Election has council looking to fill vacancies differently

Last year’s special election cost city nearly $795,000

Spending nearly $795,000 to hold a special election to fill a city council seat for a few months didn’t sit well with the Sunnyvale City Council and many residents, so city officials are seeking cheaper solutions.

The council voted unanimously Sept. 26 to create a committee, possibly made up residents, who will be tasked with proposing amendments to the city charter that will spell out how city council vacancies are filled.

The issue was brought to public attention last year when former councilman David Whittum, citing personal reasons, resigned from his seat. His April 2016 resignation proved problematic and quite costly for the city.

Sunnyvale’s city charter requires the council to declare council vacancies within 30 days of resignations and then call a special municipal election to fill the seat within 120 days of the vacancy being declared. The contest can be added at a greatly reduced cost to a general election ballot if an election occurs within 180 days of the resignation.

However, the timing of Whittum’s resignation was such that there was not enough time to place the issue on the June 2016 ballot, and it was too many days away from the November general election. The city’s hands were tied, and a special election for just the council seat, costing $794,978, was held in August 2016.

Larry Klein prevailed in a three-man contest. His victory gave him the prize of finishing out Whittum’s council term, which amounted to just four months. Klein immediately sought re-election and ran again for the seat in November. He won a full four-year term and has helped spearhead the effort to change the city charter.

A total of 12,092 people voted in the special election, with Klein garnering 60 percent of the vote, according to the Santa Clara County registrar.

The quirk in the charter goes back more than 40 years, according to city staff. It previously allowed for the council to appoint individuals or hold an election in the event of an unexpired term. But in 1975, voters chose to change the charter to require vacancies be filled by election only. There had been a rash of resignations and appointments, resulting in four of the seven sitting council members having been appointed, according to the staff report.

Last year’s special election was one of four held since the 1975 amendment, with previous ones in 1985, 1988 and 1991. According to the staff report, under the current charter rules, there are only 194 days within a two-year election cycle when a vacancy would need to be declared that would allow for a council seat to be contested in a statewide or general municipal election.

Last week’s vote will allow for the creation of a committee that will pitch solutions for council to review. Staff said the hope is for the council to review a proposal before June, with the goal of putting a solution in the form of a ballot measure before voters in the Nov. 6, 2018 election.

Resident Steve Scandalis suggested the council keep the current charter rules. He argued it is better to have voter-decided special elections than have the council appoint people.

“Anything that gives more appointment capability is not in the best interest of the way we run our city. If you give yourselves more appointment capabilities, then it goes back to cronyism,” he said.

Mayor Glenn Hendricks said there were issues that caused the charter to be structured as it is, but added that he would like to see options for “edge cases,” such as what happened with Whittum’s vacancy.

“I do think we have to keep in mind some of the issues that we had before. I’m not going to use the word ‘cronyism,’ but I do think people were trying to game the system,” he said. “I got a lot of pushback on the $750,000 for this election that we were wasting money, and there was a lot of finger pointing. I think there is an interest from the public to see if we can deal with the edge cases without taking us back to the problems we had before.”

Staff and the council will next work to determine how many members should serve on the committee. Residents will be able to apply for a seat.

“I got a lot of pushback on the $750,000 for this election that we were wasting money, and there was a lot of finger pointing.” — Glenn Hendricks, mayor