Huntington Beach residents are once again headed into a debate about the future of their local libraries as city leaders discuss whether to turn over library management to a private company and establish a committee to decide what books children can access.
The debates on both issues come after the city council spent dozens of hours discussing libraries last year, including during a discussion about potentially closing several library branches that city council members opted not to move forward on.
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The idea of privatizing the library’s management came from former Mayor Mike Posey, who reached out to city staff on behalf of Library Systems and Services, a company known for taking over public libraries and ousting librarian unions.
The company isn’t mentioned by name on the city council agenda, but a Voice of OC investigation confirmed they reached out to the city to start the discussion.
[Read: Huntington Beach Studies Privatizing Public Library Management]
As of Thursday morning, there was no staff report prepared to review the impacts of library privatization, but the agenda highlights the plan would be to search for a possible vendor to take over.
The discussion comes as city council members have taken a renewed interest in what books are available at public libraries, with the council’s Republican majority taking steps to pull any books containing discussions on sex or sexuality out of the library’s teen or children’s sections.
Rather than oversee the process themselves, council members voted to create a 21-person panel that would review what books could enter the library and what existing books would be moved to a restricted section.
[Read: Huntington Beach Creates Panel To Decide What Books Go Into City Library]
Despite city council members voting 4-3 to move forward with a review panel last October, the program has sat idle since then.
But librarians started removing books from shelves last month, setting up a new section in the library with warning signs around it announcing there was sexual content in the books.
When several council members of the Democratic minority asked questions about how the book reviews were being implemented during a February council meeting, their colleagues said they were trying to dredge up the debate again.
“I just think this item is just trying to re-debate the item we passed,” said Councilman Tony Strickland. “You didn’t like the first vote, so now you want to come in and push.”
Now, city staff have proposed some new rules that would govern how the panel of 21 appointed residents could do its job.
Under the proposal, each council member would appoint up to three people to the board, who would then be responsible for reading and reviewing all children’s books librarians want to purchase.
Which books ultimately get purchased would be up to the board, with board members also able to suggest books for the library to purchase or call for existing books to be taken out of general circulation.
While the book review board’s meetings will be public, their decisions are “final and non-appealable,” according to the staff report.
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.
