Overall, last Friday’s Napa Community’s Growth Summit was a good start in the right direction. Not much was produced in terms of tangible solutions, other than an agreement that Napa County’s challenges are increasingly regional and, as such, require cooperative solutions. While I was discouraged by some of the passive-aggressive public statements made by other city’s planning officials directed at American Canyon, I found it at least beneficial to get the sentiments out in the open, so we can begin working past them.

The expectation that American Canyon was never going to develop both sides of the commercially-zoned areas of Highway 29, was not terribly realistic. That our city’s commercial development has highlighted North County’s reliance on labor that can’t afford to live in Napa County is not a particularly compelling reason for American Canyon to defer creating fiscal independence.  

With the thorny issue of the northern ULL now resolved, American Canyon has partnered with the County to establish growth boundaries that will soon appear on a ballot for voter-approval. Not only does the agreement define American Canyon’s growth, but it also includes deals that will continue local re-routing of traffic off of Highway 29.

American Canyon has the capacity to help address and alleviate some of our County’s trickier considerations- such as meaningful jobs creation, workforce and diversified housing stock, and transportation demand management- but this will be hampered by communication approaches that amount to little more than uninvited lectures as to what we should be doing.

Happily, I would say that sentiments ranging from myopic to pompous to outright hostile towards the County’s second largest city are on the wane, and I would be greatly remiss if I didn’t acknowledge the many citizens, elected officials, and community activists on all sides who increasingly are seeking mutually beneficial and respectful solutions. Nevertheless the accusations are still there and they are often couched in an “us against them” notion that Napa County’s problems and solutions are all on the shoulders of one community.

 

American Canyon fulfills a unique role in the Napa Valley economy. We are the connection to Solano County, as well as Highway 37 and Interstate 80, and tangentially Highway 12 just to our North. Am Can has a light industry zone that, because of its proximity to the airport, can’t be developed for any other purpose.  The city is a logical choice for a regional transit hub- personally, if I had a magic genie, I would love to see a return to trans-county rail transit based out of Am Can with clean Mag Lev technology.

Moreover, Am Can has a strong and growing community of voices who are vocal about a new phase of shepherding our growth. Now that the city has gone from incorporation, to self-determination, to establishing healthy economic and political resources- we are asking the relevant questions about what we want going forward.

The 15% gradient line proposed for the eastern ULL reflects, as one resident puts it, a desire not to become Daly City in terms of developing the hillside. There are, incidentally, also voices interested in pulling that ULL in even further and simply using the hard boundary of Newell Road as our limit line.

The thought of more single family residential home creation- beyond just the hiatus imposed by the market downturn- is of little appeal to many residents and is out of balance with the city’s economic development plan.

Recently we as a planning commission have given direction to staff to create a near-term public study session on the Highway 29 corridor in order to give us more specific resources for managing and crafting development in that area. We have given similar direction for consideration of the Green Island Road area, particularly as it relates to balancing open space preservation in the light industrial zone.

The needs, challenges and best uses of community resources for say, Calistoga will vary greatly from American Canyon, as well as all points in between. Where good crossover ideas exist we should use them- where one community can contribute something that the others and the County can not, there needs to be productive dialogue in place to make sure mutually beneficial regional solutions can be arrived at.

What we don’t need anymore of is finger-in-the-face lectures, fang-baring nativism, or a dwelling of past mistrusts on both sides that sometimes leave us feeling that we’re in the same county, but otherwise worlds’ apart.