Bill Hocker | Feb 11, 2015

Council retreat will look at big picture

This is an ominous quote from the article: "Council members will discuss strategies for increasing economic development, especially in downtown, and review the city’s long-term financial picture."

Development projects full steam ahead - a lot of fees to be made ( to help pay for the unfunded costs of previous projects, no doubt). The economy of the city seems to be thriving, the article adds, but thriving is obviously not good enough, more development is needed.

The Napa County General Plan has always been a punt on fending off development interests in the county. Leave our vineyards alone and you can do whatever you want in the municipalities is the attitude. But the kick-the-can-down-the-road policy has run out of road in the form of too much traffic and not enough water and yet all the developer-controlled city of Napa can think of is more development. The urban-rural dichotomy, designed to appease developer lust for those wide open spaces of the county, doesn't seem to acknowledge that urban development not only creates the impacts of traffic congestion in the rural areas, and the need for the endless suburban mitigations of more signals and more left turn lanes, but also continues to increase pressure to expand the urban rural lines and imports the urban voters necessary to allow that expansion to happen. How does Napa City see the county in 2050? It seems to be looking in the mirror.

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