By Robert Haugh

Santa Clara’s proposed Charter overhaul is moving forward. But the Council is clearly divided.

At a June 15 special meeting, the City Council reviewed sweeping recommendations from the Charter Review Committee, which spent eight months studying possible updates to the City Charter.

The charter is Santa Clara’s governing document. Any major changes must be approved by voters.

City Attorney Glen Googins presented the committee’s final report, not the Committee’s chair Pat Nikolai, the former Police Chief.

Googins presented recommendations reorganizing the charter, removing outdated language, clarifying city operations and aligning the document with current law.

Many of the changes are technical. Others could shift more authority to City staff. That issue dominated the Council discussion.

Some council members questioned whether the changes were simply a cleanup or whether they would give the City Manager, City Attorney and department heads more power with less direct Council oversight.

Mayor Lisa Gillmor, Councilmembers Raj Chahal and Kevin Park opposed moving the broader package forward.

Gillmor and Park raised concerns that several provisions lacked enough guardrails to protect transparency and accountability. 

Park also questioned whether the process had grown far beyond what was originally intended.

The proposed changes are divided into three levels.

Level One changes are mostly routine. They include wording updates, corrections and reorganization.

Level Two changes clarify ambiguities, delete outdated provisions or align the charter with current practices.

Level Three changes are more substantive or politically sensitive. Those could be placed before voters separately — or left out.

The most controversial areas include procurement rules, city manager authority, civil service provisions and the role of the police chief.

The procurement changes received special attention.

Councilmember Suds Jain pushed to separate procurement from the larger charter package. 

Those changes could give the city more flexibility to move faster on complex projects and avoid relying only on the traditional design-bid-build process.

That motion passed unanimously. Staff will return with options for a separate procurement ballot measure.

But the broader charter package remained divided.

The Council voted to have staff continue working on the proposed changes and return with revised language. Gillmor, Park and Chahal voted no.

The Council must decide by July 14 if it wants to place one or more charter measures on the November 2026 ballot. The deadline to submit ballot materials to the Santa Clara County Registrar of Voters is August 7.

The Council is expected to revisit the issue on June 23 or July 7 before making a final decision.