County, city plan diplomatic effort on hot topics

By DAVID RYAN
Register Staff Writer

Many people see local government as a monolith, one machine that takes your tax money and pays for some service you use, like public schools or streetlights.

But the reality is each of several local government agencies can act in its own interest. Sometimes governments clash. An example is American Canyon’s looming threat of a lawsuit against Napa County for proposing a boundary line around the city American Canyon officials don’t like.

On Tuesday, the Napa County Board of Supervisors took action to stop the prospect of deteriorating relations with the city of Napa, launching an ad hoc committee to talk to Napa officials regarding “issues of mutual concern,” according to a staff report.

On the list: Development prospects for the mostly abandoned Napa Pipe property, environmental impacts of the Soscol Avenue redevelopment project, efforts to provide affordable housing and the construction of a new downtown parking garage that is well on its way to becoming a done deal.

Supervisors, with Bill Dodd absent, voted unanimously to place Supervisors Mark Luce and Diane Dillon on a committee supplemented by county staff for what amounts to a diplomatic mission between the county building and City Hall.

“I would say it kind of become apparent that we had a lot of issues to deal with and getting together to talk about that would be appropriate,” Luce said, adding there are eight or nine issues that the county and city are going to broach. “There’s a lot of different interests. We’re hoping not to look at these one-by-one, but as a package ... we’re hoping that approach will work.”

Luce and Dillon met last Friday with Napa City Manager Mike Parness, Mayor Jill Techel and City Councilwoman Juliana Inman, their city counterparts. The two groups plan to meet again this Friday.

There should be no shortage of conversation.

Developer Keith Rogal’s plan to build 3,200 housing units — the largest development in its kind in Napa — at the Napa Pipe property, including a hotel and a business park at the property’s southern reach, will likely go through the county’s approval process, but invites all kinds of questions from city officials including who will provide sewer, water and other infrastructure and how it will be paid for.

County Planning Director  Hillary Gitelman has called the city’s Soscol Avenue project something that could cost the county “millions of dollars” over a 45-year period, as the plan could siphon off property tax revenues that would, under other circumstances, go to the county. The county has challenged aspects of the city’s environmental review and prompted the city to take a second look.

Then there is the fallout from the housing authority scandal, in which former housing authority director Peter Dreier tapped $1.4 million in city housing funds for projects operated by the Napa Valley Housing Authority.

Supervisors said Tuesday the county is likely to take a more active role in overseeing the housing authority.

“Some issues like the farmworker housing issue just land on you, nobody wanted them,” Luce said. “Who’s going to take care of this problem? There’s no easy answer.”

Yet whatever the subject on the table, Luce said the ad hoc committee’s mission is clear: unity among governments.

“I think if we start to look at the whole, the big picture of what we want to do, we’ll accomplish something,” Luce said. “We’re working to better our communities. We’re on the same team.”

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