Technological billionaires supporting a proposal to raise a brand new city on Rolling Prairie in the northeast of San Francisco Bay have agreed to withdraw their measure from the November bulletin and will first finance a complete environmental examination of the project, officials announced on Monday.
The break – announced in A joint declaration Since a supervisor from Solano County and California director general forever, the group supporting development – has marked a spectacular change in what had been an incessant push to build a city from zero in the rural county of Solano. Until recently, California Forever, whose list includes technology giants such as the co-founder of Linkedin, Reid Hoffman, and the venture capital Marc Andreessen, seemed to be put in place directly to local voters this fall.
In June, after the group spent millions of dollars on a signature collection campaign, the county registrar announced the The measure was qualified For the November ballot, despite the opposition of many local elected officials. At the time, Jan Sramek, the former merchant Goldman Sachs who directs the effort, said that the measure was nothing less than “a referendum on what we want the future of California to be”.
Jan Sramek, CEO of California Forever, stressed that his investment group remains attached to the project.
(Janie Har / Associated Press)
Then, Monday morning, About-Face: California Forever announced that it would remove the measure. Instead, the group will follow the normal county process for zoning changes for the landscape of almost 18,000 acres offered for development. This includes the financing of a complete examination of the environmental impact and the reimbursement of the county for time and the consultants linked to the company, according to the joint declaration published by Sramek and Mitch Mashburn, president of the Supervisory Board of the County of Solano.
Although “the need for more affordable housing and good paid jobs has merit, the moment has been unrealistic,” said Mashburn in the press release. The rush to the ballot of California Forever without an environmental examination and a negotiated development agreement “was a mistake,” he added. “This politicized the whole project, which made it difficult for us and our staff to work with them and forced everyone in our community to take sides.”
In its part of the declaration, SRAMEK, CEO of California Forever, stressed that his investment group remains attached to the project and feels an urgency to do so. “For each year, we delay, thousands of Solano parents are missing more mornings, recitals and bedtime stories because they move two hours for work. They cannot recover these magical moments. ”
“We want to show that it is possible to move more quickly to California,” said Sramek. “But we now recognize that it is possible to reorganize these steps without having an impact on our ambitious chronology.”
He said that his group would work with the county to conclude an environmental examination and development agreement over the next two years, then bring the package back to local voters for approval in 2026.
In an interview with The Times, Sramek said that the decision to draw the measurement of a ballot was taken after it was clear that residents of Solano county wanted a in -depth environmental examination process. He said he was convinced that the decision to “reverse the order of the stages” – to put the environmental revision and development agreement before bringing the question to voters – would lead to a better result.
Supporters of the project used an LLC to buy land from farmers in a vast strip of the county, extending from Rio Vista (photo) to the west, without telling anyone why.
(Godofredo A. Vásquez / Associated Press)
“This will not affect the chronology,” he said. “In fact, it could accelerate it.”
The change also gives California forever the time to reset with local residents after the group's rocky introduction to Solano County politics.
The effort, launched under a coat of secret, has become trapped in controversy Last year, in the midst of unfounded speculation according to which land buyers were foreign agents determined to espionage.
This is because for years before the supporters revealed their plans, they used a limited liability company called Flannery Associates to buy land from farmers in a vast strip of the county, extending from Rio Vista West to the Travis air base, without saying why. The news of the mysterious sale of land, in an area so close to a crucial military installation, led some people to speculate that this could be part of an effort of foreign spies to obtain military secrets.
Last year was revealed instead As a daring plan to build a model city from zero and reinvent the way the accommodation is built in California.
In January, Sramek unveiled plans from the new community that call tens of thousands of houses surrounded by open space and trails. California has forever presented the proximity of the community to the San Francisco Bay region, swearing that the project would convert agricultural land unused in “middle class districts with houses that we can allow ourselves”. The city would be accessible on foot, integrated into a socioeconomic and fueled energy.
But the proposal collected an early early opposition from certain local leaders, fearing that the group would end the planning process, as well as environmental groups concerned with the loss of natural habitat.
Mashburn said that his agreement with Sramek came after difficult conversations on how the process had taken place so far.
“We talked about the county of Solano, and we talked about the initiative, and we talked about the future, and the way things were going to look like, and the processes that we had to pass, and if we wanted to do this amicable and have a county where the neighbors did not fight with neighbors,” said Mashburn.
In an aerial photo, cattle graze near wind farms in the rural county of Solano.
(Terry Chea / Associated Press)
“On his credit and their credit, they agree with this. It is not an easy thing to do, for a leader to admit that you may have been wrong about something.”
The decision to withdraw the measure from the ballot came one day before the supervisor council was to discuss Consultant reportCommissioned by the county, on the potential tax impacts of development and vote on the advisability of putting the initiative before the voters in November.
The report, prepared by Stantec Consulting Services in Walnut Creek, questioned the financial viability of the new proposed city and the predicted construction challenges that could cause high deficits for the county. He estimated the price for the construction of schools, roads, sewer systems and other infrastructure to support the new community to tens of billions of dollars.
By announcing the new calendar, Mashburn has challenged California Forever investors, calling them to show how they would provide water, resolve transportation challenges and sail in “financial engineering which makes it possible to pay billions of dollars of infrastructure” without increasing taxes.
When he was asked if he believed that Sramek and his donors would eventually build their dream city in his county, Mashburn said it was skeptical that it turns out to be exactly as the Tech Titans were considering.
“We are starting from scratch,” he said. “There are incredible obstacles that must be overcome.”
