The newly elected conservative majority on the Huntington Beach, California, City Council—Mayor Tony Strickland, Mayor Pro Tem Gracey Van Der Mark, and councilmen Casey McKeon and Pat Burns—hit the ground running during their first meeting on Dec. 20.
In a nearly four-hour meeting, the seven-member council granted a pay raise for its city attorney, approved a study into possibly withdrawing from the Orange County Power Authority, and ended its own COVID-19 state of emergency, which means all councilors will now be required to attend meetings in person.
They additionally took action on homelessness, crime, business integrity, and fighting state-mandated high-density housing, promises the foursome said they would tackle in their respective campaigns.
Regarding the pay for City Attorney Michael Gates, the council voted 4 to 3 to increase his pay from $117.63 to $140 an hour, described as an adjustment for inflation.
The council also voted 4 to 3—with Dan Kalmick, Rhonda Bolton, and Natalie Moser in opposition—to ask for information about a controversial report, requested by the previous council, regarding a lawsuit involving Gates and former Assistant City Attorney Scott Field.
“The previous council hired an outside attorney behind closed doors, and in secret in direct violation of our charter,” said McKeon. “In order to make sure this doesn’t happen again, we need to get to the bottom of what happened.”
While most Orange County cities remain in a state of emergency allowing remote and video conference meetings, the council again voted 4 to 3—with Kalmick, Bolton, and Moser against—to end the order and require in-person meetings.
“It’s outdated. It should be gone,” said Burns.
The state of emergency for California expires at the end of February, according to a recent announcement by Gov. Gavin Newsom.
Again with a 4 to 3 vote, the council voted for city staff to conduct a study into the options and costs if the city were to withdraw from the Orange County Power Authority.
The new majority also took up what they said were concerns about some of the city’s code enforcement of businesses, which it said were violations submitted anonymously and were, therefore, unfair to the business because they could not be verified.
“[Business owners] shouldn’t live in fear,” said Van Der Mark. “We have seen that our code of enforcement has been weaponized, and unfortunately because of people who do things like this, we have to remove the anonymity to protect the businesses.”
The council voted 4 to 3 to end acceptance of such anonymous submissions.
The council also approved voting 5 to 2, with Bolton and Moser opposing, for city staff to prepare a report on anti-encampment laws and enforcement regarding homelessness.
Unlike most items, the full seven-member council supported a motion requesting city staff and police to conduct a report on crime statistics—theft from businesses home invasions, of note—and present their findings at the council’s next meeting on Jan. 17.
Lastly, the council voted 4 to 3—with Kalmick, Bolton, and Moser against—to allow Gates, its city attorney, to challenge the state’s mandate for the city to plan for more than 13,000 new housing units by October 2029.
The requirements “violate our local charter and local controls of the city,” McKeon said.
Gates will also return to the city council with a recommended ordinance to ban “builder’s remedy” developments, which are projects aligned with a set of state laws that allow builders to begin new projects without local oversight if a city is out of compliance with state housing rules.
