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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Gillmor’s Power Play Charter Review Committee Stacked with Loyalists
At this week’s meeting, the City Council appointed members to the newly expanded Charter Review Committee—an expansion pushed aggressively by Mayor Lisa Gillmor herself. This was no routine procedural move. It was a calculated maneuver to consolidate influence over a powerful body that could shape the city’s governance for years to come.
Historically, such committees weren’t expanded midstream. But this time, the Council—perhaps too trusting, or politically cornered—went along with Gillmor’s push, enabling her to handpick allies for a process that now sits dangerously close to her control. With 13 members on the committee and only 7 votes needed for a majority, Gillmor may have already locked in the outcome before a single meeting is held.
Let’s take a closer look at the appointments. Leading the pack is former Police Chief Pat Nikolai, a known Gillmor ally who is rumored to be her choice for chair. Nikolai previously sent a letter to the District Attorney demanding an investigation into Councilmembers who opposed Gillmor—an unprecedented move that signaled a weaponization of law enforcement for political purposes. And while on duty, Nikolai conveniently failed to investigate his close friend Burt Field, another appointee, after Field made public comments likening Council recalls to “loading a gun.” That’s not just inflammatory—it’s threatening.
Field, a former Parks and Recreation Commissioner, is part of a tight circle of Gillmor-aligned operatives, including figures from the politically active group “Stand Up for Santa Clara.” Their influence looms large.
Then there’s Susan Peters, wife of Jared Peters—whose 2022 public plea to replace a sound wall on Pruneridge Avenue turned into a bizarre political boomerang. After the city addressed the issue, Jared Peters later claimed the Council didn’t help him, a narrative that somehow ended up in the 2024 Civil Grand Jury Report “Irreconcilable Differences”, which criticized the Council’s responsiveness. That report, coincidentally or not, had multiple fingerprints tied to Gillmor allies.
Among those fingerprints? Lauren Diamond, another Charter Review appointee and a member of the same Grand Jury that penned the report. Diamond’s impartiality is in question—not only for her role in shaping a document used to attack Gillmor’s opponents but also for publicly displaying a David Kertes campaign sign in her yard during the 2024 election cycle. Kertes, of course, is a staunch Gillmor supporter.
Let’s not forget that current City Clerk Bob O’Keefe—who ran the supposedly “random” lottery that helped determine committee appointments—also served on that same Grand Jury. The circle of influence keeps tightening.
Another name on the list: Mark Boeckman, a close associate of Burt Field. Boeckman comes recommended by Dana Caldwell, another Gillmor supporter from Stand Up for Santa Clara, who described the Gillmor picks (minus Diamond) as “good people with common sense.” Translation: reliable votes.
That’s five out of thirteen committee members already confirmed as part of Gillmor’s inner circle. And odds are, more names will emerge as connected loyalists. With only seven votes needed to dominate the committee’s decisions, Gillmor appears to have orchestrated a silent coup over a process that should be independent and impartial.
The Charter Review Committee is no minor formality—it has the power to recommend changes that can reshape how Santa Clara is governed, how elections are run, and how checks and balances operate. Gillmor’s stacking of the deck is not about civic duty—it’s about raw political control.
As the old saying goes: Something is rotten in Denmark. Except this time, it smells like Santa Clara.