Second Huntington Beach library petition turned in, delivered to O.C. Registrar of Voters

Volunteers have been gathering petition signatures of Huntington Beach residents for months on two issues related to the public library.

Now, the matter is quite literally out of their hands.

Boxes of petition signatures were delivered to City Hall on Monday afternoon and counted by City Clerk Robin Estanislau and her staff.

After about two hours of counting, Estanislau announced that 17,773 signatures were on the petition, which seeks to require future efforts to outsource library operations to a private company to be approved by both the City Council and voters.

“Our threshold number is 13,247,” said Friends of the Huntington Beach Public Library volunteer Paula Schaefer, a proponent of the petition. “We’re quite confident that we will have enough [signatures].”

More than 16,000 signatures were unofficially verified by the proponents.

The signatures were delivered by Estanislau and assistant City Clerk Juan Esquivel to the Orange County Registrar of Voters on Tuesday for official verification.

Boxes of signed petitions sit waiting to be reviewed at City Hall on Monday.

(Courtesy of Libby Frolichman)

The first petition sought to ask Surf City voters to repeal an up to 21-member parent/guardian advisory board that would approve children’s books before they entered the library. Those petition signatures were sent to the county late last month, and a verification — called a certificate of sufficiency — is expected to be issued by Dec. 12.

The certificate of sufficiency for the second petition delivered to City Hall this week, seeking to protect against outsourcing of services, would be issued by mid-January.

If both petitions are verified, the new City Council has several options at its Dec. 17 meeting, Estanislau told a group of about 40 observers Monday. Members could accept the petitions as written, order a report or set a date for a special election for voters to decide. They could also choose to put it on the ballot for the next general election in 2026.

The library issues wouldn’t make it onto the ballot for a special election that is set to be held by March 4 next year to elect a new state senator in District 36, Estanislau said. However, the council could set a date for a special election later in the year.

Current Huntington Beach City Councilman Tony Strickland has announced that he is running for the District 36 state senate seat vacated recently by fellow Republican Janet Nguyen, who has been elected to the Orange County Board of Supervisors. District 36 includes Huntington Beach.

“We think that the latest that [state senator special] election would take place would be March 4, and we just wouldn’t meet the deadline to consolidate on that election,” Estanislau said. “The city would be having its own election.”

Volunteers with local nonprofit Protect Huntington Beach have been fighting back against library measures enacted by the current conservative City Council majority.

The majority council members voted to put out a request for proposals for library operations earlier this year. In May, minority council members Dan Kalmick, Natalie Moser and Rhonda Bolton responded by putting forth an agenda item that would require a majority vote of both council members and Huntington Beach voters to change library management.

But that item failed 4-3, along political lines. Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark, Mayor Pro Tem Pat Burns, Strickland and Casey McKeon voted it down and accused the minority members of fear-mongering in the community, despite the more than 400 emails sent in support of the item.

Huntington Beach resident Joe Swenson observes the petition signature counting process on Monday.

(Matt Szabo)

“We were elected to make hard decisions,” Van Der Mark said at the time. “When you take those powers from us, then really, there is no point of us being here.”

The RFP continued, with Library Systems & Services putting in a bid, but the company withdrew it the day before the council was set to vote on it in June.

The second petition seeks what the outgoing council members were trying to accomplish, to stop a library outsourcing process from happening in the future without the will of the voters.

“After [the] police and fire [departments],the library is probably the most loved service that the city provides,” Schaefer said. “It’s the crown jewel of the city, it’s the architectural wonder of the city, and people feel very strongly about that. It’s a public service, it’s a public good, and it should be run and managed by professional librarians who are city employees, public employees.”

The general election earlier this month ushered in three more conservatives to the Huntington Beach City Council as well as new City Clerk Lisa Lane Barnes, who watched the proceedings Monday and took notes. Estanislau is retiring.

Bolton also watched the beginning of the counting process transpire Monday. She said the effort by the volunteers has been “really amazing.”

“Groups typically don’t think they can gather tens of thousands of signatures within a matter of months without using paid signature gatherers, but these folks were really, really committed,” Bolton said. “It’s been really gratifying to see the community come out and make its views known … People love the library. It’s an institution in the city, and people don’t want anybody to mess with it.”