West Hollywood Built Its Records File in Six Minutes. It Has Taken Five Weeks to Hand It Over, and It’s Still Not Done.
The City’s own print headers, seven missing documents, and a 2017 inspection photo raise questions City Hall has eight days left to answer.
By Mr. Reynolds | Good Shepherd Media | September 20, 2026
WEST HOLLYWOOD — On the morning of August 19, 2026, someone at West Hollywood City Hall sat down and pulled the City’s file on a commercial property in the city. The job took six minutes. We know because the City’s own system stamped the date and time across the top of every page: 8:17 a.m. to 8:23 a.m.
The next day, the City wrote to the man who had requested those records and told him the “broad scope” of his request would require a rolling production, in installments, every two weeks.
The first installment arrived September 4, 24 days after the request. The second arrived September 18, at 7:18 on a Friday evening ONLY AFTER an email stating MISSED DEADLINE send at 5:48PM city already closed. The City now says the final production will come September 28. That is a six-minute file delivered across nearly six weeks.
| Aug 11 | Demand letter and records request served |
| Aug 19 | Entire file compiled, 8:17–8:23 a.m. |
| Aug 20 | City cites “broad scope,” announces rolling production |
| Sept 4 | First installment: 13 documents, 5 Bates numbers missing |
| Sept 10 | Corrective-action deadline lapses; no inspection |
| Sept 18 | Second installment, 7:18 p.m.: 8 documents, 2 more missing |
| Sept 28 | City’s self-declared final production date |
What the request is about
The owner, owns a cement-and-brick commercial building in West Hollywood. He says that every rainy season, water enters through the same wall, the one on the property line with the building next door, and that it began after the City permitted and approved a major structural remodel of that building, one that included excavation.
His request to the City has been modest: send an inspector. He says he raised it in person with Building & Safety Manager Benjamin Galán at City Hall in 2025, by email afterward, and in person again with Code Enforcement in February 2026. On August 11, he served a formal demand letter on the Building Official, City Manager, City Attorney, City Clerk, Mayor and Council, with a 30-day deadline for corrective action.
September 10 came and went with no inspection and no response.
What the City’s own pages show
The records produced so far total 21 documents, and none are the ones that matter most. Across two installments there is not one permit, plan set, grading or drainage sheet, plan-check record, inspection card, or certificate of occupancy for a structural remodel the City itself approved. The file plainly exists: a page of the permit application appears at the tail end of one produced document, and a City email dated June 1, 2016 cites the project’s “Minor Construction Mitigation Plan” by name.
What was produced is a decade of code-enforcement paper on the adjacent property: a 2016 notice of violation to its corporate owner for breaching that mitigation plan and working before permitted hours, and a 2017 notice for after-hours construction. There are also noise violations in 2021 and 2024, the latter naming the current tenant business, which had no role in the 2016 remodel.
The production also contains a photograph. Bates-stamped *****0000014 and dated August 7, 2017, it was taken by the City’s own inspector inside the adjacent building. It shows water staining at the ice-machine and utility area, on the far side of the wall where owner says his building takes water. Another City photo, from January 2016, shows excavation spoils piled inside the adjacent building’s doorway.
The City has had that photograph for nine years.
Seven numbers, no explanation
The City stamped its production with sequential Bates numbers, and seven are missing:
*****0000005 • *****0000006 • *****0000008 • *****0000009 • *****0000017 • *****0000019 • *****0000022
A document gets a Bates number only after it has been collected, so these seven were gathered, numbered and then removed.
The Public Records Act allows agencies to withhold records, but they must say so and cite the exemption. The City has provided no log, claimed no exemption, and offered no explanation.
What the law says
Government Code § 7922.500 is one sentence long, and it says nothing in the Act permits an agency “to delay or obstruct” inspection of public records. Section 7922.530 requires records be made “promptly available.” A requester forced to sue to get them is entitled to attorney’s fees under § 7923.115, and that award is mandatory.
Owner has served the City with a four-step escalation notice: a petition for writ of mandate, a damages action on theories including inverse condemnation and continuing nuisance, public comment before the City Council, and a complaint to the Los Angeles County Civil Grand Jury. A second records request, served September 18, seeks the City’s internal communications about him and demands that they be preserved.
Four questions for City Hall
- If the file was complete at 8:23 a.m. on August 19, what “broad scope” justified the letter of August 20?
- Where are the seven missing documents, and under what exemption were they pulled?
- Where is the permit file for the remodel next door?
- What did the City do after its own inspector photographed water staining inside the adjacent building in 2017?
awaiting city response
September 28 is the date the City chose for itself. Good Shepherd Media will publish what arrives that day, and will report it if nothing does.