Santa Clara’s 13-member charter review committee has completed its work on the city’s first major charter overhaul since 1951, with results headed to a City Council study session on June 9.

The goal of the overhaul was principally housekeeping and modernizing: making the charter more logical and easier to understand, bringing it into conformance with current law, and reflecting current procedures and modern business practices. If the City Council approves the changes, the new charter will be on the ballot next November.

The most visible change is structural: the 18 articles of the 1951 charter are consolidated into nine, the language is more readable, and a glossary defines formal terms. The remaining changes update city government to conform to new practices like district council elections and biennial budgets, with the most significant changes to finance and procurement.

The following summary is presented alphabetically.

Boards and Commissions

The Board of Library Trustees is proposed to expand from five to seven members. Rather than overseeing library administration — which hasn’t been the case in years — the board will approve or disapprove the library director and, with the director, set policies on collections, lending, patron conduct, and meeting room use, while advising the Council on facilities plans, budget, and significant donations.

A new provision makes the Salary Setting Commission an official city commission, and gives it authority over compensation, including benefits, of all elected officials.

City Clerk/Assistant City Clerk

The elected city clerk and county registrar’s role in city elections is defined. A new Senior Assistant City Clerk position is designated in the charter. The assistant clerk is responsible for day-to-day administrative duties: attending Council meetings, maintaining records, and administering oaths for appointed officials.*

City Council

The proposal articulates expectations for council members — attending meetings; listening to public input; placing city interests above their personal interests and conducting themselves “in a professional and courteous manner.” The draft also includes explicit prohibition of “councilmanic interference” — council members circumventing the city manager to give direction to city employees.

A 4/5 council vote will continue to be required to fill vacancies, otherwise an election must be held. The draft also clearly articulates the two-term lifetime limit for council members and mayors elected after 2016.**

Civil Service

Changes to civil service provisions are unlikely because the city’s unions haven’t approved proposed changes. There is no information about the nature of any disagreements, nor any visibility of discussions.

Elected Police Chief

The most controversial topic in the charter is the elected police chief. The committee was given the restriction that changing the method of choosing the police chief was off-limits.

The new charter formally designates the Chief of Police as head of the Police Department, responsible for supervision, management, and administration, and required to advise the City Council and City Manager on public safety, leaving questions of appointing and supervisory authority unresolved.

The proposed charter adds to police chief qualifications a requirement for POST — Police Officer Standards and Training — Management Certificate, considered equivalent to lieutenant-level experience. All Santa Clara police chiefs in the last 30 years have met this standard in practice, though not all formally held the certificate, according to City Attorney Glen Googins.

Concerns that increasing qualifications would reduce the pool of police chief candidates — they must be registered voters living in Santa Clara — drove the qualifications deliberations, judging from remarks made at full committee meetings. While the charter requires the police chief to meet the same qualifications as Sheriff, it is less than what’s required by other California cities like San José.

Fiscal Administration

The city’s budgeting is updated to allow biennial budgeting, reflecting current practice. An important change is that public works procurement will now be able to use modern procurement tools like design-build and best value contracts. This is significant for many infrastructure projects to be undertaken under 2024’s Measure I.

Instead of a fixed dollar threshold, the new charter leaves it to the council to define by ordinance which projects require council approval and which can be approved by the city manager.

Transfers between departments or funds of existing appropriations will continue to require a five-vote supermajority, but appropriating new revenues like grants, or reducing expenditures based on savings will require only a simple majority.

Parkland Protections

After some heated discussion among the whole committee, the existing two-thirds voter approval requirement for sale or change of use of dedicated parklands was retained.

New provisions were added allowing the lease of dedicated parkland for less than 180 days — six months — and allowing certain “secondary uses” of parkland with a five-vote Council supermajority, without requiring a ballot measure. The draft, however, doesn’t define “secondary uses.”

The planning commission — in a public meeting — recommended that the new charter require a super majority council vote to overturn planning commission decisions, but in the end, the charter committee decided against that.

Transparency?

The proposed Santa Clara charter update was clearly necessary, and the committee’s many hours of work have produced a document that is clearer, better organized and in line with current law and practices.

But was this a transparent process? While meetings of the whole committee were public, the subcommittee meetings where these changes were discussed were closed (allowed by the Brown Act).

One subcommittee that drew particular scrutiny, given the composition of the committee reviewing the role and authority of the elected police chief: a former elected police chief and union president, along with the current police chief and union president, were invited to provide input.

The draft includes annotations explaining the rationale of proposed changes but reveals little about the actual discussions — leaving the question of whether characterizations before the final vote accurately capture the intent and reasoning of the subcommittees, or whether they reflect the City Attorney’s own framing of the decisions.

Further, charter review committee members voted on provisions at their May 20 and May 27 meetings without seeing those annotations, which only became available days before the June 3 final meeting. Notably, the draft requires the City Council to act in public “in accordance with the requirements of the Ralph M. Brown Act” — a provision itself decided in closed meetings.

*The assistant city clerk was assigned the majority of the city clerk’s responsibilities in 2018 rather than trying to change the charter to appoint a professional city clerk.

**The lifetime term limit was approved in 2016, and California law prohibits retroactive laws.