August 30, 2023
Mayor and City Council,
I would be privileged to be reappointed as City Archivist.
It has been a pleasure and honor to serve our city in this capacity and I hope to continue to do so.
In the next several years, we will be celebrating remarkable milestones in our city’s history. Our City Hall and Central Park will turn 50 in 2024, as will several other landmarks in our community. In that same year, our Community Services Department and Community Services Commission will celebrate 75 years of service to Huntington Beach. These types of anniversaries and commemorations will continue for the next few years because the mid-1970’s was a time of significant growth and change in our city.
As City Archivist, I will continue to work – as I have done in anticipation of these events for the past few years - to support our elected officials and decision-makers in their commemoration.
I will also work to build on my successful work receiving, organizing and processing historic materials, both from city sources and the public and making them available. Most recently, we acquired all of the original construction and founding materials of the Huntington Beach Youth Shelter and important materials documenting the history of our July 4th Parade among much else.
I also work to share the history of our city and the role of municipal archives at various conferences and public events. Speaking at national conferences each year, at no cost to the city, I also speak to local groups frequently.
I will continue to write informative guides for public use. This year, I wrote “History Online!”, explaining our city’s photo and record database and also access to the many films digitized by the Cal Revealed program worth many thousands of dollars and completely free to the city. This is a grant I write annually and we are now in our 5th successful grant year. Our films have garnered national and even international attention.
When we had a departmental records flood due to rain a few months ago, I was so pleased to be able to contribute my training in archival disaster management to salvage these records - two weeks of daily all-day work in an enclosed room with three large dehumidifiers running constantly. If a contractor had been hired to do this work, it would have cost the city well over $10,000.
Please consider my reappointment application. It is my pleasure and privilege to serve Huntington Beach.
Kathie A. Schey