In his second annual State of the City address Tuesday before a large audience, Fremont Mayor Raj Salwan announced that Fremont is no longer a “bedroom community.”
“Seventy years ago, Fremont was orchards, farmlands and five small towns that much of the Bay Area barely knew,” said Salwan. “Today we are the fourth-largest city in the Bay Area, a global center of advanced manufacturing, and one of the most diverse cities in the entire country, where more than 100 languages are spoken in our schools.”
In 1956, the five individual towns of Centerville, Niles, Irvington, Warm Springs and Mission San Jose merged to become the city of Fremont. Fremont is a general law city, not a charter city, which means that it operates under state laws rather than its own local constitution.
One early image from the mayor’s slide presentation was titled “Fremont goes all in on AI boom.”
Salwan said that seven of the world’s 10 largest makers of artificial intelligence servers were building servers in 33 facilities across the city.
“We often say that if you use LLM or post on social media, chances are that that server was built in the city of Fremont,” said Salwan, referring to large language models.
To power these factories, Salwan said that since 2023, the city had doubled the capacity of its electrical grid.
The mayor envisioned a cradle-to-career “pipeline” for “every kid in Fremont” who would advance from a Fremont public school building a project for the city’s annual Engineering Expo to earning a degree at Ohlone College to finding a “good-paying” job in Fremont “without ever having to leave the city you grew up in.”
In response to citizen concerns about how the city responds to homeless encampments, Salwan said Fremont had built five new affordable housing complexes in 2025 that provided 567 affordable units. Salwan said that over half of the units at one property were leased to families who were unhoused or at risk of homelessness. Last year, the City Council adopted a new camping ordinance that prohibited camping on public property.
On public safety, Salwan said that over the past year, violent crime had decreased by 13% and property crime by 21%. Salwan said that 95% of all 911 calls were answered in 20 seconds or less, and the Fire Department had completed an inspection of every fire hydrant in Fremont to ensure adequate water pressure.
Regarding quality-of-life issues, Salwan said that the city broke ground this year on a long-promised community center, returned pedal boating to Lake Elizabeth, and established a free citywide Wi-Fi network through the Access Fremont initiative.
Charter city proposal
At the conclusion of his speech, Salwan said that in July, the City Council will consider a proposal to change Fremont from a general law city to a charter city. Salwan said that Fremont’s share of county-level property taxes, which is the city’s largest source of revenue, is one of the lowest in Alameda County, and under state law, this share cannot be changed. Only a charter city may levy a new real property transfer tax, which is a tax paid when a property is sold.
In March, the City Council approved a work plan to draft a city charter and consider submitting it to Fremont voters on the upcoming Nov. 3 ballot. The next Fremont City Council meeting is July 7 at 7 p.m.
