Greenbelt Alliance

Co-authored by Jenny Silva is the Executive Director at Call Marin Home and Member of the Executive Committee of the Marin Group of the Sierra Club SF Bay Chapter.
Jessie Rountree is the Marin Resilience Manager at Greenbelt Alliance.

The housing and climate crises are often regarded as separate problems, when in fact they are intertwined. In an increasingly urbanized world, there is one powerful solution that addresses both: building more homes where people already live. 

This type of development is called infill. It places new and modified homes within existing neighborhoods and developed areas. The contrast to this is sprawl, a familiar practice in much of California that includes low-density residential housing, often on rural, natural, and agricultural lands. Sprawl fragments habitat, severs wildlife corridors, and disrupts the carbon sequestration and flood-prevention benefits of healthy ecosystems.

Because we share these beliefs, Greenbelt Alliance is proud to join Call Marin Home, a coalition of leading organizations expanding housing through production, preservation, and protection for an inclusive Marin County. We know that increasing housing supply is essential to advancing our mission and sustaining a thriving, equitable community. 

By choosing infill housing instead of sprawl, we can address both our housing shortage and climate challenge to create healthier communities.

Marin’s environmental ethos is evident in our abundant open spaces. Over 85% of Marin County is restricted from development, consisting of federal parks, agricultural land, water district lands, and open space preserves. However, we seem to limit our value of open space to only our County boundaries. 

Because we have simultaneously limited affordable and moderate-density homes in Marin, our community members have been forced to move elsewhere in the region and commute in for work. The direct result is that we are disrupting more lands by creating sprawl further out in Sonoma, the East Bay, and beyond. Since 1950, outer-metro locations like Santa Rosa have increased in physical size by over 300%, mostly through low-density development.

When we build inward instead of outward, we reduce disruption to the soils, trees, and plant communities. These healthier landscapes sequester carbon, improve water quality and quantity, and offer connected habitat to wildlife. The good news is that we have substantial options within already developed footprints to build the housing we need without disrupting our beloved open space.

The more housing density we build now, the more land we can preserve for our future.

Transportation accounts for the largest share of greenhouse gas emissions in Marin County. 64% of Marin’s workforce commutes from outside the county due to its high cost of living and age distribution.

When homes are built closer to jobs, transit, and services, people drive less. That means fewer and shorter car trips—one of the most effective strategies California can use to address climate change. In fact, building affordable housing is one of the most effective strategies for reducing carbon emissions, far more effective than transitioning to EVs. 

Less driving also improves our notorious Bay Area traffic and reduces wear on roads and bridges, so that local government budgets can be allocated to needed adaptation investments. Further, density creates the demand that makes buses, trains, and public transit economically viable. Centralized and denser housing is what makes public transit actually work.The emissions benefits are not limited to transportation. Newer units also tend to be more compact than suburban single-family homes, which require less energy and use less water.  

Building new homes in existing communities puts families closer to jobs, schools, parks, and shopping, giving more Californians access to vibrant, connected communities. When a new building is nestled amongst a storefront or café, it generates foot traffic that supports local businesses, activates streets, and makes walking and biking safer and more enjoyable options.

Walkability also rebuilds the kind of social connections that keep communities healthy and resilient in the face of climate change. Neighbors who walk the same streets, share the same corner store, and know each other by name are more likely to support one another when climate impacts occur.

All Californians should have the opportunity to live in healthy communities and enjoy the natural lands and open spaces that make this area unique.

Creating a greater variety of homes in connected communities can help increase affordability, address climate change, and improve quality of life for Californians. That is the future we want to build in Marin.

Local decisions about housing are being made now, and elected leaders need to hear clearly from residents who support building more homes. Stay connected with Greenbelt Alliance via email and social media and sign up for Call Marin Home’s email updates to stay informed about key upcoming meetings and get the tools you need to make your voice heard.

Header Photo: Scott Hess

The post Housing Builds a Healthier Climate Future for Marin appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Update: Santa Clara voters made their support for open spaces clear by saying YES to Measure D! With over 54% of the vote, the measure to enhance the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority’s capacity to care for open spaces in its jurisdiction passed!

Also known as the Santa Clara Valley Wildfire Protection, Clean Water, and Open Space Act, Measure D will implement an equitable parcel tax to generate approximately $17 million annually to steward these lands.

Greenbelt Alliance proudly endorsed and advocated for this measure and is thrilled to see that voters embraced this cause!

The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority is an essential steward and protector of vital landscapes in Santa Clara County, and it currently needs more resources to manage these lands sustainably.

Just in the past decade, the lands under the agency’s management more than doubled, from 12,000 to 30,000 acres, while revenue has remained flat, limiting its ability to carry out its stewardship and resilience mission.

Since 1993, the Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority has been a steward of the irreplaceable natural landscapes of central and southern Santa Clara County. The Authority conserves the natural environment, supports agriculture, and connects people to nature by protecting open spaces, natural areas, and working farms and ranches for today and for future generations. Visitors enjoy free, year-round access to hike, walk, bike, horseback ride, or simply relax in a beautiful landscape. With preserves such as Sierra Vista, Rancho Cañada del Oro, and the iconic Coyote Valley—a campaign that Greenbelt Alliance fought for for many years—, thousands of residents have access to nature near their homes. 

Protected open space is not a luxury. Healthy watersheds, managed grasslands, and restored wildlife corridors reduce wildfire risk, protect drinking water, filter runoff, and give communities a better chance to withstand extreme weather events, which are becoming more frequent and intense.

Supporting this measure is the smart thing to do because it advances key priorities, including:

• Reducing catastrophic wildfire risk by removing hazardous brush
• Protecting our drinking water sources, including rivers, creeks, and streams, from pollution
• Helping clean up pollution and litter in natural areas
• Protecting our area’s farms and healthy, local food sources
• Maintaining and restoring wildlife habitats and corridors

At a time when the cost of living and economic challenges are top of mind for American voters, asking voters to support a new tax is never a small request. However, unlike a traditional flat-rate parcel tax, this new measure applies a rate of two cents per square foot of building area. For the average homeowner in the Authority’s jurisdiction, that represents approximately $32 per year, while large commercial and industrial property owners, including the corporations and campuses that benefit enormously from the Bay Area’s livability and natural amenities, will pay proportionally more, but still have a cap of $7,500 per parcel annually. 

The Santa Clara Valley Open Space Authority has already proven it knows how to deploy this kind of investment effectively. For every dollar of local funding collected, the Authority has leveraged significant matching funds from state, federal, and private sources, bringing in more than $180 million in outside resources to date. This measure will expand that leverage, unlocking additional state and federal dollars that require local matching commitments. 

Endorsement originally published on March 19, 2026.

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Job Title:Director of Finance and Operations
Job Location: Hybrid-based in Oakland, California: 2 days in office required.
Position Start Date: September 2026
Job Classification: Full-Time Employee, Exempt, 37.5 hours per week
Salary Range: USD $135,000-145,000 per year
Reporting To: Amanda Brown-Stevens, Executive Director

Are you enthusiastic about bringing a numbers-savvy, strategic lens to financial oversight and management? Excited to provide leadership and direction to operational infrastructure in service of the organization’s mission and long-term sustainability? Greenbelt Alliance is hiring a Director of Finance and Operations who will be instrumental in deepening its financial management infrastructure to accommodate anticipated growth in programs and revenue while engaging deeply in the day-to-day details of nonprofit operations and human resources. This is a senior leadership role working closely with organizational leadership to support thoughtful decision-making around growth, staffing, program expansion, and funding strategy.

We are looking for someone who brings years of experience in finance and operations, who is excited to collaborate with colleagues to direct and implement organizational financial policies, procedures, management, and strategy to ensure Greenbelt Alliance’s healthy financial position carries forward and operational needs are consistently met.

You’ll be a great Director of Finance and Operations for Greenbelt Alliance if you:

• • Bring expertise in budgeting, forecasting, and monitoring of revenue and expenses
  • Enjoy translating what the numbers are indicating about annual financial health to non-financially savvy colleagues, executives, and board members 
  • Can proactively solve problems, developing and improving systems
  • Have experience building and overseeing complex, publicly-funded project budgets to philanthropic grant project budgets
  • Have excellent communication and critical thinking skills, including experience presenting to Board of Directors and Finance Committees
  • Thrive in providing leadership and oversight of organizational operations
  • Bring experience managing a high-functioning Finance and Operations department
  • Ability to create and promote a positive and supportive work environment
  • Enjoy collaborating and iterating with a talented, bright, and supportive team
  • Pride yourself on having great attention to detail
  • Bring a passion for supporting organizational excellence in our mission to ensure the Bay Area is resilient to a changing climate

Strategic Financial Leadership

• Oversee all financial operations, including accounts, ledgers, AP/AR, cash management, investments, and reporting systems
• Lead annual budget development, midyear forecasting, and multi-year financial planning, including cash flow analyses and contingency planning
• Present financial reports, dashboards, and narratives to the Finance Committee and Board of Directors
• Manage monthly, quarterly, and annual financial close and internal reporting

Compliance & Audit

• Lead the annual audit process, including financial statements and IRS 990
• Develop and manage complex public funding budget proposals and oversee state and federal grant administration and compliance
• Maintain a revenue processing system for timely draw-downs and reimbursements across multiple grant periods
• Strengthen and implement internal policies and controls to protect assets and ensure financial accuracy

People Management

• Supervise and provide strategic guidance to the Sr. Finance and Grants Manager and accounting staff, serving as back-up across functions as needed
• Provide oversight to the People Operations Manager on HR and employee relations matters in collaboration with a third-party PEO

Operations Management

• Oversee organizational operations, including office management, infrastructure, and vendor relations
• Support the development and maintenance of operational systems, policies, and documentation
• Ensure operational practices reflect organizational values and foster a collaborative work environment

NOTE: We do not expect any single candidate to have extensive expertise/experience in all of these areas, but will prioritize candidates with demonstrated success as a critical-thinker and quick-learner.

• Experience in accounting, finance, business administration or a related field.
• Experience as a people manager with knowledge of and ability to employ effective strategies that motivate and guide other staff members.
• Excellent mathematical and analysis skills.
• Experience with nonprofit financial systems as well as operations and administration.
• Knowledge of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and nonprofit accounting.
• Proficient use of the following software is a plus: Google Suite, Quickbooks, BILL, Zoom, Salesforce, Asana, Insperity, TimeCamp, Slack.
• Ability to lead departments and individuals.
• Strong written and oral communication skills, including presenting on financial information.
• Willingness to continually improve processes and systems, and be a team player.
• Ability to strategize creatively and think critically, overcoming obstacles and offering sustainable solutions.
• Self-starting work ethic, comfortable working both collaboratively and independently.

• 100% Employer-Paid Health Insurance, Dental Insurance, and Vision Insurance policies. Life insurance policy also provided.
• 50% Employer-Paid Insurance policies for dependents.
• Generous Paid Time-Off package, including Vacation Days, Sick Days, and Floating Holidays. As many as 14 paid holidays off, including Winter Break.
• Professional development and training opportunities. 

Applications for this position will be considered on a rolling basis; however, priority consideration will be given to applications submitted by June 29, 2026. Please allow several weeks for a response, as we are reviewing applications. Be sure to attach a professional resume as a PDF document to your application. In your cover letter, state your interest in the role along with answers to the following questions: 

1. How do you communicate complex financial metrics, risks, and forecasts to non-finance staff and board members?
2. What is your leadership philosophy for managing and developing a high-performing finance and operations team?
3. Give an example of how you used financial data and forecasting to inform an organization’s strategy direction?

Work Authorization:

At this time, Greenbelt Alliance is unable to offer assistance to noncitizens or nonresidents in obtaining employer-sponsored work visas. All employees must have existing authorization from the federal government to work lawfully in the United States of America. Authorization would include US citizenship, US permanent residency (“green card”), or any other type of unexpired work authorization visa issued by the federal government.

Equal Employment Statement:

Greenbelt Alliance is an equal opportunity employer that does not discriminate on the basis of race, religion, disability, sex, gender expression, nationality, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or any other category. We strongly encourage people of color, LGBTQIA+ persons, people of different levels of physical ability, people with diverse national and class origins, and all qualified persons to apply for this position. Learn more about our nondiscrimination policy here.

Greenbelt Alliance encourages candidates of all abilities to apply to this position! In the case you may require any kind of special accommodation in order to complete the application or hiring process, please contact us at info@greenbelt.org.

About Greenbelt Alliance:

Greenbelt Alliance’s mission is to educate, advocate, and collaborate to ensure the Bay Area’s lands and communities are resilient to a changing climate. Greenbelt Alliance has stewarded the region’s beautiful natural landscapes while promoting the growth needed for thriving communities for over 65 years. We focus on innovative policy solutions and accelerating local and regional collaboration to plan and invest in resilient communities. Learn more at greenbelt.org.

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Update: Marin and Sonoma County voters came through to keep SMART trains moving! With 70% of the vote, Measure B passed! This decision will renew the existing quarter-cent sales tax for SMART train service and the adjacent multi-use pathway. 

Measure B doesn’t create a new tax. It keeps existing investments alive—securing the next 30 years of service.

The Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit (SMART) train carries over 4,000 riders each weekday, offering a proven alternative to car travel that eases Highway 101 congestion and cuts greenhouse gas emissions. But without renewed funding, SMART cannot sustain current operations, let alone grow.

Greenbelt Alliance proudly endorsed Measure B and is thrilled that Marin and Sonoma counties are supporting climate-smart transit in their region! Thank you to everyone who showed support for Measure B on the ballot!

SMART is more than a train. Every trip taken on SMART means fewer cars on the road, less pollution in the air, and a cleaner commute for thousands of North Bay residents. For an environmentally motivated community, Marin and Sonoma’s housing and transportation systems still depend heavily on single-occupancy vehicles. This measure represents a needed investment in public transportation. 

Without Measure B, SMART will not be able to maintain today’s service levels. That means fewer trains, fewer riders, and more cars on 101. It means an incomplete pathway system. And it means abandoning an investment that voters in Marin and Sonoma counties have already made in their shared future.

Over the past decade, SMART has extended its reach across the North Bay, and the 24 mile pathway running alongside the tracks has become a beloved active transportation corridor for cyclists and pedestrians alike. Measure B protects that progress and opens the door to more: expanded service hours, greater geographic reach, and a pathway system that’s finally complete.

Measure B directly funds:

• Continued daily SMART train service connecting Sonoma and Marin counties.
• A reliable, low-emissions alternative to Highway 101.
• Expansion of service hours and geographic reach across the North Bay.
• Completion and maintenance of the SMART pathway for cyclists and pedestrians.
• Reduced greenhouse gas emissions from the region’s transportation sector. People who ride SMART reduced greenhouse gas emissions by 33% compared to completing the same trip in a car.

At Greenbelt Alliance, we believe that resilient communities require both healthy lands and healthy transportation systems — the kind that give people real alternatives to driving, reduce emissions, and keep our region connected even as climate pressures intensify.

Thirty years from now, the North Bay can be a place where hopping on a train is as natural as getting in a car—where our transportation choices match our values. This vision is now closer to becoming a reality with the passage of Measure B.

The post WIN: Voters Said YES To Keep SMART Trains Moving appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Update: Contra Costa voters sent a clear message this past election by voting to protect the county’s Urban Limit Line (ULL). As of June 3,  68% of voters said a resounding YES to Measure A, marking an incredible win!

Once again, the voters endorsed the renewal of the ULL, which was set to expire by the end of the year, for another 25 years. This effective land-use tool has been in place for over three decades. In that time, the line has been adjusted only six times, and voters renewed it in 2006 with 64% support. The landscapes that define Contra Costa exist in part because that commitment has been kept.

We thank all the voters who endorsed Measure A and our partner Save Mount Diablo who advocated for its passage!

Contra Costa voters just sent a clear message that the farms, the hills, and the open spaces that make this county worth living in are worth protecting. This is smart growth done right, directing development where infrastructure exists, keeping sprawl out of fire-prone hillsides and climate-vulnerable shorelines, and making sure future generations inherit a county they’ll actually want to call home. Greenbelt Alliance is proud to have stood with Contra Costa voters on this one."

When Contra Costa voters approved the Urban Limit Line (ULL) in 1990, they made a decision about what kind of county this would be. They drew a boundary beyond which urban development couldn’t go – protecting the farms in the Tassajara Valley, the open hillsides above Walnut Creek, and the wetlands along the shoreline—and they asked future generations to keep it in place.

The Contra Costa Board of Supervisors has referred the measure to voters, with updates to the boundary to better reflect current conditions on the ground. 

The ULL isn’t about stopping growth. It’s about making sure growth happens in the right places: in existing communities where infrastructure already exists, where people can get around without a car, where new housing and new neighbors strengthen what’s already there. By establishing a clear line beyond which no new urban land uses can be designated, the ULL has protected the county’s agricultural lands, open hillsides, and natural landscapes for more than three decades.

Protected open space and farmland are not optional extras — they are foundational to the health, climate resilience, and livability of Contra Costa communities. Clean water, cooler temperatures, local food, open land that absorbs carbon, and buffers communities from wildfire and flood. The ULL supports all of that by directing growth where it belongs and keeping natural lands open.

Greenbelt Alliance has worked to protect the Bay Area’s open spaces and farmland for nearly 70 years, and the Contra Costa Urban Limit Line is central to that work. By keeping growth focused within existing communities and away from natural landscapes, the ULL directly supports our mission to protect the greenbelt and help Bay Area cities thrive. 

Measure A is also a critical climate tool. Compact infill development reduces the vehicle miles traveled and greenhouse gas emissions that drive the climate crisis, while preserving open lands sequester carbon, filter water, and buffer communities against extreme heat, flooding, and wildfire. At a time when federal rollbacks are threatening environmental protections across the board, locally-driven policies like this one matter more than ever.

Passing Measure A advances priorities that matter deeply to residents across the county, including:

• Protecting agricultural lands and open space from conversion to sprawl development.
• Reducing greenhouse gas emissions and traffic by directing new housing and jobs to infill locations.
• Maintaining the 65/35 Land Preservation Standard, which ensures that at least 65% of the county’s land remains non-urban.
• Restricting new development in fire hazard severity zones and on steep slopes, reducing wildfire risk.
• Supporting successful implementation of the county’s newly adopted 2045 General Plan.

By approving Measure A, Contra Costa County is able to maintain approximately $2 million annually in local street maintenance funding from the Contra Costa Transportation Authority, which required the permanence of the ULL for the funding.

Opponents of urban growth boundaries sometimes argue that such limits constrain housing production. The Contra Costa ULL tells a different story. The county’s 2045 General Plan process confirmed that vacant and underutilized land inside the existing ULL can accommodate 23,200 new housing units, 1.2 million square feet of new commercial development, and 5 million square feet of new industrial space. There is no need to expand into open space and farmland to meet the county’s growth needs — and there never has been.

Measure A also includes targeted adjustments to the ULL map that would make it more accurate and functional: removing areas with major development constraints or protected status, aligning the county line with city boundaries where cities have adopted their own urban growth boundaries, and cleaning up inconsistencies like so-called ULL “islands.” These changes reflect reality on the ground without opening the door to sprawl.

The post WIN: Contra Costa Voters Say Resounding YES to Renewing Urban Limit Lines appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

On May 16th, 2026, dozens of supporters gathered at the beautiful Oak Hill Farm in Glen Ellen, shared food grown just a few steps from the table, and talked about one of the most pressing challenges of our time: how do we protect our communities from the growing threats of wildfire and extreme heat?

During our traditional Annual Sonoma Leadership Council Luncheon, supporters raised over $150,000, surpassing our goal in 20% and making it one of our best fundraising events ever, to fund climate resilience work underway across the Bay Area. A huge thank you to our incredible host and supporter, Arden Bucklin-Sporer.

The funds raised at the event will go toward concrete, on-the-ground work:

• Expanding wildfire buffer strategies countywide and helping homeowners take proactive mitigation steps.
• Advancing zoning policies that steer development away from the highest-risk areas.
  Strengthening local Fire Safe Councils with coordination and resources.
• Running community workshops that help Southwest Santa Rosa residents recognize heat risks early and protect their health.
• Creating opportunities for young people to take an active role in shaping climate solutions in their own neighborhoods.

We’ve captured some wonderful moments from the day—view event photos here.

After years of devastating fires in Sonoma County, the question is no longer whether the threat is real; it’s what to do about it. The Sonoma Luncheon has become a hub for discussing this topic and the cutting-edge solutions that are emerging in the region.

Over the past several years, Greenbelt Alliance partnered with the Sonoma County Agricultural Preservation and Open Space District and local organizations to develop the Interwoven Greenbelt Buffer—a first-of-its-kind, landscape-scale approach to wildfire risk reduction.

Rather than treating parcels of land in isolation, the model uses data and cross-sector collaboration to “weave together” conserved lands, working agricultural lands, and developed neighborhoods into coordinated buffer zones. The goal: reduce wildfire intensity before it reaches homes, protect biodiversity and farmland, and shift communities from reactive disaster response to proactive, landscape-level prevention.

It’s a scalable concept, and one that could serve as a model not just for Sonoma County, but for fire-prone communities across California and the Western US.

As a major driver of intensifying fires, extreme heat is becoming one of the region’s most dangerous public health threats. Over the past decade, Southwest Santa Rosa alone has seen nearly 10,000 heat-related emergency room visits.

In response, Greenbelt Alliance is partnering with Latino Service Providers to develop a community-led Extreme Heat Action Plan for Southwest Santa Rosa, one of our Resilience Hotspots. The effort, supported by the Governor’s Office of Land Use and Climate Innovation, centers the people most affected—agricultural workers, families, and youth— in designing the solutions. It’s a process built on community knowledge, cultural responsiveness, and local leadership.

Our Marin Resilience Manager Jessie Rountree put it simply at the luncheon: climate solutions aren’t just possible. They’re already happening.

As we look ahead, we invite you to continue standing with us in this critical work. With your support, we can expand these solutions across the region and safeguard the places we all love.

Every year, we host this event for our Sonoma Leadership Council, a group of supporters in the North Bay who donate $1,000 or more annually towards the work we do in the region. Our work would not be possible without our donors, and this is a great opportunity to thank them and help raise funds for ongoing projects in Sonoma County and beyond. If you would like to donate toward our work or join our Sonoma Leadership Council, click here. 

Thank you again to our wonderful supporters for helping us work to build a safer and more resilient Sonoma County! 

The post Funding Solutions for Fire and Heat at Sonoma Luncheon appeared first on Greenbelt Alliance.

Over the last decade, Greenbelt Alliance has been advancing research on nature-based solutions and land-use planning best practices to achieve comprehensive wildfire resilience across our Bay Area landscapes. In our latest report, An Interwoven Greenbelt Buffer for Wildfire Risk Reduction, we discuss the challenges of implementing strategically-placed greenbelt buffers in existing communities, using Sonoma Springs as a case study.

One key takeaway from that research highlighted the need for regulatory and governance frameworks that enable effective collaboration among private property owners, government partners, and fire professionals.

One organization has emerged as a leader in doing just that – creating a collaborative system that delivers real results. Napa Communities Firewise Foundation (Napa Firewise) is a Napa County-based nonprofit supporting 25 Fire Safe Councils across the county.

This organization quietly built one of California’s most effective regional wildfire resilience models that centralizes grant writing, environmental compliance, and data collection under a single nonprofit “mothership” while keeping 25 community Fire Safe Councils as its connective tissue to residents on the ground- and in doing so, has already helped surface roughly $47 million in private resilience investments that firefighters and insurers never knew existed.

In this conversation, facilitated by Senior Director of Planning and Research, Sadie Wilson, Napa Firewise CEO Joe Nordlinger*, and Communications Director Stephanie Smithers** discuss how that structure works, the importance of engaging private landowners through their new Valley Stewards program, and how they’re bringing insurers back to fire-affected communities.

Joe Nordlinger* has been the CEO of Napa Firewise since 2024 and a volunteer with the organization since 2017. After the 2014 Wragg Canyon Fire got dangerously close to his hillside property in the lower Mayacamas, Joe was spurred to action. He got involved in the Mount Veeder Fire Safe Council, got trained as a volunteer firefighter, and has since continued to change the way we think about wildfire preparedness by bringing decades of experience in the business world to think differently about how communities work more efficiently and effectively to build resilience.

Stephanie Smithers** has been with the organization for two years after working in crisis communication and public information during the 2017 and 2020 fires in Napa Valley, and has been steeped in wildfire for the last decade, tracking wildland fire blogs, listening to radio traffic, and working to understand the landscape that her husband works in as a career firefighter.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Joe Nordlinger: In Napa, we filled a vacuum and were able to change the trajectory of how wildfire resilience was being approached in the county. We basically reorganized, recruited a new board, and decided that Napa Firewise would be the shared services platform doing all the grant writing, grants administration, environmental compliance, project development, and portfolio management for what are now 25 Fire Safe Councils.

There are absolutely lessons that could apply in other counties. One thing we’ve realized is that you have to think about your customers (homeowners, landowners, firefighters, etc.) and what the experience is like on their end. If the customer has to deal with nine different organizations, “Oh, you can go here for this. You can go there for that.” It just becomes so overwhelming and confusing that they tend to just get paralyzed.

That said, I’m aware we’re a smaller, more affluent county with fewer players and a tight alignment with CAL FIRE through Napa County Fire. But the core insight is structural efficiency. If you’re trying to support 20 different nonprofits, all with their own overhead, there simply isn’t enough money to do that. You have to be very efficient.

What we’ve uncovered is that there’s a lot of value in centralizing and aggregating data to drive better wildfire containment outcomes and better insurance outcomes.

If you have too many entities gathering their own data, you don’t benefit from the aggregation needed to get actionable intelligence to firefighters or tell a better story to insurers. And fragmentation is compounded by complacency; you go a few years without a fire, the vegetation grows back, and you can find yourself right back in a potential catastrophic situation.

Stephanie Smithers: The community preparedness paired with the fuels management that we do is imperative to supporting wildfire response. It really helps us burn on our terms so we can help manage fire behavior and create opportunities for firefighters to contain wildfires faster and more safely.

What Napa Firewise does well is understand that we must be flexible. It isn’t a cookie-cutter approach. The needs and risks vary by neighborhood, terrain, and landowner profile. Our communities run the full spectrum, from very affluent neighborhoods to rural areas with very limited means. We walk each Fire Safe Council through their own community wildfire protection plan rather than expecting them all to fit into one bucket.

JN: Our model is efficient because all our Fire Safe Councils are essentially satellite entities that are part of us. They’re our connective tissue into the community. They help us push communications out, feed us project priorities, and we do the care and feeding in return: collateral, project delivery, grant writing, support with their community marketing.

For many Fire Safe Councils, it might be a retired teacher or a landowner running things. To expect them to write grants, do environmental compliance, and manage vendors is totally unrealistic.

Our model works because they can rely on us for all that back-end heavy lifting, while they stay focused on the community, which keeps us from getting complacent, because that’s the other big challenge in wildfire.

Every Fire Safe Council has its own Community Wildfire Protection Plan and NFPA Firewise designation, but they all roll up into the countywide CWPP. And all project priorities on the fuel and containment side are determined by the firefighting authorities (Napa County Fire, the city fire departments, CAL FIRE), not by us unilaterally.

JN: The program grew out of the reality that Napa, and this isn’t unique to Napa, has a lot of large landowners holding forested land, oak woodland, and mixed hardwood conifer forests, both burned and unburned from the major fires of the last seven years. To think about county-wide resilience, we have to figure out how to work with those landowners and understand what their needs are.

We ran focus groups and quickly discovered a few distinct groups. There are landowners with financial means who have done tremendous fuel mitigation, road improvement, and water storage work that nobody knows about. There are landowners willing to do more but who need to know it’ll improve their insurance or that firefighters will actually use the elements the landowner invests in. And then there are what we call property-wealthy but means-challenged landowners sitting on 450 acres with generational wealth tied to land at a very low tax basis, living on a fixed income, with limited capacity to invest.

The insight is that many of these large landowners possess critical locations for wildfire containment—about 25,000 to 30,000 of the 40,000 to 60,000 acres of forested land around the county—are strategic and critical. Firefighters look at topographically significant locations: where’s a ridge, a spur ridge, a wide saddle or bench? Those are places where they can take a stand and stop a fire. Many of those landowners already have legacy fire roads, ponds, reservoirs, areas of grazing and understory clearing, and if we can map those things and get them to firefighters as actionable intelligence, it improves containment outcomes. That’s the underpinning of Valley Stewards.

JN: Let me preface this by saying the insurance issue is very complicated, and I’m not going to claim this solves California’s insurance crisis. But we do seem to be making a difference because we’re helping insurance companies get a better understanding of contextualized risk around certain properties. Once they understand that some properties are more strategic by virtue of the resilience attributes landowners have invested in, they recognize those as likely priority locations where firefighters will want to take a stand.

We’re not telling insurers, “these properties can withstand a wildfire” or that “firefighters are going to save that house.” We’re saying: this 500-acre property has three and a half miles of critical dozer lines on a ridge, abundant water, good staging…those are properties firefighters want to know about because they could mount backfiring operations or retardant drops there. That changes how an insurer thinks about that property, and about the properties adjacent to it. We initially thought it would take ten years to develop 100 of these enhanced resilience sites (a formal designation we worked out with CAL FIRE). In our first year, we already have around 200 landowners enrolled and expect to reach 350 or so sites in three years.

If we can build large enhanced resilient sites around a suburban neighborhood, then the insurance companies are saying that they would think differently about those neighborhoods [because] we can provide actionable intelligence to firefighters about where they can take a stand before the fire even gets into the neighborhood and we can build these big swaths of resilience and buffering layers, that helps to protect those [suburban] neighborhoods as well.

We’ve participated in about a dozen insurance renewals that resulted in substantially lower premiums, increased coverage, better terms, and, in about four cases, got people off the FAIR Plan entirely. Another 15 or so renewals are in process now. CAL FIRE is also interested in expanding this framework to potentially six or eight additional counties.

SS: To simplify – for non-insurance people, myself included – what Joe is describing isn’t about individual policies, but about creating a recognized standard of mitigation that the market can respond to, giving insurers something they’ve never had before: real, verifiable data about what’s actually been done on the land. CAL FIRE told us what they need for rapid containment and response. We built this around that.

SS: One thing we pride ourselves on is that we generally don’t use fear-based marketing. You see a lot of organizations sharing structure-loss imagery over and over again. For our community, they know what that feels like. I don’t need to share triggering content—our hillsides have the scars. That’s enough.

The power of our organization is that we have all these Fire Safe Councils. We are locals. This is a neighborly effort, and we have those trusted local connections with institutional support behind it. We’re not a government organization, but we have the backing of our fire authority, the county, and electeds—while also having grassroots community trust. We speak concisely, clearly, and lean toward the technical side, which shows we know what we’re doing. We also use an agnostic approach to fuels treatment. It could be grazing, it could be mechanical treatment. Why does it matter? What matters is risk reduction.

And the messaging must change community by community. We’re constantly asking: how do we speak to the people of Napa City differently than the people of Calistoga? How do you speak to people in the suburbs versus those in the wildland-urban interface?

JN: The communities with the largest wisdom about this are often the ones that have directly experienced wildfire. They know what it feels like to be evacuated, to see fire on their hillside. In more suburban areas where wildfire has been a distant threat, it’s challenging to ask people to foot the bill. Enough time goes by without a fire, and people forget. Fire doesn’t care about a city boundary or a county line; it moves on fuel, weather, and topography, but keeping that reality in people’s minds is its own ongoing job.

JN: We consider ourselves realistic optimists. Fire will come again, but we think we can be prepared for it. When we started enrolling large landowners into the Valley Stewards Initiative, we uncovered something like $47 million in resilience investments—expanded water, improved roads, fuel reduction—that had been made privately but never captured or considered by firefighters or insurance companies. Meanwhile, we’ve been out there raising $36 million in grant funds and over $26 million in County Funds. Private industry, among just the first 100 landowners, has already matched nearly that amount, and we’re uncovering more and more of it.

By almost every measure we are far better off than we were in 2017 and 2020. PG&E has hardened a lot of infrastructure. More people have solar panels, batteries, or generators. Thousands of acres of fuel mitigation and forest health work have been completed. There’s a lot still to do, but we’re far more resilient now.

I’d also add that maintaining fire roads is one of the most cost-effective ways to mitigate risk, even if it sounds counterintuitive ecologically. We’re far better off maintaining existing roads properly, with water bars and erosion control, than letting them fall into disrepair and having firefighters push roads in an emergency in ways that aren’t ecologically sensitive. Good roaded infrastructure is valuable for containment and for doing prescribed fire, grazing, and forest health work.

SS: We know that pre-fire work makes a difference. We saw this in 2025. There was a fire in Napa County last year that, without pre-fire work, had every opportunity to greatly disrupt the communities of Angwin and Pope Valley. They contained it pretty quickly with zero structure loss. CAL FIRE said at their press conferences that they used those mapped resources in their operational planning. That’s enough for me to continue this work for the next hundred years.

And for anyone concerned about costs, these efforts reduce firefighting costs, too. If firefighters can contain fires faster, that’s fewer resources on the ground. The cost of rebuilding a single home in Napa County is greater than the critical ridgeline fuel break we just finished in the Mount Veeder area. The return on investment for doing this work ahead of time is massive. We’re honored to take the responsibility seriously, creating environments for firefighters to respond effectively and safely.

JN: For individual landowners: maintain vigilance, stay on top of notifications, track weather and fire conditions, and make those investments in defensible space and home hardening where you can. At the agency level, collaboration is everything. We can learn from [other counties], and we’re happy to share what we’re doing here.

SS: People should join their local Fire Safe Council. Even if you’re a quarter-acre property owner in the middle of town, there is something really empowering about working with your neighbors. Whether it’s a community work day, sharing education, or just inspiring one another, that connection matters. And it’s one of the most powerful ways we know to keep communities engaged over the long term.

Joe Nordlinger:<\/strong> In Napa, we filled a vacuum and were able to change the trajectory of how wildfire resilience was being approached in the county. We basically reorganized, recruited a new board, and decided that Napa Firewise would be the shared services platform doing all the grant writing, grants administration, environmental compliance, project development, and portfolio management for what are now 25 Fire Safe Councils.<\/p>

There are absolutely lessons that could apply in other counties. One thing we\u2019ve realized is that you have to think about your customers (homeowners, landowners, firefighters, etc.) and what the experience is like on their end. If the customer has to deal with nine different organizations, “Oh, you can go here for this. You can go there for that.” It just becomes so overwhelming and confusing that they tend to just get paralyzed.<\/p>

That said, I’m aware we’re a smaller, more affluent county with fewer players and a tight alignment with CAL FIRE through Napa County Fire. But the core insight is structural efficiency. If you’re trying to support 20 different nonprofits, all with their own overhead, there simply isn’t enough money to do that. You have to be very efficient.<\/p>

What we’ve uncovered is that there’s a lot of value in centralizing and aggregating data to drive better wildfire containment outcomes and better insurance outcomes.<\/strong><\/p>

If you have too many entities gathering their own data, you don’t benefit from the aggregation needed to get actionable intelligence to firefighters or tell a better story to insurers. And fragmentation is compounded by complacency; you go a few years without a fire, the vegetation grows back, and you can find yourself right back in a potential catastrophic situation.<\/span><\/p>

Stephanie Smithers: <\/strong>The community preparedness paired with the fuels management that we do is imperative to supporting wildfire response. It really helps us burn on our terms so we can help manage fire behavior and create opportunities for firefighters to contain wildfires faster and more safely.<\/p>

What Napa Firewise does well is understand that we must be flexible. It isn’t a cookie-cutter approach. The needs and risks vary by neighborhood, terrain, and landowner profile. Our communities run the full spectrum, from very affluent neighborhoods to rural areas with very limited means. We walk each Fire Safe Council through their own community wildfire protection plan rather than expecting them all to fit into one bucket.<\/p>"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"How do you manage 25 Fire Safe Councils without things becoming fragmented?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

JN:<\/strong> Our model is efficient because all our Fire Safe Councils are essentially satellite entities that are part of us. They’re our connective tissue into the community. They help us push communications out, feed us project priorities, and we do the care and feeding in return: collateral, project delivery, grant writing, support with their community marketing.<\/p>

For many Fire Safe Councils, it might be a retired teacher or a landowner running things. To expect them to write grants, do environmental compliance, and manage vendors is totally unrealistic.<\/p>

Our model works because they can rely on us for all that back-end heavy lifting, while they stay focused on the community, which keeps us from getting complacent, because that’s the other big challenge in wildfire.<\/strong><\/p>

Every Fire Safe Council has its own Community Wildfire Protection Plan and NFPA Firewise designation, but they all roll up into the countywide CWPP. And all project priorities on the fuel and containment side are determined by the firefighting authorities (Napa County Fire, the city fire departments, CAL FIRE), not by us unilaterally.<\/p>"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What is the Valley Stewards program, and why does it focus on large private landowners?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

JN:<\/strong> The program grew out of the reality that Napa, and this isn’t unique to Napa, has a lot of large landowners holding forested land, oak woodland, and mixed hardwood conifer forests, both burned and unburned from the major fires of the last seven years. To think about county-wide resilience, we have to figure out how to work with those landowners and understand what their needs are.<\/p>

We ran focus groups and quickly discovered a few distinct groups. There are landowners with financial means who have done tremendous fuel mitigation, road improvement, and water storage work that nobody knows about. There are landowners willing to do more but who need to know it’ll improve their insurance or that firefighters will actually use the elements the landowner invests in. And then there are what we call property-wealthy but means-challenged landowners sitting on 450 acres with generational wealth tied to land at a very low tax basis, living on a fixed income, with limited capacity to invest.<\/p>

The insight is that many of these large landowners possess critical locations for wildfire containment\u2014about 25,000 to 30,000 of the 40,000 to 60,000 acres of forested land around the county\u2014are strategic and critical. Firefighters look at topographically significant locations: where’s a ridge, a spur ridge, a wide saddle or bench? Those are places where they can take a stand and stop a fire. Many of those landowners already have legacy fire roads, ponds, reservoirs, areas of grazing and understory clearing, and if we can map those things and get them to firefighters as actionable intelligence, it improves containment outcomes. That’s the underpinning of Valley Stewards.<\/p>"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"You mentioned that this program has been able to bring insurers back into Napa communities. How does that work?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

JN:<\/strong> Let me preface this by saying the insurance issue is very complicated, and I’m not going to claim this solves California’s insurance crisis. But we do seem to be making a difference because we’re helping insurance companies get a better understanding of contextualized risk around certain properties. Once they understand that some properties are more strategic by virtue of the resilience attributes landowners have invested in, they recognize those as likely priority locations where firefighters will want to take a stand.<\/p>

We’re not telling insurers, “these properties can withstand a wildfire” or that “firefighters are going to save that house.” We’re saying: this 500-acre property has three and a half miles of critical dozer lines on a ridge, abundant water, good staging\u2026those are properties firefighters want to know about because they could mount backfiring operations or retardant drops there. That changes how an insurer thinks about that property, and about the properties adjacent to it. We initially thought it would take ten years to develop 100 of these enhanced resilience sites (a formal designation we worked out with CAL FIRE). In our first year, we already have around 200 landowners enrolled and expect to reach 350 or so sites in three years.<\/strong><\/p>

If we can build large enhanced resilient sites around a suburban neighborhood, then the insurance companies are saying that they would think differently about those neighborhoods [because] we can provide actionable intelligence to firefighters about where they can take a stand before the fire even gets into the neighborhood and we can build these big swaths of resilience and buffering layers, that helps to protect those [suburban] neighborhoods as well.<\/p>

We’ve participated in about a dozen insurance renewals that resulted in substantially lower premiums, increased coverage, better terms, and, in about four cases, got people off the FAIR Plan entirely.<\/strong> Another 15 or so renewals are in process now. CAL FIRE is also interested in expanding this framework to potentially six or eight additional counties.<\/p>

SS: <\/strong>To simplify \u2013 for non-insurance people, myself included \u2013 what Joe is describing isn’t about individual policies, but about creating a recognized standard of mitigation that the market can respond to, giving insurers something they’ve never had before: real, verifiable data about what’s actually been done on the land. CAL FIRE told us what they need for rapid containment and response. We built this around that.<\/p>"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What have you learned about communicating wildfire risk in a way that actually motivates people to act?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

SS:<\/strong> One thing we pride ourselves on is that we generally don’t use fear-based marketing. You see a lot of organizations sharing structure-loss imagery over and over again. For our community, they know what that feels like. I don’t need to share triggering content\u2014our hillsides have the scars. That’s enough.<\/p>

The power of our organization is that we have all these Fire Safe Councils. We are locals. This is a neighborly effort, and we have those trusted local connections with institutional support behind it.<\/strong> We’re not a government organization, but we have the backing of our fire authority, the county, and electeds\u2014while also having grassroots community trust. We speak concisely, clearly, and lean toward the technical side, which shows we know what we’re doing. We also use an agnostic approach to fuels treatment. It could be grazing, it could be mechanical treatment. Why does it matter? What matters is risk reduction.<\/p>

And the messaging must change community by community. We’re constantly asking: how do we speak to the people of Napa City differently than the people of Calistoga? How do you speak to people in the suburbs versus those in the wildland-urban interface?<\/p>

JN:<\/strong> The communities with the largest wisdom about this are often the ones that have directly experienced wildfire.<\/strong> They know what it feels like to be evacuated, to see fire on their hillside. In more suburban areas where wildfire has been a distant threat, it’s challenging to ask people to foot the bill. Enough time goes by without a fire, and people forget. Fire doesn’t care about a city boundary or a county line; it moves on fuel, weather, and topography, but keeping that reality in people’s minds is its own ongoing job.<\/p>"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"What gives you hope? What's the bright spot in the often difficult world of wildfire?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

JN:<\/strong> We consider ourselves realistic optimists. Fire will come again, but we think we can be prepared for it. When we started enrolling large landowners into the Valley Stewards Initiative, we uncovered something like $47 million in resilience investments\u2014expanded water, improved roads, fuel reduction\u2014that had been made privately but never captured or considered by firefighters or insurance companies.<\/strong> Meanwhile, we’ve been out there raising $36 million in grant funds and over $26 million in County Funds. Private industry, among just the first 100 landowners, has already matched nearly that amount, and we’re uncovering more and more of it.<\/p>

By almost every measure we are far better off than we were in 2017 and 2020. PG&E has hardened a lot of infrastructure. More people have solar panels, batteries, or generators. Thousands of acres of fuel mitigation and forest health work have been completed. There’s a lot still to do, but we’re far more resilient now.<\/p>

I’d also add that maintaining fire roads is one of the most cost-effective ways to mitigate risk, even if it sounds counterintuitive ecologically. We’re far better off maintaining existing roads properly, with water bars and erosion control, than letting them fall into disrepair and having firefighters push roads in an emergency in ways that aren’t ecologically sensitive. Good roaded infrastructure is valuable for containment and for doing prescribed fire, grazing, and forest health work.<\/p>

SS:<\/strong> We know that pre-fire work makes a difference. We saw this in 2025. There was a fire in Napa County last year that, without pre-fire work, had every opportunity to greatly disrupt the communities of Angwin and Pope Valley. They contained it pretty quickly with zero structure loss. CAL FIRE said at their press conferences that they used those mapped resources in their operational planning. That’s enough for me to continue this work for the next hundred years.<\/p>

And for anyone concerned about costs, these efforts reduce firefighting costs, too. If firefighters can contain fires faster, that’s fewer resources on the ground. The cost of rebuilding a single home in Napa County is greater than the critical ridgeline fuel break we just finished in the Mount Veeder area. The return on investment for doing this work ahead of time is massive.<\/strong> We’re honored to take the responsibility seriously, creating environments for firefighters to respond effectively and safely.<\/p>"}},{"@type":"Question","name":"Any final advice for individual residents, or for organizations in other counties looking to learn from your model?","acceptedAnswer":{"@type":"Answer","text":"

JN:<\/strong> For individual landowners: maintain vigilance, stay on top of notifications, track weather and fire conditions, and make those investments in defensible space and home hardening where you can. At the agency level, collaboration is everything. We can learn from [other counties], and we’re happy to share what we’re doing here.<\/p>

SS: <\/strong>People should join their local Fire Safe Council. Even if you’re a quarter-acre property owner in the middle of town, there is something really empowering about working with your neighbors. Whether it’s a community work day, sharing education, or just inspiring one another, that connection matters. And it’s one of the most powerful ways we know to keep communities engaged over the long term.<\/p>"}}]}

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