At a recent City of Fremont Charter Committee meeting, a contingent of uniformed city employees lined up to demonstrate their deep interest in crafting the new city charter. The stakes are high for labor since the charter proposal could shift the bargaining dynamics and give employees strong leverage in the next round of labor negotiations. Organized labor representatives will review the charter clause by clause, edit it word by word and campaign door-to-door to convert Fremont to a charter city.
Local control over labor policy would let the city set the rules, rather than state preemption on wages, working conditions, collective bargaining and contracting. The Charter language could protect pension benefits and require negotiation to partially defund pensions, require local-hire and living-wage clauses and strengthen prevailing-wage and project-labor agreements. It could create grievance procedures and independent oversight boards with labor representation, similar to how the charter advisory committee was chosen.
In 2022, the city reported that sales tax revenues grew by 29.1% due to a “surge” in new auto sales. This inspired the city council to hike wages by a lucrative 5% a year. But this rosy scenario turned out to be a mirage driven by the faulty sales tax accounting and slapdash fiscal controls. The city was forced to throttle back the 2025-2027 contract offer to just 1.3% annually.
When the contract was cut, staff felt resentful and skeptical of the administration’s talk of a “prudent budget.” City workers are now seeking protection against further paycheck and pension whiplash through a new city charter that could lock in wage floors, limit outsourcing to contractors and codify procurement standards.
On the flip side, the new charter could transform formerly routine decisions to trim budgets by mandating hard‑to‑reverse legal requirements and slower procurement. The new charter would take power out of the hands of finance managers while empowering a handful of politicians, mainly accountable to large donors, to spend more on pet causes and hire/fire financial managers specially chosen for their docility and obedience.
The new charter will raise baseline operating costs and necessitate higher taxes in view of the half-cent sales tax on the November 2026 ballot, along with possible service cuts (shorter library hours) and deferred maintenance (more potholes).
Fremont voters will have to weigh the labor-friendliness and donor-accountability of this charter amendment on the November 2026 ballot against budget efficiency. Residents should insist on a robust fiscal-impact report authored by outside analysts along with explicit transparency measures and sunset clauses for new spending mandates. Without this, they should vote “NO” on the charter, to let financial managers respond to economic shifts without raising taxes and without sacrificing essential services.
William Yragui
Mission Peak Conservancy
