It’s one thing for a mayor of a wildly popular tourist town to be proud of his little slice of paradise. It’s another thing entirely for him to be capitalizing off it by running his own clandestine tourism app.
In Solvang, both residents and members of the City Council have expressed concern that Mayor David Brown’s side hustle, an app promoting Solvang tourism, is both a conflict of interest and a breach in ethics.
The app, called the Solvang Passport, is geared toward the million visitors who come to the Danish village annually. It ostensibly gives tourists an inside look at what’s happening around town.
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But for many here, the app is not showcasing Solvang businesses equally. In addition, it appears to be using or has used city resources.
A welcome sign in downtown Solvang, Calif.
Gary Coronado/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag
Residents of Solvang, Calif., dance at the town’s traditional Danish Days celebration on Sept. 20, 2025.
Andrew Pridgen/SFGATE
Concerns over the mayor’s involvement were first made public at the city council’s Feb. 23 meeting. Solvang Skate Shop owner Robby Hargreaves spoke up about the app and who it may be advertising for. He wanted to know more about the venture, and make sure it was “fair and just” for all the town’s businesses.
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At the end of the meeting, Councilmember Mark Infanti revisited the subject for the council to discuss briefly.
“Can you tell me what it is, where it is and who’s doing it? Do we have any knowledge of this thing?” he asked
That’s when Mayor Brown piped in.
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“I can,” he said. “I developed an app for tourism and it’s — I’ve not charged anybody for it. … It’s my own accord. And I’ve discussed this with our legal team as well.”
“Well, that’s interesting.” Infanti replied.
“Is the app a revenue generating app?” Councilmember Elizabeth Orona asked.
“Not yet,” Brown replied. “I hope it is. Stand by.”
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Haizhan Zheng/Getty Images
The sudden revelation of the app’s existence was enough for the item to be placed on the March 23 City Council agenda, where council members discussed their reaction to the app and what, exactly, should be done about both the app and the mayor.
Mayor Brown recused himself from that portion of the meeting.
Solvang City Attorney Chelsea O’Sullivan told council members that city staff conducted an audit of the Solvang Passport app to track down city assets, like video or text, that was copyrighted to the city of Solvang, to “identify city marketing materials” the mayor may have used. She noted that the mayor did use a snippet from a marketing video on his site that he has since taken down.
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“If there are other assets at play we would certainly like to know,” she said.
Some were not pleased about the mayor’s rogue use of the city’s assets.
“I want to make the point that there is still material on Solvang Passport and the Solvang Passport sponsor pages and the application downloads that are still exact copies from what’s on Solvang USA,” Orona said. “There is content that is word for word copy and pasted specifically from our ‘things to do’ page. So they are not distinct phrases. They are copied and pasted.”
She continued: “Do we care? I mean, do we take any action when someone — especially one of our own — is copying that and using it for private benefit or commercial purposes?”
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Looking down Mission Drive in Solvang, Calif., in the direction of Coast Range steakhouse on Sept. 20, 2025.
Andrew Pridgen/SFGATE
“I felt blindsided by learning about this app,” Councilmember Louise Smith said during the council’s discussion on how to handle the mayor’s rogue app. “Like, I had no idea. I have a business in Solvang. The mayor’s not approached me about being part of the app. Not that I want to, but I just feel that we are held to a high standard here, and ethically this doesn’t look good.”
“I think that we do need to do a cease and desist on this,” she continued. She noted that it was fine if the mayor wanted to do a business venture like this after he served his term, but it was “not appropriate” while he was still mayor.
Mayor Pro Tem Claudia Orona (unrelated to Councilmember Elizabeth Orona), whose business Solvang Trolley Ice Cream Parlor appears on the Solvang Passport app, came to the mayor’s defense.
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“It’s not costing us any money,” she said.
However, Councilmember Elizabeth Orona believed that the app was problematic. “It is a conflict of the way that we are dictating how money, public money gets spent, and him getting a private benefit from it,” she said.
“I think we need to send a message to businesses and to the public that we have deep concerns,” Elizabeth Orona said following a heated exchange with Mayor Pro Tem Orona, “and until he stops using our content or, you know, starts sort of considering that there might be so much room for businesses to be confused about which role he’s playing when he’s speaking to them and what his motivations are and his biases are, that a cease, desist and refrain is important for us.”
“I am 100 percent convinced we should update our ethics policy,” she concluded.
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FILE: Solvang in Santa Ynez Valley on a bright sunny day.
DianeBentleyRaymond/Getty Images
“We do want to be careful about infringing on his rights to engage in commerce and free speech and all of that,” O’Sullivan told the members of the City Council. “… I’m not trying to diminish any of the concerns expressed, but I think that is a reality — that there is a limit to what we can tell him what not to do.”
SFGATE reached out to Mayor Brown on Monday with questions about the app and what the intent behind it is but did not hear back from him by the time of publication.
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For now, the City Council chose to follow city attorney O’Sullivan’s advice and decided not to issue a cease and desist on the app.
However, the matter did not end there, as city staff plan to look into how the city can protect its intellectual property, and a future meeting will likely discuss a possible update to the city’s ethics policy.