Huntington Beach’s City Council majority voted this week on a tight 4-3 margin to leave the California League of Cities this week over the municipal lobbying group’s support for Proposition 1 – citing fears it could proliferate group homes in neighborhoods.
“This is unforgivable and we cannot continue sending tax dollars to an organization that hurt us so badly,” said City Councilman Casey McKeon, who spearheaded the move, during Tuesday’s council meeting.
Surf City is the second Orange County city to leave the lobbying group over the statewide initiative, following Newport Beach’s March 12 withdrawal.
[Read: Newport Beach Bails on CA League of Cities Over Prop 1]
The proposition is a statewide ballot measure that could see $6.4 billion in bonds aimed at addressing mental health issues and providing more housing for homeless people. It could also restructure some of the mental health funding at the county level.
[Read: How Will California’s Prop. 1 Impact Orange County’s Mental Health Funding?]
Connor Medina, regional public affairs director for the League of Cities, urged city council members to postpone the decision so the organization can highlight what it does for Surf City.
“Respectfully, Cal Cities strongly disagrees with the assertions of the memo on the March 19 agenda. Furthermore, the justifications the memo provides for withdrawing from Cal Cities are inconsistent with the City’s legislative platform,” Medina wrote council members on Tuesday.
McKeon said the move sends a message to the League.
“The only way to change is our control over the purse strings, we pay $40,000 a year and Newport just pulled out and I agree with their reasons and I think we should do the same,” McKeon told his colleagues.
As of Thursday evening, the Prop 1 ballot measure was passing with a little more than a 29,000-vote margin.
Huntington Beach City Council members Rhonda Bolton, Dan Kalmick and Natalie Moser voted against the move.
Even More Group Homes?
The primary concern over Prop 1 from council members in Newport Beach and Surf City is the potential proliferation of more group homes – mental health and drug addiction treatment facilities – in residential neighborhoods.
City officials are often hamstrung in regulating the state-licensed group homes because that ability rests with the California Department of Health Care Services – a regulation process State Auditor Grant Parks was examining, but the audit is currently on hold.
According to a January analysis conducted for Mission Viejo by Townsend Public Affairs, Prop 1 would give the opportunity for more group homes to open up.
“Proposition 1 allows for a by right, streamlined approval process for developments funded by the bond. Developments that fall under the category of a behavioral health treatment and residential setting,” reads the analysis, adding that drug addiction treatment facilities are included.
“If projects meet the above criteria, and receive funding through the bond, cities will still be able to apply objective design standards to these projects but will otherwise be limited in their ability to slow down or stop a project from being constructed,” reads the analysis.
Orange County Grand Jurors found out the region has some of the densest clusters of group homes – especially along the coast.
“Orange County has some of the heaviest concentrations of group homes and sober living residences in the nation. The densities are more than the local population can bear and residents believe the influx of the group home residents seriously impacts their neighborhoods,” reads a 2023 OC Grand Jury report on the issue.
“Similarly, group home and sober living industry experts cite negative impacts on the group home residents themselves.”
Surf City Lambasts League of Cities
Huntington Beach City Councilman Tony Strickland, a former state senator, lambasted the organization’s support of Prop 1.
“They shouldn’t have been on board Prop 1 in the first place,” Strickland said. “Their job is to represent us at the local government and not represent Gavin Newsom.”
But not all of his colleagues were ready to bail out of the League of California Cities.
“Since we’ve already paid our dues, why not table this until December,” Kalmick told his colleagues Tuesday. “There’s no guarantee that we get our money back from them.”
Bolton said the municipal lobbying organization provides critical training for new council members and staff – on top of keeping tabs on the state legislature.
“So how are we going to monitor all of the stuff that goes on … in the absence of CalCities, which does a lot of the work for cities to understand all of these complicated bills,” Bolton said.
Moser tried delaying the move in an effort to get a better understanding of the situation.
“At least with Newport, they did it in a way that asked for public input,” Moser said, referring to a Newport Beach City Council discussion in December. “We already spent the money, we don’t know if we’re going to get the money back.”
Moser, who was appointed by her colleagues to the League of California Cities, said the group’s been fighting for tighter state regulations over sober living homes and other group homes.
In his Tuesday letter to city council members, Medina – the regional director for the league – said the organization can help advocate for Huntington Beach at the state level.
“I sincerely believe in the power Orange County cities harness when expressing their voice as a united front. There are many ways Cal Cities, as a statewide association, has and will assist cities like Huntington Beach in ways that are significantly more difficult to achieve when advocating as a single city.”
Spencer Custodio is the civic editor. You can reach him at scustodio@voiceofoc.org. Follow him on Twitter @SpencerCustodio.
•••
Can you support Voice of OC with a donation?
You obviously care about local news and value good journalism here in Orange County. With your support, we can bring you more stories like these.