Mailbag: Fiscal discipline is needed in Huntington Beach City Hall

Re “Huntington Beach council asks for a closer look at HBPD contract proposal”

The Huntington Beach City Council meeting held Aug. 18 should be a wake-up call for taxpayers. A proposed 17% pay increase over three years for police officers and the fiscal health of the city deserved thoughtful and informed discussion. Instead, some members of the council appeared unprepared and talked over their colleagues. When the city treasurer warned of the potential for Chapter 9 bankruptcy, one could hear a pin drop at the meeting.

I’m grateful for our police department and believe officers should be fairly compensated. But Huntington Beach officers already earn more than many of their counterparts in surrounding Orange County cities. Officers make an average of $326,000 a year in compensation when combining salary and overtime pay. According to the 2025 U.S. Census, the median household income in Huntington Beach was $121,000 in 2024.

Councilmembers supporting this substantial increase — including Gracey Van Der Mark, who is running for state Assembly, and Andrew Gruel, who is running to retain his City Council seat — are being financially irresponsible at a time when Huntington Beach faces a projected $15.6-million deficit. Before approving major new expenditures, the City Council should explain how it intends to close that gap and put the city on sound financial footing.

On Nov. 3, Huntington Beach taxpayers have an opportunity to elect new councilmembers who will exercise fiscal discipline rather than spend millions on questionable expenditures and costly culture-war litigation. The current council has failed as a steward of taxpayer dollars. Huntington Beach desperately needs a change.

Carol Daus
Huntington Beach

In June, the Huntington Beach City Council closed a $31-million structural deficit as required by law. About half was addressed by eliminating unfilled positions — without layoffs — and reducing transfers to the city’s general liability and retiree supplement funds. The remaining $15 million came from drawing down the general fund reserve from $96 million to $80 million. There was no effort to put the brakes on lawsuits against the state or pull back on a sweetheart deal to the council’s friend who runs the air show.

This isn’t a one-year problem. The city’s own projections show structural deficits continuing for the next five years. We cannot keep increasing expenditures without identifying sustainable, recurring revenue to pay for them.

That’s why I was surprised that an item at the Aug. 18 council meeting proposed a police officers’ memorandum of understanding (MOU) for fiscal years 2026-27 through 2028-29 with an 8% salary increase in year one, following threeyears of 5% increases.

Our officers deserve fair, competitive pay — so does every city employee. But an 8% base increase is hard to justify. Where would the revenue come from? Huntington Beach faces near-nil homebuilding, declining sales-tax revenue, and an aging population — none of which points to the growth needed to sustain rising personnel costs.

The council asked the Finance Commission to review the MOU and report back before the next meeting. The commission, in conjunction with city’s finance department and treasurer, have the expertise for the assignment.

Still, the timing raises questions. This MOU arrived just two months before an election. The day after the Aug. 18 council meeting, the Police Officer Assn. (POA) reported a maximum contribution of $5,900 to incumbent Andrew Gruel’s campaign! Police and fire unions wield significant influence in local elections through coveted endorsements. The POA should withdraw this MOU until after the Nov. 3rd election, allowing cooler heads — and possibly the incoming Council — to weigh in on this long-term financial commitment without any appearance of political influence. Every councilmember owes voters transparency about this cost and how they intend to fund it.

Pat Goodman
Huntington Beach

Boards and no books?

The Huntington Beach City Council has done it again. Through a remarkable combination of tenacity, creativity and what can only be described as cleverness, it has found yet another way to make our public libraries less useful.

We have watched this saga unfold. First came former Mayor Gracey Van der Mark’s efforts to ban books and create a commission that would control which books Huntington Beach residents could read. Accusations of pornography and pedophilia followed, and we lost talented librarians to nearby cities.

Then came the brilliant idea of privatizing our public libraries. That plan met its fate in a million-dollar special election, and — miraculously — book banning and privatization disappeared from the agenda.

But why stop there?

The Friends of the Library offered the city $750,000 to purchase books and library materials. The city refused the donation because it wanted the Friends to use the money for purposes outside its charter. Meanwhile, Huntington Beach residents are left with libraries struggling to keep their collections current.

Now we have the latest chapter: the takeover of much of the historic Main Street Library, a building prized for its natural light. The city has installed a surf museum that is not a city entity and now occupies roughly 60% of the library’s space, displacing readers and adding noise to what was once a place for quiet study and reading.

The museum even operates a shop selling surf-related merchandise. And, oddly enough, it is closed on Sunday — the same day the library is closed. One might think Sunday would be an excellent day for a surf museum.

Perhaps there is a perfectly innocent explanation for all of this. But to many Huntington Beach residents, it looks suspiciously like a strategy: squeeze the library, reduce its usefulness, and eventually declare that we don’t need as much library space after all.

At this rate, perhaps the council’s next innovation will be a library without books.

Nora Pedersen
Huntington Beach

Construction congestion

Long Beach, in L.A. County, is moving forward with a construction project on Pacific Coast Highway and Studebaker Road that will cause several massive problems. First of all, setting four buildings, one on each corner, will increase traffic because the project has clearly not taken into consideration the increased congestion on one of the main north/south arteries. PCH is quite narrow along the area from 2nd Street in Long Beach to Seal Beach Boulevard. Traffic will be backed up during and after construction. Traffic is already is worse with the additional street light at Seaport Way that is barely needed but used for the new mall at 2nd and PCH, and the bad timing of that light and the one at Studebaker and PCH. This is shortsighted to say the least.

This seems like another idea imposed from Sacramento, a government that doesn’t consider the consequences and realities for the people already residing in the area — specifically Seal Beach and Sunset Beach and other beach towns south of Long Beach.

Driving from Seal Beach or Sunset Beach to Long Beach to shop will be even harder than it already is. Finally, there are so many other possibilities for residential construction in Los Angeles County — just look out the window on the A Line and see all those nearly abandoned buildings. These could be demolished, the area cleaned up and made attractive for living space. How about some creative imagination!

Margo Kasdan
Seal Beach

AI oopsie

I always enjoy June Casagrande’s articles. This week it seems that both June and her new AI helper missed a spelling error. The capital of Colombia is Bogota, not Bogata.

Patti Burke-Pratley
San Juan Capistrano