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More PR baloney about the billionaires' utopia in Solano County

Money talks. And with .1%ers doing the talking about their proposed massive development in the boonies, you can expect slick, glossy, rosy projections. SFGate published an article yesterday about the latest malarkey from the California Forever noise machine. It's all about how heavenly the new town will be. But pay attention to the fine print:

  • 400,000 residents at build-out equals about half the popluation of San Francisco, yet we've alredy heard that there is no plan for governance other than to burden the Solano County Supervisors with a significant new municipal workload
  • manufacturing jobs without consideration of how the products will be shipped or whether there will be impacts on the regional road network
  • houses and downtown commercial areas that look upscale but will obviously require low wage workers to staff the businesses and service the residents - along with silence about housing for low wage workers and their families or commute traffic to/from far-flung, actual affordable housing for those workers
  • better uses for "dismal" agricultural lands - something existing family farmers and ranchers might take issue with
  • and so on
A highway alongside a barren field with wind turbines in the distance and a subtitle about agriculture in Solano County.
A screen grab from California Forever's You Tube video linked in the SFGate article. It looks like Highway 12. Notice the shade thrown at local land owners? That will go over well, won't it?

Yadayadayada, we've heard it all before. It took San Joaquin County, with plenty of directed effort at stewardship, 30 years to enable a vote on a self-governing city of 20,000 people at Mountain House. What can we expect from Solano County if the billionaires get their way? Yeah, good luck with that. Meanwhile, 5 MILLION Californians in existing urbanized unincorporated communities have very little hope of achieving he same rights and privileges that Californians who live in cities enjoy. Why? Because of California's ponderous process for enabling new cities to be formed and the Legislature's reluctance to do anything about it. Money talks, though. Heaven help Solano County, its economic strategy built around its existing cities, its limited water supply and its marginal road network that would serve the proposed development area. No doubt we will see more slick and glossy PR in the weeks and months to come.

 

 

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