Over the last 15 months, Huntington Beach has taken an abrupt turn, not to the right, but rather backward. The extreme City Council majority has slammed the transmission into reverse, stripping gears, and likely permanently damaging the engine of our local government. 

Rushing to take advantage of a low-turnout March primary, the council majority put initiatives on the ballot including voter ID, which will get the city into yet another costly lawsuit with the state, and a measure that effectively bans the Pride flag at government facilities. Both passed. 

These measures were solutions searching for problems. None of the four council members that make up the new majority bloc (which fundamentally shouldn’t exist in a non-partisan local government) ran on the flag policy or voter ID. They ran on a platform of no more housing (got sued), “saving” the air show ($7 million secret settlement; got sued), solving homelessness in 90 days (still have hundreds of unhoused residents without a clear plan to fix that) and cutting red tape for business (froze hiring to solve budget shortfalls, so there’s no one left to cut said red tape — see air show settlement above).

Now, at tonight’s council meeting, the council majority continues to plod down a path nobody asked it to go down: privatizing the award-winning Huntington Beach Public Library (HBPL) system by releasing an RFP for “Managed Library Services” for the HBPL system. That is, having a private company do something the city is already doing. It also appears that other members of the council are gaslighting the public, saying “We’re not privatizing our libraries.” Well, try to define what this is without using the word “private.”

One day after expiration of our one-year anti-lobbying requirement for former council members, former Mayor Mike Posey, a salesperson for Library Services and Solutions (a private, for-profit library contractor), submitted an unsolicited offer to privatize the personnel, collection management and programs of HBPL. The public has not seen this offer, nor have I, but now city staff is recommending we go out to bid on contracting our five branch libraries, staff, collection choices and other services.

The HBPL has one of the smallest budgets in the city and one of the smallest per-capita budgets in the county. We have more than 300 volunteers who support our library system. HBPL is a crown jewel of the city. Why would we alter that? 

Most libraries that are contracted are cities with no internal expertise. The “profit” for this company comes from canceling employee pensions, and then when those employees quit to go work at other public libraries, they hire lower-paid, less-experienced replacements. 

In addition to library privatization, tonight an ordinance is being introduced to formally create a committee of 21 amateurs to determine what books should enter the Children’s Library instead of trained librarians. No one asked for this Book Banning Committee (sorry, the “Not Allowing Certain Books To Be Acquired By The Library” committee.) In my nearly two decades in this city, I don’t recall hearing anyone say anything negative about how the libraries are run or its collection procedures. In fact, in the last decade, only a half dozen folks used the existing “Book Challenge” procedure. One was Gracey Van Der Mark, our current mayor, before she was elected. 

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In fiscal year 2022-23, the library purchased approximately 6,200 titles for children and young adults. The committee is tasked with reviewing ALL books. We’re going to let a committee of parent/guardians somehow review more than 6,000 books at two semiannual meetings with the authority to stop books from coming into our library? With their decision being final and unappealable? Why would a City Council transfer authority from highly trained librarians to a board of unelected amateurs whose only qualification is being a parent or guardian? 

This entire “exercise” in book and library policy, flags and voter ID has broken the city of Huntington Beach. National politics has no place in local government; it’s corrosive to its foundation. It may explain why all of our department heads and our city manager have quit or been forced out and why our police chief is now our interim city manager. The city of Huntington Beach is on fire; the extinguisher is a return to solving the real issues facing Huntington Beach: an imminent fiscal cliff, aging infrastructure and homelessness, not culture war solutions looking for problems that don’t exist.

Dan Kalmick is a Huntington Beach City Council member.