Rusty Wiggs, making his first attempt at election to public office, is doing so to “give back to my community.” The 40-year-old West Hollywood West resident has been involved in many civic pursuits boning up on the city’s function, not the least of which it the Building Community Through Engagement (CTE) Academy, an annual five-week study session that amounts to West Hollywood 101, or a short course in how the municipality works.

Rusty Wiggs, making his first attempt at election to public office, is doing so to “give back to my community.”

A self-defined high information voter, he wants to make more information more readily available to the voters in West Hollywood. As an administrator for a psychological clinic, he sees value in data and information.

He sees running for office – challenging the incumbents - as a part of his civic responsibility. “It’s a civic responsibility to be a part of your community,” he told WeHo News. “We have a necessity to have candidates to run against people, and it’s our responsibility to run to get a better result [from our elections].”

The 19-year resident of WeHo says he will implement a three-point plan when he gains office:

Point one: He will beef up civic responsibility as a balance between government and resident action. He promised to enhance the continuing education of the community. “It would help with development,” he said. “We have a lot of entitled projects already in the pipeline, that will totally change the face of the city and people will get really upset when they get built.”

He said that, while not everything entitled gets built, better-informed residents would lead to “less anger and fewer lawsuits when they do get built.” More importantly, he said, “there might be a different process by which these building become a part of our city,” leading to a more vibrant lobbying effort by the community members.

Point two: Navigating the future.

Mr. Wiggs stands as an advocate for “better planning and land use that looks more like European cities, where “I see a different way of approving buildings. I that they might have to add a public square to the land use space. I say they should only use up to 60 percent of the land but go up other stories to create community and gathering spaces.

“Public parks and public squares are my passion when I go traveling around the world, and we lack them like crazy – but you can work to bring them back. A city government can ask for things. Also, I’m not a heavy car supporter; I would like to look at different ways of building infrastructure for transportation.”

“Public parks and public squares are my passion when I go traveling around the world, and we lack them like crazy – but you can work to bring them back," says Mr. Wiggs.

He said our transportation system is lacking, and believes that something needs to be done rather than saying, “we just need more car lanes. In navigating our future, we need to look into these things.” He said that the city ought to look into the J-Pod system advocated by another council candidate and building subways.

His third point has to do with better representing our city: “We are a heavily gay city; we are a heavily female city and we have immigrants, all very hot topics on our federal level,” he said. “I think we need to be represented better at communicating who we are as a community and why we matter as a community – and our strengths as a community.”

He said that our city represents a city where gay people can live, work and play openly, “but it’s not that way in the rest of the world. I know it’s great to call gay people pedophiles and people agree with that on the national level and we need someone to talk about that when preachers equate that with just being gay. Independent and straight women; we have a unique jungle here. Our Russian immigrants is a very unique feature that we have. Immigrants are on the table, women’s rights are always on the table and gay rights are on the table.”

His overriding concern, however, is what he calls a lack of information flowing from City Hall. Even though he has signed up for all the E mail notifications coming out of 8300 Santa Monica Boulevard, he panned the four council members who do not send out newsletters to the constituents. “I get Jeffrey Prang’s newsletters, but I never hear anything from John Duran, Abbe Land, John Heilman or John D’Amico,” he said.

He supports term limits, saying, “I see no problem with term limits when they give people a chance to do their job. We have term limits for the president of eight years; I’m always very happy that we don’t get stuck with a president for 20 years.”

Mr. Wiggs beleives that more can be done in West Hollywood with subways and alternative transportation measures.

As for the voters’ ability to change council members without a change in the rules, he acknowledged that voters “have the ability to [vote newcomers in] during elections, but coming from a psychology background,” he said, “there’s a lot of data out there that on why people will vote for the same thing.

“I would say we don’t have the best, the most well-educated voters when it comes time to vote,” he said, adding that the electorate is used to “going for what you know… people get stuck in a pattern, and they vote for people they feel like they know and they keep on with the same pattern.”

A question WeHo News asked all the candidates – what are the incumbents not doing and why should they be replaced (or, to the incumbents, why the challengers ought not be elected), Mr. Wiggs declined to comment - repeatedly, saying, “It’s not my job to point out the flaws of our city council members at a time of running for city office… [and] I do not want to talk negatively about the council members. I might not be satisfied,” but when pressed about what dissatisfied him, he would say only, “they are our current city council members and they have done what they have done.”

Acknowledging, “I am unhappy with the current system,” however, did not translate to and direct criticism of those running the system.

“My job is to give a new and different perspective on a new candidate to give the voters a perspective on how to make a decision. I’m going to be respectful in that area because that’s not where I want to go, not my idea of running.”

For more on Mr. Wiggs’ candidacy, visit https://www.facebook.com/pages/Rusty-Wiggs-for-West-Hollywood-City-Council/101599456676899