SOLANO COUNTY, Calif. — California Forever recently announced their new advisory committee made up of Solano County community members, including the Solano County sheriff, CEO of Visit Fairfield and retired Travis Air Force Base officials among others.
ABC10 took a deeper look into the committee giving feedback from locals on the project.
“They’ve got a good representation of different points of view. There are definitely some skeptics in the room and my position is one of neutrality,” said Anand Patel, President and CEO of Visit Fairfield.
Patel sits on the new California Forever Community Advisory Committee, which took roughly 10 weeks to field members before establishing the group, according to Jan Sramek, founder and CEO of Flannery Associates LLC, the investors behind California Forever.
Sramek says the group meets for about an hour and a half every week and the group was made up of people suggested by public officials. See the full list of all 21 members HERE.
“We’ve already had two meetings and we have five or six coming up,” said Sramek. “We structure [the meetings] around topics. We had one about Travis [Air Force Base], we brought in our aviation experts, we brought in consultants to talk about issues such as noise and safety.”
Patel says the group is just meant to “listen and provide feedback” and don’t have “any kind of authority on the project.”
Sramek says they are taking the input from the group representing the community and will weigh the opinions of the committee when moving forward with plans for the proposed city.
“There are some issues where there is kind of general agreement around the table and what's the right way forward, and then there are other issues where the community disagrees,” he said. "It's a very diverse group of people and they're never going to agree on everything."
Patel says he feels like the committee’s opinions and suggestions are being heard. They recommended a larger social media presence for California Forever to provide additional information to the public. Since then, California Forever has launched their Facebook page and added releases to their official website.
Sramek told ABC10 no one on the board is receiving any type of compensation for their engagement and Patel echoes that, saying he’s only gotten a sandwich during one of the meetings.
The next meeting will revolve around topics about transportation, energy, home design and jobs. The committee is set to meet once a week through December and the California Forever proposal is expected to be released in January, 2024.
