Since Santa Clara approved its charter in 1952, the City has, with one exception, had an elected police chief. That exception was in 1953 when voters changed the charter to have an appointed chief. Two years later they changed their minds, although the reason appears to be lost to living memory.
However, the discussion has long simmered on the back burner, coming to a boil in 1971, 1988, 1993-94, 2016-17, and this year’s proposal.
1971: Change Proponents Are Political Schemers
In November 1971, the City Council appointed a 15-member charter review committee to consider changes to the City’s 1951 charter, that included making the police chief and city clerk appointive rather than elective and establishing minimum qualifications for both.
Opponents of change defended the status quo not by arguing the merits of the question, but by accusing the proponents of change of political motives. Then-mayor Gary Gillmor, supported by City Manager Don Von Raesfeld, favored having the city manager appoint the police chief and city clerk.
Community activist and journalist Ari Kulpa* accused the mayor of trying to change “our City government…from a city manager form of government to mayor controlled political machine,” reported Suzanne Byrne in the Jan. 7, 1972 Valley Journal. Kulpa accused the mayor of trying to open the door to political payoffs.
Gillmor’s proposal was dropped from the charter changes that went to voters that November.
1987: We’ve Always Done It This Way
The next time the question of electing the police chief was in 1988 when former police chief Manny Ferguson retired. City Council Member Vern Deto proposed a ballot measure for an appointed police chief, supported by Ferguson.
”It’s really the more modern way to go,” Ferguson told the Mercury News in December 1987. “The job is too complicated and too important to rely on an election.”
Deto told his council colleagues that electing the police chief caused police department instability and created a distraction for the police chief.
This time, the appeal to tradition was deployed to maintain the status quo, in lieu of arguments defending the status quo.
Mayor Eddie Souza opposed the change, telling the Mercury that he “didn’t see any reason to change a system that had worked successfully for more than 30 years. ‘Why are we really doing this?’ he asked. ‘I think the voters will be able to figure out, when there are a number of people running in an election, who’s qualified.’”
In January 1988, the council unanimously approved a June ballot measure. But two months later, Deto withdrew his proposal, with the explanation that it didn’t have enough support.
1993: We’ve Always Done It This Way Redux
Five years later, in 1993, with the retirement of another police chief, the council again took up the question of appointing the chief.
“The pending retirement of Chief Frank Vasquez – and recent complaints of low morale, racism and sexism,” wrote Mercury reporter Brad Kava in November 1993, “have a number of council members asking whether the chief should be chosen by the council or city manager instead.”
”I think it is ludicrous that the police chief is an elected official,” Council Member Tim Jeffries told the Mercury. “The problem with an elected police chief is the individual has to be a resident of Santa Clara, so that denies our citizens and police department scores of qualified candidates that may live just outside the City or out of state.”
Mayor Eddie Souza again opposed the idea, not by discussing the question but by appealing to emotion and tradition.
”I think it is a direct slap in the face of the voters, who we have entrusted with picking a chief,” he told the Mercury. “The truth is, we may be one of the only ones to elect a police chief, but all over the state sheriffs are elected and district attorneys are elected.”
However, in early 1994, after both former chiefs Ferguson and Vasquez lobbied the council for change, a majority — council members Dave De Lozier, Tim Jeffries, Judy Nadler and Keri Procunier — voted to put the question on a ballot, while Souza and council members Lisa Gillmor and Jim Ash opposed it.
”I’ve never, ever believed an elected police chief is something we should have,” Ferguson told the council according to the Mercury. “For a city of our size, it’s unbelievably medieval.”
Elections “create divisiveness” in the police department, said Vasquez, who called it “demeaning” for the position.
“No. 1, it’s extremely divisive in the department to have members running for chief. It tears the department apart and has everyone picking sides,” said Vasquez. “No. 2, there is no guarantee that anyone who wants it is qualified.”
2017: Opinions Change Depending on Who Wins the Chief Election
It was more than two decades before the question of the elected police chief, and city clerk, came up again. But this time it wasn’t because the question had been publicly discussed. It was brought up at a charter review committee that had been convened to consider changing Santa Clara’s at-large by-district election system.
Informal — not on the agenda — conversations about changing the City’s practice of electing the police chief and city clerk occurred so frequently at meetings of the 2017-2018 charter review committee that one committee member said she suspected “outside agendas.”
The chair of the committee, Tino Silva, told the committee that he had discussed changing to an appointed police chief with council members.
“When I talked to a couple of council members, they were quite broad in what they directed…there was discussion of other things we might want to do,” he said.
No meetings with Silva appeared on council calendars, however.
The previous year, Mayor Lisa Gillmor actively campaigned to replace Chief Mike Sellers with Pat Nikolai, longtime president of the police union, which has consistently backed Gillmor. Silva was backed by Gillmor and the police union in his losing 2016 council run.
Although that committee never recommended changing the elected chief, at the committee’s Oct. 4, 2017 meeting, former City Attorney Brian Doyle expressed his critique of the City’s traditional practice. Doyle was a Gillmor ally and a friend of another Gillmor ally, former Council Member Teresa O’Neill.
Doyle told the committee it was “making a terrible mistake” in not recommending the City abandon its elected police chief and city clerk.
“The average citizen has no idea how these jobs are performed,” Doyle said at the time.
As a former chair of the Civil Service Commission, Doyle said he could speak from experience that the Commission “is the only group that has any idea of how the police chief does his job. And that’s only on disciplinary matters. There’s absolutely no citizen oversight,” he said, concluding, “You’re not getting any expert opinion whatsoever.”
*One of Ari Kulpa’s distinctions was her interview with Leon Trotsky’s assassin. She was also the author of “Adult Funnies Book 1: A Harvest of Hilarity,” and wrote for the Santa Clara American and the Santa Clara Sun newspapers. She served on the Historical and Landmarks Commission and chaired the committee that designed Santa Clara’s first city flag. In December 1967, Mayor Larry Marsalli honored her by proclaiming a Santa Clara Ari Kulpa Day.
