City Councilmembers are looking at options for how Fullerton might become a charter city.
The council is expected to discuss them at its meeting Tuesday, June 3, but it would ultimately be up to voters to approve the change.
The councilmembers can vote to proceed with writing a charter themselves or delegating that responsibility to staff, ad hoc committees or appointed advisory groups. The completed charter would later go to city voters for approval.
Or, the council can vote to call a city election to select a 15-member charter commission to write the charter, which would later go to city voters for approval. The mayor would have the authority to fill vacancies in that scenario.
A third option is the council can decide on Tuesday to defer a decision at this time about moving forward with a city charter. Or, the council can just end discussions about moving forward with a city charter.
No matter their choice, councilmembers won’t be calling for any elections on Tuesday. Rather, they’ll be giving direction about their preferred path forward — a path that could lead to a public vote down the road.
The City Council looked at the idea of adopting a city charter in early March.
Earlier this month, the council met for a study session on the issue, with three councilmembers supporting continued discussions. Councilmembers Ahmad Zahra and Shana Charles were opposed.
About one in four cities in California have charters. These legal documents, essentially city constitutions, enable municipalities to retain greater control over some local concerns related to the city police force, city administration, city elections and bidding processes for public contracts.
Charter cities sometimes also grapple with more complex governance structures and greater potential for legal conflicts, including litigation with the state.
The alternative, accepted by about three-quarters of California cities and the status quo in Fullerton, is to be governed by state general law.
Several Orange County cities operate under a charter, including its largest three — Anaheim, Irvine and Santa Ana — as well as Buena Park, Cypress, Huntington Beach, Los Alamitos, Newport Beach, Placentia and Seal Beach.
Huntington Beach, with its unsuccessful lawsuits against the state regarding housing mandates, has garnered the most attention.
“I realize that over the past few years, everybody’s political issue is the fact that Huntington Beach, which is a charter city, has taken the initiative to litigate the state, and that somehow this is an attempt for Fullerton to join in litigation against the state, as well,” Fullerton Mayor Fred Jung said Friday.
“Nothing could be further from the truth,” he said.
Jung said considering charter adoption is about giving Fullertononians a chance to decide whether to keep a rotational mayor system, perhaps add a sixth council district and to codify policies that he says will protect spending for public safety and city infrastructure.
“This is pretty innocuous,” he said of Tuesday’s discussion. “It’s a necessary step in the process. This is just deciding on how we are going to go about the process.”
While he dismissed the idea of litigating with the state over its housing mandate — with which Fullerton struggled to comply — Jung also said the charter process is about sending a message to Sacramento that Fullertonians are dissatisfied with the state’s policy directions related to housing, zoning and homelessness.
“There’s not any more risk in moving forward with a charter than in allowing the state to continue down the path that they’re going down, which is alienating more and more voters and working families,” he said. “I think the state and their one-party rule, the super majority that exists in both houses, has made some of the legislation that’s come out of there very off the mark.”
Zahra, meanwhile, said Friday that he remains “completely opposed” to the idea of a city charter.
“I think it’s unnecessary,” he said. “I think this is a purely political repositioning by some on the council.”
He does not see the process as innocuous but, actually, laden with two big risks.
“I think we could lose state oversight on two very important things,” he said. “One is elections. Local elections could be completely changed — even term limits removed and election dates changed.”
“The other risk is that a charter could allow the city government to bypass state contract processes so the council can then create their own process on how to give out contracts to vendors in the city, including potentially removing the state prevailing wage,” he added.
If the council votes Tuesday to write the charter itself or maintain control over appointments to a charter advisory committee, the city will need to hold two public hearings before an election over the charter.
That election could take place as soon as November 2026.
If the council votes to have citizens elect a charter committee, the entire process could take through 2028.
First, voters would elect the chartering committee in June or November 2026. Then, voters would choose whether to adopt the charter in March, June or November 2028.
Adding any measure to the primary election ballots or calling for a June 2028 special election would cost the city up to $500,000.
Adding a measure to the November general elections would cost the city a nominal fee of $8,500.
That’s because the city already has scheduled municipal elections on the November ballots, but not the statewide primary ballots.
Jung said he supports the most cost-effective path forward, which would be for the City Council to write the charter or appoint an advisory group to assist, he said.
His opponents have said that route is self-serving because it gives him and his allies too much control over shaping the city’s direction.
Jung, who is running for the Fourth District seat on the OC Board of Supervisors in 2026, shrugs off that claim.
“I don’t expect to be here (when the charter is voted on),” he said. “So, it doesn’t benefit me any more than as a resident.”
Jung’s term as a councilmember ends in 2028.
Despite his opposition to the charter, Zahra believes the matter will proceed beyond Tuesday night.
“I would urge all our residents not to make this into a partisan issue, but to really scrutinize how the charter will be rewritten,” he said. “It’s going to end up being about the ‘devil is in the detail.’”