What will Vacaville look like in 20 years?
The City is currently updating its General Plan, which is the blueprint for how the city will grow over the next two decades. Unfortunately, Vacaville’s proposed plan envisions the worst kind of sprawl development.
The City wants to pave over large swaths of natural and agricultural lands, potentially outside voter-approved urban growth boundaries (UGBs). UGBs safeguard open spaces and direct growth into already urbanized areas by determining where a city can and cannot grow. Violating these boundaries would not only put the area around Vacaville at risk of development, but it would undermine the effectiveness of UGBs throughout the region.
While ignoring the many economic and environmental benefit of developing new homes within existing city limits, Vacaville’s proposed General Plan update would exacerbate traffic, increase greenhouse gas emissions, create land speculation, and have severe impacts on numerous sensitive ecosystems—including vernal pools and wetlands, and the wildlife species that rely on these habitats.
Greenbelt Alliance and the Orderly Growth Committee were among those to critique Vacaville’s disastrous plan and inadequate environmental review, each submitted our own comment letters. Vacaville needs to take advantage of its vacant urban lands instead of sprawling onto the vital farmland and open space of the beautiful Solano County.
Read our comment letter [PDF].
For more information, contact Joel Devalcourt at jdevalcourt@greenbelt.org.
