City staff presented draft conventions for rewriting the charter to improve clarity, consistency and legal resilience, and described a benchmarking effort of California charter cities to identify model provisions.

Staff emphasized readability and consistent use of defined terms, recommending either defining terms in place or creating an index of defined terms. They warned that some legal terms cannot be changed without attention to state law and said any new or ambiguous wording must be defensible in court.

Why it matters: The way the charter is drafted will shape public understanding and the document’s legal durability; staff noted that voters will see a 75-word ballot question and a 500-word impartial analysis, which limits how much explanatory context can accompany any comprehensive amendment.

Benchmarking and process: Staff is assembling a curated set of charters (about 121 charter cities statewide) but will narrow the list to exemplars by criteria such as recent updates, city size, governance structure and presence of comparable local enterprises (utilities, stadiums). Staff said they will share Chula Vista materials and watch Sunnyvale’s concurrent review for lessons learned.

Levels of change and drafting workflow: Staff proposed three change tiers—Level 1 (non-substantive corrections), Level 2 (policy alignment with law and practice), and Level 3 (major government restructuring or politically sensitive matters). The recommended workflow is subcommittee input, targeted drafting of strikeout language, and full-committee consideration of agreed language.

Next steps: Staff will continue benchmarking, circulate exemplar materials, and begin drafting section-by-section with an eye toward stakeholder outreach and legal vetting.