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The day before Huntington Beach city officials were set to consider turning library management over to a private organization, the final remaining company withdrew its bid.
Surf City officials have spent months debating the future of the city’s libraries, including what books should be allowed to enter the library and whether library management should be outsourced to a private company.
But council members won’t be able to decide on outsourcing at their meeting tonight after Library Systems & Services – the sole bidder left heading into Tuesday night’s meeting – dropped out of the running.
Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark and Council members Dan Kalmick and Casey McKeon did not know why the company chose to drop out, despite being the company that originally approached the city about taking over the contract.
[Read: Huntington Beach Studies Privatizing Public Library Management]
“I don’t know why they did it, but it’s their right to do that,” Van Der Mark said in a Tuesday interview. “It might not have been a good fit, and I’m alright with it.”
The company’s CEO Todd Frager did not provide a reason in his message to the city on the withdrawal, just saying the company was nixing their proposal and encouraging the city council to pull the discussion off their agenda altogether.
One prospective bidder, the EveryLibrary Institute, decided not to submit a bid after raising issues with the bidding process.
“We were concerned that the RFP requirements had been written in such a way that only one company could be scored as a fully qualified bidder,” reads a statement from the EveryLibrary Institute.
“For example, we cannot meet two requirements, both of which are heavily weighted in the final score, that proscribe all eligible references to be made by libraries and municipalities in California. When we asked, the City declined to modify that geographic limitation.”
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.
It’s been a heated discussion as opposing council members have accused each other of spreading misinformation or attacking the city library.
The council narrowly approved to authorize the bidding process in March with a 4-3 vote, with all three Democratic council members voting no.
[Read: Huntington Beach Moves Ahead on Privatizing Library Management]
In May, the council’s Democratic minority attempted to ask voters about the move through a ballot measure. 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]
Library Systems & Services operates public libraries across the country, including some locations in Riverside, San Diego, San Bernardino and Los Angeles Counties.
Despite no bidders remaining on the library, there could still be big changes coming to it in the near future, with both Van Der Mark and McKeon promising to pitch new ideas for the library’s future at tonight’s meeting, noting the city’s budget problems mean cuts may come.
Van Der Mark suggested setting up a homeschooling section in the library and noted that the proposals helped her come up with new ideas for programs.
“I got some good ideas just from this RFP,” Van Der Mark said. “We’re going to continue to look into efficiencies in every department, not just the library.”
McKeon proposed adding new fees for the library’s meeting rooms and marketing them to the business community, with other possible events to maximize the use of the space, along with replacing some of the libraries’ temporary employees with volunteers.
“We worked very hard to create operational efficiencies,” McKeon said. “Every dollar is critical.”
In a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, Kalmick said efforts would continue to place an item on the ballot to formally prohibit any future talks of privatizing the library’s management or operations.
“We will continue to collect signatures to enshrine protection of our Library into our Muni Code,” Kalmick wrote.
In a statement to Voice of OC, Kalmick said they should be focused on other ways to fix the budget beyond the library.
“I think the City should get back to figuring out how to solve the massive deficits this new Majority has run up in the last two years,” Kalmick said. “We need to govern and make hard decisions, not continue to be distracted by what’s the latest grievance on Fox News or OAN.”
Angelina Hicks is a Voice of OC Tracy Wood Reporting Fellow. Contact her at ahicks@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @angelinahicks13.
Noah Biesiada is a Voice of OC reporter and corps member with Report for America, a GroundTruth initiative. Contact him at nbiesiada@voiceofoc.org or on Twitter @NBiesiada.
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