Santa Clara voters to weigh public works change in November

Santa Clara won’t get the sweeping charter overhaul city officials spent more than a year developing. Instead, city voters will weigh in on a narrower change to how the city handles public works projects.

The Santa Clara City Council on July 14 declined to place a comprehensive charter amendment on the Nov. 3 ballot. Instead, councilmembers unanimously approved a slimmed down measure to go before voters that would change how the city handles public works projects and contracts. The measure would significantly raise the threshold to $250,000 before council approval is required.

The charter presently contains a $1,000 threshold for public works projects, an amount officials pointed to as an example of provisions that have become outdated.

District 4 Councilmember Kevin Park said the narrower measure was easier to support because voters would understand the proposed changes — whereas a larger overhaul has too many moving parts and would lead to confusion. The proposed comprehensive amendment touched numerous areas of city government including elections, redistricting, council powers, boards and commissions, budgeting and financing. It could return as a ballot measure in a future election.

Park said the scope of the amendment went beyond simple cleanup and should have received more public scrutiny before going to voters.

“If you don’t have time for public meetings, you know, that’s a good indication that it’s rushed, because the charter is one of the most public documents in the city,” Park told San José Spotlight.

District 5 Councilmember Suds Jain supported sending the public works amendment to voters and said he pushed to separate it from the comprehensive charter update because it became clear the broader proposal lacked enough council support.

“I didn’t want to lose the procurement,” Jain told San José Spotlight. “I said, ‘I want to split them out. I want them to be two different ballot measures.’”

Jain said changing the procurement rules would give the city more flexibility to use contracting methods such as design-build, which allows design and construction to overlap rather than requiring a project to be fully designed before it is put out to bid. He said that could help the city complete projects faster and avoid contractors inflating bids to account for unknown risks.

The decision pares back an effort that began in May 2025 to modernize Santa Clara’s charter, including removing outdated provisions, clarifying ambiguous language and updating city operations. A 13-member Charter Review Committee spent months reviewing the document and unanimously recommended moving the comprehensive update forward. The committee participated in 11 public meetings and 31 ad hoc subcommittee meetings during the process.

Park criticized the use of ad hoc subcommittees during the review and said more substantive changes should have been discussed with residents throughout the process rather than relying on a voter education campaign after the proposal was completed.

Mayor Lisa Gillmor said she could support straightforward cleanup provisions, but opposed sending the entire package to voters.

“A charter is supposed to be a durable, constitutional layer, precisely because it is hard to change,” Gillmor said at the meeting.

Susan Peters, a member of the charter review committee, defended the process of how the committee reached its recommendations.

“We heard perspectives from city staff, from stakeholders, from the public, from each other and had deliberations in public before we came up with these final recommendations,” Peters said at the meeting.

City Attorney Glen Googins pushed back against similar concerns at the meeting and said the project followed the process laid out when the review began.

“I don’t think it’s rushed. I think it’s a big project,” Googins said at the meeting. “The work is good, and I think the (committee) and professional staff stands behind it.”

Santa Clara voters have previously rejected other changes to the city charter that would have reduced their direct role in city government. In 2024, more than 70% of voters rejected making the police chief an appointed position, while nearly 68% opposed appointing the city clerk.

Contact Maryanne Casas-Perez at [email protected] or @CasasPerezRed on X.