1 From: Steve Chessin
Sent: Thursday, February 20, 2025 8:34 PM
To: City Council
Subject: Agenda item 7.2 for the February 25, 2025, Mountain View City Council meeting CAUTION: EXTERNAL EMAIL - Ensure you trust this email before clicking on any links or attachments.
Dear Mountain View City Councilmembers,
I am writing in support of Councilmember Ramirez's project idea of City Charter Modernization, especially the establishment of a Charter Commission to review the Charter and recommend amendments.
One area I would like such a Charter Commission to address is the method by which we elect the City Council. You may be aware that many jurisdictions in California that elect their governing body via at-large plurality elections, as Mountain View does, have been forced to go to district elections as a result of receiving a letter alleging that they are in violation of the California Voting Rights Act (CVRA). Indeed, our neighboring Town of Los Altos has been forced to go to district elections due to receiving such a letter. So has the Mountain View - Los Altos High School District. Due to changes in laws related to the CVRA, there is now a cottage industry of attorneys who send such letters to jurisdictions so they can collect a fee of around $40,000 per letter for forcing a jurisdiction to go to district elections, whether or not such a change actually furthers the purposes of the CVRA.
The City of Albany successfully avoided going to district elections due to a CVRA notice letter by changing from at-large plurality to at-large proportional ranked choice voting (PRCV), an acceptable remedy to alleged CVRA violations recognized by the California Supreme Court in Pico v. Santa Monica. This is a system that is currently available only to charter cities such as Mountain View.
Santa Clara County does possess the voting equipment necessary for conducting a PRCV election (in fact, the County is currently considering whether to change its own elections from two-round runoff to single-winner RCV by 2028). As it would require amending Mountain View's charter to change our elections from at-large plurality to PRCV, I strongly recommend that you approve of Councilmember Ramirez's project idea of City Charter Modernization and vote to move it forward to staff analysis.
Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions related to this issue. I am very familiar with the Brown Act and will not share with a Councilmember the contents of any discussion I may have had with another Councilmember.
Sincerely,
--Steve Chessin