Clovis postpones pursuit to become a charter city. What that means and why
The city of Clovis won’t become a charter city, at least not anytime soon.
City leaders had explored the idea for the past year as a way to give Clovis greater local control against state mandates on voting rights and housing development. On Monday, the Clovis City Council voted, 3-2, to continue the conversation with the community even as councilmembers acknowledged the costs and risks of becoming a charter city outweighed the benefits.
Under the California Constitution, cities may adopt a charter for their own governance with voters’ approval. Once established, a charter functions as a local constitution, allowing the city to enact ordinances differing from state law over municipal issues. Currently, there are 365 general-law cities and 121 charter cities across the state, including Fresno, Visalia and Lemoore.
Support for a city charter grew last year as Clovis reluctantly changed to a district voting system after a Malibu-based law firm threatened to sue the city for its at-large system, alleging it discriminated against communities of color by denying them equal opportunities to elect officials to represent them.
However, the Clovis City Council members noted that becoming a charter city could mean racking up future litigation costs and a potential loss of state funding.
Gail L. Zurek, the city’s contracted attorney, told the council most topics of interest to Clovis have been declared “matters of statewide concern” in which state law supersedes charter cities’ regulations. Zurek said the state has also rewritten regulations to tie charter cities’ local policies to the disbursement of state funds.
For instance, the state has removed charter cities’ ability to control housing density and prohibits cities from requiring voters to present an ID to vote, Zurek said, even if local regulations say otherwise.
“When things ended up in court, most charter cities said, ‘Wait a minute, housing is a municipal affair that is a local concern,’ and the state said, ‘No, what happens in your city and with your housing affects your neighbors, and it’s a matter of statewide concern,’” Zurek said.
There are some advantages to becoming a charter city. This includes, for instance, the ability to raise municipal fines above the state limits, though penalties cannot be excessive, Zurek said.
Councilmembers Lynne Ashbeck, Matt Basgall, and Drew Bessinger voted to continue discussions to make Clovis a charter city.
“I would love to say that, we could be a charter city and all this is going to work. But we’re talking about spending a lot of money and doing a lot of things, just to say ‘screw you, Sacramento,’” Basgall said. “We’re talking about putting ourselves in a position for litigation, putting ourselves in a position of no funding from the state.”
The council directed city staff to research creating a city charter in January with the hopes of strengthening local control, but Basgall said the reality doesn’t align with the council’s intention.
“It’s a conversation we can have as a community,” Ashbeck said. “I don’t see a way forward today. I wish it were different. I wish we could control our own destiny through this stretch.”
Mayor Pro Tem Diane Pearce said this kind of mentality is “why Sacramento keeps getting away with stripping us of everything that matters to us.”
Pearce and Mayor Vong Mouanoutoua favored proceeding with creating a city charter. Though it will be costly, they view it as a way to preserve local control and protect the “Clovis way of life.”
“’The one size fits all’ out of Sacramento is garbage, and it’s never worked, and it’s working less and less as we go forward,” Pearce said.
“I’m a dreamer, I may see this is an opportunity for us to leave this council a set of rules in which this community says, ‘This is what Clovis is, this is what Clovis stands for,’” Mouanoutoua said. “I think of it as identifying us, and whoever is up there, they may go the opposite way, and we don’t like it, this at least identifies us.”
This story was originally published August 13, 2025 at 3:12 PM.
