NAPA: Napa County voters are being asked to approve a half-cent sales tax to pay for wildfire prevention, watershed protection, and open space, and the question is already landing in mailboxes. Measure B, the Napa County Wildfire Preparedness, Watershed Protection and Open Space Preservation Act, would raise about $23 million a year for 18 years, running from April 1, 2027 through March 31, 2045. As a citizens' initiative, it needs a simple majority, 50 percent plus one vote, to pass.
What it costs, what it funds
The tax would apply to sales across the county, with essential purchases such as groceries, prescription medicine, and feminine hygiene products staying exempt, according to the campaign's materials. Revenue would be split in two: one half would go directly to the elected Napa County Parks and Open Space District for park stewardship and grants to cities; the other half would be collected by the county and spent on fire-related projects under a detailed expenditure plan written into the measure, with a citizen oversight committee, annual independent audits, and public reporting. All funds would stay under local control and could not be taken by the state or federal government, the campaign says.
The road to the ballot
The initiative is sponsored by Napa Firewise and the Land Trust of Napa County, led by CEOs Joe Nordlinger and Melanie Parker. The sponsors gathered about 7,300 signatures from registered voters, well above the 5,000 minimum needed to qualify, and the Board of Supervisors placed it on the November ballot. Briefing the American Canyon Fire Protection District in July, Nordlinger said the measure is a half-cent tax that would generate around $23 million annually for 18 years, and that projects must be listed in completed community wildfire protection plans to be eligible for funding.
About $23 million a year for 18 years: that is the number at the center of the November vote.
The case being made
The campaign's case is that dependable funding is the missing piece. Napa Firewise says roughly 18,000 acres of fuel-reduction and prevention work in the county have already been surveyed, reviewed, and prioritized, and are simply waiting on funding. A $35 million FEMA grant awarded in August 2023 was pulled less than two years later, the group says. Land Trust CEO Melanie Parker has made the same point about existing grants: they arrive and expire with their own cycles, and the sponsors say that is not dependable funding for work of this scale.
The pitch leans on recent history. The August 2025 Pickett Fire east of Calistoga scorched more than 6,800 acres before it was contained on Sept. 7, 2025; in October 2017 the Atlas, Tubbs, and Nuns fires burned roughly 145,000 acres across the region; and the Glass Fire took 308 homes and 343 commercial buildings in Napa County, according to Napa Firewise. The group's own polling, it says, shows more than 60 percent of voters would back the measure, well above the simple-majority threshold.
Ballots go out to every registered voter starting the first week of October. Because the measure passes on a simple majority, the campaign says the race comes down to one thing: how many people know what it is. The campaign that talks to more neighbors wins.
