April 9, 2025
Hon. Nick Schultz
California State Assembly
1021 O St., Ste. 5150
Sacramento, CA 95814
RE: AB 306 Building regulations: state building standards, as amended March 19, 2025. OPPOSED UNLESS AMENDED
Dear Assemblymember Schultz,
The City of West Hollywood must regrettably oppose your Assembly Bill (AB) 306 Building regulations: state building standards, unless it is amended.
Energy use from existing buildings is one of the City of West Hollywood's largest sources of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. If AB 306 were to become law as amended on March 19, 2025, West Hollywood would not be able to meet its climate goals, which align with the State’s progressive climate agenda. In addition to not meeting carbon neutrality by 2035, the City would not be able to deliver on the West Hollywood Climate Action and Adaptation Plan (WeHo Climate Action) commitments as noted below:
• Adopt a building performance standard to improve the energy performance, health, and comfort of large existing buildings • Adopt reach codes to decarbonize new buildings
• Adopt reach codes to decarbonize existing buildings
• Increase and incentivize EV charging in new and existing buildings Almost all the buildings that will exist in West Hollywood in 2035 are the ones we already have today. Since West Hollywood has a significant number of older residential buildings, many of which were constructed before the current energy efficiency standards, improving energy performance in existing buildings is a critical step toward achieving carbon neutrality by 2035.
City Hall
8300 Santa Monica Blvd.
West Hollywood, CA
90069-6216
Tel. (323) 848-6460
FAX (323) 848 6562
CITY COUNCIL
CHELSEA LEE BYERS
Mayor
JOHN HEILMAN
Vice Mayor
JOHN M. ERICKSON
Councilmember
Danny Hang
Councilmember
LAUREN MEISTER
Councilmember
City of
West Hollywood
As we experience more extreme weather events like high heat and storms resulting from climate change, there is a greater need to improve the maintenance, performance, and resiliency of existing buildings for our residents.
For two years now, the City has been developing its Equitable Building Performance Standard and has engaged the community on how energy improvements to existing buildings can benefit tenants and building owners while reducing unintended consequences to frontline communities. Without the ability to improve the performance of these buildings and reduce the emissions generated by them, the City will not be able to meet its 2035 carbon neutrality goal.
We realize that your bill’s intention is to address the disastrous consequences of the fires in Los Angeles County this past January, and we applaud your initiative. However, if the goal of AB 306 is to increase the supply of housing and rebuilding of homes, applying this bill’s requirements to existing homes does nothing to spur new construction. By narrowing the bill to new construction, local governments can continue to advance codes to improve comfort and affordability like requiring energy efficiency retrofits or space heating/cooling units to be heat pumps at the time of replacement.
Therefore, we respectfully request that you consider amending the bill as follows:
Section 4, 17958.7
“(c) Commencing June 1, 2025, until June 1, 2031, inclusive, the commission shall reject a modification or change to any building standard affecting a new residential unit and filed by the governing body of a city or county, unless one of the following conditions is met:”
We truly appreciate your consideration of this request.
Sincerely,
Chelsea Lee Byers
MAYOR
C: Hon Ben Allen, SD-24
Hon Rick Chavez Zbur, AD-51