The American Canyon City Council Tuesday voted to approve new city boundaries, cementing a wide-ranging deal with Napa County that settles several land use and resource issues.

The city’s new urban limit line expands the city boundary to the north and east, and will serve as American Canyon’s ultimate boundary until 2030.

The council could have allowed the question of approving the city limits to go to the voters in November, but council members said they saw no reason to wait.

“I have heard little opposition to this,” Mayor Leon Garcia said before the vote, which was greeted with applause from members of the public.

City Councilman Ed West said the agreement between the city and the county will protect the city’s future and will allow the community to grow on its own terms. “We define who we are,” West said.

The city will gain new industrial land north of Green Island Road and open space east of Newell Drive, up to the 15-degree slope line, assuming the change is approved by the Napa County Local Agency Formation Commission.

The new urban limit line includes land pre-zoned to serve as the Town Center, a 200-acre residential, commercial and public square development at the site of a basalt plant that operated in the early 1900s.

The agreement between city and county officials, reached after 18 months of negotiations, addressed several matters. Under the deal, American Canyon will continue to provide water service to properties near the Napa County Airport and the county will take responsibility for the construction of the Devlin Road extension, an alternative to congested Highway 29.

Controlling growth

The Napa County Election Department certified the urban limit line initiative in mid-July after determining that at least 10 percent of the 7,200 registered voters in American Canyon had signed the petition. More than 1,800 residents in July signed the initiative at Friday Nights at the Plaza and Independence Day festivities, as well as at Safeway and other locations.

American Canyon city staff recommended that the City Council adopt the initiative Tuesday.

Mark Joseph, the former city manager, is president of the citizens’ group Impact 94503, which supported the initiative. The group also wants to see the Town Center project go forward.

The group spearheaded efforts to collect signatures for the initiative while McGrath Properties, the Oakland-based developer of the Town Center, paid for legal work to prepare the initiative and hire six signature gatherers for the initiative.

Joseph on Tuesday urged the City Council to adopt the limit line as law, in part to spare the cost of the election and in part because, he said, the public had voiced its support by quickly signing the petition.

“Waiting until November isn’t necessary,” he said.

But Paulette Griffin, a community activist who grew up in American Canyon, said that people who signed the petition supported the idea of putting the initiative on the ballot, not putting the new urban limit into law. Griffin has said repeatedly the city does not need more residential development.

Pam Wilkinson, the American Canyon Chamber of Commerce’s president and chief executive officer, said the chamber board of directors supports the initiative.

Eve Kahn, chairwoman of Get Grip of Growth, a Napa-based grassroots organization dedicated to preventing sprawl and promoting slow growth, also spoke in favor of the initiative which she said will prevent sprawl and protect open space.

“(Get a Grip on Growth) feels that voter controlled urban limit lines are one of the most effective ways to prevent sprawl, protect open space, and promote smart and sustainable growth,” Kahn wrote in a letter to the City Council this week.