FAIRFIELD, California — A Silicon Valley-backed initiative to create a green city Elections for up to 400,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area on land now zoned for agriculture will ultimately not be on the Nov. 5 ballot, officials said Monday.
The California Forever campaign qualified for the ballot in June, but a Solano County report released last week raised questions about the project, concluding that it “may not be financially feasible.”
While Solano County supervisors were set to discuss the report Tuesday, organizers abruptly withdrew the measure and said they would try again in two years.
The report found that the new city — described on California Forever’s website as an “opportunity for a new community, good-paying local jobs, solar farms and open space” — would likely cost the county billions of dollars and create substantial financial shortfalls, while drastically reducing agricultural production and potentially jeopardizing local water supplies. Bay Area News Group reported.
California Forever said project organizers would work with the county over the next two years on an environmental impact statement and a development agreement.
Postponing the vote “also creates an opportunity to revisit the plan and incorporate input from more stakeholders,” a joint statement Monday from the county and California Forever said.
“We are who we are in Solano County because we do things differently here,” Mitch Mashburn, chairman of the county’s Board of Supervisors, said in the statement. “We take the time to make informed decisions that are best for the current generation and future generations. We want to make sure everyone has the opportunity to be heard and get all the information they need before they vote on a General Plan amendment of this magnitude.”
The measure would have asked voters to authorize urban development on 27 square miles (70 square kilometers) of land between Travis Air Force Base and the Sacramento River Delta city of Rio Vista that is currently zoned for agriculture. The land-use change is needed to build the homes, jobs and walkable downtown proposed by Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who heads California Forever.
Opponents of the effort include conservation groups and some local and federal officials who say the plan is a speculative money grab rooted in secrecy. Sramek angered locals by secretly buying more than $800 million worth of farmland and even suing farmers who refused to sell.
The Solano Land Trust, which protects open lands, said in June that such large-scale developments “will adversely impact Solano County’s water resources, air quality, transportation, agricultural lands and natural environment.”
Sramek has said he hopes to have 50,000 residents in the new city within the next decade. The proposal included an initial $400 million to help residents buy homes in the community, as well as an initial guarantee of 15,000 local jobs with salaries of at least $88,000 a year.