BISHO.org

NO KIDDING! …

By Stephen Golub, Benicia resident and author, “Benicia and Beyond” column in the Benicia Herald, Mar 23, 2025

On Tuesday, April 1, at 6 pm, the Benicia City Council will meet at City Hall (250 East L Street) to discuss and conduct its presumably final, vital vote on the draft Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) that will help protect Benicians against potential fires, explosions and toxic emissions connected to the Valero Refinery and other facilities the ordinance will cover.

Because this is the final up-or-down vote on the ISO, it is important  to attend and show your support – preferably in person, but also by Zoom if necessary. For more background on this issue, plus a link to the City site where you can find the meeting agenda and Zoom link, please go to bisho.org, the site of the Benicia Industrial Safety and Health Ordinance citizens’ group.

The ISO, which simply gets Benicia a seat at the table in monitoring covered facilities’ operations, emissions, incidents and accidents, represents well over a year of very hard work by Council Members Kari Birdseye and Terry Scott, as well as Fire Chief Josh Chadwick and other City personnel. Much of their extensive effort has occurred in the face of little cooperation and at times hostile opposition by Valero or its allies, despite these officials’ attempts to constructively engage the Texas oil giant’s representatives.

Valero may yet again try to get people opposed to the ISO to show up and even pack the room (as it did earlier this month at a previous City Council meeting), so your attendance for this vital vote is extremely important.

At that last meeting, a number of local organizations spoke in appreciation of Valero’s financial support for their activities. While that is certainly their right to do so and I appreciate the good things they do, I must say that in my decades of work with and study of hundreds of nonprofits, I’ve never encountered a situation where such group spoke in favor of their financial benefactors at an unrelated public meeting. I hope they realize that a key reason many corporations provide such financial support is specifically to encourage political support when needed.

To be frank, I don’t know the exact time the discussion of the ISO will start. But if you show up by 5:30 pm, you will have a greater chance of getting seats in the Chambers, but there will be overflow space just in case.

Those inclined to speak in favor of the ISO or otherwise voice their concerns about why it is important should certainly  do so. If this meeting unfolds the same way as previous ones, there will be forms at the back of the Council Chambers for registering to speak. But even if you don’t fill out such a form, you’ll have an opportunity to voice your opinions.

This is our last, best chance to establish an ISO that will get Benicia a seat at the table to protect the health and safety of our kids, our seniors and everyone else in our wonderful city. It will enable us to have the same kind of ISO that every other refinery-hosting community in the Bay Area has.

As always, in criticizing Valero I’m by no means doubting the value of its current and former employees as friends and neighbors. They’re wonderful folks. But they’re not the same as the San Antonio-based corporation that has a lousy environmental track record (to the point of even being sued by the very conservative and oil industry-friendly Texas Attorney General) and that calls the shots on its Benicia refinery’s operations.

In other news, with a big hat tip to the invaluable Benicia Independent (an online news, opinion and advocacy resource well worth checking out and subscribing to), here are some other chances to participate in our democracy this week, as well as to help ensure its survival.

April 3 (and planned for every Thursday), 5-6:30 pm: Benicia Vigil for Democracy, City Park (First and Military). A gathering to show support for democracy.

April 5, 11 am – noon: Tesla Take Down Vallejo (Tesla Showroom, 1001 Admiral Callaghan Lane, Vallejo). A peaceful protest against Tesla’s owner, Elon Musk, for his work defunding and undermining US Government programs and institutions ranging from Social Security to the US Agency for International Development.

April 5. Hands off! National Day of (pro-democracy) Action. Demonstrations in various locations, including Sacramento, Berkeley, Pleasant Hill and Walnut Creek.

April 5, 10 am – 6 pm: Fiestas Primavera, City Park (First and Military). A festival celebrating Spring and Latin American culture.

Finally and on a lighter note, in view of Trump’s interest in the U.S. acquiring the semi-autonomous Danish territory of Greenland, there’s a completely facetious site called denmarkification.com that seeks to raise $1 trillion (again, this is just a joke) for Denmark to buy California. Check out the reasons for that wonderful country to acquire our unique state!

Hat tips: Benicia Independent, BF