The City of West Hollywood is forging ahead with some big projects and new policies that are bound to surprise, thrill, confound and anger. Here are our predictions for how some of those will shape out in 2023 and the years to come.
1. Security ambassadors will get more power
City Council wanted job cuts at the WeHo Sheriff’s Station, and they got them. To compensate, they hired 30 new security ambassadors, none of whom can make arrests or carry guns. WeHo residents are going to keep banging the drum for more patrols … from anyone, cop or security guard, badge or not, who can detain suspects and subdue threats. City
Hall could see a window of opportunity in pitching a more police-like Block by Block program to the public as the cost-efficient answer. That might mean carrying self-defense devices, batons, even a firearm. If they’re successful, Block by Block stands to be upgraded into a shadow police squad that answers only to City Hall. Terrifying, right?
2. Magic mushrooms will go mainstream
It’s only a matter of time before psychedelic mushrooms a.k.a. psylocibin will be available as a retail item. It’s already taxed and regulated in Denver and Orgeon, and WeHo passed a measure last year that made possession of the substance a lower priority for law enforcement. California voters will likely get a second chance to allow shrooms to be sold all over the state, and West Hollywood, already identified as the Amsterdam of the West, would be keen to carve itself a niche as the place to buy high-end products made from formerly controlled substances. There is already at least one ketamine clinic in WeHo. But the optics of selling recreational psychosis in a city full of unhoused people plagued by mental illness will not go unnoticed.
3. Fewer crimes will be enforced
City Hall’s increasing meddling in law enforcement matters will likely mean cops won’t go after drivers with bumper damage, broken turn signals, lacking an inspection sticker or other minor infractions. Meanwhile, if shoplifting and pickpocketing can’t be controlled, more and more stores will start selling their items out of locked display cases, like Target.
4. More cameras will be tracking your movement
Cameras that capture your license plate number are coming everywhere. WeHo has them installed at the intersection of La Brea and Santa Monica Boulevard, and they’ll be on SMB’s intersections with Fairfax, Doheny, La Cienega and Fairfax soon, too. Sheriff’s deputies also have them installed in their vehicles; last year the cameras identified nearly 11 million license plates. Their purpose? To document suspect vehicle movement and assist detectives by tethering a vehicle to a given crime under investigation. Many residents want the city to go a step further and create a citywide surveillance system like Beverly Hills.
5. Reparations start being given to discriminated peoples
The $100,000 historical racial discrimination study which Council commissioned last year will almost certainly conclude that (surprise!) racial discrimination did exist in the early 20th Century in the area that would become the City of West Hollywood some 50 years later. To rectify this, the city will likely start taking applications for a reparations program, similar to the Universal Basic Income program, where a select number of residents who qualify will receive a monthly cash handout.
6. There will be a cannabis festival of some kind
City Hall looks ready to allow cannabis-focused special events in West Hollywood — think a High Times Festival or a ganja grower’s expo — though the logistics are complicated because the industry is so tightly regulated.
7. Delivery robots take over
Those charming delivery robots with two cute eyes and zero soul will continue to bumble up and down the streets of WeHo, less as a profit-maker than as a harbinger of the revolution on the horizon. A future full of delivery drones, self-driving meals-on-wheels trucks and mobile convenience store vans might not leave room for old-school restaurant drive-thrus or human delivery drivers.
Danny Roman acquires the ability to count up to ten. The City Council meetings spiral out of control and are moved entirely to Zoom. 13.
Will Marix and Basic ever reopen?
It’s uncanny to realize that the robots exemplify the three self interested automatons sitting on the dais.
Don’t be surprised if the Council hires a consultant to look into whether West Hollywood could afford to create its’ own police department. Unfortunately the consultant they would hire would probably be the one Nika Song Shiong used in her “study” of Sheriff’s costs or some other social justice soulmate.
I don’t think they’ll do this because keeping the Sheriff provides more Twitter moments where they’re seen defunding and abolishing. They don’t want people to see them creating law enforcement.
You are probably right. Cynical, but right.
Once the poisonous roots are firmly planted, though not always visible, they continue to thrive beneath the surface mysteriously connected to insidious folks whose life blood is a lack of ethics and self interest.
That was “lack of ethics and promoting self interest”.
I predict that in 2023 that 3 people on the City Council will continue rushing through their little pet projects via Consent calendar and the ridiculous SEB majority, while they drag their feet on items that are considered important by the public, but that do nothing to make them richer, or that don’t promote their political aspirations!
Which one of the politicians or city officials are getting the commission or kick back from Block By Block? The woman who had brought BBB to Santa Monica made thousands of dollars in commissions. Ms Shyne of course was the BBB pusher. Is she getting a kick back? She was sworn in as Mayor Pro Tem by a convicted Federal felon. A fellow Iranian woman. Her best friend
I can live with all of those except #5, so called “reparations” for descendants of “discriminated peoples” from a few hundred years ago. This has to be a joke, right? And who decided these descendants are owed this money, solely based on the randomly selected “race”, and not based on all sorts of other more recent and also very real discriminations? And I heard a comedian the other day say “I know my people, and I know that if they get any money, it ain’t going toward any house, any higher education, or any investment — they will use the… Read more »
#8) The Counciltwits will continue to make West Hollywood a 3rd World country akin to Portland and SF.
Yikes! Maybe it’s time to take the “Live” out of “Live, Work, Play’
8. Annie Jump Vicente is on a commission or board of some sort. 9. The Public Safety Commission meetings are canceled until April or May, so Jackie Steele can attend. 10. Chelsea Byers discovers that there are people watching her, and stops reading from her iPhone or screen. 11. Danny Roman learns how to count to 10. 12. City Council Meetings become out of control, and are conducted exclusively on Zoom. 13. The FBI doesn’t investigate anything in West Hollywood, and thinks it’s funny that we take ourselves so seriously. 14. A positive fentanyl test strip is the new status… Read more »
15: The Planning Commission is temporarily shut down for 7 months until Commissioners graduate from a beginners course on decision making.
15: A law will be passed prohibiting any more City Commissioners from jumping to the head of the line for the subsidized deluxe City housing near LaBrea.
Who are the folks that have done this in the past?
More grandstanding by the ‘woke’ councilmembers trying to grab media attention for themselves with every new esoteric campaign they launch. The ‘rainbow crosswalk’ will be added to again with every symbol known to man, animal and AI so no one is left out – it will look like r/place on reddit. More unchecked development as the Beverly Hills infection keeps spreading throughout WeHo. More rhetorical contortions as City leaders avoid describing the one demographic group that is doing most of the crime (a certain age, a certain sex, a certain ethnic makeup). Rents will keep going up and more regular… Read more »
re: #4. “Contortions” is right! It’s a joke how hard they try to not say what we all know.
You forgot the biggest, most likely prediction: If you reside in West Hollywood, I predict there’s a 99.9% chance that you will accidentally step in human poop while traversing the city at some point in 2023.