From: Paula Schaefer
To: CITY COUNCIL (INCL. CMO STAFF)
Cc: [email protected]; [email protected]; [email protected] Subject: Agenda Item # 15 - Delete the Parent Guardian Book Review Committee from City"s Municipal Code and Website Date: Monday, August 18, 2025 4:02:19 PM
Council Members:
I urge you to approve Resolution 2025-57. Doing so recognizes that the success of Measure A requires the Parent Guardian Book Review Committee be deleted from the City's Municipal Code.
Upon approving this Resolution, the following instructions should also be given to City Staff:
1. Instruct City staff to remove this Committee from the list of boards and commissions and delete the application for appointment to this Committee.
2. Instruct the Director of Community and Library Services to update the Library's collection and review policies to comply with the terms of Measure A as stated in Municipal code section 2.30.090.
The current policies do not conform to section 2.30.090 or to the enacted California Freedom to Read Act (AB 1825). This law requires every public library jurisdiction, as defined, that directly receives any state funding to establish, adopt, and maintain a written and publicly accessible collection development policy for its libraries by January 1, 2026.
Paula A. Schaefer
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Subject: Tuesday 8/19 agenda Items 15, 27, & unagendized item Date: Monday, August 18, 2025 4:14:20 PM
City Council –
I believe that your resolution 2025-57, item # 15 on the consent calendar, falls well short of what you are obligated to do.
Measure A, which passed by a nearly 2:1 margin, did not call for you to make a resolution that resolution 2023-41 was no longer in effect. It called for the complete repeal of the ordinance that resolution created, as well as the creation of a new section of the Huntington Beach Municipal Code that defines the “Selection and Use of Library Materials”.
That’s not a resolution stating that the prior policy is no longer in effect – it is a complete repeal of Chapter 2.66 of the Huntington Beach Municipal Code that resolution 2023-41 created.
You may think that placing this in the consent calendar is a way to avoid having to openly admit the outcome of the election, but it reads more like you trying to stick your thumb in the eye of the 2/3 of voters who approved Measure A.
Next, at a time when the city is in significant financial distress, the appointment of a new city treasurer, with no statement of qualifications, no resume, no biography – that is zero information about the candidate - is distressing, to say the least. The one piece of information that is readily accessible is that the candidate donated to the campaigns of the three most recently elected council members. The aroma that this gives off is unsavory, at best.
Finally, I will note that Council members McKeon and Kennedy have repeatedly stressed how they are ensuring that all the city’s leaseholders are being efficiently billed and tracked for payment. How is it then that the International Surf Museum is being considered for relocation into the Main Street Library? The International Surf Museum, up until mere days ago, was 13 months in arrears on its lease payments. In what world does a city in financial distress consider moving a tenant with a demonstrated record of non-payment into a larger, more expensive location? And is it coincidental that, within days of this delinquency being uncovered via a CPRA, the tenant paid the amount in arrears? And why would this even be considered in the first place when the consultant for the Library plan stated publicly that the concepts, functions, and use of a library and a museum make them incompatible in the same structure?
David Rynerson
Huntington Beach