V O T E M A T T

Yountville is an incredible place to live. I want to make sure it remains a place where people can actually build a life.

Our declining population concerns me. I do not want Yountville to slowly become a luxury destination where more people visit, but fewer people actually live. I want seniors to be able to stay here, working people to have an opportunity to live here, and younger families to see Yountville as a place where they can put down roots.

Affordability will not be solved by a single project. Housing is a major part of the problem, but families also have to think about childcare, groceries, healthcare, energy, transportation, and the other everyday costs of living in Napa Valley.

We need a multipronged approach that addresses the underlying causes making it harder to live here rather than continually treating the symptoms.

Moving the Commons forward

I support moving the Yountville Commons forward.

We need more affordable and workforce housing, particularly for workforce households who increasingly earn too much to qualify for traditional affordable housing but nowhere near enough to realistically live in Yountville.

The Commons gives us an extraordinary opportunity. We already own the property. We have spent years asking residents and stakeholders what they want from it. We have the ability to create something that serves both the people who need housing and the entire Yountville community.

A tremendous amount of work and community input has already gone into the Commons. I do not believe we should throw that work away because the previous plan did not ultimately move forward. We should understand why it failed, listen to the concerns that were raised, preserve the parts that people valued, make changes where necessary, and find a path forward.

I particularly like the idea of developing the Commons incrementally. A phased and adaptable approach gives us the ability to build, learn, continue gathering community input, and adjust as Yountville's needs change rather than pretending we can predict today exactly what the town will need decades from now.

I would also like us to explore multigenerational housing. Families do not always fit neatly into one model. Children, parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and other family members should have options that allow them to live near one another while maintaining their own homes and independence. If we want families to establish roots here, our housing should reflect the different ways families actually live.

The Commons needs to remain green, walkable, and welcoming, with trees, gardens, recreation, places for children to play, and places for neighbors to gather.

The goal shouldn't simply be to fit housing onto the Commons. It should be to build a neighborhood.

Food and community gardens

Access to fresh, healthy and reasonably priced food is another part of affordability.

The Commons garden and Farmstand were intended, in part, to help address that need. But I do not believe the current arrangement is doing enough for Yountville residents.

I have heard concerns from residents about their experiences with the Farmstand and questions about the relationship between the Town, the community garden, and the Farmstand. When public resources are being used to provide a community benefit, residents should be able to see and experience that benefit.

Rather than abandoning the idea, I want us to make it work better. We should listen to residents, evaluate the existing relationship, and make changes that put the needs of our community first.

The idea of community gardening must expand beyond the Commons. Where appropriate, we should explore creating garden plots within our parks and other public spaces that residents can use for their own gardens or neighborhood gardening projects. Giving people a small piece of ground to grow tomatoes, herbs, vegetables, or flowers provides food while also creating something harder to measure: neighbors meeting neighbors, children learning where their food comes from, and residents having a personal stake in our public spaces.

And we live in the middle of one of the most productive agricultural regions in the country. We should be looking for better ways to connect Yountville residents directly with Napa Valley farmers and growers and make locally produced food more accessible to the people who live here.

Childcare

If we want younger families to choose Yountville and remain here, we need to make it possible for them to actually raise a family here. Affordable, reliable childcare is a major part of that equation.

Childcare is not simply a convenience for parents. It allows parents to work, supports our local economy, gives children a strong start, and can determine whether a family can realistically afford to live in a community at all.

I want the Town to explore what it would take to bring licensed childcare to Yountville and make it genuinely accessible to local families. That could mean identifying appropriate Town-owned space, partnering with an experienced childcare provider, pursuing county, state or grant funding, or finding other ways for the Town to reduce the costs that ultimately get passed on to families.

We should also recognize the realities of the community around us. Yountville isn't exclusively a nine-to-five economy. Hospitality, restaurants, wineries, vineyards, and other businesses operate early in the morning, at night, on weekends, and seasonally. As we explore childcare, we should consider models that actually reflect the schedules of the people who live and work here.

The Town already supports amenities and services because they contribute to our quality of life. I believe childcare deserves to be part of that conversation. We cannot say we want younger families to become part of Yountville's future without addressing one of the largest expenses and practical challenges those families face.

Energy costs

Energy is another significant household expense, and affordability and resilience can go hand in hand. I want Yountville to explore technologies, partnerships, and infrastructure investments that can reduce long-term energy costs while improving the reliability and resilience of our community.

A community for the next generation

Ultimately, affordability isn't about making Yountville inexpensive. It is about making sure Yountville remains a real community.

The people who work in our restaurants and hotels, teach and care for our children, work in our wineries and vineyards, run our businesses, maintain our town, and provide the services we depend on are part of this community whether or not they can currently afford a Yountville address.

I want longtime residents to be able to remain here as they age. I want working people to have a realistic opportunity to live closer to where they work. I want children, parents and grandparents to be able to live near one another. And I want young people and young families to look at Yountville and see somewhere they could realistically build a future.

Yountville cannot control every factor that makes Napa Valley expensive. We shouldn't pretend that we can. But we have land, resources, partnerships, and opportunities that many small towns don't have. Where we have the ability to make a difference, I believe we have a responsibility to try.

This isn't growth for the sake of growth. It's about keeping Yountville a community.

— Matt

Yountville is our home, and I think we are at an important point in deciding what we want its future to look like.

The former Yountville Elementary School site is a big part of that. Whatever happens there will have a lasting impact on our community, and before we move forward with another proposal, I think we need to reflect on what has happened over the past year.

One of the things I have heard repeatedly from residents is, "they just aren't listening."

That concerns me. We need to understand why people feel that way, learn from what happened, and work on rebuilding the relationship between residents and their elected representatives. This is not about assigning blame. It is about asking what we can do differently moving forward.

The energy is already here

Yountville is filled with talented and knowledgeable people who care deeply about this town and their neighbors. The elementary school project has gotten people involved. Residents are asking questions, doing research, organizing, sharing ideas, and thinking about Yountville's future.

Let us capture that energy. We should build on it by creating more opportunities for people to be heard and, just as importantly, for neighbors to listen to and learn from one another.

Vision first, then design

I do not have all the answers, and I do not think any single person does. I want to listen first and bring people together to develop a shared vision for Yountville. What do we want to preserve? What needs to change? What do we want this community to look like in 10 or 20 years? I would like to turn those conversations into a living set of community principles that can help guide the decisions we make for years to come.

That is how I think we should approach the former elementary school property: build community, create a shared vision, and let that vision inform the design. Instead of presenting another plan and asking residents to react to it, let's involve the community early enough to actually help shape the direction.

A great deal of work and community input has already gone into that site. I don't believe we should throw it away because the previous plan did not move forward. We should understand why it failed, listen to the concerns that were raised, preserve the parts people valued, and find a path forward. I particularly like the idea of developing the property incrementally, so we can build, learn, keep gathering input, and adjust as Yountville's needs change rather than pretending we can predict today exactly what the town will need decades from now.

More ways to be heard

Doing that requires more than Council meetings. I want to create regular opportunities for conversation through office hours, community roundtables, listening sessions, workshops, neighborhood meetings, and informal pop-ups around town.

And when residents give their time and input, we need to close the loop: what we heard, what changed, what did not, and why.

This isn't about holding more meetings for the sake of holding meetings. It's about creating a process where participation happens early enough to actually matter.

The former elementary school project has been difficult, but it has also shown how much people care about Yountville. Let's learn from what happened and use that energy to build something better. Not just a better project, but a stronger community and a better way of making decisions together.

— Matt

My day job is making winegrowing more resilient to extreme heat, smoke, and disease. I don't have to imagine what a changing climate does to this valley. I spend my working hours on it.

We all do, really. Wildfire and smoke, extreme heat, drought, stress on our water, power shutoffs, a changing agricultural landscape. None of that is decades away. It's the last several years.

I think Yountville has a chance to become a model for what a resilient small town looks like. And I don't think we need to start from scratch.

The Town has been working with Napa County, American Canyon, Calistoga, Napa, and St. Helena on a regional climate action and adaptation plan. That gives us a roadmap. What I want us to do is take it seriously and ask a simple question: what can Yountville actually do?

Three things, I think. Energy, water, and wildfire.

Energy we can count on

We've already invested in microgrid technology. That was the right call, and I want to build on it.

Look at what Calistoga has done just up the valley. Their resiliency center pairs large-scale battery storage with hydrogen fuel cells to keep power flowing during a public safety power shutoff. That isn't a project happening somewhere else. It's twenty minutes away, and we should be asking what it teaches us.

I want Yountville to explore community-scale energy storage, generate more clean power locally, and keep developing microgrids. There's an economic case alongside the resilience one: storage changes when we generate, store, and use energy, and that can lower the Town's long-term costs. If it does, I want to find ways for residents to see that benefit.

The long-term picture is a town that produces more of its own power, stores more of it here, and keeps the lights on when the larger grid goes down. We won't get there overnight. We can start.

Water, before we need it

We've been fortunate. Our water system is reliable, and we should protect that while preparing for a future where water gets harder.

Conservation matters. But a strategy that amounts to asking residents to use less isn't a strategy.

An hour from here, some of the best water research in the country is happening at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and UC Berkeley — lower-energy treatment, water reuse, nontraditional sources, smarter monitoring. So here's my question: why shouldn't Yountville work with them?

As we make the next investments in our water and wastewater infrastructure, I want us actively looking for partners — universities, national labs, state and federal agencies. Some of these technologies are ready today and some aren't, and Yountville has no business gambling taxpayer money guessing which is which.

But we can offer something researchers actually want: a community willing to pilot an idea at a manageable scale, collect real data, and expand what works. Waste less, reuse more, and leave a more resilient system to whoever comes next.

Wildfire is a regional problem

Fire doesn't stop at the town limit. Vegetation, watersheds, roads, power lines, smoke, and evacuation routes connect us to the rest of the valley, so our strategy has to be regional — working with the County, CAL FIRE, neighboring towns, landowners, and utilities on fuels management, defensible space, evacuation planning, emergency water, and protecting critical infrastructure.

And resilience here means more than keeping flames out of town. Smoke, heat, power shutoffs, and road closures reach us when a fire is still miles away. People need reliable information and somewhere to go with clean air, cooling, backup power, working communications, and the ability to run essential medical equipment.

Which is where all three of these meet. A stronger energy system helps during a fire. A reliable water system supports the response. Backup power and communications are how we take care of people when everything else is under strain.

Being small can be an advantage

We're surrounded by world-class universities, national laboratories, agricultural scientists, utilities, and technology companies. Napa Valley itself is full of people who solve hard problems for a living. We should use that, and we should chase the state, federal, utility, and research funding that brings projects here without putting the whole cost on residents.

Find promising ideas. Bring the right people together. Find outside funding. Start small. Measure the results. Expand what works.

That's how I've approached problems as a scientist, and I think it serves a small town well.

How we should measure it

I don't want us measuring success by how many plans we write. I want us to ask whether our energy is more reliable, whether we're making better use of our water, whether we're better prepared for fire, whether we're bringing outside money into town, and whether people are safer when something goes wrong. Then report that back to residents honestly.

None of this is technology for its own sake. It's a town that becomes more capable of taking care of itself and its people.

Generations before us built the Yountville we have. I don't think our job is only to preserve it. It's to get it ready for what comes next.

— Matt