Fairfield officials present feasibility study for downtown improvement district; residents press on homelessness and oversight

Fairfield officials and a consultant from New City of America presented a feasibility study for a proposed downtown improvement district and solicited input from property owners and residents at a town meeting. City staff said the study is informational and that any district would be created and funded only if downtown property owners widely support it.

The presentation, led by Dave Zellers, Fairfield’s director of community and economic development, outlined how a property-owner-funded assessment could pay for additional cleaning, landscaping, security, marketing and other "special benefits" beyond what the city’s general fund covers. "This district would be driven by those property owners that would pay that assessment... It's not something that the city creates by fiat," Zellers said.

Marco Lemandri of New City of America, the consultant hired to run the feasibility work, explained how districts operate in California and summarized the project’s current data. He told the meeting organizers have mailed the survey twice and held steering-committee meetings; early returns show limited support. "We have 92 total parcels and only 55 property owners," he said, and the consultant reported roughly 5% support by building square footage, 7% by lot size and 8% by linear frontage in the current returns. The consultant said his practical threshold for moving from survey to a written plan is roughly 30% cross-measure support, while formation steps under state law require a petition representing 50% plus one of the assessed budget to trigger a weighted ballot.

Jennifer Rice, representing the city’s economic development team, described recent downtown investments, including the REAP façade-improvement program and streetscape work, and said the city’s matching and public investments have helped attract roughly $1,400,000 in private investment and a number of tenant improvements. The meeting packet and staff presentation also described the existing business improvement district (created in the 1970s) that still generates revenue downtown and how any new district might interface with or replace that legacy structure to avoid duplicate assessments.

Residents used the public-comment portion to press staff on several issues. Several speakers described repeated instances of vandalism, public indecency and tent camping near storefronts and asked who would be accountable for day-to-day safety and cleanup. "We improve the sidewalks and make them wider, but we still have people using our business fronts as a campground overnight," one longtime resident said. Zellers acknowledged the problem and said the city would coordinate with the police department and county partners; he noted staff was not speaking for the police in the meeting and suggested a district could fund ambassador services or modular restroom facilities as one of several mitigation approaches.

Lemandri cited legal and program tools used in other jurisdictions — including implementation work connected to recent state-level measures and partnerships with social-service providers — but he stressed results are incremental and require county and city coordination. He also noted that the largest property owner downtown is the county and that the county’s stance could materially change the district’s feasibility.

Staff said the feasibility work is funded with economic-development set-aside dollars rather than general-fund money and that the city will present a staff report to the city council on December 16. The report will include the survey returns and recommended next steps; council direction will determine whether staff should advance to formal plan-writing, petitioning and formation stages. Zellers asked property owners who have not yet responded to complete and return the mailed survey or submit it online so the council has a fuller record before making decisions.

The meeting closed with an extended public Q&A on thresholds, governance and oversight. Attendees asked whether board elections would be weighted by assessment and how volunteers would ensure contractor performance; staff explained that formation voting is weighted under Proposition 218, while internal board elections typically use one-parcel/one-vote rules once a nonprofit management entity is created. No formal action or ballot was taken at the meeting, and staff emphasized that no decision has been made to put a measure before property owners.