said Larry Gross, coordinator of the Coalition for Economic Survival, whose clout is expected to remain strong in next April’s election.

But disillusionment with the new regime has spread among civic activists and businessmen. “I think (there’s) a sense that the council doesn’t know what it’s doing, that we’re the town fool of America,” Robert Conrich said.

His friend, Ron Stone, fretted at the number of West Hollywood jokes that turned up in Johnny Carson’s monologue. West Hollywood’s image wasn’t helped by a vote voiding Christmas as a paid holiday for the growing city staff and or by a public power struggle between Mayor Terrigno and John Heilman over the ceremonial mayor’s job.

Uncertain Weeks

The conflict, resolved after several uncertain weeks in favor of Heilman (who will be mayor until next April), revealed the difficulty the council members have had adapting to their roles. Some of the problems may not have been of their making. “I think people are expecting too much from the council,” said Barbara Grover, an aide to Councilwoman Helen Albert. “They’re expecting supermen and superwomen. They want standards that no other council could meet.”

A cadre of activists has pored over council expense accounts and examined each move in detail. At times, the questions appeared legitimate. Activist Ron Shipton, a daily visitor to city files, questioned Terrigo’s frequent out-of-town trips during her tenure as mayor and use of limousines and taxis.

Terrigno, an acknowledged lesbian portrayed by supporters as a living embodiment of the city’s progressive nature, justified the trips and expenses as “something that’s done in a lot of cities. It exposed me to other cities’ leaders and ideas. I think I’ve behaved responsibly.” The council is now debating possible limits on travel and expenses.

Councilman Schulte, who along with Councilman Alan Viterbi has been portrayed as the most swayed by shifting political tides, had to weather a storm of criticism over the hiring of a planning consultant firm that employed his lover. Although Schulte was scrupulous enough to ask City Atty. Michael Jenkins whether there was any conflict of interest (Jenkins told Schulte there was none), Schulte later admitted making the mistake of voting on the contract.

“I should have abstained,” he said. “I didn’t cover my ass politically. You can’t just be clean. You have to have the perception of being clean.”

‘Spinning Our Wheels’

Schulte agreed with criticism from some quarters that the council floundered in its first six months. “I think we were spinning our wheels,” he said. “We were approaching burnout.”

Paid part-time salaries of $400 a month, the council worked full-time hours. Viterbi found himself prone to frequent colds. Terrigno was pestered by constituents in supermarkets and dance clubs. Heilman became irritated by questions about his sartorial choices. “I wear whatever clothes I want and I’ll dye my hair purple if I want to,” he snapped at one point.

The pressure eased as the council began finding jobs (only Heilman, an entertainment attorney, had a full-time job when the city incorporated) and employing city staff. Paul Brotzman, hired as city manager from the northern California city of Martinez, will have more than 70 employees working for him by next summer.

The growth of the city staff has given rise to fears of a swelling bureaucracy. Already, there have been subtle tugs of war between the council and the city staff over the demarcations of authority. One not-so-subtle tug occurred recently when the council learned that Brotzman had hired a county engineer without its approval. Angry words were exchanged privately, according to council sources, but the engineer was given official council approval anyway.

“I think some tension will always exist and that makes for a better organization,” Brotzman said later.

Some staffers worry that the idealism that attracted a nucleus of dedicated volunteers immediately after incorporation is in danger of fading. Dori Stegman, the council’s administrative aide, manned the city’s one phone line in its early days and led the frustrating search for a temporary city hall. “Some kind of a bureaucracy is necessary. I just hope we can keep it flexible.” Now she is part of a city staff whose numbers have increased monthly.

First Request

Her very first phone request in the days after incorporation demonstrated how the perception of a bureaucracy can lead to ill will. The call came from John Saemann, the black-bearded owner of Lipsmacker’s, a stucco cafe on Santa Monica Boulevard.

Saemann tells of a bureaucratic nightmare he claims to have been subjected to at the hands of the city’s young government. He says he was passed from county agency to county agency (county offices are still performing many city functions under contract), all so he could do some simple remodeling on his restaurant. “I had to get clearances from (the state Department of Transportation), from the county health department,” Saemann complained. “They told me I needed earthquake-proofing. I went on a goose chase all over town.”

Officials tell a different story, one in which Saemann began remodeling without proper clearance and opened an outdoor cafe in a city where outdoor cafes are illegal (under existing county codes still used by the city).

“Here we have businesses which operated for years under the county in all kinds of illegal ways,” said Mark Winogrond, the city’s new community development director. “In some instances, businesses took advantage of the county’s lax enforcement. In others, they were unaware that they were operating illegally. Now we have to get them all into code. That’s not going to happen overnight and it’s not going to happen without pain for some businesses.”

Projects Stalled

The difficulty was not restricted to small businesses like Saemann’s cafe. Major commercial developers found their projects stalled by the city’s moratorium on most construction.

By year’s end, the council began to grapple with development issues. Its members are considering an interim growth ordinance and eventually, an overhaul of its community plan. In the works are plans that would limit the height of new buildings to 45 feet, except in four locations.

One of the locations is the Pacific Design Center, where plans are being discussed for a major expansion of the center’s design showrooms. Although some opposition has been expressed by neighbors, it appears that the expansion will eventually be approved. “We’re talking about the potential of serious job losses if this expansion doesn’t go through,” said Schulte.

Most community leaders agree on the need for the center’s expansion. But where one project succeeds, dozens of others try to follow. At each council meeting, hotel developer Lorraine Howell shows up with pink boxes of cookies to be devoured by city staff during the break.

“She’s not there because she thinks we need the calories,” one city aide said. “She’s got a hotel she wants to build and she’s following the council’s every move.” (The hotel, proposed in the city’s east end, has been held up by the moratorium.)

That kind of monitoring can prove expensive to developers used to getting their way during the long years of county administration.

“We used to have much more input,” said Banks Montgomery, scion of a family commercial real estate and construction empire based in West Hollywood--and an incorporation foe who now supports the city government. “We could get things done in a phone call. Now, we’re spending thousands to monitor the planning process.”

‘I Can Call’

The Montgomery family spends thousands more for campaign contributions than it used to (the family won’t say how much) and is required to pay the city 1% of its return from construction projects. Yet Banks Montgomery says the cost is repaid by the city’s attention to detail. “Any time I have a problem I can call someone at City Hall and get them to listen,” he said. “After the incorporation campaign, I wasn’t so sure they’d ever talk to me again.”

The money that goes into the city treasury has proved perhaps the greatest boon to city government. The city expects a $7.4-million surplus and has poured much of it back into city services, including police manpower and social service programs.

Major crime was reduced 18% in a three-month period after the county Sheriff’s Department added a foot patrol and increased its patrol car teams. Banks Montgomery had worried about a rising tide of vagrants roaming through his family’s glittering Sunset Plaza shopping mall. But he has also been impressed with the increased visibility of police. “Our security guards tell us crime is definitely down,” he said.

The city has pumped more than $2 million into social service programs and has been criticized in some quarters for paying the money out too hastily. Much of the funding has gone, as might be expected, to programs benefitting homosexuals and senior citizens. AIDS victims will get more funding for counseling, lesbians will obtain vocational guidance and senior citizens are in line for reduced bus fares and free blood pressure tests at a new clinic in Plummer Park.

Senior citizens were, in fact, the greatest beneficiaries of the council’s largess, winning more than 40% of the social service disbursements. Yet the elderly seemed to shun the new government, taking some wind out of the city’s highly touted efforts to drum up citizen participation.

Afraid to Go Out

The council’s own schedule may bear some of the blame. “I wouldn’t mind going to the council meetings, but they’re all at night,” said Anna Schlig, 77, who lives with her 75-year-old sister in an apartment on Ogden Drive. “You’re not going to get me out then. I’d have to take the bus. It’s bad enough worrying about getting mugged in the daytime.”

“Seniors have more peace of mind, certainly,” said Avice Wiseman, 63, a long-time rent control activist. “The streets are cleaner. We have rent control. But it’s going to take more than just words to get us involved.”

Still, certain senior citizens manage to get to the night meetings. Frank Wittenburg shows up regularly, usually sitting toward the rear of the auditorium in West Hollywood Park. He stays at least three hours, until “those hard seats begin to get to my skin and bones.”

He watches the proceedings with satisfaction, sometimes getting through an entire meeting without letting the council know his thoughts. But more often than not, he finds it too difficult to suppress the urge to walk to the front of the chamber and sidle up to a microphone.

“They hear from me, you better believe it,” he said. “And they better be listening.”

Some Key Dates

Nov. 6, 1984-Voters approve incorporation.

Nov. 29-First City Council meeting. Valerie Terrigno named mayor. Council adopts ban on sex-orientation bias, moratoriums on new construction, rent increases and evictions. Rents rolled back to August, 1984, levels.

Jan. 16, 1985-Barney’s Beanery agrees to take down sign considered anti-gay.

Feb. 21-Domestic partnership law passed.

April 11-City manager Paul Brotzman hired.

June 27-Permanent rent control law adopted.

Aug. 8-Councilman John Heilman becomes mayor.

Oct. 17-$7.4 million budget reserve projected.

Oct. 23-Terrigno indicted on embezzlement charges by federal grand jury.