Election 2024: Here is where Napa County supervisor candidates stand on the issues

The six candidates vying for three Napa County Board of Supervisors seats responded to a series of questions at a recent candidate forum, much of it focused on agriculture, environment and the local workforce.

Well over 100 people showed up to the Culinary Institute of America at Copia in Napa’s Oxbow District on Jan. 22 to watch the forum. It was hosted by the Napa Valley Grapegrowers and the Napa Valley Vintners and moderated by local radio broadcaster Barry Martin.

The three supervisor races include:

• District 2 — which covers most of the northwestern part of the city of Napa, and runs up into the unincorporated county — is a contest between current Napa City Council member Liz Alessio and former Napa City Council member Doris Gentry.

• For District 4 — an area that includes an eastern portion of the city of Napa and eastern unincorporated communities, including Berryessa Highlands — Amber Manfree, who has a career in natural resource management, is facing off against former Napa City Council member Pete Mott.

• And in District 5, which covers American Canyon, incumbent Supervisor Belia Ramos is facing a challenge from current American Canyon City Council member Mariam Aboudamous.

The candidates answered questions regarding the county’s agricultural preserve, the general plan, recent controversial planning decisions, environmental sustainability in the wine industry, fire resiliency, water sustainability, farmworker housing and more.

Following introductions, the first question posed, focusing on agriculture, set the tone for the forum.

Agriculture

The candidates were asked whether they agreed agriculture is the “highest and best use” of Napa County land, as it’s long been defined in the county’s general plan.

• Alessio said agriculture has “made Napa an iconic destination,” and added that a conversation around “what is the best use in the development of land, and how do we balance that with our natural environment” needs to happen.

• Gentry said, “I agree that our ag is what sets us apart. And that’s what keeps us from looking like San Jose and other big cities, we need to protect the farmland.”

• Manfree said protecting Napa’s ag preserve is “an absolutely central thing we have to do in this community.” But in order to keep it that way, she said, the county will need to partner with Napa’s cities to meet local housing allocations.

• Mott also said he thought the ag preserve is essential, and the county needs to make sure ag land stays within its current zoning designation.

• Aboudamous said, “I believe that the agricultural industry is the backbone of the Napa Valley, and it made us what we are today.”

• Ramos said, “Agriculture is the foundation of our rural character and our legendary past, present and future as a wine-growing region.” But she said the county needs to revise its roughly 15-year-old general plan to figure out how evaluate questions around agriculture in the present.

County general plan

For the second question, Martin asked for the candidates’ perspective on the county’s 2008 general plan and the process of updating it.

• Alessio suggested “it’s really about revisiting that general plan and keeping it current,” and suggested the plan should be regularly revised every few years.

• Gentry said the general plan update should focus on “what it is it that makes our county our county, the farmers, the ranchers the ag, the resources that sustain our county.”

• Manfree said the update needed to include the entire county community in a conversation, and “we should be prioritizing working families in this community.”

• Mott said the process needs to take into account new state pressure to build housing and Napa’s homeless resident population, which has grown since the current plan was adopted.

• Aboudamous said, “We need to start looking at things regionally. Yes, it is the county general plan, so the county should be talking to the cities.”

• Ramos said, “We've got to make sure we’re taking charge by having a document that is encompassing of all views that can guide our future.”

County planning decisions

Martin made reference to recent planning decisions that have “raised concerns over shifting goalposts for permit applicants” — such as the county supervisors’ rejection of the Le Colline Vineyard project in late 2023.

He asked whether the candidates believed the county had permitted too much vineyard and winery development, and what their stance was on “restricting applicants who seek approval on land use decisions that comply with current law.”

• Alessio said the county, as a means of allowing agricultural applicants to know what they’re walking into, needed to maintain clear policies that address current needs and concerns, “whether it’s fire prevention and mitigation, whether it’s the drought and the watershed, whether it’s habitat corridors.”

• Gentry said, “when a business has spent 10 years and a business has jumped through hoops and a business has received environmental studies and green lights all the way along, and then all of a sudden gets the rug pulled out from under them, it sets a bad precedent.”

• Manfree said, “I am a big supporter of a process that allows project applicants to have a lot of certainty in the outcomes going forward,” but that such a process should solve the problem of changing expectations, such as those around habitat and conservation.

• Mott said winery and vineyard applications can take significant money and multiple years, so project denials in those cases are akin to Lucy “pulling the football in Charlie Brown cartoons.”

• Aboudamous said she didn’t agree with “hiding the ball” in government decisions because “our roles are all about transparency.”

• Ramos said the county “owes it to everybody to ensure there’s predictability in the process.” But she said there’s been less of that recently because “our general plan currently does not reflect the values of our community.”

Wine industry sustainability

The next question was whether the candidates believe the local wine industry is a leader in environmental sustainability, and whether they see opportunities or challenges.

• Alessio said, “They’re leading the way in this.” She added “we can always do more, we need to do more” insofar as transitioning to clean energy and mitigating greenhouse gasses goes, “but we are the leaders, I think, in the world on this topic.”

• Gentry said she loves the idea of sustainability and other agricultural innovation, that “Napa is at the forefront,” and “we just need to keep being sponsors of that and encouraging that.”

• Manfree said, “we’re seeing great examples of leadership and sustainability in this community, coming right out of our business community, our winemakers and our growers, a lot of them are just absolutely on the cutting edge in their techniques.”

• Mott said the Napa wine industry is “probably one of the most environmentally conscious” in the agricultural sector. But he said they face a challenge of the issue becoming “more and more political,” which he said could cause them to not “trust the process.”

• Aboudamous said, “I do believe in Napa Valley as a leader, and I recently have been saying that the new generation of winery owners and vineyard developers are even more environmentally conscious.”

• Ramos said, “Agriculture is based in land stewardship. I think for the most part, everyone wants to do right by the land, because if you’re not taking care of it you depleted it of its resources and it will not turn its fruit over to you.”

Wildfire prevention funding

Question No. 4 was about how the supervisors would seek to secure sustained funding for “fire prevention, suppression, mitigation and detection” with voters turning down the local wildfire prevention tax Measure L in mid-2022.

• Alessio said she thought Measure L failed because Napa County and its cities weren’t working together, and there will need to be a future measure that seeks to achieve the same end. “The city and the county, we need to get out of that old thinking of working in silos.”

• Gentry said the county also needs to figure out how to help families who can’t get insurance anymore because of the fires. “I cannot sit here right now and tell you what those solutions are, but I can tell you we need to get to work on it.”

• Manfree said there’s expected to be a greater frequency of fires over time with climate change, which she said will also intensify them. “We have an opportunity as a community to get ahead of this problem before the next fire comes, but we really have to get it together.”

• Mott spoke to the need for maintenance on existing fire mitigation work, which he said generally isn’t funded through grants. He said he’s advocating for using 3% of the county’s general fund for maintenance efforts until the county comes up with a new revenue source.

• Aboudamous also said the cities need a stronger relationship with the county, given that all of them have been impacted by fires. “People have said to me fire mitigation doesn’t resonate with people in American Canyon, because you’re so far away from it. That’s not true.”

• Ramos said she recommended the creation of a new fire district that provides emergency medical transport service: “The chargebacks we receive from Medicare on that reimbursement rate can be used to pay for our fire mitigation to the tune of millions of dollars a year.”

Reducing emissions

Martin then asked the candidates to describe their top priorities for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and creating a more sustainable habitat.

• Alessio said there’s a need to public transportation options and transportation infrastructure, in part to cut down on stop-and-go traffic. She said the county also needs to lean into electric vehicle charging stations.

• Gentry said local efforts to try and increase ridership on public buses in the past have failed, in part because “people in California are really married to their car.” She suggested that the question needs to be evaluated at a higher level, because “we do not have the solution to get people out of their cars.”

• Manfree referenced work she’d done in partnership with the Napa County Bicycle Coalition on their Safe Routes To School project, one part of which includes numerous recommendations to improve the experience of bikers and pedestrians.“if we can pull that through the process it’s going to make every single city in this community farm more friendly to pedestrians and cyclists, and I can’t wait to see it.”

• Mott said he’s happy the Soscol Junction project is getting finished to increase traffic flow in the southern part of the county, but work to improve traffic at the interchange just south of that needs to be pushed forward.

• Aboudamous said she’s recommending improvements to Napa’s public transportation, as well as higher densities in urban cores so people don’t have to spend as much time driving. “That’s good for our environment, that’s good for our mental health and it’s good for our traffic, it helps mitigate some of our traffic.”

• Ramos said building affordable and available housing in the county would help cut down on traffic and benefit the climate. “People not only have the right to live where they work because it’s dignified, but we get to kill two birds with one stone here.”

Supporting wine industry

Martin then asked how the candidates would support the local wine industry as an economic engine — which he said brings in $9.4 billion a year — or what alternatives they would consider.

• Alessio said, “We need more housing for our farmworkers, and that process needs to be easier and more accessible for vintners who have the property in this space and want to build farmworker housing for their workers.”

• Gentry said, “I think we need to do whatever we can to help support that industry, the end.”

• Manfree said the wine industry is hugely important to Napa, but it faces many challenges. One way to resolve those, she said, is through “inclusive stakeholder processes to resolve some of these disputes that we’ve been having.”

• Mott said one of the most important issue for the industry is employee housing. “My focus is going to continue to be that agriculture is the highest and best use of land in this county, and the workers that work that land need to be supported and helped along the way.

• Aboudamous noted that fire mitigation was also important, given that fires reduce tourism and related revenues. She also said farmworker housing needs to be able to support families.

• Ramos said she’d worked to support the wine industry on the board of supervisors. “The conversation, the collaboration; that’s how we as supervisors support the industry but also likewise how you the industry supports the county in good governance.

Supporting vineyard workers

Martin’s next question was how the candidates would support the families that work in Napa’s vineyards.

• Alessio said Napa County and its cities should seek to encourage “livable communities”, allowing for people of multiple generations to afford housing and live amongst each other.

• Gentry said accessory dwelling units were a great idea to increase housing in Napa, but they haven’t caught on in the way she expected. “There does need to be a better idea.”

• Manfree said there’s much work going on to build affordable housing for agricultural workers, and that cities will need to build up instead of out to maintain the ag preserve boundaries.

• Mott said there needs to be expansion in ways to support affordable housing for local workers, including working with winery and vineyard owners to build workforce housing on their properties.

• Aboudamous said Napa County needs more housing in general, including for people who make too much money to qualify for assistance but not enough to qualify for a mortgage.

• Ramos said the county needs to continue to fund supportive services through family resource centers, and “we’ve got to make sure we are locating family farmworker housing connected to services, not in remote places like Skyline that don’t have sidewalks and access to those services that you need.”

Groundwater sustainability

Martin’s final question was whether the candidates would advocate for incentive programs for growers to meet groundwater sustainability requirements and other conservation goals.

• Alessio said the community has greatly improved at conserving water. But there’s very expensive and aging water infrastructure in Napa County. She said she’s supportive of an incentive program, given the sensitivity of Napa’s watershed.

• Gentry said, “Anything we can do to work with our farmers, ranchers, vineyards and all of the people of the county to help do a better job sustaining and capturing water and doing water conservation si a grand idea.”

• Manfree said groundwater is an incredibly valuable shared resource, and she was in favor of appropriate measuring and monitoring of that. She said she was supportive of a thorough census of Napa County wells.

• Mott said he supported work that needs to be done to enhance the county’s groundwater sustainability, considering the possible future reduction in overall water resources.

• Aboudamous said she would support programs around improving sustainability, given that conservation “should be everyone’s goal.” She also said she strongly advocates for increasing recycled water production and use.

• Ramos said she wanted to work with county partners to take “shallow and inefficient wells offline.” She said that everyone does better if the county has effective wells. “With correct data, working together and incentives, we can certainly make improvements into our water system and our sustainability long-term.

You can reach Staff Writer Edward Booth at 707-521-5281 or edward.booth@pressdemocrat.com.