REPORT TO COUNCIL
SUBJECT
Title
Action on Proposed Formation of a Charter Review Committee to Conduct Comprehensive Review of the City Charter to Update, Make Corrections and Better Align the Charter with State Law and Current Best Practices and to Draft a Comprehensive Charter Amendment for Presentation to the City Council and Possibly the Voters at the November 2026 Election
Report
BACKGROUND
At the Governance and Ethics Committee special meeting on May 1, 2025, as part of the Committee's work plan, City Attorney Googins presented a report on a proposed comprehensive City Charter update process for discussion and direction. For context, the presentation included information regarding how a city charter functions as a city's constitution, how charter's provide cities with authority with respect to "municipal affairs," and Santa Clara's history with adopting and amending its own Charter over the years. Reasons for why a comprehensive Charter update process should be considered included: although it had been amended from time to time over the years, the Charter had not kept up with changing "best practices" for City operations and State legal requirements, the City itself had grown in population and complexity, and the Charter contained ambiguities, and internal inconsistencies. The presentation included a number of examples of possible Charter modifications that would address some of these issues.
The Committee discussed the proposal and agreed that a Charter update process was warranted. The importance of keeping the process "professional" and not "political" was emphasized, along with how it would be important to decide what types of changes would be included in any "comprehensive" amendment, and what types of proposals would best be kept separate. The process for how the Charter Review Committee would be selected was also debated. The Committee wanted to be clear that any November 2026 Charter amendment should be limited to modernization, clarification an...
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