June 16, 2026
Mayor and Members of the Council,
I want to address today's staff report and provide context for the public information you have made available today, which I applaud. The Commons effort was an extraordinary public and transparent process, and your work today continues in that tradition.
As you know, Kelly + Morgan Architecture/Planning was the highest-paid professional consultant the Town engaged during the Commons planning effort. Over roughly two years, our firm was paid about $750,000 for outreach, planning, environmental and entitlement support, design studies, many 3D models, and the Town's design-build procurement documents.
Kerry and I, along with the rest of our team, are very proud of the work we did for the Town of Yountville. The work was real, extensive, and publicly authorized at every step, alongside a talented Town staff, engineers, landscape architects, project managers, your very capable Town Attorney and his team, an incredible group of volunteers who sit on your commissions, and a great many residents. And of course, all of you approved that effort 4-1 before the repeal of the zoning ordinance.
A couple of weeks ago, I launched an online publication called The Yountville Moon, a sincere attempt to explain the work all of us did here, and the larger housing problem behind it, to anyone who wants to understand it better. I mention it so you and the audience know exactly who is speaking and where my interest lies.
I am glad to answer questions as a private citizen and design professional if that is useful as you consider next steps. I offer that because a substantial body of valuable work should not be discarded because one proposal was repealed. The report before you tonight lists what survives:
the environmental review, the workforce and financial analyses, the design criteria, the housing preference policy, and several years of public conversation about what this community values.
A piece in The New York Times yesterday put all of this in a larger perspective. Vancouver, British Columbia, is one of the least affordable cities on the continent, where it now takes nearly twelve years of median income to buy a median home. According to Yountville's own Housing Element, here it takes more than twenty years.
That crisis is not abstract. It falls on the middle class, the largest group almost no one is building for: the nurse at the Veterans Home, the line cook, and the waiter driving home to American Canyon after a double shift because nothing here fits a seventy-thousand-dollar salary, the young people who grew up in this valley and cannot afford to stay in it.
They are not asking for charity. They are asking for a place to live near the work they do, and the reason they cannot find one is plain. Our generation did not build enough of it. Towns like Yountville can, and should do it without delay.
Kelly + Morgan Architecture/Planning - 1443 Main Street #A200 - Napa, CA 94559 E: [email protected] C: 415.963.1089
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The same article described what happens when communities create, in effect, a permanent "Department of Not Yet". Every decision can be appealed, every objection must be weighed, every project slowed in the name of fairness, until a town can no longer say yes to anything. We have become so worried about acting wrongly that we have stopped acting at all. But doing nothing carries a cost, too. It just never sends anyone a bill.
Yountville did not cut corners. It bought its own land, followed every rule, held years of public meetings, completed studies, conducted environmental review, and still, a referendum by just 10 percent of registered voters stopped it. In California, you can still do that.
So I would offer one caution, as encouragement and not complaint. The work of governing is tedious and thankless. Most people step back from it, but a few do not, and among those few are some with extraordinary resources, platforms, and time to press for the outcome they want.
They all deserve to be heard. None of them earns a special claim over this community's future by being wealthier, louder, or more relentless than anyone else.
So be mindful of bullies. They do not always shout. Sometimes they flatter. Sometimes they promise easier answers. Sometimes they insist that only they can solve a hard problem. And sometimes they simply wear good people down until silence feels easier than engagement. You do not have to let that happen.
Please do not confuse the repeal of one zoning ordinance with the resolution of the issues that brought the Town here. The repeal stopped one ordinance. It did not repeal the Housing Element, the workforce housing shortage, the Measure S commitment, or the Town's responsibility to use this public land wisely.
The immediate need for middle-class workforce housing remains. The responsibility to steward public assets remains. The obligation to govern wisely remains.
You are not starting from scratch. You have the studies, the analyses, the review, the design criteria, and the lessons learned. Use them. You have already paid for them.
Democracy is not the absence of disagreement. It is the willingness to engage it openly, weigh competing interests fairly, and decide here, in public, and move forward. The hard work remains, and I wish all of you the best of luck.
Thank you for your time.
Brulen
Brendan Kelly, AIA
Kelly + Morgan Architecture/Planning - 1443 Main Street #A200 - Napa, CA 94559 E: [email protected] C: 415.963.1089
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