County Supervisors Appoint 16 in New Citizen's Committee

County Supervisors Appoint 16 in New Citizen's Committee
By Ben Antonius

FAIRFIELD - Supervisors voted Tuesday to reboot the citizen's committee responsible for shaping the future development of Solano County.

The Board of Supervisors appointed 16 people Tuesday, replacing the previous iteration of the committee, which worked for 10 months but was disbanded a few weeks ago.

The final vote for the changes was 4-1, with Supervisor Barbara Kondylis voting against the majority.

"I'm not happy with the process," she said. "I'm also not happy that there are now 11 men and four women and that's not representative of the community. There's also no minorities."

Each supervisor made one appointment from the 45 applicants and Supervisors Jim Spering and John Silva selected 11 at-large candidates to fill out the committee. Eight of the members are holdovers from the earlier general plan committee, but many of the outgoing members did not try to reclaim their seats.

"What we were looking for is balance," Spering said Friday. "We wanted business, we wanted agriculture, we wanted land owners, we wanted people with municipal experience. We looked at geography and what background people had."

Six of the appointees are from Fairfield, six are from Vacaville, three are from Vallejo, one is from Rio Vista and one is from Birds Landing. Benicia, Dixon and Suisun City do not have representatives on the committee.

Former Vallejo Mayor Terry Curtola will be the group chairman. The previous committee did not have a chairperson, but Spering said Curtola was selected because of his leadership experience as mayor.

Supervisors also approved an accelerated project schedule for the advisory committee, involving twice-monthly meetings, presentations to the Planning Commission and four special meetings of the Board of Supervisors.

The next planned sessions are to discuss agriculture on March 12 and conservation on March 26.

Staff writer Barry Eberling contributed to this report.

Reach Ben Antonius at 427-6977 or bantonius@dailyrepublic.net.

Re-formed committee members;
Ian Anderson, Birds Landing
Nicole Byrd, Fairfield
Lawrence Clement, Fairfield
Terry Curtola, Vallejo, Chairman
Randy Dawson, Vacaville
Michael Fortney, Vacaville
Patricia Gatz, Vallejo
Scott Greenwood-Meinert, Fairfield
Curt Johansen, Vallejo
Ronald Jones, Rio Vista
Eva Laevastu, Fairfield
Carol Landry, Vacaville
Jerry LeMasters, Fairfield
Sandy Person, Vacaville
Anthony Russo, Fairfield
Brian West, Vacaville