West Hollywood city council candidate Tristan Schukraft wants to encourage community involvement and has an idea how to see that it happens.

The33 year-old LA native and “almost” toe-year West Hollywood resident says, “I’m not part of West Hollywood’s political establishment, but I think this will work in my favor, for I feel the residents of West Hollywood are looking for change.”

Tristan Schukraft is the lone challenger not supporting term limits.

He portrays himself as a seasoned business leader who can leverage his experience creating and managing global companies to make the city even better. When he was 21, he came up with the idea of a travel Web site for airline employees, which became theID90 Group, and now boasts more than 100 employees on four continents.      

As Schukraft explains, “We are the creative city, yet we are not leveraging the ideas of our residents, and many in our community are simply not encouraged to be involved. I want to utilize technology to bring people and their ideas together, while improving access to our city services. West Hollywood needs to be a leader, not a follower when it comes to technology and community involvement.”

That community involvement, he says, he finds lacking, not only on quantity but also quality. City council meetings, he says, “don’t really encourage community involvement at all. When I first moved here I thought the city was really engaging, but I found out that it’s not. It shouldn’t be so hard to engage people; yes, 18 to 24 percent of the city votes, and that’s higher than a lot of places, but we can do better.”

Mr. Schukraft says that often the council members cannot see the forest for the trees, “but I don’t own a car, so I walk the city. There are so many great ideas out there,” and the council too often responds to “squeaky wheels and too seldom to the general voice” of the people.

His primary issue is that community engagement, something that he would help foster through technology, and he feels he can “leverage that to [better] access city services. People complain about traffic,” he said, “and there’s only so much you can do about traffic.

“Parking – I think we have a lot of unique things that we can do that costs little to no money that would generate more parking. One simple idea is to paint lines on the street. A pet peeve of mine is, you have this big space for two cars and somebody parks in the middle and now there’s room for only one car.] Another thing we can do is add angle parking to streets where we have sufficient room to do it, he said.

He advocates enhanced parking meter enforcement to improve availability.

He also noted that increased enforcement of parking meters will open up additional spaces, benefiting the merchants and car drivers both. He noted that he “wouldn’t pay $10 to park his car to pop into a store to buy some underwear of a gift card, but Larry Block of Block Party was against the parking meter enforcement. I’m not going to make decisions emotionally, but based on the evidence.”

Avowedly pro-new development, he sees opportunities on the Sunset Strip for development that will bring additional revenue to the city. “It always peeves me when people say, ‘I love staying at the London in Hollywood.’ The London is in West Hollywood,” he declared.

He fully embraces and supports the city’s local businesses, saying, “we’ve got great dining, great shopping, great nightlife and fantastic hotels, as well.” While speaking of the need to respect the needs of the city’s residents and enhancing the quality of life for all in West Hollywood, says, “I love the idea of the Walgreens being built at Crescent Heights and Santa Monica; I love the idea of residences on top and retail below – mixed-use. We have to respect the traffic [issues] we create, but at the same time we can’t say no to development and leave the strip mall that’s falling apart decay into blight because ‘I don’t want more traffic’.”

The candidate is critical of the incumbents, saying that “look at the city council in general – there’s no one there who is in business people. I come in with a business background and I can look at things in a black and white perspective. Essentially, this is a very large business that we’re dealing with, although you need to take into consideration the needs and the desires of the residents. That’s where the politics come in.

Mr. Schukraft is dedicated to creative destruction, saying that a new Walgreens mixed-use project set for this site beats a blighted strip mall, as long as traffic mitigations are put into place.

“I am coming in with a clean slate. I’m not looking to make a career out of the city council, like every other council member has done. [Incumbents] here in the city of West Hollywood are very intimidating and prevent people from challenging the incumbents. In general, they don’t listen to the people as much as they can, but again, they really don’t encourage community involvement.

“Jeffrey Prang… tends to waver a lot, doesn’t take any firm stands – want to make everybody happy. John Duran… I know he’s been very vocal on the fur ban, and my feeling on the fur ban is that – I love animals, but if we’re eating rabbit and using the fur of the rabbit, that should be OK. If you’re killing the animal just for the fur, that’s something different. I really believe that less government is better. The council is there to make the city run, not to tell me how to live my life.”

So far as term limits is concerned, he is not at all for the idea, saying, “My feeling is that you can’t complain about the person being in office for 40 years if you’re not coming out to vote. If you want to make a difference, come out and vote. Each council member gets in with about 2,500 votes – you have a voice. So, in this particular case, I would be doing the city an injustice if I were to serve more than three terms. If I’m that influential, I should move on…”

He said he thinks that the “reason the supporters of term limits are so passionate about the issue is just what I got when I announced. People said, ‘Are you crazy? You’ll never unseat Jeffrey Prang.’ People said, ‘What endorsements did you get?’ The only endorsement I got was not to run,” he said with a chuckle. “People see it as very intimidating and suppose that they’ll never win – they say, ‘wait for next time when you have the support of XYZ.’ That’s what I don’t like to see. It’s a civic service, not a full time job – the pay is only $800 and some a month. You should not be so passionate about keeping your seat for so long.”

Having lived all over the world, in Milan, Amsterdam, Hong Kong and most recently Cordoba, Argentina, Mr. Schukraft has chosen West Hollywood. He hopes to serve the city he loves.

For more on Tristan Schukraft, visit http://www.Tristan2013.com