City of Westside is an exploratory civic initiative, not an existing city, government agency, ballot measure, service provider, emergency service, or official source.

The public case

Why a new city?

Los Angeles is too large and distant to deliver the local accountability many Westside residents expect. We should find out whether a smaller city focused entirely on these communities can do better.

City of Westside is an exploratory civic initiative, not an existing city, government agency, ballot measure, service provider, emergency service, or official source.

A question worth answering

The test is not whether a new name sounds good. The test is whether local control can produce better results.

City of Westside is a public effort to determine whether Westside communities should leave the City of Los Angeles and form a safer, cleaner, more responsive, and more accountable city of their own.

A smaller city could focus its budget, leadership, and daily work on Westside needs. It could also fail, cost too much, inherit serious obligations, or depend on agreements it cannot secure. That is why the case must be made in public, with current sources and no promised outcome.

What residents should expect

Local control should come with a clear job to do.

01

Safety and public order

What residents experience
Residents want to feel safe at home, at work, in parks, on sidewalks, and while getting around. They want lawful enforcement, prevention, clear standards, and honest follow-up.
What local control could change
A Westside-focused government could set local priorities, publish service standards, strengthen civilian accountability, and build clear coordination with county, regional, state, federal, and neighboring agencies.
How success should be measured
Publish lawful, independently reviewable measures for calls, response, prevention, public-space conditions, complaints, use of force, case outcomes, staffing, and resident experience—without treating one number as the whole truth.
What still must be proven
The plan must prove legal authority, cost, staffing, facilities, dispatch, records, oversight, mutual aid, and uninterrupted police, fire, EMS, and 911 service before any transition.
02

Homelessness and public spaces

What residents experience
People living outside need a real path to safety, care, and housing. Residents also need parks, sidewalks, libraries, and business districts that are clean, safe, and usable.
What local control could change
A smaller city could give one human team responsibility for outreach, public-space care, lawful rules, county health links, housing partnerships, and visible results instead of counting spending alone.
How success should be measured
Track people reached, accepted placements, returns to homelessness, connection to care, time to resolve hazards, and whether shared public spaces remain usable, while protecting personal information.
What still must be proven
The plan must establish lawful roles, county and provider agreements, housing and care capacity, cost, privacy, civil-rights protections, and workable public-space operations. Incorporation, enforcement, or spending alone cannot solve homelessness.
03

Taxes and value

What residents experience
Residents deserve a clear answer: what do we pay, where does the money go, what comes back to the Westside, and did the service deliver a useful result? Those answers are hard to see today.
What local control could change
A new city could publish budgets, contracts, invoices, assets, liabilities, service costs, owners, deadlines, and results in one public record tied to adopted decisions.
How success should be measured
Compare adopted budgets with actual revenue, cost, obligations, reserves, contract performance, audit findings, service results, and long-term forecasts in records the public can inspect.
What still must be proven
A neutral fiscal study must test revenue, costs, tax allocation, assets, liabilities, pensions, contracts, capital needs, reserves, and transition obligations. A new city does not promise lower taxes.
04

Responsive city services

What residents experience
A basic request can cross departments and leave a resident wondering who owns it, what happens next, and when anyone will answer.
What local control could change
The proposed standard is simple: one request, one case number, one owner, an expected deadline, a visible status, a reason for delay or decision, and a clear escalation path.
How success should be measured
Publish completion time, first-contact resolution, missed standards and reasons, reopenings, appeals, accessibility, language service, resident feedback, and verified outcomes by service type.
What still must be proven
The plan must identify who performs every lawful service, what it costs, how non-digital access works, and how current service continues during any approved transition.
05

Local representation

What residents experience
Los Angeles must serve many communities and balance competing priorities. The case for a new city is that Westside decisions can feel too far from the people who live with the result.
What local control could change
A smaller government could make representatives, department leaders, budgets, hearings, votes, performance, ethics, and public records easier to find and challenge.
How success should be measured
Report public participation, response to constituent cases, meeting and records access, ethics and complaint outcomes, audit follow-up, representation, and whether residents can understand who decided what and why.
What still must be proven
Districts, representation, elections, ethics, independent oversight, public participation, and protections for every community remain proposals that residents would have to shape.
06

Emergency preparedness and resilience

What residents experience
Wildfire, earthquake, extreme heat, flooding, infrastructure failure, and other emergencies cross neighborhood and agency lines. Residents need trustworthy plans, accessible information, practiced coordination, and reliable fallbacks.
What local control could change
A focused city could maintain public preparedness, continuity, evacuation-support, infrastructure, accessible communication, and recovery plans while coordinating with the agencies that retain warning, response, utility, health, and regional authority.
How success should be measured
Use independently reviewed exercises, corrective-action closure, continuity tests, accessible warning reach, backup readiness, infrastructure recovery, community preparedness, and after-action findings—not simulated incident scores.
What still must be proven
The plan must establish lawful emergency roles, official warning authority, command, mutual aid, evacuation and shelter relationships, communications, utilities, continuity, funding, accessibility, and tested fallbacks without interrupting current service.

The opportunity

What incorporation can change

  • Who sets municipal priorities and adopts a city budget.
  • How close elected leaders and department owners are to the result.
  • How city services are organized, explained, measured, and challenged.
  • Which lawful services a city performs, contracts for, or coordinates.
  • How city spending, contracts, decisions, and performance are published.
  • How a future city designs accessible, multilingual, online and offline service.

The limits

What it cannot solve by itself

  • It does not guarantee lower crime, fewer people living outside, lower taxes, or faster service.
  • It does not erase regional problems, state and federal law, court orders, labor duties, debt, or shared infrastructure.
  • It does not transfer UCLA, schools, hospitals, federal land, utilities, transit, or private property to a city.
  • It does not replace county health and human services, regional transportation, federal functions, or independent education governance.
  • It does not make a conceptual boundary legal or prove that every included community supports the proposal.
  • It does not make technology, AI, or a website a substitute for capable people and accountable decisions.

No shortcuts

What must be proven before a vote

Residents should not be asked to choose a slogan. They should receive a reviewable plan with current sources, independent analysis, clear uncertainty, and enforceable transition conditions.

  1. 01

    A lawful property-by-property boundary

    LA LAFCO requirements, review by affected agencies, land and service areas, neighboring cities, and unresolved questions about LAX and the western hills.

  2. 02

    A complete answer about money

    Revenue, service costs, public property, debt, tax allocation, worker and pension duties, contracts, reserves, major investments, and start-up costs under a range of conditions.

  3. 03

    Uninterrupted essential services

    Named responsible authorities, legal power, staffing or contracts, facilities and assets, mutual aid, emergency command, data, insurance, and fallback plans.

  4. 04

    A democratic government residents can inspect

    Representation, elections, ethics, civil rights, public records, accessibility, language access, oversight, complaints, audits, and ways to correct or appeal.

  5. 05

    Public consent on a plan people understand

    Open analysis, meaningful participation, lawful proceedings, an honest statement of tradeoffs, and a resident decision at the point required by law.

Immediate danger is not a design exercise.

For an emergency, call 911 and use alerts and instructions from official public agencies.