W. Hollywood Turns 5 With Eye to Future : Politics: Government fulfilled its promise on rent control, civil rights and social services. But those issues may no longer take center stage as new activism emerges on development and crime.

Even after a sometimes trying five years, West Hollywood seldom misses out on a chance to remind itself of the youthful fervor and optimism that ushered in cityhood in 1984. From the Christopher Street West festival celebrating its gay heritage to the impromptu and Bacchanalian Halloween parade, the city calendar is dotted with regular reminders of its high hopes.

Last weekend, West Hollywood threw itself a $10,000 birthday party, and the peculiar glue that has held large populations of gays, lesbians, senior citizens and Soviet immigrants together was once again in evidence. Some of West Hollywood’s most vocal critics joined in the celebration.

But with the birthday candles blown out, both city officials and residents are looking to the future. Having successfully survived its infancy, West Hollywood, some say, has stepped into adolescence with the realization that youthful optimism can only go so far.

“I think the ideals are still there, but I think they have gotten a little frayed around the edges,” said City Councilman Steve Schulte. Elected in 1984, Schulte is one of three council members who have served the city since its beginning. “I think it has gotten a little frayed with the realization that we can’t do everything.”

But West Hollywood has lived up to virtually every major promise made during the cityhood campaign. Responding to an 85% tenant population, West Hollywood now has one of the tightest rent control ordinances in the state. It has maintained a balanced budget and amassed $12 million in reserves while delivering one of the highest levels of social service spending in the state.

West Hollywood politicians have been able to cash in on those victories. But new activism among residents in such areas as development and crime control suggest that the traditional issues of rent control and civil rights may no longer take center stage in the next five years.

Voters recently defeated the City Council majority over a bond issue and a proposal to build a huge civic center. Bubbling beneath the surface of the civic center fight was the complaint by some residents that the city government had taken on a life of its own, that the bureaucracy had taken precedence over the wishes of residents. Despite campaign promises that West Hollywood would need fewer than 50 employees to support a population of 37,000, there are now more than 150 people on the city payroll.

Though City Manager Paul Brotzman insists the city needs all of those employees to handle all its myriad of boards, task forces and social service programs, some council members acknowledge the government may be growing too rapidly.

“I am not completely convinced that we are not becoming too bureaucratic,” said Councilman Paul Koretz.

And although crime rates in West Hollywood plummeted under the city’s contract with the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, residents of the corridor along Santa Monica Boulevard in the eastern half of the city continue to deal with drugs and prostitution. Residents there recently organized and persuaded the council to restrict business hours at Circus of Books and revoke the license at Oki Dog restaurant both of which, according to residents, attracted crime.

The temptation to act on large political and social issues has sometimes led a young, ambitious council into the public eye, often unwillingly. In 1985, then-Mayor Alan Viterbi “canceled Christmas” as a city holiday, having convinced the council that it was discriminatory that the city could not also declare the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur as an official holiday.

Last month, the council voted to close a controversial homeless feeding program in Plummer Park, drawing the wrath of Hollywood celebrities, who, in front of television cameras, criticized the council as insensitive. The council’s decision to reinstate the program, roused the ire of neighbors, who quickly organized to end the program.

“That has been a major pitfall. This is a community that wants to help, but maybe we have not learned to balance all that,” said Mayor Abbe Land. “How do we deal with all the needs and not bite off more than we can chew?”

Development is another issue gaining more attention among West Hollywood voters. Though there has always been a vocal core of residents opposed to nearly all new development in West Hollywood, recent council decisions overturning Planning Commission decisions angered others who said the council had been deaf to residents’ complaints.

Residents complained that the city was too easily lured by the promise of revenue and that it violated the spirit of its restrictive general plan in approving an expansion of the Writer’s Guild building and allowing hotelier Severyn Ashkenazy to convert apartment buildings into hotels.

And despite the substantial reserves the council has laid away in five years and annual revenues that have increased to $28 million from $5 million in its first year, West Hollywood officials are looking at a long and expensive list of capital improvements that could tax city coffers in coming years. On the wish list are a City Hall, a fire station, an expanded library and a senior center.

Although the rent control organization Committee for Economic Survival has ruled city elections since incorporation--three council members belong to the group--council members take differing views of where new issues and citizen activism will lead. Whether voters think issues other than rent control need attention may be disclosed in April, when three council seats are up for election.

Councilman John Heilman said he is confident that rent control remains the main issue.

“The sort of coalition that formed to create this city is still intact, I think. The people in the community are pretty much united” around the issues that created the city.

Schulte disagrees.

“I think we may see some changes in April. People want more attention to neighborhood preservation and efficiency in government. I think there is a muted anti-City Hall sentiment out there.”