Thanks for sticking around for part 2 of how I want West Hollywood to be a business friendly town again! I’ve said what I want to do as a city councilor to support existing businesses, but what about new businesses?
West Hollywood is one of the most difficult cities to open a new business in thanks to the red tape and many costs associated with it. In our city. I spoke in detail about the challenges two of them faced when they or their clients started a business. My name is Miguel, a resident and business owner, I am an architect and he helps clients create their dream space for their future projects.
On behalf of his private clients, he went through the permit application process many times in the city. Miguel told me that when he submits the application, the paperwork, the payment, and anything else the city requires, it goes to the permit technician*, and then everything is coordinated by email. There is no organization. If email is lost, misplaced, or lost, you’re out of luck. You’ll never know if your email or information has arrived when you come back from town and say you’re ready to move on to the next steps or that something is missing from you. And that’s what happened to Miguel.
One of their clients was told that they had submitted their plans to city hall and were all set to go. About three weeks passed when the permit technician emailed Miguel saying the city was unaware of the plans. Miguel looked in his inbox for the emails he had sent. And indeed he did. The city received it and sent the confirmation, but it wasn’t properly followed up by City Hall, and Miguel’s email was either ignored or buried among hundreds of other emails.
Simply put, this is unacceptable. Commercial real estate prices are sky high, which is unacceptable for any city, but especially for cities like West Hollywood. Now, the wait time for permits to be approved by the city (forget any permit approvals required by the county if your facility needs to move out of a county-regulated area such as health or industrial waste) can be longer than 4. months. If you’re lucky enough to get $10,000 a month in business rent, you’re spending $40,000 before you even open.
Earning money. How can we expect any small business owner to carry that kind of burden? There needs to be some entity that holds accountable for the delay in getting permits for our businesses to open – the city or the business owner.
After speaking with Miguel and another business owner named Ted, we came up with the idea of creating a “dashboard” on the city’s website that would organize all the documents and paperwork needed to obtain permits and open a business. We see these dashboards all the time, nothing new or groundbreaking. If you have three items to enter for something, say your electricity license, the dashboard will show a simple checklist that lists each item, a “check mark” and a stamp of when the item was entered. after all. The items are checked in, the dashboard shows that all items have been checked in, the date and time they were checked in, and it is now the city’s responsibility to move on to the next steps.
This not only organizes all the items needed to apply for a license, but also shows who is responsible for the next steps and how quickly they will be delivered. After all the goods are brought in, it takes a month to reach the city, something needs to be fixed at the city level. There may not be enough staff to process permit applications. Perhaps the workers in the city do not move quickly. Or business owners may not be good at turning in required documents in a timely manner, and the delays are mostly their fault. I can’t tell what the cause is yet, but with the dashboard, we can find out. There will be more transparency and we can hold our city and business owners accountable. After all, that’s what government should do for its citizens – transparency and accountability.
This accountability helps us identify bottlenecks in the permitting process, shortens the wait times faced by new business owners (or established businesses through remodeling, tenant improvements, etc.) and the costs associated with opening a new business. This happens in every city, but we want to attract small businesses to West Hollywood, and we can do this by helping to speed up the process.
A lot of these delays happened during covid, so if we’re going to do it, let’s take this opportunity to do things from home. Submit everything online and just print the final, finished document for the workplace. Save time, save money, save resources, save the environment.
That’s what I want to do to help make it easier for a new business to open in West Hollywood, and that’s what I’ll do as your city council member.
As always, your comments, suggestions, thoughts and ideas are welcome! If you are a business owner, have ever tried to open a business, or just have an idea to improve it, I want to hear from you! Please contact me by phone or at (323) 250-0992 or by email at JC@JordanForWeHo.com.
You can check out my website at JordanForWeHo.com for more of my plans. If you like what I’ve said so far, I’d love to count your vote in November, and I’d love it if you told others to do the same!
thank you!
Jordan
* A permit technician is a city employee responsible for reviewing, documenting and submitting all plans for each individual to the various departments: Building, Planning, Mechanical, Electrical and Plumbing.
