Vallejo City Council votes against including Mare Island Preserve Park in San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge

VALLEJO — The Vallejo City Council unanimously voted down a measure to include the Mare Island Preserve Park in a proposed expansion of the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge at a contentious city council meeting on Tuesday, 

The land’s inclusion in the act would have allowed, but not required, the city to make a future transfer of the land to the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge, under the management of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.

U.S. Representative John Garamendi sought to include several parcels of open space on Mare Island in the federal Refuge Expansion Act (H.R.9826), which is designed to ensure that wildlife refuge lands will remain open to the public for outdoor recreation, including hunting and fishing where permitted.

The bill to expand the wildlife refuge was originally brought to the city for consideration in June 2024. It proposed several Mare Island sites to be added to the wildlife refuge, including a parcel near Highway 37 that would be designated as wildlife habitat, the Mare Island Preserve, and Navy-owned lands on the south side of Mare Island that will be transferred to the City of Vallejo when environmental remediation is complete. 

While the City Council considered the proposal publicly for the first time on Wednesday, city staff had known about it for nearly a year and Garamendi’s office sought a decision by May 31. A staff report  published on May 23 stated that city staff presented the proposal to councilmembers in a series of one on one meetings in June 2024. 

“At that time, Council direction to staff was to retain City ownership of the Preserve Site and not ask for inclusion in the San Pablo NWR,” the report stated. and “Most recently, several Council Members have requested that staff bring the item back for reconsideration.”

Several members of the public spoke against the proposal during Tuesday’s meeting. Paula Conley said that the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service is being gutted at the federal level. “They don't have the staffing,” she said. “They will end up fencing it off and closing it to public access because there is nobody to staff it.” 

Jimmy Genn suggested combining the Mare Island Preserve and the lands that will soon be transferred from the Navy into a regional park. He pointed to the Presidio of San Francisco, which is managed by the National Park Service, as a model for how the old Navy buildings could be repurposed to make the park self-sustaining. “Work with us to create partnerships to take over ownership and operation by a nonprofit.” Genn said.

The bill does not mention what funding would be available for park maintenance or operations. A cost estimate for the bill has not yet been submitted.

Assistant City Manager Gillian Haen said that the city currently spends about $56,000 per year to operate the park and that estimates from the Greater Vallejo Recreation District and other organizations to manage and maintain the park were much higher.

City Manager Andrew Murray said that he had spoken with the staff at Solano Land Trust who said that they don't have the financial capability to take on ownership or maintenance, but that they'd be happy to help facilitate a conversation and could be a willing partner to help identify a future arrangement.

Councilmember Charles Palmares said that, pending other other council members' approval, his preferred course of action  would be to reach out to the community and other organizations to see what other arrangements could be made that meet the intent of what the community wants from the preserve.

The public had enjoyed greater access to the Mare Island Preserve when it was managed by a volunteer group called the Mare Island Heritage Trust, led by Myrna Hayes from 2007 to 2019. The park was open until sunset and held nighttime activities like lighted trail walks and haunted Halloween events. 

The city terminated the trust’s involvement in September 2019 after several fires broke out on the preserve, citing concerns about liability. Since then, the park has had minimal management from the Department of Public Works, which locks the park gates every day at 5 p.m.

Tuesday’s meeting broke into chaos during a discussion of whether the council’s actions last year violated the state Brown Act, which requires local governing bodies to make decisions during public meetings, because the city did not hold a public discussion about Garamendi’s proposal for a year. Vallejo Mayor Andrea Sorce called two recesses to get the meeting back on topic.

Conley described the lack of notice and transparency about the inclusion of the agenda item within days of a deadline as “shady.” “There's no public trust with these kinds of maneuvers,” she said. “It's manipulative. It denies citizens from being stakeholders.”

City Attorney Veronica Nebb argued that, because the bill had not been agendized in 2024 after a series of one-on-one communications, no action had been taken, and that taking no action is not subject to the Brown Act. 

But that did not sate many of the people in attendance. “Even though it may not fit the letter of the law to say it was a Brown Act violation, it doesn't look good,” resident Liat Meitzenheimer said. “If you ask people what they want to do, and they say they don't want to bring it forward, that's an action. How come we didn't know about it? How come we didn't get to weigh in on it when it came before Council, when Garamendi brought it forward?”

Garamendi’s office told the Vallejo Sun that the City of Vallejo proposed adding the Mare Island preserve to the wildlife refuge, not the other way around.
 They also emphasized that the San Pablo Bay National Wildlife Refuge Expansion Act had a year-long public comment period prior to being introduced, during which the representative’s staff members met with local officials, environmental groups, and other stakeholders and received hundreds of comments in support of the bill.

Some councilmembers also complained about the lack of time to have meaningful discussions on important topics. The meeting documentation, which was released on Friday ahead of the Memorial Day weekend, was 1,000 pages long and the City Council meeting ran over six and a half hours until well after midnight.

Editor's note: This article was updated to add comments from the office of U.S. Representative John Garamendi