Mailbag: Council chaos a reflection of Surf City divisiveness

Even though outsourcing of library management was no longer on the agenda due to the withdrawal of Library Systems & Services, the sole bidder, a Huntington Beach City Council meeting once again devolved into chaos (Trouble in Surf City: Polarized Huntington Beach City Council squabbles over library proposal process, Daily Pilot, June 19).

Right at the get-go, Mayor Pro Tem Pat Burns demanded that Councilwoman Natalie Moser remove the tiny Pride flag in front of her on the dais, in recognition of Pride Month. His true colors are showing, and they’re not the colors of the rainbow. Several public speakers recommended censure of Burns for calling the three minority council members “pieces of s**t” when they walked out of the previous meeting to protest his agenda item. No censure, no apology. Instead, he doubled down and labeled them narcissistic for assuming he was referring to them. It’s a very poor reflection on our city that our next mayor would behave in such an outrageous manner.

Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark lectured us on polarization in the community due to all the lying and fear-mongering, called for cohesion, then immediately launched an attack on minority Councilman Dan Kalmick. Her hypocrisy is stunning, having banned the minority council members from nearly all committees and commissions. The polarization and lack of cohesion is coming from the MAGA majority on the dais. Mayor Gracey deals in selective enforcement of decorum in the council chamber, pounding her gavel at Protect HB people, but not at those on the MAGA side. Apparently the rules of decorum apply only to those she disagrees with; those who support the MAGA agenda can get away with just about anything, including harassing Protect HB and LGBTQ+ speakers. MAGA speakers harangue us, flip us off, call us pedophiles and perverts, and we’re not allowed to respond upon threat of eviction.

In the meantime, we are still collecting signatures on two petitions to protect our beloved library from those who would do it damage. The majority four are an embarrassment to Huntington Beach and cannot be trusted.

Michele Burgess
Huntington Beach

My thought upon reading recent Daily Pilot reporting about the June 18 City Council meeting in Huntington Beach: We are truly not in Kansas anymore. It is bad enough that Mayor Pro Tem Pat Burns clearly referred to elected board members as pieces of excrement. In the moment, he no doubt pictured himself as some lonely crusader, bravely saying what needed to be said. Far from behaving like the lion he imagines himself to be, he cowardly turned tail and refused to own his words. I will leave it to Daily Pilot readers to decide which of City Council members Tony Strickland or Casey McKeon displayed the requisite heartlessness and stupidity to claim the roles of the Scarecrow or Tin Man in our little civic production. There is plenty of shortsighted cruelty instigated by the council majority to go around, particularly in transforming the Central Library from a refuge for the unhoused children of this city into a crater-marked no-mans-land in their culture war.

But let us not be distracted by the fireworks in the chamber of the Great and Powerful: The legal “wizard” behind the curtain, City Atty. Michael Gates, will have to decide by Friday, June 21, if he will further appeal the release of the airshow settlement. He claims that he will only do so under council direction. This direction will have to come from the final member of our little production. I write not of Dorothy (meek and mild of Kansas), but rather the other raven-haired someone who is afraid of having a housing element dropped upon her out of the troubled sky.

Galen Pickett
Huntington Beach

Due in no small part to exposure in the Daily Pilot, everyone in coastal Orange County is aware of how dysfunctional local government has become in Huntington Beach. That dysfunction was on full display at the June 18 City Council meeting where council members squabbled on the dais and over 30 residents skewered the council majority in public comments over the failed attempt to outsource library operations to a private for-profit company. The lame attempt to justify the outrageous lengths the amateur authoritarians went through to ostensibly achieve “efficiencies” in budget savings to paper over fiscal deficits of their own making was cringe-worthy. The majority’s attempt to demonize Councilman Dan Kalmick in particular for being “divisive” was more than the pot calling the kettle black. It was the height of hypocrisy and irony that has flowed freely since the majority came to power in 2022. And yet it was a cathartic experience for many in the full house chamber audience. The cold truth setting in is that these political poseurs are not only incapable of leading but wholly unfit for office. It will require residents taking charge of their own civic destiny for the community to weather this dysfunctional storm until 2026 and then chart a new course for the future. We are lucky the Daily Pilot and other media are standing up for us in this endeavor.

Tim Geddes
Huntington Beach