{"id":255627,"date":"2026-04-07T12:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/255627\/"},"modified":"2026-04-07T12:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-04-07T12:05:13","slug":"california-destination-pushes-back-against-mayors-rogue-app","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/255627\/","title":{"rendered":"California destination pushes back against mayor’s rogue app"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s one thing for a mayor of a wildly popular tourist town<\/a> to be proud of his little slice of paradise. It\u2019s another thing entirely for him to be capitalizing off it by running his own clandestine tourism app.<\/p>\n

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In Solvang, both residents and members of the City Council have expressed concern that Mayor David Brown\u2019s side hustle, an app promoting Solvang tourism, is both a conflict of interest and a breach in ethics.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The app, called the Solvang Passport<\/a>, is geared toward the million visitors who come to the Danish village annually<\/a>. It ostensibly gives tourists an inside look at what\u2019s happening around town.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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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.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

A welcome sign in downtown Solvang, Calif.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gary Coronado\/Los Angeles Times via Getty Imag\"Residents<\/p>\n

Residents of Solvang, Calif., dance at the town\u2019s traditional Danish Days celebration on Sept. 20, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andrew Pridgen\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

Concerns over the mayor\u2019s involvement were first made public at the city council\u2019s\u00a0Feb. 23 meeting. Solvang Skate Shop owner Robby Hargreaves<\/a> 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 \u201cfair and just\u201d for all the town\u2019s businesses.<\/p>\n

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At the end of the meeting, Councilmember Mark Infanti revisited the subject for the council to discuss briefly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cCan you tell me what it is, where it is and who\u2019s doing it? Do we have any knowledge of this thing?\u201d he asked\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s when Mayor Brown piped in.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cI can,\u201d he said. \u201cI developed an app for tourism and it\u2019s \u2014 I\u2019ve not charged anybody for it. \u2026 It\u2019s my own accord. And I\u2019ve discussed this with our legal team as well.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, that\u2019s interesting.\u201d Infanti replied.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIs the app a revenue generating app?\u201d Councilmember Elizabeth Orona asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cNot yet,\u201d Brown replied. \u201cI hope it is. Stand by.\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"FILE:Haizhan Zheng\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

The sudden revelation of the app\u2019s 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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mayor Brown recused himself from that portion of the meeting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Solvang City Attorney Chelsea O\u2019Sullivan 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 \u201cidentify city marketing materials\u201d 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.<\/p>\n

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\u201cIf there are other assets at play we would certainly like to know,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

Some were not pleased about the mayor\u2019s rogue use of the city\u2019s assets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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\u2019s on Solvang USA,\u201d Orona said. \u201cThere is content that is word for word copy and pasted specifically from our \u2018things to do\u2019 page. So they are not distinct phrases. They are copied and pasted.\u201d<\/p>\n

She continued: \u201cDo we care? I mean, do we take any action when someone \u2014 especially one of our own \u2014 is copying that and using it for private benefit or commercial purposes?\u201d<\/p>\n

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\"Looking<\/p>\n

Looking down Mission Drive in Solvang, Calif., in the direction of Coast Range steakhouse on Sept. 20, 2025.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Andrew Pridgen\/SFGATE<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt blindsided by learning about this app,\u201d Councilmember Louise Smith said during the council\u2019s discussion on how to handle the mayor\u2019s rogue app. \u201cLike, I had no idea. I have a business in Solvang. The mayor\u2019s 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\u2019t look good.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that we do need to do a cease and desist on this,\u201d 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 \u201cnot appropriate\u201d while he was still mayor.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s defense.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u201cIt\u2019s not costing us any money,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

However, Councilmember Elizabeth Orona believed that the app was problematic. \u201cIt is a conflict of the way that we are dictating how money, public money gets spent, and him getting a private benefit from it,\u201d she said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we need to send a message to businesses and to the public that we have deep concerns,\u201d Elizabeth Orona said following a heated exchange with Mayor Pro Tem Orona, \u201cand 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\u2019s playing when he\u2019s speaking to them and what his motivations are and his biases are, that a cease, desist and refrain is important for us.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI am 100 percent convinced we should update our ethics policy,\u201d she concluded.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\"FILE:<\/p>\n

FILE: Solvang in Santa Ynez Valley on a bright sunny day.<\/p>\n

DianeBentleyRaymond\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe do want to be careful about infringing on his rights to engage in commerce and free speech and all of that,\u201d O\u2019Sullivan told the members of the City Council. \u201c\u2026 I\u2019m not trying to diminish any of the concerns expressed, but I think that is a reality\u00a0\u2014 that there is a limit to what we can tell him what not to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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For now, the City Council chose to follow city attorney O\u2019Sullivan\u2019s advice and decided not to issue a cease and desist on the app.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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\u2019s ethics policy.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It\u2019s one thing for a mayor of a wildly popular tourist town to be proud of his little…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255628,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[7,9,8,1894,3100,1228],"class_list":{"0":"post-255627","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-california","8":"tag-california","9":"tag-california-headlines","10":"tag-california-news","11":"tag-sfgcentralca","12":"tag-sfgpolitics","13":"tag-sfgtravel"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255627","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255627"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255627\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255628"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255627"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255627"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255627"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}