Yountville voters to choose new mayor, two new council members

The current mayor of Yountville, John Dunbar, has served in the role since 2010 and was a member of the Town Council for six years before winning the mayoral seat. Dunbar is restricted from running again this year because he’s busy with his bid to win the 3rd District seat on the Napa County Board of Supervisors.

Four candidates are now vying for the mayoral seat. Yountville residents have a choice between current longtime Councilmember Majorie Mohler and former Councilmember Pam Reeves, as well as Robert Moore and Ken Clarke, residents of the Yountville Veterans Home. 

As for the two council seats, Yountvillians will choose among Scott Owens, Robin McKee-Cant and Hillery Trippe, all of whom have experience on various local boards and commissions but would be newcomers to the Town Council. 

Mohler said she moved to Yountville in 1999 and, with her scientific background, started a pharmaceutical consulting company, Ciencia Group LLC. She decided to run for Town Council in 2008, and has remained a member ever since.

Mohler’s time on the council has also brought her experience on a variety of other local and state boards. She serves as chair on the Upper Valley Waste Management Agency Board, is a member of Napa County’s Local Agency Formation Commission, and has served on the Napa Valley Transportation Authority board, among many other roles. 

Mohler said one of her priorities while a council member has been — and would continue to be — maintaining fiscal resilience by keeping Yountville’s reserves relatively high. 

In part, she said, that’s because Yountville has a relatively unique budget situation, in which the hotel room tax — known as the transient occupancy tax, or TOT  — accounts for a greater percentage of budget revenue than any other Napa County municipality. But that means Yountville can be more dramatically affected by disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic or wildfires, Mohler said. 

“I’ve always felt that it’s important how local government spends your money, and it’s  probably more important how we save money for these challenging times,” said Mohler. 

Reeves said she’s lived in Yountville for about 40 years; she was on the Town Council about three decades ago, and the town’s Zoning and Design Review Board for several years prior to that. She’s also run two Yountville businesses in her time there. 

Reeves added that she’s noticed a lot of changes in the town since she was last on the council, many related to the further transformation of Yountville into a tourism hot spot. Reeves said she felt that with Dunbar leaving the mayor’s seat, there’s an opportunity to offer “a new kind of leadership that is much more inclusive, much more welcoming, much more genuine in their pursuit of public opinion.” 

Reeves added that housing is a big issue, and she wants to see the town encourage all sorts of affordable housing in Yountville. She said at one point most business owners lived in the town and there was a synergy between the needs and desires of the residents and those businesses. Currently, she said, there’s a bit of a disconnect between the businesses, the local government and the community, and she’d like to help heal that. 

“A lot of people hold up Yountville as a shining example of what good management is,” Reeves said. “But there is also something lacking, and I think that is the focus on community. We’ve lost a number of full-time residents, we’ve lost our elementary school (which closed in 2020), we’ve lost our connections. And I feel that’s where we need to proceed now is, to try and reconstruct or start anew with a focus on how we are a community and how we can be our best community.”

Clarke said he’s a musician — he currently plays ​​with a Veterans Home group called the Ding-A-Lings — who was in a band that once played for tourists at Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. He’d like to bring more activity to downtown Yountville by being an “ambassador mayor,” which he defined as being active in the town and making sure tourists are happy. He also said the Veterans Home population needs more representation in Yountville, and that he’d like to see a fast-food restaurant option so more families could eat affordably. 

Clarke acknowledged in an interview he was “having fun” by running for mayor and doesn’t expect to win. Responding to a question at an Oct. 5 candidates’ forum about how he would prioritize spending in the Yountville’s budget, Clarke said: “Oh that’s easy. I wouldn’t spend any money. I’m a miser.” 

Moore, who didn’t respond to the Napa Valley Register’s requests for comment by press time, emphasized at the forum and in YouTube videos a plan to “double our town revenue without increasing our town debt,” which would involve reopening the Lincoln Theater, which closed early in the pandemic, as a convention center. He argued that those visiting the center would bring the town a considerable amount of money without disturbing residents. And, he added, Yountville would be a highly attractive destination for that currently untapped segment of the tourist population. 

“Why fight big-city crime, drug abuse and homelessness when the conventioneer can spend an average of four days here in paradise?” Moore said.

Along with selecting a new mayor, Yountville residents will need to select two of the three Town Council candidates: Trippe, a former business attorney and risk management expert; McKee-Cant, a Napa native who’s had a long career in tourism and hospitality; and Owens, who works for the California Health Care Foundation. 

Trippe, who moved to Yountville in 2019, said she’s always been interested in community service; she’s currently a member of the town Zoning and Design Review Board, and she’s served on a number of other similar housing and zoning boards in the past. 

Trippe said she believes her experience with zoning and her legal background — as assistant general counsel for C&H Sugar, then a risk management expert at the University of California system and later at Dignity Health — would be helpful to the Town Council. She added that she also wants to make sure the council is more responsive to local residents. 

“I think Yountville is a very well-run town so it’s not like there’s something broken,” Trippe said. “But I do think there are ways that it could be improved, especially now the town has built out and we don’t really need to push tourism as much. I’m very supportive of business and tourism, but I don’t think we’re going to be adding a lot more of that. One of Yountville’s goals was to be a premier tourist destination. I think we’ve met that goal, and now we need to make it both a premier place to visit and a premier place to live.”

Owens, who’s lived in Yountville since 2014, said in a statement that he’s worked in the nonprofit community service sector for over 25 years, in positions that work with youth development, supportive housing and health advocacy. He’s also a member of several local boards and commissions and previously represented Yountville on the Napa County Library Commission for seven years. 

At the Oct. 5 forum, Owens said Yountville should encourage business diversity, but also strengthen collaboration with existing businesses.  He also suggested he wanted to pursue fiscal responsibility, and suggested funds could be reallocated for a modest increase to the city’s low-income subsidy for water and wastewater services.

McKee-Cant, who grew up in Napa and moved to Yountville in 2019, said she got into the council race after serving for two years on the Yountville Arts Commission, because she feels that the council could do a better job of including the community in collaboration and decision-making. 

She said she comes from a varied business background with an emphasis on destination management, hospitality and tourism, but feels that she could help build a better connection between the Yountville government and the community. 

Additionally, she suggested that, on issues regarding the now-closed Yountville Elementary School campus, some of the area could be used for needed affordable housing. But, at the same time, she suggested that part of it could be left as a space for children or a park. 

McKee-Cant said that she could help improve the local business environment during the week, which she said would be helpful to the community.

“Yountville is a tourism destination on weekends, but our businesses are hurting mid-week,” McKee-Cant said. “I feel I could be a leader that could support them, at the same time ensuring that Yountville retains its charm.”