Voter Game Plan: A guide to Huntington Beach’s special election on public libraries

In a special election on June 10, Huntington Beach voters will decide on two ballot measures:

• Whether to overturn a committee of City Council appointees charged with reviewing children’s books and determining whether they’re appropriate.
• Whether to make it more difficult for the city government to sell or outsource management of the city’s public libraries. 

Official titles on the ballot: 

Measure A: Community Parent Review Board

• A "yes" vote on Measure A means: The ordinance establishing the community review board will be repealed. It will be replaced with minimum standards for librarians to select materials for the library that present a range of diverse viewpoints.
• A "no" vote on Measure A means: The community review board will not be repealed.

Measure B: Public Operation of Library

What your vote means

• A "yes" vote on Measure B means: The city would only be able to sell one of its public libraries or outsource library services if the city declares a fiscal emergency or voters approve the sale or outsourcing in a special or general election.

• A "no" vote on Measure B means: The city can consider selling a public library or outsourcing services.

Understanding the issues

The beach city’s libraries have been a point of controversy since 'MAGA' conservatives won a majority of elected seats on the City Council. One of them, Councilmember Gracey Van Der Mark, has made it a major focus of her political career to try to get books removed from school and city libraries that she believes have inappropriate sexual content.

"What we're trying to do is take our library back to the days where our kids were able to go to the children's section and run around and open books and look at the pictures and read and have it be safe the way it used to be," she told LAist last year.

Elsewhere in Southern California and across the nation, children’s and young adult books — especially those with LGBTQ characters and themes, and books about sex and sexual health — have become a flashpoint in the so-called culture wars. The Supreme Court is currently reviewing a case filed by parents in Montgomery County, Maryland, who want to exempt their children from public school instruction that includes reading books with LGBTQ themes because of religious beliefs.

The backstory

In 2023, Van Der Mark spearheaded an ordinance, backed by her fellow conservative council members, to establish a board of local parents and guardians to review books for children and teens proposed for library acquisition and vote on whether the books are appropriate. The board can also review books already in the library and decide whether minors need parental permission to check them out.

The City Council also ordered librarians to remove books with “sexual content” from the children’s section of the library. Initially, the librarians were instructed to remove any books showing body parts that typically would be under a bathing suit. That led librarians to move books about the human body, development, and puberty to a high shelf in the adult section of the library. You can see the most recent list of removed books here.

The backlash was swift, with opponents accusing city leaders of censorship. They mounted a petition drive to get the board repealed, which is now Measure A.

Gov. Gavin Newsom also signed a bill last year, the “Freedom to Read Act,” aimed squarely at prohibiting the kind of book restrictions Huntington Beach has enacted for its libraries.

What the review board ordinance says

The library review board, which hasn't been officially established yet, would vote on whether a book meets “community standards for material acceptable for children's access, including books that may contain sexual content or sexual references.”

“Community standards” is defined as the review board’s determination of whether or not a book is appropriate. Examples given of “sexual content” include “sex, sexual organs, sex acts, relationships of sexual nature, or sexual relations in any form.”

The board can also review children’s books currently in the library and decide whether to move them to the adult section and require a parent’s consent to check them out.

Each council member would appoint two members to the board, and the board’s decisions would be final and unappealable.

Review board faces lawsuit

Two Huntington Beach teens, backed by the ACLU and the First Amendment Coalition, sued the city earlier this year over the book review board and its new policy of restricting minors from accessing library books with sexual content.

A city spokesperson told LAist that because of the pending lawsuit, the review board has yet to be established.

Controversy over 'PORN' signs

Some of the many campaign signs seen in Huntington Beach as the city prepares to vote June 10 on two controversial library measures.

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Jill Replogle

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LAist

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Last month, in the run up to the June special election, supporters of the book review board posted campaign signs around Huntington Beach reading “Protect our kids from porn” in big block letters. The complaints began immediately, to schools, city leaders, and in online forums, including this comment on a local Facebook page directed at City Councilmember Chad Williams: “Chad Williams got a whole city full of kids googling ‘What is Porn’ on their smart phones, exposing them to more images online than any books in the library ever will.”

Williams defended the campaign tactic. “The bottom line is there’s pornography that’s available to minors in our public library,” he told LAist at the time. “I’m not going to dance around the subject, it needs to be addressed.”

According to Cornell Law School’s online dictionary of legal terms, the definition of pornography is “material that depicts nudity or sexual acts for the purpose of sexual stimulation.” It is illegal in the U.S. to distribute pornography to minors.

At a recent City Council meeting, supporters of the book review board read graphic passages from books they said were in the Huntington Beach library.

What supporters of Measure A say

Supporters say the book review board Measure A would repeal replaces experienced librarians with untrained political appointees with the power to decide which books kids can access in the city’s library.

They say there’s already a mechanism in place for adults to submit a complaint about a book in the library, which kickstarts a review and potential relocation or removal of the book.

What opponents of Measure A say

Opponents of Measure A, who want to keep the book review board, say the board gives the community greater decision-making power over which books are appropriate for Huntington Beach children.

They say the review board provides a safeguard to make sure children don’t have access to obscene or sexually explicit content in the library without parental consent.

Understanding the second measure on the ballot —Measure B

Around the same time the City Council passed the book review board, they voted to explore the possibility of turning over management of the city’s libraries to a private company.

The idea was immediately controversial, and the sole company that submitted a bid pulled out at the last minute. The City Council has not publicly explored the idea of privatization or outsourcing since then.

But advocates for Measure A decided to mount a second petition drive to put strict limits on the city’s ability to ever sell or privatize the library or otherwise outsource library services. That became Measure B.

What supporters of Measure B say

Supporters of Measure B say the measure will ensure that residents have the final say on any decision to privatize the public library system. And they argue that the measure allows the city enough flexibility to make tough decisions about the budget.

What opponents of Measure B say

Opponents of Measure B argue that the measure would take away the city’s ability to make budget decisions regarding the library, thereby potentially jeopardizing the city’s overall fiscal health.

Further reading

There's a lot of information about the two ballot measures on the city’s website, including:

• Full text of Measure A
• Full text of Measure B
• Official arguments for and against Measure A
• Official arguments for and against Measure B
• Campaign finance information (who spent how much to sway your vote)

Need to know how and where to vote? The Orange County Registrar of Voters has information on the time and place of vote centers and secure ballot drop boxes, and how to mail in your ballot.

You can also track your ballot and make sure it gets counted by signing up for alerts on the registrar’s website.