The City Council recently voted in favor of Buena Park becoming a charter city, and a measure has been placed on the November 4th ballot. 

The proposed Charter contains only one page. It is open ended and loosely worded.

The Buena Park City Council claims they spent two years studying charter cities versus general law cities before appointing a Charter Exploratory Committee.  Since July of 2003, I have personally attended over 270 City Council Meetings and Study Sessions. No in depth discussions regarding charter cities were held during those meetings. Therefore, any "study" done by the individual Council Members must have been done independently. 

The Charter Exploratory Committee contained only one person with any significant amount of knowledge and experience regarding charter versus general law cities. For the most part, these Charter Exploratory Committee Members were mainly visiting various groups to get their opinion about Buena Park becoming a charter city. Most of the Charter Exploratory Committee members did not have enough information to explain the differences between these two forms of government nor to answer specific questions.

The public service announcements and the stories in the two issues of "Buena Park Today" did not throughly explain the charter. Listing a few pros and cons is not my idea of "throughly explaining" a serious change in Buena Park's governmental structure.

 

We are now left with a number of questions.  Why change to a charter city?  What specific crisis or problems that Buena Park now faces will becoming a charter city solve?  Buena Park already has "Home Rule."  Why radically change our governmental structure just to gain what we already have?  "Buena Park can become more like some of the other California charter cities."  Los Angeles is a charter city.  Why would my Buena Park Neighbors want to have our city become another Los Angeles?  Today, Buena Park awards a contract to a "Qualified Bidder."  As a charter city, Buena Park would award a contract to the "Most Qualified Bidder."  What does "Most Qualified Bidder" mean?  

 

The main supportable reason for becoming a charter city is to avoid paying "prevailing wage."  The only specific "law" contained in this proposed one page charter stipulates that Buena Park will pay "prevailing wage."   The Buena Park City Council gains more power.  The Public Works Department's budget will most likely become larger.  Today, the people can go directly to the City Council and propose change.  As a charter city, "that change requires paying for a charter amendment to be placed on the ballot" becomes the City Council's mantra.  Individuals and groups have to pay out of their own pockets the cost of placing a charter amendment on the ballot.  Additional funds are then necessary in order to inform the public.  A charter amendment placed on the ballot by the City Council uses taxpayer money to cover all costs.  Opposing a taxpayer funded ballot based charter amendment is never cheap. 

 

So, what happens if  Buena Park becomes a charter city?

The City Council wins.

The people lose.