Board of Supervisors - Regular Meeting

Madam chair, we're live.

Good morning. I would like to call to order this meeting of 01/27/2026 for the Napa County Board of Supervisors. May I have roll call, please?

Vice Chair Lession? Present. Supervisor Ramos? Here. Supervisor Gallagher? Here. Supervisor Cottrell?

Here.

Chair Manfrey?

Here. I would like to invite Jenny Olson to lead us in the Pledge of Allegiance today. Thank you. Our next item is agenda item three, pet of the week. Today we will be meeting a cat named Dormouse.

Good morning. Good morning, Louise and Dormouse. How are you today?

I'm doing pretty good. I might need some assistance with the microphone because she is a big girl. We'll see how much she tolerates. She seems to be doing pretty well so far but she does let me know every now and then. She's like, put me down, I need to roam around. The people need to see me. So this is Dormouse. She's about two years old. Oh, she's licking me. She's she's about two years old. She was a stray that was found here in Napa. She came in back in November. She did have a microchip. Unfortunately, we weren't able to bring her back with her owner. She is one of those community cats that was very, very friendly, very social, very outgoing, and very much an adoption candidate.

Sorry, I'm out of breath. She's she's a little heavy. Okay. But since she's been at the shelter, she's been a very, very social cat, very friendly, very confident. And if you've noticed already, she's got little extra toes. So she is a polydactyl, meaning that she just has one extra digit on her paws. It kinda looks like she has a hand or a mitten. Otherwise, she is probably best as a single cat only. She does tolerate other cats. If she walks around the adoption cat room, she's kinda just walking around on her high high heels letting everybody know, hey, I'm walking around while you're in your kennel. She will hiss at them, but I haven't seen her do much more than that. But, yeah, that's Dormouse.

Okay. Well, she's a beauty and I hope that we can find somebody to take her home and give her a lovely lovely, forever home sometime soon. Thank you, Louise.

No problem. Thank you, guys.

Thank you. So our next item will be approval of commendations and proclamations. And we have a proclamation today recognizing January 2026 as Positive Parenting Awareness Month in Napa County. Do we have any public comment on this item today? Is there anyone on the phones? Okay, I'm not seeing any public comment. May I please have a

motion to approve the proclamation?

So moved.

Second.

Okay, I have a first by Supervisor Alessio and a second by Supervisor Cottrell. All those in favor? Aye. Motion passes unanimously. And I would like to invite Supervisor Gallagher to present this proclamation.

Good morning. This is the eighth annual Positive Parenting Awareness Month we have recognized. And I would like to read this come up, stand close. I won't bite, I promise. Whereas raising children and youth to become healthy, confident, capable individuals is the most important job parents and caregivers have, and whereas the quality of parenting or caregiving is a powerful predictor of future social, emotional and physical health, and families come in many forms with children raised by parents, grandparents, foster parents, family members, and other caregivers, and whereas the pandemic, climate crises, and racial injustices have exacerbated economic insecurity, mental health challenges, domestic violence, discrimination, and other trauma experienced by families, particularly black, indigenous, Latin A, Asian, and other families of color whereas positive parenting is a protective factor that prevents and heals adverse childhood experiences which impact lifelong health and well-being and occur in the context of adverse community environments that lack equity, and whereas families in Napa County can receive support from positive parenting programs, including the Triple P Positive Parenting Program, an evidence based program available thanks to a partnership between Napa County Health and Human Services Agency, ParentsCan, Cope Family Center, Child Start Incorporated, and Up Valley Family Centers.

And whereas Triple P has benefited over 20,000 parents, caregivers, children and youth in Napa County since 2017 through proven strategies to strengthen relationships, promote children's development and handle parenting challenges, and whereas families in Napa County can also receive support for raising healthy, thriving children from high quality programs offering home visiting, early learning and care, after school care, preventative health and dental care, behavioral health care, economic support, other basic needs and more, and whereas everyone can play a vital role in supporting parents and caregivers to raise happy, healthy children. And during the month of January, Napa County Triple P Collaborative Partners and many others will be increasing awareness of this importance. Now, therefore, be it proclaim that this Board of Supervisors, County Of Napa, State Of California, on this January 2026, does hereby recognize January 2026 as the eighth annual Positive Parenting Awareness Month in Napa County. We commend the work and mission of Cope Family Center, Parents Can, Up Valley Family Centers, and the Triple P Collaborative Program, and encourage all residents to join us in this recognition and reach out to learn more. Thank you, and thank you

to all of you.

And if you'd like to speak, please do.

You, Chair Gallagher and Chair sorry, Supervisor Gallagher, Chair Manfrey, and Napa County Supervisors. My name is Jenny Olson, and I'm the Executive Director at Coat Family Center. Thank you so much for recognizing January as Positive Parenting Awareness Month and for your leadership in advancing the health and well-being of our community. Raising children is sacred work, and it is also essential upstream prevention and early intervention. The care children receive beginning at birth before birth shaves lifelong outcomes in health, education, and economic stability.

We know that early relationships and environments strongly influence whether children thrive and whether families remain resilient in the face of stress. Supporting parents is one of the most effective ways to reduce long term costs related to mental health challenges, child welfare involvement, violence, and a chronic disease. At the same time, many parents in our county are navigating significant pressure, especially in our current climate. Nearly half report levels of stress that interfere with daily functioning. When families lack support, the stress shows up across systems: schools, health care, behavioral health, and public safety.

When caregivers are supported, however, safe, stable, and nurturing relationships become powerful protective factors that promote positive outcomes for children and strengthen the community as a whole. This is why investing in parenting support aligns so closely with Napa County's focus on early intervention, equity, and community wide well-being. Programs like the Triple P Positive Parenting Program provide evidence based, scalable tools that build caregiver confidence, strengthen family relationships, and support positive child development. Triple P reaches families with young children, adolescents, and children with special needs, helping reduce risk before challenges escalate and ensuring support is accessible across diverse communities. This work is made possible through strong cross sector collaboration through the Napa County Triple P Collaborative, including Health and Human Services, and community partners such as ParentsCan, Cope Family Center, Up Valley Family Centers, Child Start, and the Child Abuse Prevention Council as well.

I'd like to recognize all of our community partners that are here today to recognize this important month. Positive Parenting Awareness Month is an opportunity to reaffirm our shared commitment to going upstream, supporting families early, and building systems that help parents succeed. When we prioritize parents and caregivers, we are not only supporting individual families, we are strengthening the foundation of a healthier, safer Napa County. Thank you.

Good morning. Good morning.

Okay. Thank you all for being here today for that. Before we get into today's regular business, I'd like to announce that later in this meeting we will be adjourning in the memory of Renee Nicole Goode and Alex Preti. Our consent calendar today item five includes

J. J is J.

Item. It will be dropped from the agenda today. And we are pulling item J, so that will be heard under item eight. So at this time, I would like to make sure there aren't any additional items being pulled. No? Okay. And is there anyone wishing to make public comment on any item on the consent calendar other than item R or item J? Okay. I don't see any public comments here. Anything on anyone on the phone?

Okay. And may I have a motion and a second to approve consent calendar items A through W, accepting items R and J? Second. Okay. I have a motion by Supervisor Ramos and a second by Supervisor Cottrell. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? No? Motion passes unanimously.

And we will move on to item six, public comment. For items not on the agenda today and also public comment for any item on closed session, today is item 11A. So if there are any comments not on the agenda, for items not on the agenda or for closed session item 11 a, I welcome those comments now. Is there anyone in the room? Okay. Mister Falcon, welcome.

So I don't need to introduce myself. Three minutes is not a lot of time. I'm here again regarding the Circle Oaks Landslide Repair Project and the storm drain improvement on Ridgecrest Drive. I'm a direct a public works director rejected a $125,000 bid initially to relocate that storm water pipe. He then selected a different contractor who's now charging probably somewhere around $4.50.

It's hard to tell. So I have a very simple question, if that massive increase, was justified, because full engineer plans and specs, he said were required, we don't have those plans and specs, We have basically some hand drawn lines and then two letters from two consultants. So they don't exist. Anyways, public works proceeded with two consultant letters and they constructed a system that ignores the most important specifications. Those consultants actually provided that they meet Caltrans standards.

Either the county needs to build what was approved and rep and represented to us or the county admits it is not. There is no third option. The approved plans and descriptions call for specific drainage infrastructure inlet types, Caltrans standard components, designed by licensed engineer, stamped. Public Works is now substituting different structure in the field because it's easier, faster to build. They're literally trying something to see how it performs. We've witnessed how it performs. It doesn't. We brought to their attention. We've asked them to make the necessary changes, follow the plans. We get gaslighting, no meetings, basically, just being ignored again.

It's an unauthorized design substitution. When plans are stamped by a licensed engineer, county staff does not get discretion to ignore them. The county wants to change the design. The engineer record must approve the change in writing and accept liability. If staff makes changes without the approval, the county owns the liability then. That exposes taxpayers. Let me remind you why this matters. The original landslide was caused by unmanaged and misdirected storm water. The county paid settlements because of that failure. Now public works is trying to trying to just do a jerry rig, and he claims, the parts not wasn't it's not available.

He had, since last February to order this part. I understand he's ordering now he's ordering something else that again is not approved on the plans instead. There's a second problem. We were induced to resolve a claim based on representations about what would be built if the county construct something materially different from what was represented, that is a breach of the settlement. Plain and simple, so I'm asking the board, direct the public works director to construct the storm drain system exactly as shown on the approved plans. No more field improvisations.

Conclude your comments, please?

I will. This is taxpayer money. I want a meeting. I want accountability. And I want this system built as promised. Thank you very much.

Thank you for commenting today. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. Then we will move on to item seven, Board of Supervisors Reports and Announcements. I invite my colleagues to make any reports or announcements they wish to make at this time. Supervisor Gallagher.

Thank you. Good morning, Chair. In lieu of making a report, I'd like to just make a few comments. I wanted to acknowledge the many horrific events that have occurred in the month of January across our country. The brutality and loss we're seeing in this country connected to federal immigration enforcement is indefensible and immoral, and it weighs heavily upon each of us.

We cannot and should not look away. We have to be brave enough to speak out and committed enough to care for one another in real ways. I'm holding a simple wish for peace, for dignity, and for the courage to stand up for our shared humanity. I want to thank everyone in our community who has tirelessly organized and attended many vigils over the past four weeks, protests, and rallies. We need to keep showing up for each other and for our community members who are vulnerable and who are living justifiably in fear and uncertainty.

So thank you, everyone, for all the great work that you do and for helping to keep our community safe and protect everyone in it. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Gallagher. Next up, we have Supervisor Alessio and then Supervisor Ramos.

Thank you. And thank you, Supervisor Gallagher, for those comments and statement. Just want to update let's see here. Let's see. Go down here. Well, first we saw Jenny Olson, who's the new executive director for Cope Family Center, which is a wonderful choice by Cope. And I want to congratulate her here, though I think she's already left and gone back to the office. But she's going to do an incredible job. She originally started Teens Connect back in 2018, leaving a very successful private business that she had for the kids in this community. And it stretched into Mentis and now Cope.

So again, I want to congratulate Jenny and the board for choosing her, the Cope board. I want to share that I did attend the Napa Chamber of Commerce reception that provided a release of the economic development strategy. I thought it was very well done. It's a confirmation of some things I've seen. And I invite this board and the public to also watch on a quarterly basis. Napa City Council has Doctor. Eiler, who's an economist. At their last Tuesday meeting, he provided a presentation. And it's something that I wish we could do here, too. We don't have a specific economic development department, but I do think it's essential to the work we do.

I know it's connected. I know our CEO also has kind of an expert in this area, and he helps guide that. But maybe in the future, we can also have an update that's specific to the county. That said, the county did sponsor this report presented by the chamber, and I want to recommend that folks look at that. There was also I want to congratulate Supervisor Cottrell, was a panelist on last Friday's Latino Leadership Luncheon.

She did a really great job. We had also attended the Napa Valley Farm Workers graduation. I believe it was Doctor. Drew Isaac that put together an educational program for farm workers. And that was very inspiring.

So I want to congratulate those graduates. At the last NCE board meeting that I'm appointed to be on by this board, a couple of things happened. Once, I was asked and will be on their finance committee. Second, I'm on their ad hoc governance assessment committee to review this board structure and then also potentially the organization. I'm working with the chair and a representative from each of the counties to put out either RFP or RFQ for a consultant to come back and look at MCE.

It's been fifteen years, and they've never had one. So we thought, as the board, this is a good time. I want to also make a referral. I think this might be the first referral I've made since being on this board. So forgive me if I stumble on how to do this.

But as you know, child care and access to affordable child care early learning is on our legislative platform. It's been something that this board has been committed to both in past funding and in support of a legislation last year that Senator Weiner brought forward. That legislation crossed the governor's desk and somehow there was a little bit of an oops along the way, in my opinion. It is about protecting child care providers from people filing CEQA lawsuits on them. And you don't have to go to court or even getting to court.

There's an entire year and over $100,000 that a child care provider doesn't have here locally because someone filed a sequel lawsuit on her. The legislation that Senator Weiner brought forward was to protect child care providers who are essential to our community. And as a reminder, for every nine babies born in Napa County, there's one space available, license space, for these children, for our working families. So it's a rural area that's a very critical need. So the legislation went through that protects child care centers that are in industrial areas, commercial areas, I guess agriculture areas, but all areas that really matter.

That's residential areas, neighborhoods where childcare is located. And we need more. So Senator Gabaldon, our Senator, has picked us up in a bill that's SB two ninety nine. As I stated last time, he invited me to testify at a Senate hearing a couple Mondays ago, which it was an honor to do. And I ask my referral is for the CEO to come back with a letter of support and really to bring this back, I guess, for the board consideration and to add a kind of a special touch.

And that is for us to have each of our signatures on the letter of support for Senator Gabaldon's bill SB299. So

it would

be a five signature letter of support. If we could do that, I would greatly appreciate it. Let's see. Next, I just want to share that on a different matter, and this will come up as we talk about the legislative platform, is that I'm convening a roundtable in terms in support of our utility companies working together when undergrounding. So I'm very grateful that PG and E, Comcast, AT and T have all agreed to attend this roundtable.

We will also have staff there, our Director of Public Works, Steve Ledger, I believe our engineering manager, Frank Lucita, will be there. And a couple representatives from our fire, JC Greenberg and Eric Hernandez, because it really is a public safety issue in addition to some other ripple effects. So I just wanted to share that that's happening. Think there's two more items. Thank you for this time.

At the last NVTA board meeting that chair I, Manfred and I are both on, I made a request for staff to come back with a pilot program for a mobility manager. I've been through my time as a board member for Area Agency on Aging for Napa Solano County, we did a needs assessment. In Napa County, the number one identified need is transportation for our older adults. That said, we also hear people calling who are commuting, young people that are really trying to figure out this network of different transportation options in our community. It's been identified in different discussions that it's low hanging fruit.

So that will be coming back on a future agenda item. And it would be one FTE. So I'm hoping we can do that. I think that would solve a lot of different issues for a lot of folks. And then just something that's coming up that's kind of unique, a past local resident, John McCormick, wrote a book called Chinese in Napa Valley.

And there's now a new documentary that's being released. It's going to be at the Cameo Theater in St. Helena on Monday, February 2 at 5PM. He will be there. Gentleman who folks who did the documentary will be there for this. I just want to let people know about that. And this is being hosted and organized by the Napa County Historical Society. And then you'll see there's other opportunities. There's on, let's see, on February 10, Tuesday, February 10, it'll be in American Canyon. And then in Calistoga on February 20. So just a little something interesting to look forward to. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Alessio. Supervisor Ramos and then Supervisor Cottrell.

Thank you so much. And thank you, Supervisor Gallagher, for your words and to the chair for our closing afternoon of our meeting. I very much appreciate the thoughtfulness that has gone into those words. And I wanted to highlight some of the work that I have had the opportunity and the privilege to participate that I think really does showcase the challenges of our community at this moment. In coordination with the League of Women Voters, I moderated a panel called Building Bridges, Not Barriers, where we, had a discussion of our school district and our nonprofit partners and how they are meeting this moment of supporting our immigrant community and providing safe paths.

And it was, an incredibly informative, discussion. And I think that it really did help to center and focus those in attendance. It was very well attended for being a very hard to find place. It was very well attended. And I'm thankful that the league engaged in this work and is going to lean into this space of being able to provide greater support to our immigrant population and to the community as a whole to provide greater stability and foundation.

I am a director of the Bay Area Latino Elected and Appointed Officials Organization, which is structured after the National Association, And we traveled to Stanford University. And we heard from Associate Dean, Professor Chacon, regarding immigration policy and briefings and how it relates to local governance. And I felt like I took a step back in time into law school, but it was also one of the most informative and timely briefings that I have received. And I look forward to sharing more with my colleagues on that. To let you know, I I I was saddened that I wasn't able to attend our former chair's investiture as second vice president RCRC, but certainly a great a great move here for our county.

And I am continuously reminded of just how rural we are as we sit in the Bay Area with the privileges of the Bay Area when we are sitting at MTC and looking at policies that affect every other county, but we just don't meet that threshold. It really does signal the importance of being there present as a rural county. I thank you, Supervisor Cottrell, for that. The corollary, bigger framework, CSAC, actually, we had a sledgehammer party. And I'm sorry you weren't able to join us.

And we're taking down that building. And it certainly was a really, really exciting move. So it'll be a couple of years of dust and great changes coming for us. I wanted to invite everyone to the Napa River Ecology Center Winter Open House from four to 6PM. You will recall and this is on January 29, sorry, on January 29 from four to 6PM.

And this is before construction on that site begins. And I think that it's a really great moment in time for us to look at how we in government used to do things and how we are now making it better. And that is this used to be a corporation site in the middle of wetlands for the city of American Canyon, and they thought better. And so now it's going to be an educational center focused on our watershed, our wetlands, and our river ecology. And so I think that that is incredibly important for all of us to be able to to support.

And I'll put a little pin in that because I'm gonna come back to that one. Our American Canyon Library is reopening, and we're having an event on Saturday. And I will remind everyone, I'm going to hopefully, the library director will get this message. But I'm going to ask for a report back of what our circulation numbers are. And per capita, we blow all the other districts out of the water and all the libraries out of water.

And that is because a lot of the children go to the library on Wednesday afternoons on early release days. And so that furniture and those walls were very well loved. And it was time for a refresh. I'm so grateful we were able to do that. I did participate in the wetlands cleanup and I was so thrilled.

Aside from this very random, looks like a makeshift seat for a boat that we found that was waterlogged and I made my son carry on his bike that was really really heavy, There wasn't a significant amount of litter and debris around the wetlands. And I think that that really goes to show the use of the community, the pride that the community and I say community as a whole because we have so many people that came from Up Valley even coming down to our Martin Luther King Junior Cleanup Day at the wetlands. And so my referral here comes and requesting for support of what is going to be this Napa River Ecology Center. They have received grant funds from the Coastal Conservancy through Prop four. And as a reminder, Prop four is the resiliency and climate bond.

Most of the bonds that come forward in the state have a rule making suspension component that is already included in the language. And somehow, in the rush to get prop four on the ballot, that was left out. And so in order to do so, special legislation is being carried. I believe it's an assembly member from San Diego that is carrying the legislation. It's already passed through the assembly.

And what I am requesting as a referral is that we send a letter of support to the senate that this board supports the expedited rulemaking for the climate bond issuance dollars of Prop four. That'll bring significant investment right here into into Napa County through the Napa River Ecology Center. It's rather urgent that we do that, so I would would ask that that come come forward as as soon as possible so we can get that support on the record. And lastly, if you haven't had the opportunity, I would really encourage everyone to just take a walk down to our law library. It's been redone and cleaned up.

And it's a really great tool for those like myself who have gone through law school. I'll warn you, Supervisor Kotrulla has a little PTSD with all the Wickens books that are in there. But it's a great resource for for the community for research. And I was really I got to see someone, you know, providing assistance, someone researching. And I think that that's an unknown resource that we have hours are nine to three Monday through Friday. And you get to check out the historic courthouse in the process. And that's it for my remarks. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Ramos. Supervisor Cottrell?

Thank you, Chair. Good morning. And I wanted to just echo some of the comments that have already been made up here. I so appreciate that we are adjourning today in the memory of Renee Nicole Good and Alex Preti. The tragedies in Minnesota are heartbreaking and wrong. Their families, friends, and communities deserve so much better, as does our country. Thank you to Supervisor Gallagher for your statement. I want to second that and to support the work that our community does in standing up and speaking out. And I also want to cover a couple of other items. Thank you, Supervisor Alessio, for mentioning the Latino Leaders Roundtable.

It was focused on civic engagement and Latino voting power. And I appreciate being on the panel. It gave me an opportunity to highlight a lot of the great work that several of our Up Valley Latino residents are doing. And thank you, Supervisor Ramos, for mentioning RC RC. I did want to share with the group that I will be chairing an ad hoc there on sustainable groundwater management that other county supervisors are also struggling with.

Looking forward to that. And then finally, I just wanted to call out a couple of items actually that we just approved in our agenda. We had two farmworker housing items that were both, one was for about 150,000 and another was a grant for 47,000. That $150,000 was solely from our community. That was a philanthropic benefit to the farm worker centers and then our great team found that grant that is going to help the farm worker centers too.

A lot of great work happens here at the county and when we can leverage private dollars to help us with public dollars, that's so important and efficient. So thank you, Ms. Palmer. And then finally, I wanted to give a shout out. One of my interests in our work here is to make sure that our board reports are as clear and concise as possible. So I wanted to give a shout out to Frank Licido. He had one of the board reports we had today. The report is about one page. It's clear, concise. You can follow the background and why we're doing what we're doing. So look forward to more of that, too. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Cottrell. I would like to concur with my colleague's statements on events nationally, And I appreciate those statements here very much. And I want to say that a big part of this job is attending heartwarming community events throughout the community. And it really helps sustain the harder parts of the work we do, I think.

But in having the privilege of attending so many of those events, I would like to recognize that this community has built an incredible capacity over decades. And that capacity was built by kind, hardworking family oriented and community oriented people from all over this whole planet. And it's because of them that we have these robust resources available for moments when people are finding themselves struggling. And I would like to just provide a point or two our existing mental health resources. If you or someone you love is experiencing a mental health crisis, you can call or text 988 You can also locally contact Mentus Community and Youth Resource, database which offers bilingual mental health for people of all income levels.

There's also a Veterans Crisis hotline available for veterans and those who support them also at 988, and then you press 1. And we also have the Up Valley Family Center available for residents farther north in Napa Valley and COPE, which is particularly focused on parents and especially parents with young children, but families who may need any kind of help. Those are good places to get started finding community resources. And I would like to also add that I support pursuing Prop four funds, which Supervisor Ramos mentioned. And Cottrell, thank you for your leadership at RCRC.

It's amazing to see you in that space, doing so much for all rural counties throughout California and for Napa and the role we play in that. So let's see. I would like to move us on to a discussion of items pulled from the consent calendar, today is item J. Is there any public comment on this item? Okay, I don't see anyone in the room. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. Okay, then we will now discuss item J. Ms. Dawson, welcome.

Morning, chair and members of the board. I'm Holly Dawson, Chief Communications Officer. My colleague Andrew Mies, the legislative analyst, is out today. So I am sitting in and will attempt to address your questions or help in any manner that I can.

Okay. Is there any public comment on this item? Wait, did I already did it? Sorry. And then any discussion from the board? I welcome your comments. Okay. Supervisor Alessio?

Thank you. Thank you for this opportunity. You know, we're working with the undergrounding project that is going to be starting for Upper Redwood Road and Mount Veeder. And because PG and E was given the approval I've shared this in the past that PG and E was given approval by CPUC to do this undergrounding. And it's very important work.

It's a huge investment. And it's going to really prevent the risk of wildfires coming from those lines, having those undergrounded. That said, I also shared at this last meeting about the Bead program, which is federal funding for broadband equity access deployment, and how CPUC has assigned the same area for Mount Beder and Redwood to Comcast to do the broadband undergrounding through the federal funds of the Bead program. In addition, we have a layer of AT and T who is there currently with the copper mines as the carrier of last resort. And going back to what I talked about in terms of a roundtable, what I'd like is a small amendment to reflect that we encourage utility companies to work together in joint undergrounding projects.

To have two or three independent projects, especially around Mount Veeder, very narrow road. We have constant slides. It's a tremendous impact to the residents. Trickles down. And those projects obviously also will impact rate payers.

I'd like to have that noted. Reading the legislative platform again, kind of with fresh eyes and with this in mind, I'd really like that to be included. And again, just going over kind of what I just shared, but repeating it. And I know staff will do a better job at this. But adding on page 23, under regulatory utility infrastructure policy, And like it added, the county also encourages utility companies to work together in joint undergrounding projects to minimize impacts on residents, county roads, and overall cost to ratepayers.

And then on page 16, under carrier of last resort, there's also an opportunity there to ask for those lines, those copper lines, to also join the undergrounding projects with other utility companies. There's video from the Paradise Fire that I've seen, and I think Jenna Upton, our PIO, sharing for this with me, that gave me a very visual understanding that power lines and very that are crisscrossing the road, as they do with Mount Veeder, in a natural disaster can cross the road and become barriers to evacuation. And in terms of communication, if those lines go down and are broken, it also prevents people in terms of being able to call for evacuation, to call for help, or to receive notice of evacuation in terms of those lines. So I think it's really important that, A, that our utility companies really work together. And I know ATT recently sent out a letter of interest to these other utility companies.

But it's something that I'd like us to advocate on a legislative level if needed, but at least on a local level. So that is my request and amendment to the legislative platform.

Okay. Supervisor Ramos? Thank you so much. I I certainly do understand the desire to want to address this, but I I do think we need to stay focused on what the legislative platform's directive is, and that is to influence policy change. And this sounds to be a project and geographical a geographic concerning constraint.

And so I would in an attempt to address those concerns in a space where we have the ability to influence, I don't think that in the carrier of last resort is the right space. Because the carrier of last resort is certainly not a broadband issue. It is literally a phone issue. And so to expand it into the broadband space, I think, is a directive that is far left our ability of influence. However, I would say just a small friendly and I would hope the council would say that it was a de minimis change.

It would be on page 23 that we add on the county also encourages an additional additional wording that says other appropriate utilities to be underground. And that way, we are covers us on water. Right? Water is an underground utility. In some places, it is not undergrounded.

Right? In the South County, there are places where the waters the the pipes are up above the ground, the recycled water lines. So utilities, where appropriate, should I agree, should be underground. But for us to get to a place of saying, need to take this one carrier and and deploy this one type of federal program, I'm very concerned with specifically calling out the b program for the undergrounding, but that we would encourage other utilities to be undergrounded in high disaster prone areas because I think that that matters also in flood areas. It's not just in the fire areas.

We've had this concern, and I think it's consistent. We had this in Elbridge, and Chris Silke would be able to tell me we had flooding and mudslide, one of our pipes disconnected and should not have been disconnected. So we have this concern in other spaces, so I do appreciate that. But I'd like us to really stay high level so that we're not calling out specific projects.

Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Ramos. Supervisor Gallagher?

Thank you. And thank you, Supervisor Ramos. I was curious where we were going to put that exactly. It didn't seem correct before, but that's a good idea. Also, I think the cooperation piece maybe also has more to do with a dig once kind of policy. So maybe there's a way to incorporate that, that you get in there and you do it all, whatever it is you can do. And you do it one time. And that would obviously necessitate a lot of coordination. But yeah, sticking to things that we can affect policy wise, I think, is important. Some of the background areas we might be able to add some of that information. But just trying to focus in on the policy piece, which you know well. Thank you.

Okay, thank you. Supervisor Cottrell and then Vice Chair Alessio after that.

Yeah, thank you. Supervisor Alessio, I think what I'm hearing the high level is you're interested in making sure that the county encourages cooperation between which I really appreciate that. And so holding on to that, figuring out exactly where it sits, I'd love to hear what Mr. Meijs says about that. And also having spent a fair amount of time working on the COLA issue, I'm very sensitive to that we I mean, this is our platform.

It's ours to use. And I want to make sure that we are not opening doors for a provider to say, oh, it sounds like you're willing to get rid of an overhead copper line, and eventually we'll take care of you with fiber, which long term, that's what we do want to do. But we want to make sure that everything is in place before someone loses their copper line.

Okay. Vice Chair Alessio?

Yes. Thank you for those comments, everybody. And I completely agree. And Nepal, I gave background in terms of the Bead program and specifics of this as this one example. But I know that this has been something that's been issue statewide.

I mean, Paradise had to go to bat to get this to be all undergrounded as they were rebuilding. And I know that this is really more of those high risk areas. So I appreciate the comments, of course, on that high level, not calling out specifics. And yes, the Kohler program, Cary Vlast Resort, is an important legislative position and policy. So I agree not to disrupt that, leave that as is, and then just go to the other in terms of utilities. Does that give enough information? Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Alessio. And I have is this CEO Alsop?

Yes, ma'am.

Welcome to would you like us to know?

Yeah, Madam Chair, members of the Board, I'm going to put Ms. Dawson on the spot here, and maybe this is something that we can handle today so that we don't have to bring this back. Do you have a sentence or a couple of sentences to go into Section 23?

I'm not quite there, but we do know Section 23, something to the

effect of the county also encourages other appropriate utilities

to be underground. And I think we just need to add something about collaboration.

Coordinated and then coordinated and underground, I would suggest. And if we could just have counsel say, chair, that it is a de minimis change. I think we've always said that, but I think the point is noted. We cannot suspend our support of Carrier of Last Resort. And to say that we are fully into the undergrounding might do that.

Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Ramos. Is that clear counsel?

Yeah. Through the chair, as long as it's clear to the board and the public that we're adding a sentence on page 23, which has been read effectively, and you're directing staff to effectuate that. That could be the motion.

Okay. So moved.

Okay. Do we need a restatement of the motion?

Is I that would like a restatement one more time, because I know we looked at coordination cooperation.

Supervisor Ramos, I think you've got it.

County also encourages the undergrounding of other utilities as appropriate in coordination between such utilities.

Okay. Is that a motion?

So

moved. Okay. May I have a

second? Second.

Okay. Motion by Supervisor Ramos, second by Vice Chair Alessio. All those in favor? Aye. Any opposed? Okay. Seeing none opposed, that is a unanimous decision on Item J. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisors.

Yeah, thank you for that thoughtful discussion. Okay. We are moving on to Item nine on the agenda, Administrative Items. And we are going to switch items 9A and 9B. So we're going to hear Item 9B first, which is receive a presentation on countywide active transportation plan from Napa Valley Transportation Authority staff, and then Item 9A after that, which is about edge line rumble strips on Silverado Trail. Okay, welcome. Welcome, Mr. Letter and Mr. Band.

Thank you, Chairman. Steve Letter of Public Works. You really already did my introduction. We're here with Patrick Band of NVTA, who is going to talk about the county's active transportation plan update, which the county and all the cities have been involved in with NVTA. And with that said, I'm going to turn it over to Patrick.

Get that working. Thank you very much. Thank you, Chair, members of the board. And thank you, Mr. Litter, and all of your staff for the extensive coordination that we've done over the last year, year and a half as we've moved towards this presentation. So my name is Patrick Band. I'm a senior planner with NVTA, Nat Valley Transportation Authority, presenting an update on our countywide active transportation plan. Let's see if that works. Great. So a little bit of background before we get into the nitty gritty of exactly what this plan looks like.

So why are we doing a countywide active transportation plan? What is the purpose? So in 2016, NVTA developed and our local jurisdictions adopted a countywide pedestrian plan. And in 2019, the same was done for a countywide bicycle plan. Those documents now are kind of showing their age, and we want to make sure that all of the adopted documents and planning documents that we have are current, that they show what our plans are for our communities, but they're also consistent with various changes in state law, in regional guidance when it comes to funding discretion, things of that sort.

So there's certainly a need to update this plan to combine both our bicycle and our pedestrian plans from a number of years ago into a single cohesive kind of comprehensive document. We also want to make sure that we're consistent with the direction that many of our jurisdictions have shown in their recently adopted general plans and are coordinating closely with county staff to ensure that we're incorporating potential changes for the county's upcoming general plan process. So this planning effort kicked off in the 2024. We did extensive data collection, including mapping out the location of all existing bicycle facilities countywide, as well as a very comprehensive first time we've ever done this mapping out of all of our pedestrian networks in both our incorporated cities as well as a number of our unincorporated pockets and what we call urbanized areas as defined through the US Census. So that includes Oakville, Rutherford, Deer Park, Angouan communities, and a couple of other smaller communities throughout the county.

We did extensive community engagement over the spring winter twenty twenty five and then developed a set of recommendations, which we'll share some of those today. We're anticipating coming to the NVTA board for a draft plan release next month, followed by adoption roughly a month later. And then this document will come back to each of the local jurisdictions, including the Board of Supervisors, for adoption sometime later this calendar year. So the plan takes really a look at kind of seven key goal areas. First and foremost is safety.

We also we wanna make sure that we have a network of active transportation that's walking, biking, but also scooters, and other mobility devices that people may use, a safe way for people using those modes of transportation to get around. We wanna make sure that it's equitable and accessible, that it connects to both where people live as well as where they want to go, that it addresses our our county wide priorities around sustainability, reducing greenhouse gas emissions, that we focus on maintenance, that we're not building out a network of facilities that we can't maintain long term, and that we're also doing this all in a really kind of data driven approach that looks at where are the needs, how does this address our overall priorities as a community, and then evaluating how those investments both in infrastructure and programs yield results long term. The plan is organized with a countywide set of goals and objectives, a countywide policy framework establishing effectively kind of a floor for countywide policies so that all of our jurisdictions are kind of communicating in the same framework when it comes to implementing projects, programs, and policies. We've developed a best practices toolkit, which many of our community members have already found very valuable.

And we have jurisdiction specific chapters that address the unique needs and context of each of our local communities. So as I've discussed already, we've done an extensive outreach and engagement throughout the community, and we're really wrapping up right now those last couple of steps, which is really evaluating what our potential future demand is going to be for these types of facilities. If we built out the full network of recommendations and infrastructure and programs, what are we going to see in terms of the mode shift, the number of people who are leaving their vehicles for those short trips, one, two miles, and choosing to ride a bike or walk down to the coffee shop instead of drive their car, implementation and funding planning, as well as the full draft plan, which I mentioned will be released next month. Extensive community engagement, as I've mentioned before, we've held two in person kind of open house workshop type events, one in the city of Napa and one up Valley in Calistoga. These numbers are a little bit outdated.

Actually, we've had more than 2,000 unique engagements with members of our community, stakeholder groups, and other interested parties. We've had over, I think, now 600 comments on our various interactive maps with people saying, hey, I'd like to see sidewalks on this street. Why are you putting this kind of bike lane here? That is inappropriate, those kinds of things, as well as nearly 200 responses from a community survey asking people really what are their more qualitative interests and priorities when it comes to investments in walking and biking. I'll skip over the vision statement.

You can certainly read that on your own. But suffice to say, we want to make sure that we're developing a network that addresses the needs of everybody in our community, not just those people who may be going out for a 50 or 100 mile bike ride on the weekends. So this is really where we get to the kind of meat and potatoes of the plan, which is our draft bicycle network. And so you'll see on the left hand side of this table is our 2019 countywide bicycle plan numbers. We've highlighted that unincorporated county of Napa portion there as well as the totals at the bottom.

And then on the right is our 2025 totals. What you'll see there is that in 2019, we proposed a total existing plus proposed of about five ninety miles of bicycle facilities, and that number hasn't really changed. But what we are seeing a significant change in is the types of facilities that are being recommended. And what we mean there is that we want to have more protected, separated bike lanes and pathways, things like the Vine Trail, but also like has been done by Caltrans on the Imola Bridge, where you are providing some kind of vertical separation between the bikes and vehicles, that improves safety. It reduces collisions.

But also improves people's sense of safety so they're more confident and comfortable choosing to walk or bike in our local communities. This goes and kind of dives into some of the types of classifications, which again, won't go into the nitty gritty on this one. But what we are seeing is that we are shifting away from those kind of shared roadway facilities, those what we call class threes, where, we are having bicyclists effectively share the road with, vehicles and more towards those protected separated facilities where we have things like the Vine Trail, those Class I shared use pathways, as well as those Class IV protected bike lanes on the far right of that table. We also, as I mentioned, did extensive mapping and analysis pedestrian network. And what we find is that there's significant potential for mode shift to get people walking in our local communities, particularly in those more urbanized areas, or the unincorporated pockets, where we have existing or proposed complete sidewalk networks.

Needless to say, it's not feasible nor would we have the funding to put a sidewalk on both sides of every street countywide. So we did a fairly extensive analysis of where are those priorities. And what we started with was analysis of key origins and destinations, so looking at schools, transit stops, parks, retail centers, medical locations that are those destinations people want to or need to get to, and then putting effectively a buffer of a 500 foot circle around each of those locations to then identify where are the gaps in proximity to those locations and how can we really smartly make those future investments in building out those gaps in the pedestrian network. And then also prioritizing one side of the street over both sides when it makes sense so that we're not, again, putting sidewalks on both sides of the street where it may not make sense or where it may be cost prohibitive or where we don't have sufficient width in the right of way. As I mentioned before, we have a set of countywide policies addressing and incorporating not just existing adopted general plans, local roadway safety plans, the countywide Vision Zero plan, but also looking at regional and statewide policies that have been adopted or guidance that have been provided to ensure that the projects that are included, the programs that are included in this plan have the greatest chance of succeeding when it comes to securing new funding to do that work.

We also did extensive work with local residents and community members to identify what their priorities were, and again, ensuring that we have county wide consistency in terms of how we're approaching these types of projects. The treatment toolkit is about an 80 page document that maps out and provides guidance both for public works and engineers, as well as community stakeholders, interested parties like the Bicycle Coalition, or local residents who may see, hey, I've got a speeding issue in my street that makes it not comfortable for my kids to walk to school. How can we fix this? And it provides extensive documentation and some guidance and contextual framing for what an appropriate fix to those kinds of problems might be, whether that's speed cushions or narrowing the roadway or any one of a range of other solutions. So in terms of next steps, as I mentioned, we have our draft plan coming to the NVTA board to be released to the full public in February.

We'll have a roughly thirty day public comment period and a final plan coming to the NVTA board for adoption in March. Following that will be jurisdiction level adoption, ideally in that kind of May, June time frame. We're also going to be kicking off a biennial progress update to evaluate we've got 600 miles roughly of proposed bike network and around 200 or so existing. So how do we fill that gap and how are we progressing in our goals and identifying those priorities and delivering on those projects? I think that is it.

Happy to answer any questions folks might have. There's a QR code if folks in the public want to scan that or go to that website for more information. I'm happy to answer any questions.

Thank you, Mr. Band. Are there any public comments on this item? Welcome. And we'll come up to the podium, please. Each commenter will have three minutes.

Am I on? Okay. Good morning, Chair Manfrey and supervisors. My name is Carlota Sinato. I'm the program manager of the Napa County Bicycle Coalition.

Thank you, Patrick, for the update on the active transportation plan. The bike coalition has been engaged in the plan throughout its update process, and we have provided thorough comments to the jurisdictions through the public comment process. As the plan moves closer to its final iteration, we wanna take the opportunity today to urge the county to address in the plan the lack of sidewalks in the unincorporated county pockets in Napa, particularly in the larger pockets in the Pueblo Vista and Shirt Lift neighborhoods. These county pockets are some of the areas that most urgently need sidewalks. These pockets are in distinctly urban areas within the city of Napa.

In and around these pockets are residential neighborhoods and destinations like local markets, parks, and schools. These pockets are in places where people would reasonably expect to be able to walk and where people are already walking. But the lack of sidewalks and the sidewalk gaps in these pockets create significant gaps in the existing pedestrian network due to the lack of sidewalks, which poses a very real safety risk to people walking. The Governor's Highway Safety Association found that nearly two thirds of pedestrian deaths in 2023 occurred in locations without a sidewalk, underscoring the importance of sidewalks in maintaining pedestrian safety. The current pedestrian plan states that the majority of collisions in the unincorporated county occurred near areas of development, especially near the border of the city of Napa, which includes these unincorporated pockets.

The pedestrian plan also found that pedestrian safety issues surrounding collisions are typically focused around walking on the road or shoulder in the unincorporated county, demonstrating that a lack of sidewalks is already a key issue in pedestrian safety for the county. Adding sidewalks in these unincorporated pockets were recommendations in our Safe Routes to School walk audit reports for Pueblo Vista Elementary and Phillips Elementary. We've heard from people who live in these neighborhoods who want to see sidewalks in these areas but have the understanding that this is not gonna happen. The county adopted a proclamation in 2023 supporting the county wide vision zero plan and the goal of eliminating traffic collisions resulting in serious injuries or fatalities in Napa County by 2030. Please use the active transportation plan update as an opportunity to honor this commitment and respond to community feedback by filling the sidewalk gaps in the unincorporated pockets.

Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Sainato. Any other public comments? Welcome.

Good morning. Shawn Casey, Executive Director of the Napa Valley Vine Trail Coalition. And thank you, Patrick and the county, for the outstanding active transportation plan and the community engagement. I also wanted to commend the council for its vision over fifteen years ago with the Greenway feasibility study and in the investment that the county has made on the Vine Trail. NVTA identified the Vine Trail as the spine of Napa County, and we're really proud of the national and international recognition that this Class I shared path is for the community.

And that over the last ten years, just in the Knowles section, we've seen over 3,000,000 trail users of this eight times the number that used to try to use Solano or State Route 29. So, we know that a built environment does work and that these treatments that are proposed in the plan are very successful. I also wanted to highlight the fact that the community is supportive of these efforts. And in the last ten years, the community has donated $863,000 to the maintenance of the Vine Trail. And that's the 50% match that we provide to the agencies and the county for ongoing maintenance, both routine and non routine.

Additionally, in the ten years, the community has donated $10,602,000 to the construction of the Vine Trail. That includes American Canyon, all the agencies, unincorporated agencies, and the newest section that opened between Calistoga and St. Helena. And when we look toward the vision of the after transportation plan and the two remaining links of the Vine Trail, I'm proud to be working with Steve Leterer and Graham Wadsworth as the project managers for the Vine Trail. And the coalition, supported by the community donations, have already made a $6,500,000 commitment to the construction of these two areas, Vista Carneros and the Auntville to St.

Helena link. And we've also pledged the ongoing support to the tune of $650,000 annually for the maintenance of the Vine Trail. We know that that's going to be an incredible investment in our future, but we know that the revenue and the community engagement and trail users and the reduction of safety, the improvement of sidewalks in the finishing of the Vine Trail by 2030 will be a huge benefit to all of us. Thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Casey. I don't see anyone else in the room. Is there anyone on the phones? Okay. Then I will go ahead and bring this to the board for discussion.

Anyone? Oh, Supervisor Ramos. Thank you so much. I very much appreciate this more regional approach. We truly are too small to do this all individual basis.

And that connectivity of projects is certainly important. I just wanted to stress my support for putting forward that we prioritize one side of the street for sidewalks and bicycle access over a two sided approach. As we look and thank you to the Bike Coalition for the the note in regards to these pockets. The the the the county pockets are significantly constrained by existing homes, and and it does, in fact, pose a a challenge. So a a couple of things I would just like to to make sure and understand how we can show our support for that prioritization of one side of the street.

In particular, I had an opportunity to meet with the prospective developers of the the state project on the Lower 20 of former Skyline Park area. And that is going to pose additional challenges the Imola pocket areas in terms of bicycle access, walkability, access to services. And with the hopeful proposal of bringing bus service out into that area, I would hope that this is going to look at how we prioritize that one side of the street. The other part that I would like to understand from you, Patrick, is how are we incorporating, as I'm looking at this website and the comments and the projects, how are we incorporating what is to come? Because we know some things are in the pipeline.

How are we going to look at this more broadly?

Thank you, Supervisor Ramos. In regard to the pedestrian network specifically, yes, the intent is to prioritize gap closures on one side of the street over providing sidewalks on both sides where there are those constraints. As you mentioned, existing development and limited right of way are two of the most common. And I would defer to Mr. Letter in terms of additional context for the county side.

I will note that broadly speaking, with the exception of those class one shared use paths which are bidirectional, most, if not all, of the other bicycle facilities tend to be bidirectional because you want to have bicyclists riding with the flow of traffic as opposed to contra flow. Many of those do not require any additional right of way, so that isn't generally a limiting factor unless you're talking about class two bike lanes. But if it's a bike boulevard or other kinds of more neighborhood level improvements, that is generally feasible. In terms of the incorporation of future projects, we have tried to be as diligent as we can, looking ahead and identifying where there are future projects identified, identifying roughly what that alignment might be if there are future improvements planned, as well as thinking about the density of those future developments and what kinds of demand those might place on a future network. You mentioned Imola as a good example.

NVTA developed a Imola corridor plan a number of years ago. And the prospective developers for that state owned parcel at five acres next to Skyline Park are in coordination with the NDTA, the county, the city, and at least initially we've heard are supportive of implementing portions of that plan to provide a class one shared use path that would connect to Skyline. You mentioned the transit connectivity, also a key element. So there's a number of things, and it really does become very project specific when we get to that level of granularity. But it's something that we've kept a close eye on throughout the plan development process.

So a couple of additions from the county perspective on those thoughts. First off, county pockets and this is policy, board policy going back years. There's always been the goal to, frankly, to eliminate those county pockets and have them annex into the city. Sidewalks, streetlights, those sort of things are essentially city amenities. That being said, there probably could be some opportunities.

And Patrick and I have discussed this, for instance and I'm not sure, I'm not giving an actual example, but on many of those streets, the vast majority of the street belongs to the city. Small sections belong to the county. If the city were to build out sidewalks, for instance, on their sections and the county simply needed to finish a side you know, finish a block of sidewalk, that would be a good opportunity where in the context of some other project we were doing, that would be a a a useful gap closure. Beyond that, I mean, a community wide sidewalk project is just not something the board has ever, certainly has never funded or shown an interest in. Again, the theory is those pockets should eventually end up in the city.

And that's when the city type amenities could possibly get added. Although, as Supervisor Ramos said, because of the way the communities are built, there are quite a number of barriers to doing that. And property owners have built out their front yards. There's limited right of way. The roads are already fairly narrow.

So anyway, are challenges there. A couple of other things that came up in the presentation. Vertical barriers are things that can be used in certain places and are wholly inappropriate. In other places, the county has used delineators, for instance, along Atlas Peak Road, where there is a fair amount of pedestrian traffic between the hotel and some of the communities there. And there are a couple of curves.

Relatively low speed road delineators made sense there as a safety barrier, although they are still maintenance problems. We'll put them up, and they'll get knocked down within a month. There was a mention of Vimola, and you can see that too as you drive over. They do serve a purpose, but they're really maintenance problems. You get, for instance, high speed roads where a class one makes total sense, like the Vine Trail.

But trying to put other vertical barriers, oftentimes, frankly, become hazards because if a car hits them, they can launch off of them at 55, 60 miles an hour. Also just sort of big picture, these plans are important policy goals. They're certainly more than aspirational, but they're also not funding documents. So at some point, from a budgetary standpoint, we always look at these projects, projects we're already doing, and what we can do in the context of the funding that we have, which is what ends up leading to frankly a lot of signs, a lot of green paint, frankly different intersection designs and different street designs. We've recently added, for instance, buffered barriers on Silverado Trail and on Trancas so that there's a painted area between the bike lane and the road and where there's enough pavement on the right roads, those sort of things can be very valuable.

So there are a lot of things we can do within the context of the budget we already have. And then there are other things that are more challenging. For instance, the Vine Trail was mentioned, and it has been a great partnership. And I acknowledge Graham Wadsworth, who's our project engineer in public works, who really has done yeoman's work, if you will, keeping that project going. And we are getting hopefully to the point where we have the Yaunville to St.

Helena section designs and the environmental done and, if you will, shovel ready. But that's a very expensive construction project. And we haven't yet identified the funding for that. Lots of effort going into chasing various grants and whatnot. But so are a lot of other communities chasing those grants.

And of course, we all know what's happening at the federal level at this point in terms of availability of funding. So anyway, short answer, from the county perspective, we've been working with NVTA on this plan. We do think it's a very good plan, and we think it's an important policy document. And there's a lot of work to do around doing everything we can that's practical and doable.

Okay. Thank you, Director Letter. Supervisor Ramos, are you?

Yeah. Just to level set from putting my last coat hat on, I was on the ad hoc in regards to addressing the island's concept with the city of Napa. And at this time, the city of Napa and the county are not engaged in those discussions. So I want to be very clear that there is no expectation of transfers of property and annexations happening. And so when we look at what we do at the County and what our our charges, being very sensitive and and understanding the the advocacy of the bicycle coalition, our charge is the maintenance of county roads.

That is our expectation. That's what the constitution tells us we need to do, and that is, in fact, what we are funding. And we do not fund sidewalks because sidewalks are not our obligation. If we were to provide a sidewalk in one of these county pockets, we would be treating them differently than a rural county resident that is in Polk Valley and would like sidewalk in front of their mailbox on those sidewalks that go to nowhere. And so one of the struggles in being one of these rural counties is, in fact, that we have such diverse areas and trying to treat them consistently.

This is different from those planned communities, like Lake Berryessa, up in the Highlands, and in where did I live? Berriess Estates. Sorry. Long week already. But I think it's an Anguin that also is an unincorporated community.

And so I think that one of the opportunities here for us as the board to be able to provide direction to staff is to how do we utilize this plan to create safety zones that we can through signage? We've been through this. There's a street out in my district, Parrish Road. It does not have consistent sidewalks. It has a random handicap zone, which we still need to deal with, Mr.

Letter, on that one as to how in the world the county approved a handicap zone in front of a house. There is not enough right of way to be able to create a consistent sidewalk. Sidewalks have been randomly added by owners, some imposed by county. And there is an inconsistency and there is no one straight line. Then, just when you think you might be able to get to a straight line, you've got a power pole.

Right? That's coming right up. And so our solution in that space was to be able to provide signage. And so one of the things we need to be able to look at at this time, annexations of those pockets is off is off the table. No one's no one's in a position of of moving right now from a jurisdictional standpoint.

But I think there is an opportunity for us to be able to use the active transportation plan to inform those low hanging fruits of maybe it's how we painted on the roadway, the speed limit signs. Maybe it's signage of asking I saw there are two people that have comments on they want a safer route to school. Maybe that's the person whose house we knock on and we say, Can we put a sign in your house that says kids walking to school? Can we make sure that we are looking at those places in which the children are walking to these schools these bike paths and be able to prioritize an area that is more feasible for greater safety enhancements through signage. We have great limitations in those pockets.

I just put that out there for us to be able to use this active transportation plan and what comes out for it in a more productive and safety minded way. I definitely do think there are places where we can make great improvements. Silverado Trail, certainly we have already deployed some of that. The Imola Bridge is a great example. I did notice two more of the delineators came down in the last few days, concerning. But that doesn't mean we stop trying to find these safety solutions, whether it's through signage, whether it's through painting and striping. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Ramos. I have Supervisor Gallagher and then Vice Chair Alessio.

Thank you. I was also going to talk a little bit about the pockets. You know, my district is the short lived area and have had many discussions with neighbors there. It's really difficult to live over there. I mean, people are trying to maneuver strollers on the road, and there are so many speeding cars.

I mean, there's a real traffic issue, which we've discussed with law enforcement many times with the neighbors, and it's just a very fraught situation in that neighborhood. People are afraid to walk they walk anyway. And when I've been out there walking around, I'm like, I don't think I would walk with a stroller. I mean, I think it feels really unsafe. So I guess, you know, I agree whatever we can do through this plan in terms of safety, but I think we may have to continue to go beyond that.

If we're not going to be able to provide sidewalks, because that's not what the County does, then we do need to get into a discussion with the city. You know, it's the neighbors that are caught in between. You know, I don't think they you know, they don't really care whether it's city or county. They just want to be able to safely walk around their neighborhood. So I know that we have a lot of obstacles and impediments, but I think that we need to continue to try to figure it out because people are, you know, they're upset, they're complaining, and they're not going to be satisfied until their neighborhood feels safe for them to walk.

And safety is obviously a huge concern in terms of active transportation. Yes, we need the infrastructure in order for people to feel safe and confident to get out and bike and walk. I think the other thing, though, when I was reading through the plan is there needs to be some acknowledgment of the fact that part of the reason people don't use active transportation is because it takes time, and they want the convenience of a car because they need to get from A to B in five minutes and they don't have forty minutes to walk there. So I think when we're talking about people recreating, that's different. But when we're talking about encouraging people to walk and bike as a way of getting from point A to point B to shop or to go to work, etcetera, that we're going to have to take into consideration what can we do to incentivize.

I mean, know it's great to get exercise. You can tell people that all day. It doesn't mean they're going to exercise. You you can tell them, You should ride your bike. I mean, it's good for the planet. And it is. But again, time and convenience. You know, they want to get somewhere when they want to get there. So I think there needs to be an acknowledgment that we're dealing with a lot more than just, yes, we need to improve the infrastructure so people will feel safe. That's true, but there's a lot more to it.

As I was reading through the performance charts, the targets, for example, I just wanted to point out that some of them are measurable and some of them are not. And just to go back and take a look at that, because, you know, if you can't measure it, it's you can't have a target you can't measure. So in many places, it will say reduce this by X percent, or go from this number to this number. That's great. But there are many targets that say words like reduce, increase, and improve, but there is no measurable number there.

So I would say if we're going to call something a target, that we make sure there's a real target to go for and it's not just reduce or increase because that be like a factor of one or a factor of 10 or a factor of 100. So that's confusing and I know this happens a lot, but I think it bears always pointing out that if you're going to call something a measurement, actually be able to measure it. And I think that that's all my comments for now. But thank you. Thank you for the presentation and for the draft plan.

Thank you, Supervisor Gallagher. Supervisor Alessia?

Thank you. First, Patrick, I want to thank you and your team for this plan. You did such a great job. It's fantastic. I really appreciate the outreach and success of community engagement. That's very clear and evident here. I do have a question and it kind of stems from public comment and comments here around the Vision Zero. And you may not know this. Diane Meehan, who's in the audience, may know this. Where do we rate in terms of safety, road safety? Because I know historically we've been extremely low. Like if there's 100, we're probably eight on there or something. But I don't know. How are we doing on that?

So that's a simple question but a complicated answer. And so because I don't have the most current collision statistics in front of me, I'll just speak broadly, which is to say it really depends on what specific measures you're looking at. Historically, Napa County has ranked among the lower quarter to lower fifth of counties statewide in terms of overall collision rates and particularly severe injury and fatality collisions. That's something

talking to

Why the

severe injury and fatality?

What I will say is that as it relates to this planning document, one of the priorities and this was included in the overall goals number one is safety, making sure that whatever facilities are being provided, whether it's a sidewalk or a bike lane or a separated pathway, is being done in a way that identifies the appropriate type of facility for the context of the roadway. And as Mr. Lederer said, there may be places where vertical separated barriers are appropriate and where they're not. But what is the safest facility that can be provided in that context based in part on the collision history? So the existing adopted Vision Zero plan certainly heavily informed the recommendations in the countywide active transportation plan.

Thank you. And I will just say I did look up the data in terms of collision, and I want to share this is on the NVTA website. It says data driven approach to reducing collisions. So from 2015 to 2021, there were 4,908 total injury collisions, almost 5,000 collisions during that time. Five seventy one were severe fatal injury collisions.

And again, this goes towards our commitment and this board approval of Vision Zero along with, I believe, every jurisdiction. So I appreciate the quantity and the increase of the quantity that is presented here in terms of the bicycle network. That's impressive. But I think quality is also extremely important. And that's where Vision Zero comes in.

So how do we you know, you can provide there's access and there's access. There's access and there's safe access, whether it be pedestrian, cyclist, know, just motorists. The last thing a motorist wants to do is hit a person on a bike or hit a pedestrian. So it's safety for all in these situations. In terms of the because I also want to talk about the unincorporated pockets in the city of Napa, because one of those pockets are also in my district, too.

And I'm going to propose this to Director Letter. Believe isn't there if it hasn't already started, it's going to start a mutual improvement on the roads in the Pueblo Vista unincorporated area of the streets, correct? Isn't the city and the county working on this right now?

Yes. Napa San is replacing many of the sewer lines in that neighborhood, which is both unincorporated county and city. And the city, the county and Nappasan are all working together such that we'll repave the roads once they're done with their sewer project. Yeah.

But it doesn't include any curbs or any other improvements, curbs or sidewalks? Know it doesn't include. Does it include any curbs?

It does not include any new Infrastructure? New infrastructure. Okay. Actually, my project engineer is sitting behind me and she might be able to say. I know when we did the Shetler neighborhood, there were areas of existing curb and sidewalk that needed upgrades. And we did that. And we may be doing some of that here. But we're not adding any new infrastructure currently.

Have we reached because I know, again, as was mentioned before, there's been discussion of annexation, both when I was on City Council that was presented and, of course, now here. In terms of this discussion of annexation in the future, has that been, when was that last discussed? And because I do know the city is looking at the cost burden of taking this area and having to build in all that infrastructure that's not currently there. So has there been discussion of a shared cost approach and then final into the annexation portion?

So the island discussion has been frankly going on for decades. And several areas have annexed into the city over the years. Generally, the areas that have not annexed are because the residents and then they may not be the residents at this moment. They may have been the previous residents. There has always been a perception that the city rule city zoning rules are more strict.

There are fee then this is, in fact, true. There are fees that the city charges that the county doesn't. And of course, the city uses those fees to provide the services that we're talking about. So generally, areas that haven't annexed it is because the residents objected to annexation for those reasons. And then generally, as supervisor Rama said, those conversations will go dormant for periods of time, and then they'll sometimes come back up.

Those infrastructure issues are a piece of the discussion certainly in in in the past and in the future because if an area does annex into the city, then those people will be expecting sidewalks and streetlights and and those sort of city services. And there have been discussions in the past of the city and the county sharing some of those costs. But as Supervisor Ramos pointed out, I believe all of those discussions are dormant at the moment.

Okay. Thank you. I will concur with Supervisor Gallagher that when I've you know, walked and knocked and talked to folks in those in the Pueblo Vista area specifically, there's been a lot of desire and request and confusion about why they don't have this infrastructure and the safety factor. So I'm just going to put that out there that the next time it's no longer dormant and there's a discussion to be had, I'm interested in that and not forcing something new on anyone. But I do think it's an area of need and an opportunity to improve when that time comes.

The other item that hasn't been mentioned in this test is the bike lanes that are available, whether they're regardless of which class, and the debris that's there. So as somebody who cycles on occasion, more rare than most these days, it's really, treacherous to get a road bike out there and have all that debris. And we don't have any mechanism. The city doesn't and the county doesn't. Well, Kara and her polling wagon that cleans up the debris along the Amala Bridge, with exception of that, which is not really sustainable county wide, I am interested in a bike lane sweeper for the county in these more most used areas, Silverado Trail, Solano Avenue again.

And I say that because the Vine Trail is so popular, if you're riding a road bike, it's actually it's kind of hazardous for the cyclists and maybe and folks on the Vine Trail to be sharing this this space. So I'm finding I'm seeing more people on road bikes also on Celano. But just those high use areas, I'd be very interested in the county, even working with the city, if there's a shared bike lane sweeper that we can get together and whatever. I'd like to see that because I do think that the debris a hazard and that doesn't give us truly the benefit of these bike lanes. The green paint and striping was mentioned.

I think that's been very effective. I want to give kudos to the city as they're striping all over their new paved areas, the main corridors. But basically, I'm very happy with the work that you've done, and I'm glad that there's a biannual progress update that going to be happening because we do need to make this we do need to be mindful on our work and recognize the work that's getting done. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Elvillo. Supervisor Cottrell?

Thank you, and thanks to my colleagues for the comments. This is a good discussion to hear from everyone. First, I just want to thank Patrick and team for this report. I want to call out something that you said, Patrick, that this is thinking about everybody who uses our transportation network. It's wonderful to have people who want to ride their bike very far, but this is not targeted toward them.

And Supervisor Gallagher's point about people who are using strollers on the side of the road. Right? And that you've also made it clear that safety is paramount here too. And also, just aspirationally, great to hear that the number of miles would go from 200 to 600. That is measurable and a big reach, which we should be aiming for.

I also want to make the point, you know, we're talking about two kind of major buckets here, the sidewalk infill opportunities, which I want to come back to, but also Ms. Casey's point about the Vine Trail, that both of those are, you know, we're talking about them in terms of safety, but there's also a huge economic development component because they make life more livable for everyone here. They make it, more attractive for visitors to come to the area and they make it easier for people to get to and from work, school, childcare. So I want to hold on to that because when we're talking about all these items, there's significant financial investments, but I believe there's a payoff long term too. So then on the point of the pockets, appreciate supervisor Ramos' framing and some background on the the LAFCO issues there and that we have seen over years an interest in, you know, some sort of broad island policy that that looks at annexation and also seeing that that's not moving forward anytime, soon.

And and as a member of LAFCO, what I have seen is that it's often when, a project is more likely to be annexed when the property owners are very, interested in it. They can see the benefits. And, mister Letter, to your point, that if they're not, if they're worried about an annexation, then those things aren't gonna move forward. So with that in mind and also understanding that we have a policy, it sounds like, so I'd love some clarification about this. No, not supporting sidewalks in the unincorporated county.

I'm interested in you know, I think we need to have a conversation about evolving that policy. I'd I'd have us take a look at we've got a pavement condition index, which takes a number of factors. It looks at population density, condition of the road, things like that, to make an assessment rather than just, oh, this black and white line, it's not in our policy to do improvements here. Because I think it's good to hear about the short lived neighborhood, where that may be an unincorporated area, and it's much more dense, and there's more need there too. So I think I think we should be looking at different ways to approach this problem.

I think discussions with the city are appropriate too. You know, maybe there's a project that is coming down the the pike faster, But there are benefits that will be gained from increasing the sidewalk square footage in these pockets that I think we should bring into effect. The other thing I want to say about a plan like this is it's not a one and done, right? To use your term, Mr. Alstoff, we're looking for continuous improvement, right?

So we should view this as we're going to learn some things every year we do it and improve it. And so I want us to keep that as a living document. And then I guess, Steve, I've asked kind of one question about policy. And then I had another question about can we access Measure U funds for any of the elements of this plan? And then my final question is if you can just give us a ballpark when we're talking about sidewalks. What is what's what's kind of a cost, maybe not in terms of absolute cost, but sort of in relation to, you know, repaving a road? What does the sidewalk cost us there? And with that, then I'll hand it back to you, Chair. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Cottrell. All right. I have a couple questions, too. Could I hear a little bit more about bike parking? Because I realize in the county, we probably have very few areas in our jurisdiction where a bike that are really candidates for dense bike parking. But it's something that, in my experience as a cyclist, is a limiting factor. So I'd just like to hear more about it in this venue so people can understand where that's at.

Thank you, Chair. Yes, we were very fortunate to be able to partner with the Napa County Bicycle Coalition to actually do a countywide bike parking survey that included use of ArcGIS mapping software to have volunteers go out in the field and locate where is existing bike parking in our communities. And the final plan will include maps of where those parking assets exist. And then the next step is really coming from the policies document in the plan to work with each of the local jurisdictions to identify where are there changes to the existing municipal code that can both encourage or require future development to incorporate whether it's short term bike parking for high turnover locations such as a coffee shop or longer term bike parking for whether it's a warehouse or a winery or other kinds of longer term locations where you have employees or visitors staying for durations of many hours at a time. And so it really is going to be an iterative process to look at where are there those gaps in our bike parking network, both in the urbanized areas and in the unincorporated communities, and what is the right approach to developing long term policies that can build out that long term parking network where it's most appropriate and required?

Okay. Thank you. That's really helpful to know. And then also, it came up in this discussion I get the sense we're going to talk about it more on the next agenda item as well. But is there any kind of survey going on for facilities that were installed for to improve active transportation safety that are being damaged by cars? Because I feel like there's a very direct correlation there between we identify a problem area, we attempt to do something about it, and then it's really confirmed that this is a serious problem area because, you know, the facility gets damaged by cars which are leaving the traffic lane.

So I would defer to Director Letterer on the roads damage side of things. I will just mention, and going back to a point that supervisor Alessio brought up around maintenance, that the plan does include some additional direction and some policies around maintenance and sweeping of bike lanes and ensuring that those facilities that are developed are maintained in a way that ensure that they can be used by the intended user groups long term. And then I'm sure that Director Lerer can address the vehicle damage issue.

Yeah. I think, as I mentioned, particularly some of these vertical things that we put up are regularly damaged by cars. And then many of the other things that that we put up, you know, in terms of paint and signage and whatnot, those need to be maintained, of course, year after year paint fades. So the more paint we have, the more paint we have to replace. So and, obviously, it's cars that are doing the damage to that, and cars run over our signs, and cars run into our guardrails, and all of that sort of stuff.

So yeah, I mean, there is ongoing damage to all of our infrastructure at some level from vehicles.

Okay, thanks. That's all. Yeah, I'm just kind of wondering if that information is assembled anywhere because it seems like it may be informative about areas that the level of risk in different areas. Just a thought. Not a directive, but it's a you know.

It's just on one level. We have an annual guardrail contract, is basically some of it is replacing aged guardrails, but the vast majority of it is replacing guardrails that were damaged. And that runs about $500,000 a year.

Yeah.

Okay.

And if I could answer Supervisor Cottrell's question, the cost of a sidewalk. Generally, the cost of a sidewalk is equivalent to the cost of paving. So for instance, we looked at this and it varies in different places. But when we paved Salvador, we looked at adding a sidewalk, and it doubled the cost of the project. When you get into a neighborhood, it's and if you're talking about actually adding sidewalks, it's probably significantly more than the cost of the paving because now you're dealing with getting into people's front yards and creating new infrastructure and whatnot.

And to answer the question, are are Measure U dollars available to do that? The answer is is yes. Measure U does allow complete streets stuff, which which is we use Measure U, for instance, with adding the conflict markings and the signs and and those sort of things. But Measure U, of course, is a zero sum game. So if you take money from one thing and Measure U to put it to something else, then you're doing less paving, which then impacts that side. So it's really just a question of ultimately where the board chooses to put their money.

Okay. That's helpful to know. Thank you for the clarification on Measure U funds. Generally in this discussion, I've been hearing that the county pockets have continuing I don't want to say differences in perception of how that might best move forward or what residents want. And those are going to be continuing discussions the community has.

I really do appreciate the discussion of county islands in the city's jurisdiction. You know, we, I think, probably all get this from residents who are living in those pockets. There's a number of differences between expectations and realities for residents in those pockets, and it's an ongoing concern. And I expect it to be an ongoing point of conversation, and I will participate in that certainly as it goes forward. There may be an educational component there, just making sure people understand what the trade offs are in maintaining it as a county area.

Mean, I heard that talking about some residents sometimes oppose being incorporated. So that might be an educational element. And then also just want to make sure that I say that I'm open to reviewing policy around that. Because again, we do get a lot of comments about this, not just about sidewalks, but a number of different concerns with the way those areas are existing in the city. It also means the residents there can't vote for city council members even though it's a very impactful thing for the way they live, you know?

So just democratically, there's an issue there. And I'm certainly hearing agreement among the board about the importance of safety and moving forward with active transportation planning. I'm very much in favor of active transportation planning and incentivizing active transportation, and it's very true that the more you build it, the more people will come. During the pandemic, it was very clear that if a street was closed, it would immediately fill up with people who wanted to use the space in a productive, healthy way. And when you are in a community where there are well thought out, connected, thorough, active transportation facilities, those are, you know, if they're safe, if they're approachable and welcoming, they are very, very much beloved and used.

I think the Vine Trail is an excellent example of that here. You know, we built it and it absolutely filled up with people to the point where I'm hearing my colleagues say, Hey, maybe it's not safe if you want to go fast on your bike, because there's so much foot traffic and slower bike traffic. And that's just a sign of how successful those things can quickly become. And what a great service they do to the community for health and wellness and all those elements which are something we want to pursue. Yeah, and I also heard a lot of discussion about clearing debris out of bike lanes and maybe that's something I don't know, maybe that's a question actually. Don't know if we heard much back about that.

We do own what's called a kick broom, we for instance, when there are scheduled events on certain roadways, part of our preparation is to run the kick room to try and clean the shoulders, which generally works pretty well for that event. But the debris, really within a week, the debris is back. So we're kind of back to the issue of 800 or so shoulder miles that we own the limited resources that we have do it. But like I said, we do clean areas for the events, but the debris comes back really quickly.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Well, to keep in mind. I really appreciate the thorough and thoughtful analysis that went into this planning effort. It's really helpful to get this update here, and I'm definitely looking forward to biannual updates going forward. That's really going to be great to see things roll out here. Anything that moves us meaningfully toward Vision Zero is a plus for this community. We do have some very dangerous roads here, and it kind of goes hand in hand with being rural and beautiful, but certainly something we're all going to keep working toward. And I think that's it. I don't see any

more

oh, is there Vice Chair Alessia?

Yes, thank you. Director Letter, thank you for letting us know about the kick broom sweeper, I guess I can call it. I understand that debris returns, but it's better that we sweep at least once a year or twice a year than not at all. Again, if you're a cyclist and you're on those lanes, whether it be Silverado Trail is a really good example, About once a year, folks are workers are out there trimming the weeds along the side of the Silverado Trail. And those thorns get onto the bike lane, and then those they pop tires and could be a hazard there, just as an example.

So I'm glad we have something and that it's utilized around events. But I'm very supportive of us getting a schedule and maybe working with a bike coalition or NVTA, identifying those high use areas for cyclists and actually doing some maintenance with the kick brooms if we have something available. I think that's going to be really I think it's important.

Yeah. Just to be clear, it's much more often than once a year. It's much more frequent than that.

But

we still have the problem that, someone can come through three days later assuming that it's going to be completely clear and then there's a good chance that it won't be.

I could say the same thing about my granddaughter when she's visiting in my kitchen. I just wept. And then all of sudden, need to sleep again. And you know what? I do. So again, I just want to advocate for that kind of maintenance and update. Okay.

Thanks a lot. I believe that concludes our discussion on this information item. Thank you so much for presenting, Mr. Band and Mr. Lederer. And I would like for us to take a comfort break. We want to do five minutes. Five minutes ish. Let's try to get back here and be and be well, let's make it 11:10. I think that's probably realistic, but let's take a short break, and we'll come back.

Thank you everyone. We're gonna go ahead and get started now. We're running a bit behind. Madam chair, the floor is yours when you're ready.

All right. We are on administrative item 9A, presentation on Edgeline Rumble Strips. Welcome Steve Letter and

Sidney Barkley.

Sidney Barkley, good to see you. Thank you. Go ahead.

Thank you, chair. Yes, Steve Letter, Public Works Director. And I'd like to introduce Sydney Barkley, one of the group of wonderful young engineers we've been able to hire over the last few years. This is Sydney's first presentation to the board, but it won't be her last. We're here today.

First off, thank you for rearranging the agenda to do Patrick's presentation first. As I kind of put it, I think it's worthwhile for Patrick to introduce you to the forest before we start talking about some of the branches on the trees. So I just think that made sense. The board may remember back a year or so ago, we were approaching a paving project on Silverado Trail from Skellinger to Zinfandel Lanes. And there had been a lot of previous discussion before that on rumble strips, particularly as a, an application that, might help with, with safety on Silverado Trail.

And the board authorized us to, install rumble strips on that section of Silverado Trail, with the small exception. There's a Caltrans owned piece in there right where Conn Valley Road and 128 crosses Silverado Trail. So just if anyone has any questions, there's a small piece there that's Caltrans that we didn't do, but otherwise from Scalinger to Zinfandel. And we've gotten some interesting experience on that. And we wanted to report back to the board on that project how it went and some of the input that we've received.

So that's why we're here today, and Sidney and I are going to share this presentation. So to start off get the camera why this matters. The Silverado Trail is a heavily used road. It's also a road that has seen its share of accidents. I have some statistics that I'll add later.

One of the primary causes of accidents along Silverado Trail are what we call lane departure crashes or runoff crashes. I read every accident report that happens in the Valley or in the unincorporated, at least. And particularly on Silverado Trail, the vast majority of accidents are single car. And no matter how the CHP classifies them, the vast majority of them come back to inattentiveness of some kind. So it could be DUI.

And I know a lot of people are focused on that. But a lot of it simply is cell phones. It's falling asleep. It's being somehow inattentive in other ways. Rumble strips are and this is why we wanted to try them relatively inexpensive treatments that help mitigate this human error, that they provide a noise and a feel to try and get a driver who perhaps has lost focus for whatever reason to return to that lane. So our goals for today in this presentation are to report and educate the board, hear public input, and then obtain any board guidance and potential direction. We do have some recommendations at the end of the presentation.

So what are rumble strips? There are multiple types of rumble strips, but essentially they are grooves in the pavement that give the driver an audible and a vibratory warning in the vehicle when they are departing their travel lane. They also help to address driver inattention, fatigue, and impairment that often lead to these run off road collisions. Just as Steve had said, it's a low cost proven safety countermeasure that's used nationwide. We see that Caltrans, AASHTO, and the Federal Highway Administration have a lot of data and studies on these rumble strips.

So some of the some of the data, and we didn't we did mention cost as an example. A guardrail is a 100 times more expensive than a rumble strip. Rumble strip runs about a buck a buck a foot. A guardrail is about $100 a foot. So the relative cost is really significant.

Some nationwide statistics that we've been able to find indicate that rumble strips do result in a 10% to 46% reduction in runoff crashes or lane departure crashes, up to 58% reduction in fatigue related crashes, 21% reduction in alcohol and drug related crashes. So looking at this graph, this is total accidents, not just Silverado Trail, but this is total accidents in the county by fiscal year. This is based on the CHP database. I will caveat to say that not every accident ends up in the CHP database if it's not reported or if CHP isn't there. So in some ways, these numbers are probably understated because there are accidents that don't end up in the database.

But two seventy three accidents in the county last year by our data, seventy nine of them were on Silverado Trail. It's the single most accident prone by total number by far road in the county. Of those 79, again, a great many of those are lane departure caused by a lot of them by inattentiveness. Not a 100%. I mean, it could be an animal running across the road.

It could be debris on the road. There are other it could be mechanical. There are other reasons that accidents happen. But the vast majority of them, again, are these inattentiveness single lane departures. If you look at the statistics, 10% to 46%. You take the 80 accidents and say, well, ten percent if we could reduce eight of them, I think we've accomplished a great deal. That being said, rumble strips are have pluses and minuses, and they're not the only answer.

So in addition to seeing what the nation is doing and how the studies have come about with rumble strips, We looked into what the neighboring counties are also doing, specifically Sonoma and Solano County. Sonoma County is successfully utilizing the edge line and the centerline rumble strips to mitigate runoff road collisions as well as centerline crossings. They gave us some recommendations when it comes to their installation. Specifically, they do recommend buffered bike lanes when we install these edge line rumble strips. It's a Caltrans recommendation.

It's actually something that is in the proposed 2026 ATP that Patrick just talked about. And when we have room, we do think it's an effective treatment. We should also really consider the surrounding land uses and noise sensitive areas when we install the rumble strips, and that their installation should be based on collision history. Solano County does not necessarily utilize these edge line rumble strips that we're proposing here on Silverado Trail, but they do utilize a traverse rumble strip, essentially a horizontal rumble strip that's in the middle of the road. It alerts drivers that there is an a change in upcoming road conditions, and it's often used on, lower speed, roadways, prior to a residential area.

Still you.

Thank you. So what the research shows, we are finding that rumble strips may only make noise when vehicles, cross over them, and they've been effective in reducing crashes. We can. There are noise and bicyclist impacts that can be reduced by the design, and modifying it. Edge line rumble strips do provide the most advanced warning because it is located on the edge of the travel lane.

So it immediately will notify a driver when they are leaving the travel lane, and it provides the greatest buffer between them and a bicyclist. These edge line rumble strips, when thermoplastic striping is applied over it, we're seeing that the thermoplastic is lasting longer and that it has a better, visibility at nighttime, particularly in wet conditions. We see that rumble strips, when they are installed in pavement that is in new or in good condition, that it has little effect on deteriorating the pavement. So pavement condition is a very important factor to consider when we install the rumble strips. And that rumble strips, it's very it's dependent on land use and roadway context.

It's not a one size fits all solution. And we need to consider that when we install rumble strips.

Where the noise from rumble strips do become a factor, there alternatives. And it can be very site specific. As I mentioned, the county installed about three miles of rumble strip from Skellinger to Zinfandel. And there's been basically one area that's been identified as a concern. Caltrans has installed dozens of miles of rumble strips along State Route 29, and they report no concerns their area.

So generally, they can be used without problems, but there can be problems that can arise. And there are alternatives that we'll be talking about shortly. Rule of thumb from Caltrans is to, if there is an area of noise concern, is to terminate the rumble strips about 200 meters from the identified area. There are also, in the chart below, there are different types of designs for rumble strips. Some are deeper, some are less so.

If you will, the maximum rumble strip gives you the maximum safety. But in certain cases where those can't be used and again, some of the alternatives we're talking about the alternatives may not be as effective as the full rumble strip, but they're still better in most cases, still better than nothing, still better than baseline. So we'll talk about that.

Thank you, Steve. So one alternative is, essentially called a mumble strip. It's an it's it's, somewhat effective treatment. It still provides a a same internal vehicle noise and vibration, but it's less noisy on the outside of the vehicle. This has been utilized and studied by Caltrans for over five years.

When designing rumble strips rumble strips do provide safety benefits for bicyclists, but they also have to be designed with the bicyclist in mind. If you look at the two pictures at the bottom, you see on the left side the rumble strip is more off the lane, but it off the travel lane. But it makes the bike lane itself very, very small. Ours are designed like the one on the right where the rumble strip is on the on the white fog line, on the edge line, which provides enough space for the bike lane. But the rumble strip that we designed will get hit more often because it's closer to the travel lane.

So that's the balance. On Silverado Trail, Silverado Trail is not uniform from Trancas to Calistoga. There are places where a rumble strip and a full bike lane fit. And there are other places where it doesn't. So again, we'll talk about this a little bit later.

As we develop these more, we're going to have to look at very kind of site specific designs to see what makes sense in different places and where a rumble strip can work and, frankly, certain places where it just won't. We also designed the strips so that there are gaps so that if bicyclist needs to move out of the bike lane that they have a way of getting out of the lane without having to run over the strip. Again, we're installing in the fog line and the edge line as opposed to further over. We did mention earlier some of the vertical barriers that are very challenging on Silverado Trail, partly because of maintenance, but partly also because they actually will trap the bicyclist in inside that area. And, again, depending on how much space is available, it also makes it much harder to sweep if you have those those physical barriers there.

And also, just because of the nature of Silverado Trail, many of those vertical barriers actually act as launching pads for cars. If a car were to hit them, it tends to cause the cars to go airborne. So are pluses and minuses to everything here. Environmental factors that we do look at. Caltrans has typically found that rumble strips are considered a less than significant impact, under CEQA.

This board adopted a less than significant, class one categorical exemption, for our projects. So we we didn't meet our requirements under CEQA. Some of the factors that have been looked at and studied in the past is impacts on wildlife. And in general, the studies say that there's already whatever impacts from basic road noise are not any different than what you see from from the rumble strips. And then, again, there are there are mitigation options, in certain circumstances where noise or in perhaps an unusual situation where there might be a specific wildlife impact, there are there are different things that that can be addressed.

So we wanted to address where rumble strips make sense and the most sense in the county. We believe that rural and agricultural segments of the roadway make the most sense, where there's fewer nearby residents and driveways. We want to install them on longer uninterrupted sections of the roadway where there's documented runoff road collisions. And we also believe they're better off on higher operating speeds that are around 50 miles per hour and greater.

So that brings us to the actual project that we did. Again, it was paving on Silverado Trail from Schallenger to Zinfandel. And this is an actual picture of the project. You can see the rumble strips installed there in the edge line. We as a result of this project, we did receive a good amount of feedback, both positive and negative, which is really useful to inform our decision making going forward.

There were comments from two property owners, specifically, one who lives is essentially the first house off of Silverado Trail just north of that Conn Valley 128 Intersection, and then also the home behind them, so a little further up the hill. And then there was a comment letter, which the board has seen, where those property owners obtained some input and signatures from, I think, four or five other property owners. So we did receive that input. We also received roughly I think we're up to about three dozen letters in support of essentially the safety value of rumble strips, as well as input from the NAPA Bike coalition. I just want to mention that in context, a lot of this discussion has been about bikes and whatnot.

And certainly, safety measures for the bikers are important. But this is broader than just, oh, we're doing something for bikers. Many, many, many of these accidents don't have anything to do with bikes. And yet, again, the rumble strips can potentially, prevent many of them. So, I don't think this should be couched in terms of we're just doing something for the bike. It's a it's an overall safety issue.

So we do believe there are areas where alternatives to rumble strips may be a better use, specifically in, residential areas where there's a limited setback from the roadway and buildings, and then where there's more driveways at intersections, town centers, and specifically on tight horizontal curves as the rumble strip is more likely to be hit. So in 2023, we had an additional pilot project in essence where we installed reflective pavement markers. These are often they're used in the center line of the roadway. They're often utilized. Oh, thank you, Steve.

So this is this is the installation of them on Coombsville Road, and perpendicular to this is 1st Avenue. These were installed based off of a severe lane departure collision that occurred. We have found that it's been successful so far. There have been no noise complaints. It's obviously not gonna be as effective as a rumble strip.

It's it's not going to give the same amount of of an alert. As you'll see with the installation, they were installed on the inside of the roadway to provide, the greatest alert to the driver if they're departing their travel lane. The edge line rumble strip essentially would would do the same thing being on the edge of the road. But we see that when we do install something such as, we call them in house an RPM, that they're going to require more maintenance, in the same way as the vertical delineators that, Steve mentioned. These can pop off, and on high speed roads as well. It's potential that they could, I guess, sling slingshot

as well.

Become projectiles.

Become yeah. Become projectiles. Yeah.

Let's go

to the

next slide. Yep.

So our recommended path forward. So this in large, we have a, local roadway safety plan. This is required in order to apply for the highway safety improvement grant. I'm working on the h SIP cycle 11 project, which is using this grant and which identified three intersections from the LRSP. And this is kinda where this came about, and and I was asked to help Steve prepare this presentation.

The local roadway safety plan is going to be updated this year. We will hire a traffic engineering consultant who will look at the traffic data, who can look at risk and identify specific corridors on Silverado Trail where rumble strips would be recommended. As we have seen, rumble strips is not a one size fits all kind of application. There are certain areas where it's more appropriate than others. And we think we need to have a specific professional do a study on this, evaluate it, and provide that in the LRSP.

And I will note, when we do provide the LRSP update, this is something that is also circulated and and is allowed to have public comment as well, just similar to the ATP. And in order to continue getting our eight SIP grant funding, we need to update the LRSP. We do think rumble strips and the alternatives should be considered on future projects on Silverado Trail and potentially similar roadways. We think the rumble strips the conventional rumble strips are when are a good idea when the residential exposure is limited and there's no noise concerns. Mumble strips should be considered where there are noise concerns.

Do you want go to

next slide? Yep. Perfect.

One alternative could be these reflective pavement markers. These are an effective treatment when we don't want to necessarily mill the pavement. If the pavement condition index, which Anne actually had mentioned in the last presentation, if the pavement condition index is lower than an 80, meaning that it's it's, under good condition, we consider, I guess, between fair and good. That's not necessarily a good, pavement to mill into. We want to install these in pavement that's about three years or younger, or else we can lead to cracking and then we have bigger maintenance issues.

And we we don't want to have pay more pavement concerns by by installing this countermeasure. I'm specifically I had mentioned I'm working on the h sip cycle 11 project. On Silverado Trail, we're going to be, specifically at Oak Mill Avenue installing installing a a southbound right turn lane where you'll take a right onto Oak Mill Avenue from Silverado Trail. Same thing. Well, we actually already have an existing left turn lane there.

At the new right turn lane and at the existing left turn lane, we're proposing to do, raised pavement markers, instead of rumble strips, at the approach in a way to protect cyclists and to alert drivers to stay in their travel lanes as they're getting into these new turning lanes. We don't believe rumble strips to be effective here or a good measure. Caltrans actually recommends that rumble strips are not installed 50 feet near an intersection that we need to have a larger gap. They constantly would be traversed over if we had them at this location. We also have a resident that is about 250 feet away from the intersection.

And as we're seeing with the pilot project in last year, that is a major noise concern. So we don't want to create another issue there. We believe RPMs would be an effective approach as part of this project. And I will let Steve wrap things up.

Yes. So the recommendation that we also had out of the Silverado Trail project. So we do have the one area. I'll mention the Harshburgers. I believe I have the name correct.

So they were the residents closest to Silverado Trail. And I'll say for whatever reason, it's probably geography and geometry. The road actually sits above their house, and then the hillside sweeps up behind it. And this just does seem to be an area where the noise seems to be more of an issue than others. So using the Caltrans recommendation for distance, our recommendation is this summer we have a paving project on Deer Park Road, actually.

Project Supervisor Cottrell, I know, will appreciate. But it would be pretty easy as a way of including in that contract that we do remove the rumble strips in front of the Harshburger residence and look at using one of the alternatives. Probably raised pavement markers is probably the best way to do it. Again, any of the alternatives are going to be an improvement over baseline. So we think that's probably the appropriate balance there, where we obviously keep the rumble strips that have been installed because they're hopeful and they're working and they're not bothering anybody.

But in this area, we look for a quieter alternative. And then as Sydney talked about, we use the local roadway safety plan analysis to inform us for future treatments on the remaining 24 miles of trail. And that completes our presentation. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you so much for that informative presentation, Ms. Barclay and Director Letterer. I now welcome public comment. Is there anyone in the room that would like to comment on this item? Go ahead and approach the microphone and you will have three minutes.

My name is Dave Harshbarger. Steve just mentioned our property. I can't tell you how excited we were when the new roadway came in. It was much quieter than to our surprise the rumble strips went in. And it's very, very loud. Steve and his team came out. Anne came out. Anne's comment was the best of everyone that I've talked to. It sounds like a low flying aircraft. And I think a lot of it is due to the topography.

We have Rutherford Road on one side, and we have a hill side on the other. So it's like a little valley. So I'm thinking that your recommendation may work because that is on Zinfandel Lane and we've been there and driven on it and listened and it's considerably quieter. Our home is rock, so it's very well insulated. We hear this rumble inside, outside, every room in our house. We never heard the roadway in the house at all before. My wife and I invested in a a decimal reader. I sent you all the reports that we ran. Standard with no car on the road, it's about 40 decibels. When a normal car goes by, it's 70.

We have readings in the nineties. So there's 232 ratings readings over 80 decibels, so it's noticeable. So I'm glad that they acknowledge that we have a situation. We canvassed the neighborhood, seven homes, 12 people. I submitted their names yesterday or Sunday to you guys. So take a look and see what you can do. And we're concerned about the environment as well. We have a lot of wildlife. We have a nesting set of owls in our yard. They have their hatchlings every year.

We haven't seen them. So I know if it's they're migrated or if it's due to this noise. So thank you for your consideration. And hopefully we get a good feedback. There's got to be some sort of a solution for us all, including the bicycles. I mean, they have the right to ride and all that. We're all in agreement. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, mister Harshburger. Anyone else in the room? Yeah. Miss Furner?

Good morning, Chair Manfrey and members of the board. I'm Kara Verner with the Napa County Bicycle Coalition, and we wanted to come again today and ask you to support the installation of rumble strips along all of Silverado Trail. The need for safety upgrades is urgent and exceedingly well established. It's our county's deadliest local road. Rumble strips, especially paired with buffers, will make the road safer for drivers and bicyclists.

It is the most cost effective and feasible way to reduce collisions that we know of. We hope the county and everyone for that matter feels a deep duty of care on our roads, that everyone feels responsible for people returning home not so much quickly, but uninjured and in one piece. We can all recover from feeling annoyed or being late, but a fatal crash is irreversible. Roads need to evolve because vehicles have evolved to be more dangerous. Cars today are much larger and heavier on average.

They weigh about a thousand pounds more than they did in the nineteen eighties. Trucks in particular are a danger to people outside of them with their extremely tall, flat noses, and restricted sight lines. And technology from cell phones and screens incorporated into vehicles distract. Yet most of our roads are not significantly different than they were in the 1980s. Each of us here today are here because we've been lucky.

We have not been killed on our roads. Search online for deaths on Silverado Trail, you can read about the visitors and neighbors who were not lucky. We must do all we can to take luck out of equation and to implement the road treatment studies have proven to be effective in reducing crashes. Crashes are not inevitable. We have the tools we need to make a difference.

We only need to use them. We observed the rumble strips on Silverado Trail and those on Highway 29 between St. Helena and Calistoga and found that at the street level, the strips are not louder than the other road sounds. They are not often heard because they are not often driven over, with the exception of drivers cutting inside horizontal curves. The sound seemed to us to have more to do with these curves than proximity to the road.

In the rare instances where the sound reasonably bothers a resident, there are a variety of tools that can inexpensively mitigate that. We would ask that those tools used include vertical separators between the bike vehicle lane where space allows, as those are the more effective, not less effective, than rumble strips. And both Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration call for vertical separation on roads with Silverado's vehicle speeds and volumes. We ask that you move forward with rumble strips and then mitigate in the rare instances where it is needed. This helps put the county's Vision Zero commitment into action. Thank you for your time and consideration.

Thank you, Ms. Verner. Ms. Sonata?

Hi, Carlota Sonata with the Napa County Bicycle Coalition again. I just want to expand a little bit more on the use of vertical separation, Kara touched on in her comment that Caltrans and the Federal Highway Administration both recommend vertical separation for roads like Silverado Trail based on current conditions. Using vertical separation has a lot of different approaches. And there are a lot of different types of vertical separation and treatment types. And the reason that you see it being a problem on IMHOLA, you see it potentially being a maintenance issue, is because those types of vertical delineators are really not the appropriate type for those roadways.

I would stress not to use IMHOLA as your example, because we would recommend something different there. Those are not appropriate, which is why they've become the maintenance issue. But you can use vertical separation without it being the maintenance issue of them being run over like that. Kara gave several examples. There are a variety of tools out there.

Paint and signage are not protection. They are a guidance, but you can tell just simply by looking at the no parking in bike lane signs that people ignore signs if it's inconvenient for them. People go over paint frequently. Caltrans putting vertical separation on Silverado Trail on that SR one hundred twenty eight secondtion demonstrates that it is appropriate for that roadway. Separated facilities have a crash modification factor of 50%.

So they reduce crash risk by 50% compared to just painted bike lanes. And I just want to stress that we shouldn't be decreasing safety for spot treatments if rumble strips are not the appropriate treatment in a particular area, decreasing safety shouldn't be on the table. We should really be looking to be keeping safety forefront of our minds and keeping vehicles on the road, keeping everybody safe. There are sweeping options for separated bike lanes. There are a lot of opportunities we can explore.

The Bicycle Coalition is always open and available to be having these conversations, to be looking into what other places are doing to help provide solutions that can work for everybody. So thank you for your time.

Thank you for your comments. Anyone else in the room? I'm not seeing anyone. Is there anyone on the phones? No? Okay. I'll go ahead and bring this back to the board for questions. We have anyone? Okay. Supervisor Gallagher?

Thank you. And thank you for the presentation. You did a great job your first time up here. We look forward to seeing you more. So safety is paramount.

It sounds like rumble strips are very, very effective. And it's something I'm very much in favor of. I'm just wondering if you spoke director Letterer, about it rumbles removing the rumble strips in front of the Hirschburgers. Wondering what it what are we talking about in terms of how how what's the length of that that part of the road? And have you looked at using vertical separators rather than the the markers? Because it does sound like there may be places where we can be using vertical separators on Silverado Trail just to keep safety at the forefront?

Yeah. So the distance we would look at, we would at least start with the Caltrans standard to inform. So we're talking about 200 meters there. We can certainly look at the various options. Like I said, we've not found any sort of form of vertical separation that we're comfortable with there.

We can go back and talk to our traffic engineers and whatnot. But we're very uncomfortable from a safety standpoint of those things that we've looked at, both safety and maintenance. It's a relatively short section. It's a straight section. Now, that being said, accidents on Silverado Trail, the location is fairly random.

As Sydney pointed out, we're doing improvements like at Oak, Nolan's and Findelin. Those are considered hot spots and the strawberry patch. But the other accidents on the trail are relatively random. They basically happen at the point where the person loses attention and drives off the road. And that is no different if you happen to be South Of Hardman or North Of Bale.

You know, it just sort of happens. But it is a straight stretch. It's a relatively the visibility there is good. The speeds there are a little bit lower because of the intersection. So I think we can find an appropriate treatment that does reduce the noise and still has certainly a level of safety above the baseline of nothing.

Okay. Thank you. Because I think it is important. I understand, obviously, the quality of life issues. But we're also trying to save lives. And I know when I hit a rumble strip, I pay good attention after that. So they seem to be incredibly effective. And I'm always grateful when they're there. Okay. Thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Gallagher. Supervisor Cottrell?

Thank you, Chair, and thank you, Sydney, for the presentation. Thank you also for Mr. Hershberger for coming and for the Bite Coalition's comments. Great to hear everyone participating. So I think for me, some of the takeaways just at the beginning, because I think one of the questions for us is whether we want to continue a program of rumble strips. Because again, this is a pilot, right? So this is what we should be doing this, learning from where it's appropriate and where it's not. So I'm glad that we have a pilot in place. In general, I think these rumble strips are incredibly effective and and pretty pretty cost effective too. So in general, I'm supportive.

I did go visit the, Harshburgers in December, and it was loud. And I do think it's a combination. We were not looking at the road where we could see the noise coming from, so I'm not sure if it was on the far side or the near side. But I do think it was perhaps a turn. And just the way I mean, I think we heard it in the public comment that there's an echoing across too.

So anyway, that is a place that I think we do need to be looking for alternatives. I appreciate Ms. Sonato's point that we don't want to be going backwards in safety, but I think we can come up with something that makes less noise in that area. I appreciate your comments, Supervisor Gallagher, there, too. So I would like to I think my interest would be in also saying can we have a further conversation about replacing there with the vertical separator just so that we can understand more what the options are there, as well as looking at those raised pavement markers.

I think that's about it. Did have one question. Sydney, are you saying that we will be expecting or you're interested in getting a consultant to work on the LRSP further?

Correct, yes. We're looking to hire. Used Wilden Engineering for the original LRSP, and we're looking to hire potentially them or another consultant. We may utilize an RF request for qualifications for that or somebody that we already have on call.

Yeah. Okay. And I am in general supportive of the direction. I think we likely will run into other scenarios where, you know, it works in a lot of places, but we need to make adjustments in specific places. And that's, challenging, I'm sure, for public works, right, because you wanna have a policy that you can use everywhere. But I think we do need to build some flexibility in and make sure we have a few different sets of tools in the toolkit. So, thank you.

Okay, thank you, Supervisor Cottrell. I'm not seeing any other comments. Oh, go ahead.

Thank you. My button is kind of doing some funny things. Sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't.

Well, welcome your comments. Vice Thank Chair Lester, you. Go

I need can we fix that, Director Rathenburg? No, thank you, in all seriousness, for this really important topic as we talk about public safety, you know, for cyclists, pedestrians, motorists. I think this is I think what I'm hearing here, this is not either or. This is a yes and. I appreciate the thoughtfulness and listening to the residents who are being impacted through the noise because quality of life is also something we need to keep in mind for people that are being directly impacted with high noise areas.

And I've already shared how, as stated here, safety is paramount. That said, so is quality of life. And so being thoughtful about this and your approach, I really appreciate that. You're listening, and you're giving some alternatives that we can move forward to kind of mitigate this area of impact for the people that living there. It's their home.

And the impact, I guess, it's making on wildlife. I never thought about that with the owls or or, you know, other species out there, how it may deter them and how that may have those ecological impacts too in that area. So I'm hearing, I mean, I appreciate the presentation. I'm assuming that we have our sign guys out there off the Silverado Trail, that we have signs out there that also, you know, I've seen signs where it's a yellow sign and there's a bicycle and it says watch, cyclists ahead or something like that. Do we have those kind of signs out there?

There are lots of signs out

there. I know. There's so many signs, right? So many signs. And then the signs also in terms of reminding people how fast they're going.

I tell you also, I've made the error too as a cyclist where I was avoiding debris or a pothole on Serrard Trail in bike lane, and I veered out in the street. It scared somebody that I was cycling with because I veered out and then came back in. It wasn't safe, but I was trying to avoid something. And so not only do these things kind of remind us that we need to stay in, our cycles need to stay in the lane too, but it helps both sides in terms of that safety factor, not just the motorist in Nigeria. I try to avoid those rumble strips as kind of punitive as I hit them or if I do.

Then also for those who are using the bike lane. I did have that. It does remind me of a question I had. Why are those rumble strips getting hit so often in this specific area? Is there something we need to do different in terms of the road itself? You said that it's roughly a straight road. I don't understand why people aren't hitting it so often.

I think we need better drivers.

So it's not the road itself. It's really just people are just not paying attention.

There's really no particular reason there. No.

Okay. All right. So we can't fix it from that direction. So let me take a look here at my notes. I think we've kind of covered it. Yeah, I appreciate the again, just the flexibility. I appreciate the rumble strips and the public safety factor, how this also helps improve quality of life, the health impact, the economic development impact of all of this is all encompassing. But most of all, listening to these folks and how it's impacting their home quality of life. So we need to keep that in mind, too. So a balanced, a flexible approach. I appreciate that. Thank you.

Okay. Thank you, Supervisor Alessio. Supervisor Cottrell, did you have another follow-up?

Yeah. I just thought, since I did get to witness these in action, I think there's some interesting questions. I would say while I was out there, what the number of people and I appreciate what I've heard from two of my colleagues is you hit those and you get off those, but a lot of people were staying on them. Like, there's this real interesting, like, for for for a lot of seconds that So I'm not sure if it's coming up the hill. I think it's coming up the hill.

But I mean, again, that says that they are effective safety wise because I don't think that's stopping people from veering further rightward into the bike lane and the edge of the road. But I just wanted to remark, I was surprised, like, you gotta get off that, buddy, which goes back to your point about drivers.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. So I had a question or two. I was curious whether it's the northbound or the southbound lane or both that are creating the problem. Do we know that?

I don't think we know, actually.

Okay. Because you could if if it's both lanes, then you have to update both lanes to a different technology. But if it's only one, you could just do the one and probably solve the problem. I'm hearing from that we need continued conversations about this and maybe suss that out before we decide how to address it. And then the other thing that this is kind of a how to say it, like it's the fact that there's frequent noise here indicates the level of the problem in this specific location, which, you know, means there really is a need for safety treatments here because every time that noise happens, that's an indication that there's a driver who's potentially at risk.

Or it could be a cyclist or walker or whatever, whoever's out there that's at risk of an inattentive driver. And so that does point to a real problem area. If this isn't the right solution because of noise, that's all right. But let's look for another solution that does ensure as much safety as possible. I think this is a good place for compromise and a continuing conversation. And I guess, in a way, I mean, it's a pilot project. So this is the next phase of that is adaptive management and figuring out what might be the next best thing. And if that doesn't work, what's the next best thing? And just kind of work through those options in order of their effectiveness. Let's see.

I want that one. Something I've noticed on Silverado Trail, I will make the comment, is that there's e bike use increasingly, and it's increasingly less experienced cyclists. And that's a concern as well. And I think an even better reason to move forward with this kind of work because it takes a while to get good at riding bikes in dangerous traffic conditions. I have been noticing and if you're driving up and down the valley, other people, I'm sure you're noticing too, there's more and more cyclists out there with e bikes who don't have maybe the full set of skills that might help them keep as safe as possible.

So that's a concern I'm just seeing out there. Yeah, I do support continuing to implement rumble strips or whatever the best practices are for Silverado Trail managing traffic conditions and safety. And I will note that physical changes to the environment are the most effective way to incur safer behavior by drivers or anyone in the environment. It's not signs. It's pretty much always, how do you change the environment to help drivers slow down to keep conditions safer or be more aware in this case?

And that's why curb bulb outs work so well in city streets to get drivers to slow appropriately at intersections is because you've changed the physical environment. So that element of it, just keep that at the forefront of the planning process is that if you want to maneuver people into better behavior, that physical change is the best way to go, the most effective way to go. And I appreciate the comments on the noise levels. And I did hear a little echo there of the aircraft sounds. And we've had a lot of that lately.

And I just want to underscore that it's really good that we have this process to bring concerns forward and do adaptive management and change the conditions and respond to the community. Thanks, everybody, for participating. And I think that's it for me. Okay. So I will look for a motion to approve the agreement.

I'll move. I just want to make sure we remembered we had an action. So I'll go ahead and move that.

Okay. I'll second. Okay. So first by Gallagher, second by Cottrell. All those in favor? Aye. That's a unanimous vote in favor. So I hope you have the guidance you need. And thank you for coming today with this presentation.

Thank you very much.

And Chair, just to confirm that that does include the, you know, reviewing the mitigation for this one issue in this area that's been brought forward? That does include That was my understanding.

Perfect.

I just want to make that clear for everyone. Thank you.

Okay, great. Thank you. Okay, that's it for item 9A, and we will move on to item 10A, is consideration of a resolution for category five temporary event application. I am gonna to push through this one before we break for lunch because everyone's here now and I think we can get through it in a reasonable amount of time. So I'll give us a couple minutes to clear the room.

People are moving around. Oh, what's happening over there? Okay. Thank you. Thank you, clerk.

All right. So we are gonna move ahead with item 10 a, consideration of resolution approving a category five temporary event application for the twenty twenty six Auction Napa Valley event. Welcome, Planning Director, Bordona and Ms. Galina, Supervising Planner.

Good afternoon, three minutes after twelve Good afternoon, Chair Manfrey and members

of the

Board. The item before you is a request for adoption of a resolution approving a category five temporary event for the twenty twenty six auction Napa Valley event occurring between June 5 and June 7. The application was submitted by the Napa Valley Witners on November, and the proposed locations this year are, and activities include the Barrel Auction and tasting at Robert Mondavi Winery, as it's going to be newly renovated, on June 6, with approximately 1,200 to 1,500 attendees, a main live auction at Inglenook Winery on June 7, approximately 400 attendees, and ancillary activities limited to fewer than 50 attendees. This item is in response to board action taken back on a resolution number 687 in 2 thousand six for a category five temporary event permit request also submitted for auction Napa Valley. At that time, the, board approved a resolution that allowed for these activities, which was, one of the first or a few of the auction Napa Valley, activities.

And activity included the Borough Auction and tasting at Treanchero, estates, breakfast activities at Copia, and the Main Live Auction at Meadowood. And then ancillary activities were planned for 50 attendees. And Attachments seen in your packet reflects this action. In addition to approval of the event, the board set parameters or criteria for review of future subsequent events and or when that board would consider action of a new resolution. And then here, we have the category five temporary event criteria that is included in our current Napa County code, which defines what a Category five is.

And I'll just let you read it, and I won't go over it. It's also included in your staff report. In addition, there was criteria for review for subsequent auction Napa Valley events. Because they were a category five. They had to be basically are the same nature, substantially the same in size, and conduct in accordance with the time, place, and manner restrictions imposed by the board under the resolution and would require just prior written notice to the county of the event, but would not require further review.

And since that time, we have had, up until today, we have had those activities just go through a subsequent, review with a letter submitted and not having to go to the board. But today, we are asking that the Napa Valley, vintners bring forward the resolution a new, request for the 2026 event and ask that the board adopt the proposed resolution to approve the 2026 event subject to the updated time, place, and manner restriction. And that's included in your resolution in Attachment a. And then before concluding my presentation, I would like to just announce and bring, that staff will bring forward a comprehensive temporary event ordinance update. And it should be noted that staff has been actively, working on a newly formatted and updated temporary event manual and packet.

These materials were posted on the county's website back in August along with the updated materials that were ready to go, to the board back in September. However, this process was postponed and has been conducting further public outreach along with preparing revisions and more streamlining efforts. And given this, staff anticipates that we'll be returning to the board in April with these new materials. And then this concludes my presentation. Staff are available to answer any specific questions that you may have on the request, including representatives from the Napa Valley vendors. Thank you.

Okay, fantastic. Thank you for the presentation. Is there any public comment on this item? I welcome anyone in the room to come forward. Hello, Ms. Novi.

Hello, Madam Chair. Hello, Board. Thank you. My comments said good morning, I needed to good afternoon. I'm here today and joined by Linda Reif, President and CEO of the Napa Valley Ventners in support of the resolution authorizing Auction Napa Valley as a category five temporary event.

Since 1981, Auction has been woven into the fabric of our community. We are extremely grateful for the generosity of our vintners and the enthusiasm of our participants and the bidders. But mostly, we are grateful and actually in awe of our local nonprofit partners and how they've been able to transform $250,000,000 raised from this event and leverage those funds into improving the quality of life for residents here in Napa County, whether that's through youth mental health services or expanded community health, early childhood education, COVID vaccines, the list goes on and on. But their work has really transformed what our community looks like today. The 2026 event as proposed and noted by miss Galena is scheduled to take place this June with our Friday Barrel Auction at the newly remodeled Robert Mondavi Winery and Saturday's live auction taking place outside at Inglenook.

While the material changes to this event, since we were with you last have really been around the rotating event venues and the event actually shrinking in size. This has been a really good exercise in reaffirming the importance and impact of auction to our community while also confirming the depth and breadth of our health and safety measures for the event. So building on the last twenty years of safe and successful auctions, we support the resolution before you today and thank you for your consideration. Lastly, I just want to acknowledge and thank the staff for their diligence in bringing this item forward for you today and for doing so in a way that I believe really exemplifies one of the Napa County values, which is integrity and collaboration. Staff showed up with both of those things and we're very grateful for that.

So thank you.

Thank you, Ms. Novi. Any other comments? I don't see anyone in the room. Is there anyone on the phone? No? Okay. Then I will open this up to the board for questions of staff. What's that? Close the public hearing. Oh, yeah. I'll close the public hearing and open this up to the board for questions for staff. Vice Chair Alessio?

Thank you. No questions. Just really compliments I want to extend to the entire staff for presenting this resolution. But again, for listening, listening to a very important community partner, being the Napa Valley Veteran Association. I want to thank Christina Adamson, too, who's sitting in the back, also for her work and continued work on this.

In her previous life, I've shared that I worked for Coyne Valley Medical Center for twenty years. And ten of those years in community outreach, working directly with the nonprofit community. These local nonprofits are small. They've got very thin margins. They serve a very vulnerable, disenfranchised part of our community, which is our families and neighbors.

And Auction Napa Valley has been pivotal, paramount for the ability for these nonprofits to be able to serve the folks that otherwise we would be serving here at the county. Part of my work was specifically identifying what is community benefit? What is a charitable gift? It's exactly what Auction Napa Valley does through the Napa Valley Visitors Association. The $250,000,000 if not raised by them for our community that really ripples and touches everyone in our community would have to either come from the county or people would have gone without.

I know it's been a significant impact on Olay Health, on Queen of the Valley, on St. Helena Hospital in particular, more recently around youth mental health, which is a critical area. And I appreciate their flexibility and shifting to what's been identified as a need. So again, I'm really glad the auction is back. And so this is a partnership between the county and this nonprofit organization to work on, and at the same time provide those clear parameters that we need to stay by in terms of providing this type of size of event that's at multiple locations.

So just really want to thank staff. I want to thank Linda Reif and Michelle and everybody in your team for this event. I've done small events. This is a huge lift. It's a huge lift and a very big gift to our community. So thank you.

Thank you, Supervisor Alessio. Supervisor Ramos?

I was just going to be prepared to make the motion and with gratitude to staff and acknowledging the, tremendous community investment that the Napa Valley Fitness have made. I'll make a motion to adopt, this resolution for application of the twenty twenty six auction Napa Valley event.

I'll second. Okay. So we have

a motion by supervisor Ramos, a second by Gallagher. I just wanted to echo

Supervisor Alessio's comments and thank the the VIT nurse for decades of work and really an engine for good. So thanks for everything and also supportive of this motion.

Thank you. And yeah, I'll also echo those comments and just note that the community resources I touched on earlier in this meeting, a lot of those are very much assisted by the work you do. So thank you for that because it does make our community stronger and better and broadly benefits everyone here. So thanks for that. So with that, I will take this to a vote. All those in favor? Aye. Have a unanimous vote of approval from everyone present. Thank you very much. And I will now close item 10A, and we will close the meeting we will go into closed session.

And in closed session, we'll be taking up item 11A, which is a conference with labor negotiators, government code section 54,957.6, agency designated representatives present.

Madam? Yeah. I'm sorry to interrupt you. I was just going to just let everybody know that our cat Dormouse got adopted.

Oh, thank

Just a demonstrative of the importance of doing that. You're bored doing so thank you.

About instant gratification.

Okay. Cher, if you could also, as you close and I know we're going to close in memory, could you also mention that we're purposely wearing black and white?

Oh, yeah. When we adjourn or right now?

Whenever we adjourn.

Whenever. I think we'll do that in adjournment. Was going do the doormouse thing in adjournment, but this is a good time. There's still some people here and probably still some people listening. So thank you. No, that's fine. Thank you. Thank you, CEO Alsop. Okay. So with that, great news. We are going to go into closed session, and we will return from closed session before we conclude the meeting.