The Public Safety Commission will be knee deep in citywide gender-neutral restrooms at their meeting tonight, where city staff will present updated design guidelines for the controversial facilities.
In October, a slew of public commenters took to the podium to express their dismay about gender-neutral restrooms, and the Commission motioned to agendize the item onto tonight’s schedule.
The push for gender-neutral restrooms began last year with the creation of a draft ordinance requiring all multi-stall restroom facilities in businesses and public places to be gender-neutral. The ordinance, which applies to new developments as well as significant remodels and new commercial leases, will go before City Council on Dec. 5.
West Hollywood has also sponsored legislation that will allow local governments to require new or renovated public toilet facilities to be designed, constructed, and identified for use by all genders instead of the design standards for separate facilities for men and women currently found in the California Plumbing Code.
The new guidelines appear to address the No. 1 public concern of the last meeting — that the main entrance to the restrooms would not have a door that would obstruct views or threaten safety. The main entrance leads to a room with sinks used by all genders, and that room contains individual toilet stalls with floor to ceiling doors.
Every toilet stall in a gender-neutral restroom will have a lock on the inside, according to the guidelines, which also mentions that any urinals present might have their own private stalls as well.
The staff report lists four reasons for the implementation of gender-neutral restrooms:
- Public safety and public health, particulary for trans people, for whom gendered restrooms present a multitude of unique problems.
- To accommodate special needs situations, such as a father taking his daughter to use the restroom, or assisting an elderly parent.
- It’s a more efficient use of space compared with individual toilet stalls with sinks (i.e. single user restrooms).
- Decreasing wait times, ostensibly.
Gender-neutral restrooms have generated jitters since City Council first approved a plan to start integrating them in 2021. Former City Councilmember Steve Martin memorably warned that gender-neutral restrooms at Plummer Park would a “bordello for our prostitutes.”
HOW TO PARTICIPATE IN THE MEETING
BY TELEPHONE:
You are strongly encouraged to email Jessica Anukam at janukam@weho.org no later than 3:00 P.M. on the meeting day (November 14, 2022) to be added to the Public Speaker List for the meeting. To speak during public comment, please email your name, the phone number from which you will be calling if applicable, and which item you would like to speak on. Your comments and information will become part of the official public record. Please call in and remember to place your phone on mute (*6). Dial-in 10 minutes prior to the start of the meeting. You will be placed on HOLD in the Virtual Meeting Room until it is your turn to speak.
• Dial-in phone number: (669) 900-6833
• Meeting ID: 878 7025 0946; then press #
• Dial in Code: *6 = unmute
BY E-COMMENT
You are strongly encouraged to email Jessica Anukam at janukam@weho.org no later than 3:00 P.M. on the meeting day (November 14, 2022). Written correspondence will not be read during the meeting; however, correspondence received by 3:00 P.M. will be forwarded to the Public Safety Commission and posted on the City’s website as part of the official meeting record. If you do not want your personal information included in the official record, please do not include your address and/or phone number.
Another one of Sepi Shyne’s insidious Tail Wags the Dog strategies to have Trans & LGBQ individuals and policies dictate life for the bulk of residents. She consistently preaches fairness but actually practices hate and control.
Shyne feels personally victimized by life and thereby collects likeminded followers. It’s a sad and sick way to live. She has also rebuked her true heritage by discarding her legal name Ghifouri and adopted the Shyne nomenclature for effect. Similar to claiming to be black after adopting the race if her former partner. Another deceptive practice illustrative if the Lindsey Horvath playbook.
I’m pretty sure you’re sad and sick. No wonder you don’t use your real name while posting but ironically you attack her for changing her name. Another hypocritical insidious rightwing troll.
So now you are the man missing in Weho? I’m glad you found yourself 🙄.
Au Contraire.
Happy and healthy always seeking the high road.
No need to be in the fray.
Pretty sure that they are exactly right. Imagine catering to less than 1% of the population. What could go wrong?
How about we treat mental illness instead of celebrating it?
If you cutoff your genitals it doesn’t change your gender, it makes you a mentally ill freak with mutilated sex organs.
good grief. what a clown show.
What is wrong with Danny Roman? The dumpster lock interaction was ridiculous. He and Jackie need to wait a couple minutes and think before launching into their monologues. Jackie speaks so quickly that I can’t imagine how she keeps track of her thoughts.
Kerri Balbone is the only adult in the room. The way Danny Roman just stormed off mid-meeting was very unprofessional. It seems he no longer cares.
Where were all you commenters at this meeting? Not a lot of people who have any authority read this blog. If you really care about this topic you have to make yourself heard. Both sides of the issue should have input. Come to a meeting, call-in and speak up or at the very least write an email to the Councilmembers, and cc: the City Manager and the Public Facilities Director. Otherwise your thoughts fall away into the ether. Get involved or nothing changes.
I am watching this LIVE. What a bunch of derelict representatives. Men and WOMEN need separate bathrooms. Ask everyone, including yourselves, what did you think back then? Everyone has lost the decency and civility of being a human. All of this woke movement has created insanity. Boys need boys bathrooms, girls need girls bathrooms. Again, go back in your memories people, what did you think then? AND, the cost to businesses?!?!!! Where is that consideration? I don’t want to take a dookie with a woman next to me in a toilet stall, and I bet she would not want me… Read more »
Sepi Shyne’s toilet obsession is the highlight of her past two years in office plus Block by Blockheads (her reimagining of policing WEHO) and paying off the housekeeping union. Otherwise, she is the worst thing that ever happened to West Hollywood. Sue her for breach of public trust along with Erickson.
My gawd… the dumb ass stuff people worry about these days. And yet, the homeless druggies, and the rising crime, and the corrupt city halls…
It is amazing…isn’t it?! The crap they focus on while our quality of life is deteriorating.
Somehow my Mother, Father, younger brother and I made it through Bathroom Use 101 without all this drama. I recall lovely rest rooms in department stores on Fifth Avenue elegantly designed similar to Bullock’s Wilshire & I. Magnin in BH without a single issue or incident. There was always an attendant on duty to hand you a towel and/or tiny up. So now we have all of this for specifically what reason, to accommodate Transgender folks? Why is that? If single use bathrooms exist there should be no problem. I don’t get it. Some might appreciate separate preening areas adjacent… Read more »
Compared to the harm done to women and girls by removing our restrooms, the people it claims to help are such a tiny minority that it is not reasonable to proceed with this change.
NO, it is not. But the current city council does not care what the people think, it only cares about its own extreme political agenda. (that’s why the people voted the way they did in this last election. Shyne and Erickson, your time will be up soon…count on it).
Is ANYONE considering the very high cost to the businesses this would be? There is so much wrong with this, but another intrusion of government on businesses is just so unfair. This is really nothing more than a vanity project and a power trip. If there are a handful of people who feel they need a gender neutral bathroom and a business doesn’t have one, those people can choose to not shop there.
Right, a Vanity project to grace THE SHYNE/ERICKSON HALL OF GRIEVANCE. Will undoubtedly be paid for by West Hollywood businesses if they have any money remaining after paying what amounts to mafia style campaign contributions ti enable their future civic careers.
What could go wrong?! 🙄