Huntington Beach holds contentious second budget town hall meeting
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City council members do not typically engage with speakers making public comments at council meetings, but Wednesday night’s Huntington Beach budget town hall held no such restrictions.
And so it turned into about an hour of back-and-forth dialogue between some impassioned residents, Mayor Pat Burns and Mayor Pro Tem Casey McKeon.
The meeting at the Central Library, the second of two budget town halls in recent weeks, was designed to ask Surf City residents their take on how their vision for the community could be accomplished with limited funds. Leaders also sought input on what should be given priority in funding, and opportunities that the city should pursue.
Structural deficits are projected in Huntington Beach starting in the next fiscal year, 2025-26, the city’s interim Chief Financial Officer David Cain said in a presentation. Without action, those deficits could grow to more than $50 million by 2032.
A special election on two library initiatives, which the City Council has approved for June 10, apparently was not high on the list of things to fund for many attendees. The projected cost of the special election is anywhere from $1,190,478 to $1,315,405, per a staff report.
The initiatives seek to repeal a parent/guardian children’s book review board, as well as require voter approval before any possible outsourcing of library services in the future. Each qualified for the ballot by receiving petition signatures of more than 10% of the city’s registered voters.
Several residents asked why the council did not either go for a cheaper option in putting the initiatives on the 2026 general election ballot, or adopt them outright, instead of holding a special election.
“Can you tell me why, when we’re dealing with so many financial issues right now and efficiency is so important, why we would be putting it on the June 10 ballot?” Carol Daus asked.
McKeon responded that he and his council colleagues were elected to govern and implement policy.
“A segment of the community disagreed with a policy we did, went out and gathered signatures,” he said. “I believe it’s only appropriate for the entire electorate to weigh in on these changes to the policy that they elected us to implement.”
He added that the council has one-time funds to pay for the special election, and it doesn’t impact the city’s recurring revenues and expenses.
Residents continued to press McKeon on the library initiatives. Natalie Moser, a former member of the council, said if the panel had wanted the full electorate to weigh in, it would have put the initiatives on the general election ballot, when more people would likely vote than in a special election.
Moser then mentioned remarks that Burns made at Wednesday morning’s mayor’s breakfast. She characterized them as an example of what not to do as a leader trying to attract business, which brings in revenue.
“If the mayor of Huntington Beach is standing in front of business leaders telling them that the city is incompetent, why should any company want to invest here?” she asked. “If you’re saying that the city is incompetent, you’re saying that the workers that work at the city are incompetent. I know that they’re not, so it’s offensive to me that you talk that way in front of our business community, sir.”
Burns responded to Moser by calling her “a master at lying,” then referencing when she was censured in 2023 for questioning the appropriateness of putting Councilwoman Gracey Van Der Mark on a Policy for Human Dignity ad hoc committee.
“I never used ‘incompetent,’ I can guarantee it,” Burns said. “I just think businesses are better at running businesses than the city is, that’s all it is.”
McKeon said businesses want to come to Huntington Beach because of the city’s business-friendly environment.
One way to whittle down the budget deficit, according to McKeon, would be for the city to combine positions or outsource work. He noted that the Public Works Department outsourced work in the early 2000s for services like graffiti removal and street sweeping.
“Everything’s on the table because it has to be, but there’s no imminent, like, we’re going to slash departments and lay off people,” he said. “We’re not there yet. I don’t think we need to get there, but we need to look at every single department. That’s all we were trying to do with the library, and when we even tried to touch it, everyone went nuts and screamed about it.”
He added that he personally did not want to raise the city’s sales tax.
“To me, that’s the easy way out,” McKeon said. “A 1% sales tax increase brings another $50 million in revenue to our city, but we need to explore all of these other opportunities first.”
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