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Huntington Beach officials won’t be outsourcing library management to a private company after council members publicly acknowledged staunch resident opposition against the move.
The end of the privatization efforts come after the sole bidder withdrew its proposal at the 11th hour.
[Read: Surf City’s Move to Privatize Public Libraries Falls Apart at 11th Hour]
Even though Huntington Beach City Council members weren’t able to vote on outsourcing at the meeting Tuesday night, the Republican majority – who originally voted to accept applications along party lines – backed down from pushes toward privatization.
Councilmember Tony Strickland said meetings with residents revealed that the majority of the public doesn’t favor outsourcing library services.
“Even after discussions with a lot of folks in the community, the community pretty much said even with the possible savings they didn’t want to contract out for the library services,” Strickland said during the meeting. “That’s what we ended today. That’s where we are.”
Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark said the process “worked out as it should” and that she’s “glad at this point this is over.”
“If it wasn’t a good fit, it wasn’t a good fit,” Van Der Mark said.
Library Systems & Services – the sole bidder heading into the meeting – dropped out of the running on Monday, leaving the council with an agendized discussion but no bidders left.
When contacted Monday morning, Van Der Mark and Councilmembers Dan Kalmick and Casey McKeon said they didn’t know why Library Systems & Services chose to drop out even though the company originally approached the city about taking over the contract.
The debate over library privatization has been split along the council’s party lines, with the Republican majority expressing a need to pull books containing discussions on sex or sexuality out of the library’s children and teen sections.
Pushes for outsourcing also came from desires to increase efficiency and find cost-saving measures within the libraries.
At Tuesday’s council meeting, McKeon said he wasn’t going to support the change in library management because it did more harm than good.
“At the end of the day, I was not willing to move forward with this proposal as I’m not convinced that the financial savings could be guaranteed, and I don’t believe they outweighed the negative community impact,” McKeon said.
McKeon also expressed an interest in advertising library meeting rooms or theater areas for rent to increase revenue.
It’s been a heated discussion over the past year as opposing council members have accused each other of spreading misinformation or attacking the city library.
The decision to put out a call for proposals was also split along party lines.
The council narrowly approved to begin the bidding process in March with a 4-3 vote, with all three Democratic council members voting against the item.
[Read: Huntington Beach Moves Ahead on Privatizing Library Management]
In May, the council’s Democratic minority tried to push this issue on the ballot instead.
The action would have let voters decide if they wanted to move forward with having a private company take over managing the public library.
But the Republican majority shot down the move, saying they wanted to study the issue and get more information on how to save the city some money on library management.
[Read: Huntington Beach Leaders Shoot Down Putting Library Outsourcing on the Ballot]
During Tuesday’s meeting, the council’s Democratic minority criticized the bidding process, saying it took up staff time and didn’t produce enough useful research that the council could use moving forward.
“In the future, I would hope that if another situation like this presents itself it will not be conducted like this,” Councilmember Rhonda Bolton said. “There was no reason to go straight to an RFP. I think that just created unnecessary concern on the part of the community.”
Angelina Hicks is a Voice of OC Tracy Wood Reporting Fellow. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.
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