California Forever CEO: We stand by our land development guarantees

The executive, Jan Sramek, says he would sign a contract with Solano County if they presented one that included the same language as the East Solano Plan's "10 Guarantees."

(Graphic by Solano NewsNet)

The chief executive of the development firm California Forever says he is willing to enshrine a list of community guarantees found on the website of the East Solano Plan if officials from Solano County provide a contract that includes those same exact guarantees.

In an interview with Solano NewsNet, California Forever CEO Jan Sramek said the group stands by their promises and are fully committed to them, even as legal experts cast doubt that the list, as written, constitutes a legally-enforceable contract.

The promises are outlined in a document called the 10 Guarantees, which promises significant financial investments in community-based programs and resources that the organization says will benefit Solano County as a whole. The guarantees presume Solano County voters will approve a ballot initiative that overrides the region’s slow-growth initiative, which is preventing many of the projects outlined in the East Solano Plan from getting off the ground.

For several years, Sramek and a coalition of investors have been purchasing land in rural Solano County along the Highway 12-Highway 113 corridor, with the broader intention of establishing a standalone city. The community would utilize around 17,500 acres of land between Fairfield and Rio Vista for residential, commercial and industrial purposes, with land set aside for recreation, open space and as a “security zone” for nearby Travis Air Force Base.

Residents, business leaders and local officials have expressed concerns that the plans would create significant burdens in a part of rural Solano County that currently exists as open space and for agricultural use. Those concerns range from impacts on public infrastructure, safety, traffic, water rights, the environment and cost of living.

To assuage some of those concerns, California Forever has opened regional offices and conducted public outreach events to solicit information from community stakeholders. They also unveiled their list of 10 Guarantees that are tied to the approval of the ballot initiative, which voters could decide in November once the Solano County Registrar of Voters gives it the green light.

Those guarantees include sizable financial investments in community-based projects and resources, including $70 million to help Solano County residents pay for college, $30 million to protect open space, $500 million in downtown revitalization projects for Solano County’s seven established cities and unspecified funding for upgrades to Highway 12 and Highway 113.

On its website, California Forever says the 10 Guarantees are “legally binding,” and that “Solano County is not allowed to issue any building permits unless California Forever complies with all 10 Guarantees.” But legal experts who spoke with not-for-profit news outlet CalMatters in February cast doubt on that claim, saying California Forever was moving into untested legal waters with their list of guarantees, and suggesting disputes would have to be settled in court.

"They can promise they can do a thing," Mary-Beth Moylan, a law professor at the University of the Pacific who specializes in California initiatives, told CalMatters. "But, when you get into things like commitment of taxpayer money, that’s not something they can guarantee."

On Tuesday, Sramek told Solano NewsNet he understood that concern, but he still feels the guarantees are legally binding.

"We've always been very clear that they are legally binding, we actually believe that they are strictly legally binding."

To ease any further concerns about the matter, Sramek said he would “sign whatever piece of paper the county puts in front of us to make the guarantees legally binding right now.”

“We are not trying to tell one story and do another; we stand by those guarantees, and we will go and deliver on them,” Sramek asserted. “As long as it says these are legally binding, and they are the same guarantees that are in the initiative, we will sign it tomorrow. We would love for Solano County to give us a document like that, that could take this off the table and make it clear to everyone that we stand behind our work.”

While it sounds like a simple matter, it could be more complicated than that. Development projects, especially one of this scale, typically involve several layers of government bureaucracy. In this instance, the matter would almost certainly require scrutiny and approval by the Solano County Planning Commission and the Solano County Board of Supervisors before the county itself would be willing to sign an agreement with California Forever on the guarantees. By then, the November election will likely have come and gone.

Even if all parties agreed to fast-track the process, there is a relatively low chance that an agreement would be endorsed. California Forever and its East Solano Plan have drawn criticism from some Solano County supervisors, including Supervisor Mitch Mashburn, who told KXTV (Channel 10, ABC) in April that there were still more questions than answers about the East Solano Plan.

“Many in the community have asked me about the uncertainty surrounding this initiative, which includes a long list of unanswered questions and an absence of specific plans and environmental studies to address them,” Mashburn said in a statement to the TV outlet. “I can assure the Solano County community that the Board of Supervisors will do everything we can to provide the facts needed to make an informed decision.”

When asked if he felt Solano County officials were being fair in their treatment of California Forever and the East Solano Plan, Sramek remained optimistic.

“I think they’ve been fairly impartial,” he said. “We are following basically the same process that any other land use initiative would, which is, you change the zoning and the general plan, and then you have all these conditions in the development agreement.”

He continued: “I think what’s unusual here is that, already, all the way at the beginning [of the process], we’ve set these other guarantees, and we are wiling to stand by them. I think some of the opponents have weaponized [them, through] some technicality of whether they have to be fully incorporated into the development agreement, to claim that they are not legally binding. But it’s not just the case.”