HUNTINGTON BEACH Central Library as seen from the Central Park (OC Tribune photo).

By Jim Tortolano/Orange County Tribune

It was loud and it was time-consuming but it wasn’t a surprise.

After two hours of public comments and another hour of arguments among themselves, the Huntington Beach City Council members voted 4-3 against a proposal to put the fate of the municipal library system before voters.

As expected, the conservative majority – Mayor Gracey Van Der Mark, Mayor Pro Tem Pat Burns and Councilmembers Casey McKeon  and Tony Strickland – outvoted the liberal minority of Councilmembers Rhonda Bolton, Dan Kalmick and Natalie Moser.

At issue was a proposed charter amendment to require a majority vote of the council and of the voting public to “approve any proposal that would change the wholesale management of the library, and/or any proposal to operate the library with a private contractor that would employ library staff to achieve savings,” and add an advisory vote of the public on “whether to hire a third-party contractor to operate the Huntington Beach Public Library.”

If approved, the matter would have come back to the council at its June 4 meeting with the intent of placing the charter amendment on the November general election ballot.

The first two hours of the meeting was taken up by public comments by 75 speakers, most of them expressing opinions about the library and most of those expressing opposition to a proposal to look into outsourcing or “privatizing” the operation of the city’s libraries.

Finally the council members took up the issue.

Kalmick said, “The people would like to have a say in this,” recasting the issue as “Do you like your library the way it is or do you think it’s broken?”

McKeon challenged the idea of putting the proposed amendment before voters. “I think it’s hypocritical,” he said that the council minority wanted a public vote on the matter while having opposed charter amendment ballot measures in March. He complained about what he called “fear-mongering” about what he called “premature assumptions” about the effect of issuing a request for proposals on hiring an outside firm to run the library system instead of city employees.

The back-and-forth between council members grew loud and the audience chimed in, too, forcing Van Der Mark to use her gavel to quiet the spectators.