RIO VISTA, Calif. — Before California Forever can break ground on its ambitious plan to build a brand new city in Solano County, it must break through the opposition.
Solano County voters will decide the project's fate in the November 2024 general election.
Now in the midst of a town hall tour across Solano County communities, founder and CEO Jan Sramek was peppered with questions from a skeptical crowd in Rio Vista Tuesday.
Some families with deep roots in Rio Vista told Sramek that the place where the company wants to put its new city isn't just idle grazing land.
"My ancestors have been farming this land since the 1850s. They grow dry land crops. This isn’t just pasture land," said Aiden Mayhood, an activist with the group Solano Together.
"For you to present the farming that my family and other families in the room has done for generations is unacceptable," one audience member told him.
"How do you expect anyone in this room or the county to believe what you're saying?" asked another.
Sramek responded by saying housing in California is "insanely expensive," adding Solano County has a shortage of good paying jobs.
"Somehow, it’s controversial to say we should take some grazing land and on a portion of it, build a new community. If we went back 50 or 100 years, this would be happening all over the country, all the time," Sramek told ABC10.
Retiree Alex Padilla was among the few people in the crowd who welcomed the development.
"The concerns are valid, but what I don’t want to see is that walls go up all of a sudden," Padilla said, adding that it would be great to see new generations of people staying in Solano County for employment opportunities and schools.
To conclude the contentious town hall, Sramek engaged in a lengthy exchange with one of the families California Forever is suing for alleged price fixing of lands the company wanted to buy near Rio Vista.
"I believe we have been extremely reasonable in wanting to have a discussion, and it has been you and your family who don’t want to do this," Sramek said.
"We are not hoping to settle, because we do not want to sell our land. We are hoping that you will drop the lawsuit," said Margaret Anderson, who is named in the lawsuit.
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