California Forever withdraws push for November vote on new city plan in Solano County
FAIRFIELD – California Forever is pulling its ballot measure that would have put an ambitious plan to build a new city up for a vote in November in Solano County, the group and county announced Monday.
The billionaire-backed campaign has been pushing hard for months to garner support for their proposed community of 400,000 people; but for now, getting the plan before voters is paused.
In a joint statement, California Forever CEO Jan Sramek and Solano County County Supervisor Mitch Mashburn noted that the East Solano Plan would instead be taking the normal route of submitting an application to rezone the land.
Racing to get it before voters in November via a ballot initiative, many Solano leaders have agreed, side-stepped the process and cut through the red tape all other developers have to navigate.
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"To rush forward when there's not a need, to usurp a process when there's a process in place for a reason and it's beneficial, those are mistakes. I think now that's all talked about and negotiated and that's going to change," said Mashburn, chair of the Solano County Board of Supervisors.
Back in April, California Forever leaders revealed that they had gathered enough signatures from county residents to put the plan before voters.
Monday's announcement comes just one day before a scheduled board of supervisors meeting where the board was set to hear a report it ordered over the past 30 days to summarize the impacts of California Forever, which Mashburn admits, cannot adequately be done in such a short time frame. Still, the report cited major concerns with the project.
Mashburn never wanted California Forever's project to go before voters without them first having all the facts.
"It would have been a mistake because there would have been too many unknown impacts on both sides that would negatively affect this county, this whole region in all probability, for generations to come," Mashburn said.
Mashburn says he and Sramek had a conversation that culminated on Monday, July 22, where the two came to the mutual agreement that the timeline of the project was unrealistic.
California Forever will now apply for a General Plan & Zoning Amendment and proceed with preparing a full environmental impact report (EIR) and negotiating a development agreement with the county.
"We now have the gift of time," Mashburn said. "This way, we start over from the beginning. Everything goes through the process it's supposed to go through. The public has their input, the studies are done, it's very transparent."
Mashburn complimented Sramek for his willingness to walk back the ballot measure.
"It's not easy to say you were wrong. For a leader of a company who has investors to step up and say, 'Hey, I was wrong and I want to start over and do this right.' That's not easy to do and he's doing it. So I have to give him kudos," Mashburn said.
A CEO's response: The point isn't to win an election
Sramek, citing new polling, says a majority of Solano voters are in support of new development in East Solano County but that most voters also wanted all the facts laid out in a full EIR before they could pass California Forever's plan to build a new city.
"We didn't just want to win by a narrow margin. The point here isn't to win an election. The point is to build an incredible new community," Sramek told CBS13 Monday.
He wants the proposed city to be affordable, walkable and home to a new economic engine in Solano County.
Sramek says he did not pull the ballot measure because he feared it would fail in November. Following his conversations with Mashburn, he now believes delaying the vote will be a better path forward for everyone involved.
"We've always tried to find the right balance between a sense of urgency, delivering the hopes and the jobs and clean power on a reasonable timescale, but doing it right. We have too many projects in California that take 20 years to approve. We didn't want to end up in that position. I think we found here a good middle path where we have a commitment to work together and bring something back to the voters in 2026 that doesn't change the timeline to construction but it does make for a better and more inclusive process," Sramek said.
If California Forever can take two more years, give people the information they need, and make sure people do not feel that this was rushed, Sramek believes they have a chance to eventually win in what he calls a "bigger and decisive majority."
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"We want to be good members of the community. We are willing to fight for what we believe, but we don't like to fight. If we have a process that is more consensus-building, then we are excited about that," Sramek said.
The CEO admits that when it comes to what has been loud opposition to the project, there will be people California Forever simply will never win over.
"Maybe we haven't done a good job explaining the benefits of the project and how we will deal with the serious concerns they have. I think it's important to recognize there is a faction of people who will never be for this, and that's okay; but we want to have a broad, inclusive, productive relationship with the people who are open to it," Sramek said.
For the next two years, Sramek says California Forever will focus not only on completing its full EIR and development agreement with Solano County but also on shoring up more detailed plans for the project internally.
This will include planning more community engagement, solving issues concerning things like transportation and sustainability, and focusing more on the benefits they plan to promise future community members.
Opposition: Outspoken leadership praising vote delay, but wary of the future
Some Solano County leaders have been opposed to California Forever since it was first announced the group sued local farmers to get their land as they were secretly buying up what now totals more than 60,000 acres of farmland.
William Brazelton, president of the Solano County Farm Bureau, is one of them.
"It's more like a David versus Goliath situation. There's a group of investors with seemingly unlimited resources putting pressure on a group with limited resources," said Brazelton, who is also a fourth-generation Solano County farmer.
Brazelton told CBS13 Monday that the news of the vote delay is good and that the farm bureau supports California Forever going through a more normal, regulated process moving forward.
That does not mean they support the project—Brazelton says he still opposes it and is not likely to change his mind.
"Their proposed development is full of empty promises," Brazelton said. "In a perfect world, they're not gonna go away, but maybe they could find an alternative where that kind of investment can come to our existing cities that need investment instead of an entirely new development and community that nobody actually asked for."
The plan to create a new city in Solano County doubling its population has been met with significant pushback from the community. In June, the Solano Land Trust also came out against the plan.
Some leaders like Congressman John Garamendi may never be sold.
"The citizens of Solano County and the leadership, political and economic leadership are smart. They want smart growth. California Forever is dumb growth. It is a repetition of the worst of California's urban sprawl," Garamendi said.
Garamendi told CBS13 he was "delighted" to hear the news the ballot measure was pulled Monday.
"A bunch of super-wealthy billionaires thought they could run over the top of the voters and citizens of Solano County and do anything they damn well please to do because, after all, they are billionaires," Garamendi said. "The fact of the matter is, this was a terribly ill-conceived concept and then an even worse conceived development plan."
Garamendi does not believe a full EIR will be able to be completed in the two years before California Forever wants to get its ballot measure back before voters.
For now, the group is pumping the brakes in its race to rezone. California Forever hopes one day, despite what could be considered an uphill climb, the delay eventually helps them cross the finish line.
Time can only tell if Solano County will get behind it.