Santa Clara has California’s last elected police chief, and now it’s one step closer to letting voters decide whether to change that.
At a Tuesday evening meeting fraught with controversy over a “tainted” survey, a divided Santa Clara City Council provided feedback to city officials on a proposal to change the police chief and city clerk positions from elected to appointed. The city clerk position is largely part-time.
In June, the council established a seven-member Charter Review Committee to examine the issue and last month it voted to recommend the council place the two measures on a future ballot.
The committee gathered feedback from appointed police chiefs and city clerks in the U.S., as well as the city’s current elected officials serving in the roles — Police Chief Pat Nikolai and City Clerk Hosam Haggag. But a survey that ran from Sept. 7 to Oct. 12 on the city’s website that was meant to gather feedback from the community on the issue became a major point of contention on Tuesday night.
Of the 243 registered respondents — those who provided the city with a name, email address and physical address — 72% said they should not change the police chief from an elected position and 66% said the city clerk should continue being elected.
The survey, though, had an additional 5,943 response from unregistered respondents who overwhelming said Santa Clara should consider changing the roles to appointed positions. City officials and committee members questioned the validity of the unregistered responses, which they said could be duplicates or responses from bots.
That led Mayor Lisa Gillmor and Councilmember Kathy Watanabe to question the process entirely, with Watanabe calling it “tainted” and said it lacked transparency.
“Obviously there’s potentially some special interests that have inserted themselves into this process, because the point is this has never happened and now it is on a crucial decision that is going to take away the votes of our residents, take away their right to vote,” she said.
Assistant City Manager Cynthia Bojorquez responded to the criticism saying that putting out a survey is part of “our normal process of getting community input.”
“It was not intended to be a scientific poll of registered voters,” she said. “It was again, based on our past practice of having done these and having had good input.”
Jeremy Schmidt, the president of the Santa Clara Police Officers’ Association, also criticized the process and said the POA hired an outside polling company that found 73% percent of respondents supported electing the police chief.
“Acting on this information is dereliction of your duty to the public and a violation of your oath,” Schmidt said of the city’s survey. “Despite the work of the dedicated community members, this turned into a rushed, botched job. Please respect the people, stop with the we know better politics and fix this.”
Councilmember Karen Hardy expressed her concerns that “there’s no one in the wings” to be the next chief as less than 10 of the department’s officers live in the city — a requirement to being elected police chief. She also criticized comments rebuking councilmembers in support of the ballot measure for trying to take away residents’ right to vote.
“It’s bothersome to me that I’m hearing ‘you’re taking away voters rights, you’re stripping voters rights, how dare you,’” Hardy said. “Excuse me? That’s exactly what we’re trying to do is give the voter’s a voice. They will decide.”
Councilmember Anthony Becker said he sees moving the police chief and city clerk positions to appointed roles as creating “better checks and balances.”
“You don’t have reviews, you don’t have goals and I think that’s a big issue because you don’t get the best candidate,” he said. “In fact if you only have one candidate on the ballot, you only get one choice and I think that’s not fair.”
The council is expected to discuss ballot language at a meeting later this year and is aiming to put the measure to voters in March 2024. The next election for both police chief and city clerk is supposed to take place in November 2024.