Huntington Beach City Council candidates dish on housing, other issues at forum
Housing and the library were hot topics at a Huntington Beach City Council candidates forum held Tuesday at Golden West College, as they have been in recent months in the council chambers themselves.
With Election Day now less than two weeks away, all eight council candidates showed up to the forum.
Incumbents Dan Kalmick, Natalie Moser and Rhonda Bolton are vying to keep their seats, while Marissa Jackson, Chad Williams, Don Kennedy, Butch Twining and Amory Hanson are also trying to snag one of the three seats up for grabs.
Golden West College Political Science Professor Joel Powell served as moderator. He made it clear at the beginning that the event was a forum, not a debate.
But the conversation got more spirited later on in the 80-minute event, where the candidates fielded questions crafted by GWC students themselves. The crowd of dozens also consisted of mostly students.
The candidates’ responses revealed obvious differences between the incumbents, who typically vote the same during meetings but have found themselves in the minority on the current conservative council, and their counterparts.
The first question was about Vice President Kamala Harris’ proposal to provide up to $25,000 in down payment assistance to first-time home buyers. In Huntington Beach, people need a lot more than that when the median home sale price is $1.3 million, according to Redfin.
Moser said she was fortunate to buy her home — then the cheapest in the city — for $275,000 in the early 2000s.
“There need to be thoughtful proposals, to be able to encourage thoughtful housing developments and be able to encourage folks like you to stay here in Huntington Beach,” she said to the students. “I want all of you to be able to have the opportunity to be able to thrive here, should you choose. I don’t want you to have to live two hours away and come back and work here.”
Kennedy, who sits on the Planning Commission, told the students what he called the reality, rather than what they simply wanted to hear.
“You can’t build your way out of this,” he said. “I can tell you, there is incredible opportunity and affordable housing throughout this country. You might not live by the beach, but the way you get into home ownership is you live and work where you can afford.”
The conversation moved to state housing mandates, specifically that Huntington Beach needs to zone for 13,368 new units during the current Regional Housing Needs Assessment cycle.
Kalmick noted that of that number, about 5,000 are market rate units, meaning it’s not all affordable housing.
“We had our massive growth between 1960 and 1980, and the folks who got in then lucked out,” he said. “When we see our major employers like Boeing, Quiksilver, Safran, can’t have their engineers and their top folks afford to live here? You’ve broken your city.”
Twining, Williams and Kennedy — who call themselves the HB3 — each said that they oppose the housing mandates that City Atty. Michael Gates is currently fighting on appeal in both federal and state court.
“This is absolutely a worthy fight,” said Williams, a former U.S. Navy SEAL, using the now-familiar word of “unleashing” Gates to fight Sacramento. “As a charter city, we are given home rule authority over municipal affairs. Don’t mistake it, this comes from the highest authority in the state, the California Constitution.”
Bolton, a lawyer by trade, had a different perspective.
“If you ask a surgeon how to address a problem, they’ll tell you that you need to operate,” she said. “I think you can say the same of lawyers. I’m a lawyer by training, but I am not going to tell you that litigation is the only way to solve this policy question.”
One GWC student asked a question about ensuring inclusion and diversity in Huntington Beach, mentioning topics like the re-cataloging of books in the library and policies that prevent the LGBTQ+ Pride flag from flying in Huntington Beach.
Jackson, a mother of five, said that she wouldn’t want her children to see inappropriate books that had pornography, obscenity or “anything she didn’t agree with.”
“I’ve talked to other mothers that feel the same way,” she said. “They don’t even go to the library anymore because of that issue.”
Moser, however, said someone told her at another event that pornographic books in the library did not align with that person’s Christian values. Moser then said pointedly that there was no pornography in the library, repeating herself for emphasis.
“Changing access is ultimately banning books,” she said. “We can get into the semantics of all of that, but I want the books on puberty to be able to be available for those who are going through it, not to have their parents bring them up to the fourth floor in order to see that book. That’s unacceptable to me.”
Petitions have been circulating for months against the city’s parent/guardian book review committee, which was approved by the current council majority last year but is yet to be implemented. Last month, Gov. Gavin Newsom also signed AB 1825, known as the “Freedom to Read Act,” which Gates has vowed to fight.
“That committee has the ability to stop the purchase of books based on no criteria other than the political appointee’s beliefs,” said Kalmick, adding that he helped draft the petitions. “That is banning books from the library.”
Kennedy said that just because he thinks a book should be moved, that doesn’t mean he doesn’t support everyone’s right to be who they are.
“When you continue to tell somebody that’s a young and impressionable person that your thought today is who you are tomorrow, every tomboy here would have been self-declared as potentially trans, LGBTQ,” Kennedy said. “The bottom line is, when they’re young and impressionable, you have to allow them to grow their own beliefs as kids with parental involvement, not reinforce one behavior because that’s an agenda you want to push forward.”
Bolton called any suggestion that an LGBTQ+ person is made and not born “absolute nonsense.”
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