Being a Councilmember can sometimes be a trying job. One of my main tasks is to field questions and comments from residents. Some get pretty harsh. I hope that you will keep in mind that we are just residents like you who are willing to work at this job and represent you fairly and make some tough decisions.
Sometimes my mind wanders on current issues and I am just trying to figure out how to understand them, and writing here helps me clear my mind. There are two very important issues coming up on Wednesday 8/5. And I’d like to hear what you think about them – you can email me at my town email address, jbleep@townofwindsor.ca.gov. By the way, if you send to towncouncil@townofwindsor.ca.gov, not only do all the Town Council members get the email, but also the Town Manager, Jon Davis, and the Town Clerk, Irene Camacho-Werby. So you don’t have to send it to everyone plus Town Council, plus Jon, etc. Just either email to Town Council, or the specific person you want to reach.
It would be nice to hear from all those people who have positive feedback from time to time.
Nota Bene: It is much more likely that I will receive your thoughts if you send an email than if you bury them in Facebook. On the other hand, when I want to say something, I can reach a lot more people on Facebook, thousands, than I can by email. And I usually I try to copy my info to my website at https://jbforwindsor.com .
The first issue is the Windsor Creek project with WUSD and Gallaher. Not only is there a lot of emotional energy on the subject because of the desire of a lot of the public to keep the property green and public, but also there are complaints about the continuing growth of affordable housing buildings. Lately I’ve heard “Shiloh Terrace” (in my district!) used almost as a generic descriptor, like “Kleenex”. As in “We don’t want to see another Shiloh Terrace at Windsor Creek.” And my house is about 600 feet from Shiloh Terrace, so I am very familiar with it.
A while back, the Town Council, Town Manager, and others, discussed if we could outright make a meaningful offer to buy the land. In short, we don’t have that much free cash to do it. But we made an offer that included cash and some other available property. It turned out it was not even close to Gallaher’s offer, but it was the best we could do and could actually fulfill. Not to mention, we would have to take over cleanup and maintenance of the property.
Now on the other hand, Gallaher’s plans include doing a development that would make money not only as it is developed and rented, but also might generate income over time, possibly for WUSD. I don’t know.
The issue of zoning has come up. In short, the Town controls the zoning of the property. In addition, there is a state policy called “RHNA”, Regional Housing Need Allocation, we call it “REENA”. This is a policy, a state-mandated process in California used to figure out how many new homes—across different income levels—each city and county must plan for every eight years. It is fairly complicated. You an see the numbers.
I have heard that the numbers might be set high so that the state can keep pushing cities to build more affordable housing.
The numbers are very complicated and are listed on a link on the past April 1 2026 agenda. But here is a simplified link to the summary “slide show”: https://jbforwindsor.com/rhna . Look on page 11.
If you have gotten this far in the post, I will just tell you that the numbers, as far as I understand, say that we have not hit our RHNA numbers, which is sort of par for the course. In addition, in a recent sort of analysis I did, my understanding of things is that not only have we not hit our numbers, but also hitting them is not foreseeable in the near future. By “par for the course”, I mean that numbers may be set high by the State to keep pressure on the cities.
The Windsor Creek area is currently zoned “Public/Institutional”. Another part of the equation is whether the Town Council can simply not rezone it, and boy is that a can of worms.
I did not know exactly how to describe it, so I asked my AI friend to summarize the issue and here is what I got:
A flat “no” to rezoning isn’t the simple option it might sound like. State housing law has made it genuinely difficult for cities to reject projects that include affordable units, and Windsor has real exposure here — the Town has its own state-mandated housing targets to hit, actively sought a “Prohousing” designation that says we are friendly to affordable housing, and could face funding or legal consequences if it falls short.
This site’s fate is also tied to a signed sale agreement between the school district and the developer, so a denial doesn’t just block a building — it unwinds a deal the district is already counting on. A “no rezoning” needs to rest on a documented record — traffic studies, wildfire evacuation analysis, infrastructure capacity — not just neighborhood pushback. “We got a lot of complaints” isn’t the kind of finding that holds up if the decision gets challenged. So this isn’t a case where the Council can just listen to whoever shows up and speaks loudest, and then vote accordingly.
Keep tuned. This is not going to end overnight. It is going to take a long time, months, to resolve this.
The second issue is gas stations and a major retailer.