Comprehensive City Charter Update: Taking the Time to Fit the Process

Recognizing Ethics Issues in Real Time — Part 3 of 3

Few people expected Santa Clara’s July 14 Charter discussion to become one of the City Council’s best deliberations in quite some time.

After more than nine months of work, the Charter Review Committee had completed its assignment. The City Attorney’s Office had prepared a comprehensive package of Charter amendments. The recommendation before the Council was straightforward: place the proposed Charter on the November ballot and let the voters decide.

Instead, something unexpected happened.

As the discussion unfolded, Council members stopped debating individual Charter provisions and began asking broader questions. Was the review process transparent enough? Had the public been given a meaningful opportunity to understand the proposal? Would voters know what they were actually approving? Did the proposed Charter provide clear benefits to the public? And should a document as important as the City’s constitution move forward as quickly as it did and without broader Council consensus?

About two thirds of the way in the discussion, Suds Jain withdrew the motion he had made to place the comprehensive Charter update on the ballot. In its place, the Council unanimously approved putting a revamp of the City’s procurement and bidding processes before the voters on November 3, 2026.

It was a significant decision.

The process that produced it was remarkable.

A Different Kind of Meeting

Anyone who regularly watches Santa Clara City Council meetings knows the familiar pattern. Staff presents a recommendation. Council members ask questions. The public comments. A Council Member makes a motion. Each Council member explains why he or she intends to support or oppose it. The motion passes or fails.

Rarely does the discussion itself change the outcome.

This meeting was different.

Rather than defending fixed positions, Council members listened to one another, challenged assumptions, built on concerns raised by colleagues, and gradually reconsidered whether the Charter was ready for the voters.

As it went on, the discussion became more thoughtful, more probing, and more deliberative—the kind of discussion that ought to precede any decision as important as amending a City’s constitution.

Transparency Became the First Question

The turning point came when Council Member Kevin Park questioned the extensive use of closed session ad hoc subcommittee meetings during the Charter review. The Committee had 10 open public meetings and over 30 closed meetings.

Park acknowledged that all the meetings complied with the Brown Act. His concern was something different.

“The reason that you have discussions behind closed doors is because the topics cannot be discussed in public. But in this case, we are literally looking at the Charter that affects all of the public.”

He rejected the argument that public report-outs after the meetings were an adequate substitute for public participation during the discussions themselves.

“To be able to go to a public discussion and perhaps give input on the topics that are being discussed is very different from hearing a report out….”

The City Attorney responded to Mr. Park’s concern: “There was a thought about making sure that there was an environment created where it could just be an easy back and forth with no dumb questions and a free flow of ideas, that that’s not nefarious, it’s just an environment where that is facilitated without public observation of every comment. And so I think that the meetings that went on and how they were reported out to the public made all that ultimately public.”

Mr. Park’s concern was not simply about meeting procedures. It was about transparency. It was about whether the public should be able to observe—and participate in—the conversations that shape the City’s most important governing document.

Later in the discussion, Mr. Park broadened the point.

“This entire process feels like it was closed. This entire process feels like we didn’t give the public enough time. We didn’t socialize this enough before it came to Council… This is the process that we use to change the City Charter.”

Those comments fundamentally changed the direction of the meeting. The discussion was no longer about editing Charter language. It had become a discussion about whether the process itself had earned the Council’s and the public’s confidence.

Looking Through the Voters’ Eyes

Council Member Kelly Cox approached the proposal from a different perspective.

She praised the Charter Review Committee for its dedication, but warned that committee members understood the proposal at a level most residents never would.

“I commend the work your group has done. I think that when you’re really close to the scenario, you’re going to understand and know things at a level we never will, and that our public certainly isn’t going to.”

That observation became the foundation for the questions that followed.

Which provisions might become “poison pills” on the ballot?

Would changes that seemed routine to those who drafted the Charter instead appear to reduce transparency, public notice, or voter rights?

Could technically sound amendments fail simply because the public would not understand why they were being proposed?

Those were not legal questions. They were questions about public trust.

From Transparency to Public Benefit

If Council Member Park changed the discussion by raising questions about transparency, Mayor Lisa Gillmor broadened it by asking a different question.
How does this benefit the public? Again and again, she returned to that theme.

The Charter Review Committee had produced a thoughtful, comprehensive document. Staff had explained how the proposed amendments would modernize City government, improve efficiency, eliminate outdated provisions, and align the Charter with current practices. But Gillmor wanted to know something more fundamental.
“I ask, how does this benefit the public?”

She acknowledged that many of the proposed changes would improve the administration of City government: “…efficiency for staff and streamlined administration is a direct primary benefit of most of these provisions. But the public benefit of that is indirect at best.”

That observation became one of the evening’s most important themes. A Charter is not simply an operating manual for City Hall. It is the City’s constitution. Its primary purpose is not to make government more efficient, but to establish the enduring principles, structures, and protections that the people want preserved regardless of who holds office.

Mayor Gillmor also questioned whether voters would actually understand what they were being asked to approve.

The proposed Charter would leave many important details to future ordinances and Council policies adopted after the election. As she saw it, voters would be asked to approve a framework without knowing how many of its most important provisions would ultimately be implemented.

She warned: “The documented effect is that almost no voter will see all of these provisions before voting.” Then she asked the question that seemed to change the room: “You’re going to put that before the voters?”

She pointed to a pattern she saw throughout the proposal: “Section after section, it replaces a fixed Charter requirement with ‘as provided by ordinance’ or ‘per City Council policy’… Collectively, the pattern moves the substance of governance out of one document that requires a public vote to change into instruments a Council majority can alter… with no further voter input.”

Her conclusion captured the concern that had been building throughout the discussion. “I would be ratifying a shell… without knowing what those rules will actually say.”

Whether one agreed with that assessment or not, the Mayor had shifted the discussion again. The question was no longer simply whether the proposed Charter modernized City government. It had become whether the proposal preserved the public’s role in governing the City itself.

The Importance of Consensus

By this point in the discussion, Council members had raised questions about transparency, voter understanding, public benefit, and the relationship between the Charter and future Council actions.

Council Member Raj Chahal added another consideration. He reminded the Council that it had faced a similar question before.

During the Measure I campaign, he recalled, the Council had agreed that issues of fundamental importance to the entire City should, whenever possible, have broad Council support before being placed before the voters.

“We did decide… when we were going for Measure I… anything which is citywide importance, the Council at least should be able to support it in totality.”

The Charter, he suggested, deserved that same level of consensus.

His point was not that every Council member had to agree with every provision. It was that the City’s governing document should, if possible, reflect a shared commitment of the Council, rather than a narrow majority. A Charter adopted over substantial disagreement could divide the community and make future Charter reform even more difficult.

That observation changed the conversation once again.

Until then, the discussion had focused primarily on the content of the proposal.

Mr. Chahal reminded the Council that they had agreed to a principle that benefitted everyone equally, would avoid dividing the City, and, should the measure fail, make it much more difficult to change the Charter is a future election.

Would the Charter be stronger if the Council slowed down, addressed the concerns that had emerged during the discussion, and sought broader agreement before asking the voters to decide?

For several Council members, the answer increasingly appeared to be yes.

By the time the Council voted unanimously to advance the procurement and bidding proposals the Council had traveled a remarkable distance from where the discussion began.

It was no longer debating individual Charter provisions. It was asking larger questions.

Had the process been transparent enough? Would the public understand what it was being asked to approve? Did the proposal clearly benefit the people of Santa Clara? Had the Council itself reached the level of agreement that a City Charter deserves? Had the City taken enough time to understand not only what it was changing, but why those provisions had been adopted in the first place?

Those are not simply political or legal questions.

They are questions about what kind of city Santa Clara wants to become.

A City Charter is more than an operating manual for City government. It is one of the few opportunities a community has to decide which core values, behaviors, principles, institutions, and commitments are so important that they should endure regardless of who holds office or how the political winds may shift. It helps define not only how a city governs itself, but what kind of city it aspires to be.

Near the end of the discussion, Council Member Kevin Park offered an observation from his engineering background that seemed to capture the evening’s larger lesson.

“We do not fit the process to the time. We fit the time to the process.”

That may prove to be the most important lesson of the meeting.

The Council’s decision was not simply to postpone a Charter update. It was to give Santa Clara the time to think more deeply about its future.

Real political leadership, it has been said, offers to take people to where, in their best selves, they really want to go. That kind of leadership begins by asking the right questions.

What kind of city do we want to become?

What permanent values, principles, and institutions deserve a place in our City’s constitution?

How do we build a City Hall culture where ethical leadership and earning the public’s trust are expected, recognized, and continuously strengthened?

If the discussion that began on July 14 continues in that spirit, the meeting may ultimately be remembered not as the night Santa Clara delayed its Charter update, but as the moment it began intentionally shaping the city it will become—the best version of itself.

About Public Trust Now

Public Trust Now examines Santa Clara city government through an ethics and public trust lens, so residents can follow the reasoning, test it, disagree with it, and use the same tools themselves. Learn more about how we analyze a decision.

Public Trust Now operates independently of the Markkula Center for Applied Ethics and Santa Clara University. The Framework for Ethical Decision Making is used here for educational analysis; the conclusions we draw are our own, and should not be attributed to the Center, the University, or the City of Santa Clara.