All posts by Roger Straw

Editor, owner, publisher of The Benicia Independent
Benicia City Council

Benicia City Council to ratify emergency proclamation

UPDATE: An emergency “virtual” Benicia City Council meeting was held on March 19.  The procedings are available in audio only on the City’s website.
See also “Benicia City Council “virtual meeting” Thurs 3/19, public can watch but cannot attend“

Benicia City Council to ratify emergency proclamation on Thursday

Vallejo Times-Herald, by John Glidden, March 18, 2020 at 3:28 p.m. 

BENICIA — The City Council has called an emergency meeting Thursday to ratify a proclamation of local emergency and conduct other essential city business amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

City Hall canceled the council’s regular meeting scheduled for Tuesday over fears of spreading the novel coronavirus.

Councilors will be asked to ratify City Manager Lorie Tinfow’s March 15 proclamation declaring a local emergency in the city of Benicia. Council ratification is required within seven days after a proclamation is announced.

The proclamation allows Benicia to seek reimbursement funds, and further allow “the city to enact regulations and orders to assist in responding to COVID-19 pandemic,” a city staff report states.

The five-person council will also decide three other issues, including a $47,500 contract with Chabin Concepts for on-call economic development services to implement various action plans for the Benicia Industrial Park Vision 2020 Plan, the 2015 Benicia Industrial Park Marketing Plan, the 2012 Business Development Action Plan, and assist in organizing the 2020 Clean Tech Expo.

They will also decide on approving a task order with Coastland Civil Engineering, Inc. for construction inspection services of the Bayshore Road/ East J and K Streets Sewer Improvement Project at a not-to-exceed cost of $85,195, and adopt a resolution approving a task order with Cullen-Sherry & Associates, Inc. for professional engineering services to design the Bayshore Road sewer lateral crossovers at a not-to-exceed cost of $18,500.

City officials say the general public may still attend the meeting in person by they are urging individuals not to do so. Officials say the public can view the meeting online or via television.

“As always, the public may submit public comments in advance and may view the meeting from home,” officials said.

Comments submitted prior to 3 p.m. Thursday will be presented to the council and included in the public record for the meeting, city officials said. Comments can be submitted to Benicia City Clerk Lisa Wolfe, lwolfe@ci.benicia.ca.us.

The Benicia City Council will meet at 6 p.m. Thursday, inside the Benicia City Hall Council Chambers, Benicia City Hall, 250 East L St.

How to Watch the Meeting:
1) Cable T.V. Broadcast on Channel 27
2) Livestream online at www.ci.benicia.ca.us/agendas.

How to Submit Public Comments:
Comments submitted by 3:00 p.m. prior to the commencement of the meeting will be presented to the City Council and included in the public record for the meeting. Comments can be submitted by email to lwolfe@ci.benicia.ca.us.

…THE ITEMIZED AGENDA FOLLOWS, HERE…

Coronavirus, Covid 19, Solano County courts

Solano courts seek leave to delay some cases due to Covid-19

Fairfield Daily Republic, by Todd R. Hansen, March 19, 2020

FAIRFIELD — Solano County Superior Courts is seeking an emergency order from the chief justice of the state Supreme Court to allow certain operations and court matters to be delayed due to Covid-19.

The actions would be in place through April 3, a statement released by the court said. The court remains open, but is looking for permission to continue the following matters:

• Civil, family and probate trials.
• Small claims matters.
• Unlawful detainer matters.
• Traffic matters except for trials already scheduled.
• Guardianship and conservatorship matters, with the exception of emergency orders.
• Most family law matters.
• Most criminal trials.

All clerk’s offices are closed to the public. All transactions with the clerk’s offices will be handled via drop box, telephone or through email.

These continuances are intended to reduce the number of jurors, parties and attorneys in the court, consistent with Gov. Gavin Newsom’s executive order dated March 12, the Solano County courts report.

Coronavirus, Covid 19, Vallejo CA

Vallejo emergency orders: curbside medical marijuana, essential businesses, no evictions

Greg Nyhoff issues emergency orders for medical weed, evictions, and essential businesses

Vallejo Times-Herald, by John Glidden, March 18, 2020 at 6:02 p.m.
Nyhoff

Allowing the city’s cannabis businesses to offer curbside pick-up of medical marijuana is one of three orders issued Wednesday by Vallejo City Manager Greg Nyhoff, amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nyhoff’s orders also included keeping essential businesses open to the public, while limiting residential and business evictions in the city.

The orders come just two days after the Vallejo City Council approved a proclamation declaring a local state of emergency as a result of the coronavirus outbreak. The move also gives Nyhoff emergency powers as Vallejo’s director of emergency services.

“These three orders really help to keep the city safe,” Vallejo Mayor Bob Sampayan said by phone on Wednesday. “They also keep the city up and running.”

The city’s 11 cannabis storefront businesses are now allowed to “conduct curbside pick­-up of medical cannabis goods under video surveillance or under monitor of the retailer’s security personnel,” the order states. Retailers are still required to check a customer’s age under state law.

Nyhoff stated that such businesses are essential health care operations. His second order listed almost every type of business as essential, including grocery stores, certified farmers’ markets, food banks, convenience stores, and other establishments engaged in the retail sale of canned food, dry goods, fresh fruits, businesses that provide food, shelter, and social services, and other necessities of life for economically disadvantaged or otherwise needy individuals.

Also listed as essential were newspapers, and other media services, gas stations and auto-supply, auto-repair, and related facilities, banks and related financial institutions, hardware stores, plumbers, electricians, exterminators, and other service providers who provide services that are necessary to maintaining the safety, sanitation, and essential operation of residences.

The order further identifies businesses providing mailing and shipping services, including post office boxes, educational institutions, laundromats, dry cleaners, and laundry service providers, restaurants and other facilities that prepare and serve food, airlines, taxis, and other private transportation providers providing transportation services necessary for essential activities and other purposes expressly authorized in Nyhoff’s order.

The order stipulates that Nyhoff is “to assist continuing services of an Essential Business and to support its operations to maintain financial feasibility, that any Essential Business is able to provide delivery services of its products to all residents of the City of Vallejo.”

Finally, Nyhoff declared that all residential and business evictions based on a tenant’s loss of income or need to pay out-of-pocket medical expenses due to COVID-19 are prohibited.

All three orders stay until the council rescinds the emergency proclamation they approved on Monday.

For more information, visit cityofvallejo.net/NCOV.

Donald Trump, National security, President Joe Biden, Presidential politics

More than 80 national security professionals break with tradition and endorse a presidential candidate — Biden

Trump “has created an existential danger to the United States.”

Washington Post, by Ellen Nakashima , March 18, 2020 3:22 p.m. PDT
Former vice president Joe Biden participates in a Democratic presidential primary debate on March 15. (Mandel Ngan/Afp Via Getty Images)

More than 80 career national security professionals have signed an open letter of support for Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, saying that President Trump “has created an existential danger to the United States.”

Most of the signatories, who include career diplomats, intelligence officers and defense policymakers, have served both Republican and Democratic administrations. They noted that their policy views cover a spectrum and as officials they “have often been in opposition, sometimes bitterly, with each other.”

But in a letter published online Wednesday, they expressed a shared belief that Trump’s approach to leadership has undermined the country’s role in the world.

“His reelection would continue this downward spiral and will likely have catastrophic results,” say the signatories, most of whom have never publicly endorsed a candidate for president.

Doug Wise, a former CIA clandestine officer and former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, broke a career-long vow to serve in silence by signing the letter.

[Inside Trump’s frantic attempts to minimize the coronavirus crisis]

“We need to restore courtesy, respectability and consensus decision-making based not on the personal interests of Donald J. Trump but on the personal interests of Americans,” said Wise, who retired in 2016 after 48 years of government service.

Wise, who leans Republican, said that he has never voted for president, content to trust in the American democratic system “to produce a good president and commander in chief.” But the system has failed, he said. So this November, he said, he will cast his first vote for president — for Biden.

Larry Pfeiffer, former senior director of the White House Situation Room and a former chief of staff to then-CIA Director Michael Hayden, said he leans Republican. “If Donald Trump wasn’t running, and it was Mitt Romney versus Joe Biden, I’d be endorsing Mitt Romney,” he said. “And I probably wouldn’t be public about it.”

Pfeiffer, who served five presidents dating to Ronald Reagan, said he sees himself as nonpartisan, so much so that endorsing a candidate feels like “an unnatural act.”

Margaret Henoch, a former CIA officer who joined the agency in the Reagan administration, agreed that a public endorsement is “absolutely” unheard of for career professionals. But these are not normal times, she said.

Henoch said her endorsement is “not political.” It’s driven by a desire to restore “the stability of the country and the world and the respect for the role and function of government” in a democratic society.

Paul Rosenzweig said he was a Republican but became an independent in 2017 because “the standard-bearer for my party no longer represented the values that I think the party should stand for.”

“Even though I am sure I will disagree with much of what [Biden] does, I am also certain that the overall result will be far superior under Biden than under Trump,” said Rosenzweig, who served as a senior policy adviser at the Department of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush and as a senior counsel to Independent Counsel Kenneth Starr in the Clinton administration.

James R. Clapper Jr., a former director of national intelligence who entered government service in the Kennedy administration and retired in 2017, has voted “both ways” in federal elections. He considers himself a “Democrat domestically and a Republican in the foreign and national security realm.”

He, too, said he would vote for Biden. “I just think he would represent, if elected, a restoration of normality to the country,” said Clapper, a retired Air Force lieutenant general who served in five Democratic and five Republican administrations.