Agenda Is Gender in Coast City

A simple matter of housecleaning. That’s what the Seal Beach city clerk said is behind the measure on Tuesday’s city ballot that seeks to eliminate the use of male-only gender references like “he” and “his” in the city charter.

Shucks. No feminists burning brooms. No downtown blockades by protesters of the city’s Historic District. Just chalk it up to modernization.

“We had some old charter language that refers to city jobs all as ‘he,’” said City Clerk Joanne Yeo. “And we’re trying to bring the city’s charter into the 21st century.”

Example: “The City Manager will be responsible for the City Council. He will....”

Goodbye pronoun, hello equality. If perturbed, thank city officials. They wanted to raise the city manager’s threshold to authorize contracts without council approval from $5,000 to $20,000 and needed to change the charter.

Along the way, they found a few cobwebs in the language that governs this sleepy little coastal Shangri-La.

In its early days, Seal Beach had a reputation for its gambling and houses of prostitution. The city was well-known to sailors, explained historian Gordon Shanks, who helped bring back a Pacific Electric Red Car to the city in 1972, which now serves as a museum. “This was in the 1920s and 1930s when sailors would get off boats at Long Beach and take a cab to Seal Beach to take advantage of gambling and prostitution,” Shanks said.

Long Beach had been founded “by conservatives,” he said, and Seal Beach was the Southland’s Las Vegas, and no one in Long Beach could change it, “because it was across the county line.”

By the time the city chose a charter in 1964, it had cleaned up its act. The recreation of choice became surfing as blond-haired locals humming Beach Boys tunes rode long boards near the famed pier.

What did it matter that every job description in the charter made it look like Dude City?

According to the city attorney’s impartial analysis, a yes vote on the measure, designated SS, will replace gender-based designations in the city charter with gender-neutral terms. A no vote retains the current language.

It’s a choice that has many residents just rolling their eyes.

“You’d think the city would have something better to do with their time,” said one of the gray-haired male retirees sitting in a chair at the Main Street Barber Shop.

But for Kimberly Salter, “I think it’s about education and we have to educate people [that] not everybody is a he and not everyone is a she.” Salter is president of a local branch of the National Organization for Women. “If you have a daughter at school and she hears that the city manager is a he and the coach is a he, it sinks into [her] subconscious. You don’t want your daughters thinking, ‘I can’t do that job because only a man can do it,’” she said.