A newly formed committee will recommend to the Santa Clara City Council changes to the city’s charter.
At its Sept. 16 meeting, the council gave the go-ahead to the charter review committee. The committee comprises 13 members. Each council member and the mayor selected an appointee from a pool of 60 candidates. The remaining candidates for each district were chosen by lottery earlier this month.
Mayor Lisa Gillmor appointed former police chief Pat Nikolai; Council Member Albert Gonzalez appointed Bernard Thamsey; Council Member Raj Chahal appointed John Brooks; Council Member Karen Hardy appointed planning commission chair Eric Crutchlow; Council Member Kevin Park appointed former city clerk candidate Steve Kelly; Council Member Suds Jain appointed Eric Jansen; Vice Mayor Kelly Cox appointed Susan Peters.
Those chosen by lottery included Holly Rhea Roberts (District 1), Mohammad Navid (District 2), Joseph Sosinski (District 3), ousted parks and recreation commissioner Burt Field (District 4), former civil grand juror Lauren Diamond (District 5) and Mark Boeckman (District 6).
The committee will review the charter for consistency with state law, alignment with best practices and clarity. For such a “wonky project,” City Attorney Glen Googins said, response has been positive.
“The proposed top-to-bottom review process is intended to be driven by practical and legal considerations with the prime objective being to bring the charter up to current best practices for city operations,” Googins told the council. “It is not intended to implement any major restructuring of city operations or to change the city’s election process.”
The idea for the formation of a charter review committee came out of the city’s governance and ethics committee.
Committee members are unpaid and will be unable to direct city employees or represent the committee unless delegated to do so by the committee. The committee will meet monthly.
Its first meeting, set to be held in late September or early October, will include Brown Act training, familiarization with the charter, review of bylaws, selection of chair and vice chair and adoption of a schedule. In its second meeting, the committee will review a more detailed work plan.
Changes to the committee’s bylaws require council approval.
Council Member Park, who sits on the governance and ethics committee, said the committee discussed delineating changes into three categories. The first category would simply be cleaning up the charter’s language, the second would be minor changes and the third would be more “controversial” changes.
Park expressed concern that without such designations the changes may not pass, saying it would be better if the city had “bucket-ized” things a bit more.
Googins told Park that he didn’t want to be too prescriptive prior to the committee’s formation.
“There are a lot of different ways to eat this elephant, if you will,” Googins said.
Still, Park called the lack of such designations a “big miss,” adding that it is one that putting things in “one big bag” doesn’t “do the council any favors.”
Mayor Gillmor pushed back, saying the committee’s members are smart enough to make their own decisions about what changes are necessary.
“It is a community-based group, and any changes, whether big or small, should come from a community-based group and make recommendations to us,” she said. “I don’t want to limit them … I just want to make sure they feel, you know, to look at our charter, inside and out, and come back with their group of recommendations.”
The committee will be on a tight deadline, coming back to the council with its recommendations in June for a measure on the November 2026 ballot. The recommendation from the city attorney’s office passed with Park abstaining.
Contact David Alexander at d.todd.alexander@gmail.com
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