SAN FRANCISCO– A Silicon Valley-backed initiative to… green city as up to 400,000 people in the San Francisco Bay Area have qualified for the Nov. 5 ballot, election officials said Tuesday.
The Solano County Registrar of Voters said in a statement that the office has verified a sufficient number of signatures. California Forever, the company behind the campaign, has submitted more than 13,000 valid signatures needed to qualify.
The plan is for the clerk to present the results of the count to the county Board of Supervisors within two weeks, after which the board can order an impact assessment report.
Voters will be asked to allow urban development on 27 square miles (70 square kilometers) of land between Travis Air Force Base and the Sacramento River Delta city of Rio Vista, which is currently zoned for agriculture. The land use change is necessary to build the homes, jobs and walkable downtowns proposed by Jan Sramek, a former Goldman Sachs trader who heads California Forever.
Sramek, who has the backing of wealthy investors such as philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs and venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, announced that the campaign spent $2 million in the first quarter of 2024.
He expects the amount spent to be higher in the second quarter, he told The Associated Press in an interview before the ballot initiative was approved.
The opposition includes conservation groups and some local and federal officials who say the plan is a speculative cash grab rooted in secrecy. Sramek infuriated locals by secretly purchasing more than $800 million worth of farmland and even suing farmers who refused to sell.
The Solano Land Trust, which protects open lands, said last week that such large-scale development “will have a detrimental impact on Solano County’s water resources, air quality, traffic, agricultural lands and natural environment.”
Sramek expects to have 50,000 inhabitants in the new city in the next ten years. The proposal includes an initial $400 million to help residents purchase homes in the community, as well as an initial guarantee of 15,000 local jobs with salaries of at least $88,000 per year.
Companies specializing in aerospace and defense manufacturing and indoor vertical farming are among those expressing interest if voters approve the project, California Forever previously announced. It also plans to build a regional sports complex.