Vallejo City Council hears maritime plan

The Vallejo City Council discussed the city's new Strategic Plan on Maritime Revitalization at a special Tuesday night meeting, where city staff and consultants walked council members through the highlights of the 138-page plan they have been working on since December.

Acting City Manager Nalungo Mwanga-Conley said she was excited to bring the strategic plan forward and thanked the Roosevelt Group for consulting on the plan.

"This really is a great framework for us to start these conversations," she said. "This isn't the end of the conversation. This is just the beginning."

Nathan Paukovits, a senior advisor for the Roosevelt Group, thanked the city for its partnership over the past four months and the community for the feedback provided during the process. A bipartisan national security advocacy group based in Washington, D.C., Paukovits said the Roosevelt Group employs both full-time advocacy staff and former military brass and subject matter experts on shipbuilding to provide feedback on reports like this one.

"It is somewhat of a menu," he said of the plan. "Twenty-seven recommendations, but it really is the full menu for you to choose from and really focus on the areas that you think are the highest impact."

Paukovits said the local shipbuilding effort was kick-started by Representative John Garamendi's SHIPS for America Act and was impacted by President Trump's Maritime Action Plan.

"You have a great asset in Mare Island," he said, "It's underutilized based on inconsistent demand signals from the commercial sector as well as the federal government."

The plan's strategic framework hopes to build a self-sustaining maritime innovation loop on three pillars: Industrial revitalization on Mare Island, the long-term possibility of a Coast Guard or Naval presence in the city again, and the strengthening of the local maritime jobs ecosystem by building workforce pipelines.

Industrial revitalization would seek to move away from unpredictable short-term repair jobs to sustained high-value commercial and federal projects, Paukovits. He said the city should create a defense community around national security through public-private partnerships and city-led initiatives.

"Ultimately, you have to show that you have skin in the game, that you are organized and that you have a clear vision," he said.

The second pillar recommends a highly targeted long-term senior leadership engagement strategy, lobbying the military to return to Vallejo through the U.S. Navy or Coast Guard.

"The capability is there," Paukovits said. "It exists today. With a little bit of dredging and some TLC, it can come back to be one of those ports."

To bring back military assets, he said, a service branch would need to have missions to be done in the region, the industrial capacity to support their ships, and the capacity as a community to support troops and their families, particularly with housing.

"This would be a long-term goal," he said. "This takes a lot of time to get on the radar of the federal government as a potential site and then to actually get those targeted to be here and have the appropriate upgrades made."

The third pillar would seek to establish a Maritime Workforce Pathway in K-12 schools in Vallejo and to attract startups to Mare Island.

Mayor Andrea Sorce thanked the Roosevelt Group and city staff for their work on the plan. She noted that Mare Island is now privately owned and asked Paukovits about his work with the Mare Island Company on the plan. He said he believes the company is widely open to maritime development, and he recommended that the city bring them into a formal coalition.

"This situation is not normal where you have the federal government say ‘we don't need this land' and then potentially needing it again," he said.

Vice Mayor Diosado Matulac said he believes Vallejo will need to work with other cities in the region to compete with California Forever's proposal in Collinsville.

"We as a city have not done enough to encourage development here," he said.

However, Mwanga-Conley said the report aimed to focus on collaboration rather than competition. She said a regional maritime revitalization like the one called for in the plan will necessarily include developments in Collinsville, Benicia, Antioch, Pittsburg, Stockton, and other communities.

"One of the things this report actually highlights when you read the entire thing is really the emphasis on regionalism," she said. "As mentioned, there is a space for Vallejo to go now, because we essentially do this work, but when you look at that sort of wishlist of ships that the government is hoping to get over the next five or six or seven years, some of those we just can't build here."

A full copy of the written plan is available at the City of Vallejo's website.

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