A Report from the Vallejo Chamber of Commerce President and CEO, Rick Wells
Published: March, 2008
During the latter part of November, the Vallejo Chamber leadership held a series of meetings with City and State officials regarding the Vallejo Baylink Ferry, the state takeover, SB976 and the clean-up legislation that will follow. We believe that Vallejo can and should be aggressive in turning this situation into a benefit for the community.
The following are the ideas that the Chamber is advocating:
1. Vallejo Ferry Service – At a minimum, we need assurances that the ferry service will not be cut or reduced in any way, and that in fact, consideration will be given to increasing service back to 2005-2006 levels of 15 round trips per day on weekdays and 11 round trips on weekends. The reason for the decrease in the current level of service had to do with City of Vallejo finances, not decreases in service demand.
2. Ferry Asset and Investment Recovery – The city of Vallejo should be fairly compensated for its investments in ferry boats, terminal and maintenance facilities, equipment, tools, spare parts, personnel training, systems development, staff time and overhead.
3. Protection of Vallejo Station Grant Money and Development – The Vallejo Station Transit Oriented Development project has secured approximately $56 million in federal, state and local funding. We need the funds to remain intact and earmarked for this critical project in order for the Downtown and Waterfront Redevelopment Plans to be implemented as envisioned. Additionally, the catalyst of the successful implementation of the Redevelopment Plans is the consolidation of the current street level parking on the waterfront into the new underground parking facility that is part of the Vallejo Station project. This entire project is critical to the future of Vallejo’s economic development.
4. Completed Development of the Ferry Maintenance Facility on Mare Island – Planning and initial federal funding have started for this project on Mare Island. This will add jobs to Vallejo and regional servicing ability for the ferry system. This will be a first step in making Vallejo the North Bay Ferry Hub for operations and maintenance of the ferry system, as well as a Center for Disaster Recovery.
5. Dredging the Strait – The Mare Island Strait is a critical transportation throughway for both passengers and freight for the North Bay in the case of a regional disaster. Allocating funding for mandatory perpetual dredging of the Strait will facilitate the movement of large numbers of passengers as well as critical goods and services.
6. Voice on the Governing Board – It is crucial that Vallejo be represented on the new WETA board. We support the city’s efforts to have former Mayor Intintoli appointed to the board.
7. Communication – We ask that City Staff act as a facilitator to keep all interested stakeholders involved and informed with regards to important meetings and legislative issues that have an impact on the Ferry.
Additionally, we have strongly urged the City to add business community representatives to their Red Team, which the City Staff has set up to work on the Ferry Issue and present a unified voice in discussions with state legislators. We also recommended the addition of one or more daily Ferry commuters to the Red Team. We believe these individual would add valuable perspective to the process.
The Chamber knows that the Ferry is a critical marketing tool in attracting new business to Vallejo, and a major component in Vallejo’s efforts to transform itself into a transit-oriented hub.
Since the closure of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard, the Vallejo Baylink Ferry has become an iconic representation of pride of Vallejoans and we will fight to not just maintain Ferry service for Vallejo, but to grow it as well.
