All posts by BenIndy

Benicia CA

Not your ordinary Benicia Peddlers Fair weekend Garage Sale

[Let’s start the long weekend with something very special from resident Cathy Bennett. It’s a little late to go up (the Peddler’s Fair was in early August) but the ‘epiphany of gratitude’ Cathy extends to the ‘kaleidoscope of humanity’ that attended the fair tells a story of warmth and welcome that is timeless and very, very Benician. Cathy shows us Benicia at its best in this lovely story. Please take the time to read this all the way through.]

By Cathy Bennett, Benicia resident

Folks come by the throngs happy to spend the day strolling First Street and looking for bargains at our annual Peddlers Fair.  Many in town take advantage of the chance to attract the spillover crowd by holding their own garage sales. Even though I live a fair distance away from downtown, I held my own garage sale across the street from a waterfront park that attracts a lot of folks from out of town.  I say “garage” sale, but my garage was too full of “stuff” to bring anyone inside, so the sale ventured out into my driveway and front yard.  The last time I had a ‘garage sale’ was nearly 20 years ago after clearing out my mother’s home as a result of her unexpected passing.  Like yesterday, at that time I took it on all by myself, and soldiered through the sorting & arranging as best I could, set up in the driveway, and positioned a chair that I rarely occupied because I was mostly on my feet talking with folks and moving stuff around as items got sold.

The amount of energy this requires reminds me of getting ready to take a long vacation.  All the necessary planning and preparation consumes you for days in advance, and sometimes the stress is enough to make you want to throw up your hands and say, “Oh forget it, I’ll just stay home!”  In this case, it was more like, “Who cares if I have too much stuff?  I’ll just shove it back into the closets, storage shed & various hiding spots, and avoid all this hassle!”  But I was determined, so again I soldiered on.

Just so you know, this isn’t going to be a rant about folks promising to come help out, (but don’t show up), or patrons that try to nickel and dime you to death. (If you price things low enough, you get very little of that, & most quickly snatch things up & happily pay you.)  Besides the physical exhaustion, I learn a great deal about myself and about others from the experience.

First to note, I am again reminded of my status as a white person that benefitted from privilege.  I initially realized this decades ago, but as I get older time and wisdom peel back & expose layers of awareness and I am continually being re-educated.  I’m no spring chicken.  As a woman of a “certain age” I occasionally see my former self in others, and am amused by the trips down memory lane to youthful naivety and innocent self-indulgences.  Sometimes I long for those youthful indulgences, but mostly I just smile and nod to myself, remembering my own personal version of it.

But yesterday as I watched the ebb and flow of folks coming & going in and out of my yard sale I was struck by the difference of those who “have” and those who “need”.   I’m not just referencing material “stuff”, but in every sense of “need”.

Before me was a kaleidoscope of humanity, and I took the opportunity to slow down and take it in without concern for time, status or judgement.  I was after all, a captive of my own advertised availability as defined by the posters I had put up all over the neighborhood.  So, I just surrendered to the experience, and in short time, I really enjoyed it.

What I was reminded of was just how many folks out there are struggling with loneliness, insecurity, grief and loss, unemployment, under &/or miserable employment, financial hardship, and lives that seem to be drifting in and out of uncertainty.  Yes, they were there to look at my “stuff” but they were also there to have someone to talk to, to feel some sort of connection, and to share their story with another person that might simply bear witness to their struggles and actually care about it.

It started with the elderly gentleman who moved about with obvious pain in slow deliberate steps.  He loved my collection of handmade “redneck champagne glasses”- (a mason jar glued to a glass candlestick holder), and swept them up with a chuckle.  He hung around, & when no one else was there he told stories as different items I had on display reminded him of various times in his life.  He spoke of his wife’s extended illness and passing, and his years of dedicated caregiving to her.  As the stories flowed it seemed to open a hidden passageway & soon he was telling me about his 9 years as a CIA prisoner of war in a Viet Cong prison.  He told me about living in a cage, and being beaten & tortured on a daily basis, and what they did to other prisoners in front of him to further their attempts to extract information.  As my body involuntarily retracted & my jaw clinched, he repeated, “That is what war is like.”  I eventually had to interrupt because I was beginning to experience secondary trauma.  We both moved our heads slightly & closed our eyes as if to shake off the images that now haunted both of us.  After standing in silence for a moment we somehow managed to turn the conversation away from his very painful traumatic past.  I could see the courageous & loyal person he was, and I held a great deal of respect for what he had been through.  He eventually left with a few of my items, which I refused payment for and thanked him for his service to our country.  The Vietnam war was a particularly ugly & unpopular war, but he clearly had performed an unimaginable duty out of loyalty to our country & to the authorities that commanded his actions.  This was not the place or time, nor did I feel the need for any discussion about whether it was a worthy or unworthy war.

Then there was the young woman who was relocating with her elderly mother from La Vegas to Vallejo.  She pulled up in her old beat up car that looked  crowded and hot.  She asked if I could help her figure out what was wrong with her CD player.  We spent about 15 minutes trying to figure out why it suddenly wouldn’t operate.  I loaned her my disc cleaner & then a pair of tweezers, looking for the bobby pin she suspected her mother had inserted into it.  We eventually gave up on the CD player, and she took a much-needed break wandering through my rows of items, telling me the story of her life circumstances, while Mom sat in the car. I gave this woman my full attention, and eventually some advice on how to follow up on job leads, as well as community supports she could check into.  Then I sent her off with a Barbie doll for her niece, a retractable pull-down window shade for her car, and a box of craft supplies- beads, ribbons, colored pens, stationary & dried flowers.  She left with a smile & I waved them on.

A young man wandered in looking quietly around.  After a few minutes I engaged him in conversation.  He was thoughtful and polite and careful with each item he handled.  He eventually told me about his young high school aged brother who had been left paralyzed from the neck down after a horrible auto accident.  It had been 5 years since the accident and he was rejoicing the fact that his brother had fought hard to find meaning in his post-accident life, and had recently broken through the barriers with a newfound passion and purpose to his life.  This young man’s admiration and respect for his brother was so evident that I couldn’t help but smile even though the story was a harsh one.

Then came the Grandmother with her granddaughter on a scooter, who had wandered all the way from visiting the Peddlers Fair.  With bright blue eyes & a youthful smile, she spotted a lamp & a set of brass candle stick holders that she said would go lovely with her homemade beeswax candles.  She also admired a large framed watercolor painting of a dancing horse, and told me stories of her childhood & the horses she grew up loving.  After a bit, she shared that she managed to get by on just welfare to make ends meet, and she clearly was one who took an active role in supporting her children and grandchildren.  I sent them off with the items she fancied, and in turn the next day she left me a jar of some home spun honey.

I had started the day at about 7:00am, and the sun was beginning to lower in the sky.  I was exhausted, but folks kept stopping by.  I had ‘sold’ a lot of stuff- most of which were high quality items that I once thought entirely necessary, but now realized I had no need for.  It was a pleasure to witness the delight of others who excitedly told me what they would do with each item I sold (or gave away).  I was down to some small wood furnishings, some garden equipment, a few boxes of clothes and shoes, some framed paintings, pet carriers, dog car seats and a few specialty items.

I did not want to haul any of it back into my garage, so as the sun started to set, I encouraged everyone to pick things out, and take them for free.  A couple of young women that work in town at my favorite bakery delighted themselves with some cool shoes and clothes I had long ago stopped wearing. If I must say so myself, I have very good taste & have acquired a nice collection high quality fashion ware.  It was fun to hear their giggles of delight as they tried on shoes, and held things up to check for size.

A Spanish speaking family with young children looked longingly at some of my items, but didn’t understand that I was now giving everything away.  With some help from an interpreter I was able to send them off with a box load of things.  Their young son picked out a framed painting and smiled widely with his new acquisition.  I wish I could have heard his story about where he planned to hang it, as I could see the light in his eyes as he held onto it proudly.

And so, the day came and went.  Yes, I was exhausted, but my heart swelled with gratitude.  With all of my life’s imperfections and periodic struggles, I felt so much appreciation for the luxuries I enjoy (& often take for granted.)  Yes, I have a huge mortgage, but that means I have a home.  I have a big yard that requires constant weeding, raking, trimming of bushes & trees- but that is because I have the pleasure of pride in ownership & the physical ability to take care of my home & yard.  I get frustrated & impatient trying to figure out what to cook for myself each day, sometimes eating the same boring meals because I get too tired to be more imaginative. But I never go hungry, nor do I worry about where my children’s next meal will come from.  I bare the high cost of high Veterinary bills & have at times resented the expense of having pets & being anchored to my home because some of my animals have special needs. But having pets is a privilege that not everyone is able to embrace.  I am so fortunate to enjoy the love, companionship & loyalty of my animals.  Do you see where I am going with this?

Unless your work or personal life involves close contact with the full spectrum of the public, and even then, one rarely hears their stories, and gets to know of their personal struggles, you might miss out on this epiphany of gratitude.

Some may think, what a softy giving away so much of her “stuff”.  To that I respond that I recognize my privilege, and the opportunities that I have been blessed with.  Often for no other reason other than the color of my skin, and the luck of the draw I was born under, as well as the chances that came my way to nudge my life in a certain direction. I appreciate what I have, and know that my life could easily have turned a different direction, as my roots are from a family of working class “white” immigrants. I hope to carry this appreciation in my heart for as long as possible.  It makes me a better person- more kind, compassionate & content.  But like everyone, I am prone to the occasional pity party. My hope is to recognize it quickly and snap myself out of it.  Rather than risk losing this gift of gratitude, I might very well need to periodically hold a garage sale.  If so, please stop by and say hello.  I need to hear your stories as much as you might need to tell them.

Flannery Associates, Rep. John Garamendi, Rep. Mike Thompson, Solano County CA, Travis Air Force Base

Local Leaders React to Tech Billionaires’ Bid to Build ‘Utopic City of the Future’ in Solano

Local stakeholders react to Flannery Associates 52,000 acre purchases

Public records show ‘Flannery Associates’ has invested $1B on land surrounding the Travis Air Force Base. | Graphic from FYI.

The secrecy and scale of the project have local leaders skeptical

The Reporter, by Nick McConnell, August 30, 2023

Big Oil, California oil industry, Climate Change, Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, Lobbying

California Is On the Verge of a World-Changing Climate Bill — But It’s in Trouble

Emissions disclosure bill is testing the state’s climate resolve in the face of industry misinformation.

Illustration: Javier Palma/The Guardian

Capital & Main, by Aaron Cantù, August , 2023

It’s been more than two years since a California lawmaker first introduced a bill requiring big corporations to report their greenhouse gas emissions. The information could be criticalin the fight against climate change, with global temperatures smashing records this summer — yet it died in the Legislature last year after failing by one vote.

Now, the bill could fail anew thanks to a handful of Democrats.

The Climate Corporate Data Accountability Act, carried by Sen. Scott Wiener (D-San Francisco), would force big companies to report their emissions to the California Air Resources Board.

Altogether, the lack of information on supply-chain emissions means we know only a fraction of the global economy’s climate impacts, undermining the public’s knowledge of the crisis. Some companies already report these figures, or disclose select information on their own.

But under SB 253, thousands of public and private companies — about 5,300 — would report the full scope of their climate pollution, many for the first time. That includes recognizable brands like Walmart and Costco and any other company that generates at least a billion dollars in revenue and operates in the state.

And if SB 253 becomes law in California, reportedly the largest sub-national economy in the world, it could contribute to a wave of transparency regulations requiring more corporate climate disclosures, among them the European Union’s new policy. Bill supporters say this information helps put pressure on companies to reduce their emissions.

But business interests, including the oil and gas lobby, are aligned to sink the California legislation. To pull that off, they would need the help of Democrats.

Fence-Sitting Democrats Receive Millions From Corporate Interests

Swing-vote Democrats in the State Assembly — where similar legislation failed by one vote in 2022 — may determine whether the opposition succeeds.

As Democrats have secured a supermajority in the California Legislature, business associations have increasingly targeted so-called moderate Democrats with their giving and lobbying.

Many of the same assemblymembers who helped kill the bill previously may have a chance to vote on it again. But a review of campaign contributions suggests that opposed industries have lawmakers’ ears.

Seventeen Assembly Democrats who registered no vote or voted against the bill in 2022 are still in the chamber. They have collectively taken nearly $1.16 million from oil and gas throughout their careers, including the months after last year’s session. (A full list of figures can be viewed here, with more detail here.) Thirteen lawmakers collected oil and gas money in 2023.

Over the course of their careers, Assemblymember Mike Gipson (D-South Bay) collected the most from oil and gas, at $244,380; Blanca Rubio (D-South Bay) and Brian Maienschein (D-Escondido) came in second and third, at $212,399 and $114,950.

Staff for Rubio and Maienschein didn’t return a request for comment. In an email to Capital & Main, Gipson chief of staff Emmanuel Aguayo noted Gipson’s affirmative votes on several climate bills signed last year by Gov. Newsom.

The lawmakers also took $4.6 million from business groups, many of which, such as the California Chamber of Commerce (recently rebranded as CalChamber) and regional agricultural associations, are opposed to SB 253. Forty percent of that total went to just three lawmakers: Gipson, Rubio and Maienschein. But 10 others have collected more than $100,000 each from business groups over their careers.

The governor’s rush to pass a climate package last year may have led to fatigue among some lawmakers, claimed Sen. Wiener.

“I suspect if our bill had come up a day or two before, my prediction is we would have gotten it off the floor,” Wiener said in an interview. “We just have a stronger, more diverse coalition this year.”

Wiener said he’s also planning outreach to 15 freshmen assemblymembers who would be voting for the first time. Of them, three — Esmeralda Soria (D-Merced), Blanca Pacheco (D-Downey) and Jasmeet Bains (D-Delano) — received thousands of dollars from oil and gas this year. And seven, including Soria, Pacheco and Bains, collected contributions from CalChamber (view figures here).

“We have a lot of new members, so we have a lot of work to do on that front,” Wiener said, “but I’m optimistic.”

Supply Chain Emissions a Missing Piece of Climate Puzzle 

A handful of companies are supporting the bill, including Microsoft, IKEA, Patagonia and Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

In a letter to the Assembly’s Appropriations Committee, they wrote that the bill “would level the playing field by ensuring that all major public and private companies disclose their full emissions inventory, creating a pathway for collective reduction strategies.” The committee has to approve the bill before it can go to the Assembly floor.

CalChamber has reiterated the same concerns over two years. A letter boils it down to difficulties tracking supply chain emissions, which it has described as “impossible” and something that would “necessarily require that large businesses stop doing business with small and medium businesses” that act as subcontractors.

Such claims are “not true,” said Simon Fischweicher, head of corporations and supply chains for CDP North America. The nonprofit supports companies’ efforts to account for their emissions, and connects them to climate-conscious investors; CDP’s member companies represent trillions in global market capital.

“A significant portion of companies disclosing emissions are small or medium sized,” Fischweicher said. “It’s already happening.”

Most company’s supply chain emissions (which are referred to as Scope 3 emissions by the World Resources Institute) account for the vast majority of their climate pollution. For oil refiners, this includes emissions generated when people fuel up their cars and drive using gasoline refined from company petroleum.

To take another example, Coca-Cola can track the emissions generated when its executives drive or fly (Scope 1), or when its office buildings use fossil fuels for electricity (Scope 2). But far more pollution happens indirectly, across the lifecycle of each Coke bottle or can. Understanding it requires gathering data points from subcontractors involved in bottling and distribution, as well as estimated climate pollution from all the trashed Cokes in landfills.

The bill directs companies to use the GHG Protocol, which determines supply chain emissions by multiplying “emissions factors” by weight or cost of products. The figures are imprecise, an ongoing concern as the need for accurate information grows. Advocates say standards will improve.

“That level of granularity involves different assumptions that can be made, so we’re not always going to end up on the same exact number, even from a Coke to a Pepsi,” Fischweicher said. “But what’s critical is that companies go through those steps, understand where their impacts lie, explain those figures, and understand the methodology to know how they got there.”

Industries “Fighting, Delaying” Disclosure Rules 

Companies have railed against Scope 3 emissions requirements to the Securities and Exchange Commission, which is working on rules requiring public companies to disclose their emissions and exposure to climate change.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce argued that the costs of compliance to businesses would be far higher than the government’s estimates — and that investors just don’t care much about emissions.

Separately, the American Petroleum Institute, the organization that once served as the fossil fuel industry’s main disseminator of climate change denial, said the information would be unreliable and hard to gather.

Yet API’s comments contradict its endorsement of emissions-gathering in other venues. In 2020, API and two other oil associations released a guide that encourages companies to report emissions across their value chains using various frameworks, among them the GHG Protocol.

And both the state chamber and oil lobby have cited the SEC’s rulemaking to argue that California’s climate disclosure bill would be redundant — even as their national counterparts oppose that same rulemaking at the SEC.

Wiener called these actions “shocking.”

“They’re fighting, delaying and trying to kill the SEC rule, but then saying we shouldn’t legislate because the SEC will handle it,” he said. “It’s so cynical.”

Flannery Associates, Rep. John Garamendi, Solano County CA, Travis Air Force Base

The Silicon Valley Elite Who Want to Build a City From Scratch

A mysterious company has spent $800 million in an effort to buy thousands of acres of San Francisco Bay Area land. The people behind the deals are said to be a who’s who of the tech industry.

From left, Michael Moritz, Reid Hoffman, Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, four prominent Silicon Valley investors, have backed Flannery Associates.Credit…Bloomberg; The New York Times; Clara Mokri for The New York Times; Getty Images; Reuters

The New York Times, by Conor Dougherty and Erin Griffith, August 25, 2023

In 2017, Michael Moritz, the billionaire venture capitalist, sent a note to a potential investor about what he described as an unusual opportunity: a chance to invest in the creation of a new California city.

The site was in a corner of the San Francisco Bay Area where land was cheap. Mr. Moritz and others had dreams of transforming tens of thousands of acres into a bustling metropolis that, according to the pitch, could generate thousands of jobs and be as walkable as Paris or the West Village in New York.

He painted a kind of urban blank slate where everything from design to construction methods and new forms of governance could be rethought. And it would all be a short distance from San Francisco and Silicon Valley. “Let me know if this tickles your fancy,” he said in the note, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times.

Michael Moritz, a well-known investor, wrote in a 2017 pitch, “If the plans materialize anywhere close to what is being contemplated, this should be a spectacular investment. | Alex Flynn / Bloomberg.

Since then, a company called Flannery Associates has been buying large plots of land in a largely agricultural region 60 miles northeast of San Francisco. The company, which has little information public about its operations, has committed more than $800 million to secure thousands of acres of farmland, court documents show. One parcel after another, Flannery made offers to every landowner for miles, paying several times the market rate, whether the land had been listed for sale or not.

The purchases by a company that no one in the area had heard of and whose business was a mystery have become the subject of heavy speculation and developing news stories, rattling landowners, local supervisors, the nearby Air Force base and members of Congress. Was Disney buying it for a new theme park? Could the purchases be linked to China? A deepwater port?

Flannery is the brainchild of Jan Sramek, 36, a former Goldman Sachs trader who has quietly courted some of the tech industry’s biggest names as investors, according to the pitch and people familiar with the matter. The company’s ambitions expand on the 2017 pitch: Take an arid patch of brown hills cut by a two-lane highway between suburbs and rural land, and convert into it into a community with tens of thousands of residents, clean energy, public transportation and dense urban life.

The company’s investors, whose identities have not been previously reported, are a who’s who of Silicon Valley, according to three people who were not authorized to speak publicly about the plans.

They include Mr. Moritz; Reid Hoffman, the LinkedIn co-founder, venture capitalist and Democratic donor; Marc Andreessen and Chris Dixon, investors at the Andreessen Horowitz venture capital firm; Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payments company Stripe; Laurene Powell Jobs, founder of the Emerson Collective; and Nat Friedman and Daniel Gross, entrepreneurs turned investors. Andreessen Horowitz is also a backer. It was unclear how much each had invested.

It is unclear how much the investors, who include Patrick and John Collison, the sibling co-founders of the payments company Stripe, have each invested in Flannery. | David Paul Morris / Bloomberg.

Brian Brokaw, a representative for the investor group, said in a statement that the group was made up of “Californians who believe that Solano County’s and California’s best days are ahead.” He said the group planned to start working with Solano County residents and elected officials, as well as with Travis Air Force Base, next week.

In California, housing has long been an intractable problem, and Silicon Valley’s moguls have long been frustrated with the Bay Area’s real estate shortage, and the difficulty of building in California generally, as their work forces have exploded. Companies like Google have clashed with cities like Palo Alto and Mountain View over expanding their headquarters, while their executives have funded pro-development politicians and the “Yes in my backyard” activists who have pushed for looser development and zoning laws in hopes of making it easier to build faster and taller.

The practical need for more space has at times morphed into lofty visions of building entire cities from scratch. Several years ago, Y Combinator, the start-up incubator, announced an initiative with dreams of turning empty land into a new economy and society. Years before that, Peter Thiel, the PayPal co-founder and billionaire Facebook investor, invested in the Seasteading Institute, an attempt to build a new society on lily pad-like structures in the law-and-tax-free open ocean.

But while these ideas have garnered lots of attention and curiosity — lauded in some corners for vision and derided in others for hubris — they have been little more than talk.

The news and stories that matter to Californians (and anyone else interested in the state), delivered weekday mornings. Get it sent to your inbox.

As Flannery began seeking property, it bought so much land, so fast, that it spooked locals who had no idea who the buyer was or the plans it had in mind. Catherine Moy, the mayor of Fairfield, Calif., started posting about the project on Facebook several years ago after she got a call from a farmer about some mystery buyer making offers throughout the county. In an interview, Ms. Moy said she had gone to the county assessor’s office and found that Flannery had purchased tens of thousands of acres.

John Garamendi, a Democrat who along with Mike Thompson, another Democrat, represents the surrounding region in Congress, said he had been trying to figure out the company’s identity for four years.

“I couldn’t find out anything,” he said.

Representative John Garamendi, Democrat of California, said he had been trying to figure out Flannery’s identity for four years. | Rich Pedroncelli / Associated Press.

On Friday, he said that had suddenly changed. This week representatives for Flannery reached out to him and other elected officials requesting meetings about their plans. That meeting is now being scheduled, he said.

“This is their first effort, ever, to talk to any of the local representatives, myself included,” he said.

The land that Flannery has been purchasing is not zoned for residential use, and even in his 2017 pitch, Mr. Moritz acknowledged that rezoning could “clearly be challenging” — a nod to California’s notoriously difficult and litigious development process.

To pull off the project, the company will almost certainly have to use the state’s initiative system to get Solano County residents to vote on it. The hope is that voters will be enticed by promises of thousands of local jobs, increased tax revenue and investments in infrastructure like parks, a performing arts center, shopping, dining and a trade school.

The financial gains could be huge, Mr. Moritz said in the 2017 pitch. He estimated the return could be many times the initial investment just from the rezoning, and far more if and when they started building.

“If the plans materialize anywhere close to what is being contemplated, this should be a spectacular investment,” Mr. Moritz wrote.

The Bay Area is among the country’s most expensive regions, even after rent and home prices fell after the pandemic. Economists and housing experts have for decades blamed a longstanding housing shortage and California’s inability to build enough to meet demand.

Mr. Moritz nodded to this in the email to the investor, arguing that “this effort should relieve some of the Silicon Valley pressures we all feel — rising home prices, homelessness, congestion etc.” He added that his group had secured some 1,400 acres for less than $5,000 per acre. The price per acre has since escalated, and the company’s most recent purchases have neared $20,000 per acre, according to court documents and people familiar with the matter.

The purchases burst into public view this spring when lawyers for Flannery filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court, accusing landowners of colluding to inflate prices.

The group focused on Jepson Prairie and Montezuma Hills, an agricultural patch of eastern Solano County between the cities of Fairfield and Rio Vista, according to the lawsuit. This area is mostly unpopulated and covered with ranches, windmills and power lines.

ravis Air Force Base’s proximity to the land deals prompted speculation about the motives of the people behind Flannery. | Jim Wilson / The New York Times.

In November 2018, the company sent offers to “most landowners in this area,” the lawsuit said, and included incentives such as allowing sellers to retain income from wind turbines, as well as stay on the properties rent-free under long-term lease-back agreements. Over the five years, the company purchased some 140 properties from 400 owners, the lawsuit said.

This month, a lawyer representing landowners jointly filed a motion to dismiss the case. In July, three landowners said they had reached a potential settlement with Flannery. Other owners could not be reached for comment this week, or had declined to do so.

As the offers continued and prices escalated, landowners in Solano County started buzzing about who was buying so much land for so much money.

“They would come with an offer of four and five times over the market at the time,” Ms. Moy said. “They were deals that they couldn’t pass up.”

Flannery’s offers were creating multimillionaires across the county, but no one seemed to know what the mysterious company intended to do with land that now amounted to a large chunk of the entire county.

That changed last week, when residents started receiving texts and emails with a poll gauging their opinions on a number of questions. One asked them to rate the favorability of several names including “Joe Biden,” “Donald Trump” and “Flannery Associates.” Another question began with a description of a possible ballot initiative for a project that “would include a new city with tens of thousands of new homes, a large solar energy farm, orchards with over a million new trees, and over 10,000 acres of new parks and open space.”

Ms. Moy cited poor infrastructure, including the two-lane highway bisecting the region that she said was already clogged by super-commuters driving to the edges of the Bay Area and beyond. The area is also prone to regular droughts and is at high risk for wildfires.

“It seems very pie in the sky,” she said.