A City Charter first draft was presented at the Fremont City Council meeting on June 2. The Charter Advisory Committee spent six weeks going over every element of what makes up a charter city and came up with several recommendations.
One is to increase city council compensation, increase the term limit to three four-year terms, and hire a staff member to work for the council and mayor.
Mayor Raj Salwan said the core topic of governance was not addressed. “I think a lot of the things that we were looking for kind of got watered down,” he said. “I think more we were looking for addressing the governance challenges that we are having, rather than salaries and all of that. How do we deliver better for our residents? And so, I think the core issue of governance is not fully addressed. If we’re gonna ask voters to approve a charter, it should be meaningful.”
The costs to put the city charter on the ballot would be around $600,000 to $850,000.
Salwan said residents wanted to see results. “They come to us with issues about homelessness, public safety, permitting, economic development, infrastructure. And the community members expect elected officials to listen, to respond, to be responsive, solve problems and move the priorities forward.”
Vice Mayor Yajing Zhang said her main goal with a proposed charter is the procurement process when it comes to bidding and choosing contracts. “Because that’s the reason I think that the bidding procedure that I recommend cannot be by general law city, it has to be done by charter city. That’s the benefit of having a charter,” she said.
City attorney Rafael Alvarado said creating a procurement process for the proposed city charter would be a lengthy process and may not fit their timeline for the November election.
Alvarado said, “If what you’re simply trying to do is update your procurement procedures, because maybe you want to increase certain administrative authorities to move projects through faster, you may not need to go through the charter process to do that, and we may be able to do that as staff, bring back a recommendation under your existing authority.”
The second public hearing for the proposed city charter is on July 7.
