Benicia elections, Valero PAC

Benicians for Clean Elections: An open letter to Valero

By Benicians For Clean Elections (BCE), published in the Vallejo Times-Herald, Aug 26, 2022, AND in the Benicia Herald, Sept 4, 2022

To: Valero Energy Corporation
Cc: Valero Benicia Refinery, Working Families for a Strong Benicia Political Action Committee

In the interest of clean elections and clean air, residents of Benicia and surrounding communities ask you, a Texas-based Fortune 50 company, to stop using your “Working Families” political action committee and tremendous resources to influence our city council and mayoral elections.

If you nevertheless persist in funding the PAC, we ask that you limit your spending and campaign practices in order to:

  • Abide by Benicia’s Contribution and Spending Limits Ordinance, which limits individual donations to $640 per candidate, and similarly curtail the PAC’s massive non-donation spending through mailings, ads, phone calls and polling.
  • Abide by Benicia’s Voluntary Code of Fair Campaign Practices, which sets ethical standards for campaign practices.
  • In any Working Families online, printed and other materials, clearly and prominently inform the public that you, Valero, are the main funder of the PAC.

Instead of complying with the Spending Limits Ordinance, the Working Families PAC has spent over 230,000 in each of the last several elections, backing one or two candidates and opposing others. This puts Benicia residents and candidates at a huge disadvantage.

Since the city adopted its campaign finance ordinance, all of the candidates signed a pledge to campaign ethically and abide by the city’s spending limits and standards. Yet, your PAC has never agreed to follow the rules that everyone else must abide by. You are by far the dominant spender on Benicia’s elections, dwarfing the expenditures of all candidates combined.

In the interest of “decency, honesty and fair play,” the Code asks that candidates and PACs pledge to not use “character defamation, libel, slander, or scurrilous attacks … including whispering campaigns involving such statements.” Past elections have seen the Working Families PAC violate this prohibition by calling candidates “job killers,” running misleading polls, photo manipulation, misrepresenting candidates’ records, and engaging in harsh, negative campaigning that has divided our community.

Elections have consequences. One can only wonder at your goals and intentions in funneling so much money into elections which should only be decided by Benicia voters. The issues that have been or could be considered by the city council, and that you might look to influence, include:

  • Whether you would bring back to Benicia the potentially deadly “Crude-by-Rail” project proposal that the council defeated in 2016, which would have brought through our industrial park the kind of fuel-carrying railroad cars that derailed, exploded and killed 47 people in a Canadian city in 2013.
  • Your unreported release into Benicia’s air of toxic emissions thousands of times (see correction to follow here) in excess of legal limits, reaching back to 2003.
    • CORRECTION:  “Our letter to Valero included an error in the extent of Valero’s Benicia Refinery emissions. The letter said Valero had failed to report ‘release into Benicia’s air of toxic emissions thousands of times in excess of legal limits, reaching back to 2003.’  That was incorrect.
      Valero released about 4,000 pounds a day in Non-Methane Hydrocarbons. The legal limit for such emissions is 15 pounds. That is hundreds—not thousands—of times over the limit. Valero also released 138 tons of toxic air contaminants from 2003 through 2020. These contaminants included Benzene. This information was presented by the Bay Area Air Quality Management District in its community meeting in Benicia.”  – Benicians for Clean Elections       www.beniciansforcleanelections.org
  • Your continual requests to lower your property tax assessment, which impacts city finances.
  • Your relatively low water rate payments, given that you use 60 percent of our raw water.

None of our requests are intended to prevent you or your employees from having a voice in Benicia’s election. We only ask that it not drown out Benicians’ voices.

Nor do we doubt the integrity or dedication of Valero’s hardworking employees, some of them our neighbors. But in order to be a good neighbor, the Corporation needs to contribute to clean elections and clean air.

So, keep your PAC out of our elections.

If you will not do that, then sign Benicia’s Voluntary Code of Fair Campaign Practices, limit your donations to $640 per candidate just like everyone else in Benicia, and similarly limit your non-donation spending through polling, ads, calls and mailings.

Be a good neighbor — make our elections clean and fair.

Respectfully,

Benicians for Clean Elections
https://www.beniciansforcleanelections.org/

Benicia City Council, Kari Birdseye, Terry Scott

Nikki Basch Davis: Remember! …and vote for Birdseye and Scott

It is imperative to remember the shameful manner of our last two elections

By Nikki Basch Davis, September 1, 2022

Nikki Basch Davis, Benicia CA

To the citizens of Benicia:

With the elections for council in our town approaching, it is imperative to remember the shameful manner of our last two elections when our mailboxes were filled with glossy propaganda showing distorted faces of candidates with truth twisting lies about their history and conduct.

It is important for our town not to be influenced by campaigns supported by very large contributions funneled to special interest PACs by large corporations.

By the end of the day, the candidates that have the funds to place the biggest signs around town and create a stream of expensive glossies that arrive in every mailbox are the candidates that will be beholden to those corporations when the time comes for council to vote on what is best for our children’s health and wellbeing.

The fact that Valero builds football fields for our schools does not compensate for our children growing up in a town listed by the American Lung Association as having the highest rate of asthma in the state.

When I choose my candidates, I choose the ones with no present or past ties to those corporations. Therefore, my choices are Kari Birdseye and Terry Scott.

Nikki Basch Davis
Benicia

More letters, news & links about Kari here on the BenIndy

And best of all – Kari’s website!

Kari Birdseye For Benicia City Council 2022
https://karibirdseyeforbenicia.com
Arsenal Park, Benicia

President Lincoln’s Historic Benicia Arsenal in Peril – Former Mayor Elizabeth Patterson

[Excellent background here on why oppose current plans for new construction in Benicia’s historic Arsenal District.  To sign a petition in support of a lawsuit to stop the plan, see “Help Us Appeal the City’s Approval of these projects!” on Change.org.  For additional background and photos, see “YES! Benicia Arsenal Park“.   Earlier stories on BenIndy see below.  – R.S.]

New efforts to save our National Treasure

EL PAT’S FORUM

by ELIZABETH PATTERSON
Benicia, California

August 3, 2022

One woman is responsible for listing most of the historic structures in the Historic Arsenal of Benicia. Ms. Wold, a graduate of University of California at Berkeley (UCB), recognized that the city leaders in 1965 were focused on surviving the Army’s closure of the Arsenal and loss of jobs and business.  Therefore Ms. Wold filled out the forms – around 90 – and got the historic structures listed. State Parks and Recreation was interested in establishing a State Park for the mostly early portion of barracks, garrison, officer quarters, infirmary and enclave of Civil War Era buildings. President Lincoln commissioned the garrison and barracks – about 120 acres – to ensure Union presence to prevent Confederate efforts to make California a slave state. Think about that.

But the city leaders showed little interest in the history and even did a land swap that put many historic structures at risk. Witness the demolition of the 1860s Foundry and Pacific Mail Steamship company office building just three years ago. While Mayor I used my office as a bully pulpit for saving or at least respecting these structures as the last tangible evidence of the first industrial site in California. It was a struggle. At least the city was able to negotiate a settlement price with Amports that will help preserve other historic structures. But none on the list are the first industrial buildings.  Gone. Part of the settlement was to develop a “demolition by neglect ordinance” – an ordinance to prevent intentional or neglect and then seek a demolition permit to tear down. I don’t have the exact numbers but we are talking about more than 20 or so historic structures demolished by this strategy.

The city brushed off the State’s proposal for a State Park and embarked on permitting industrial and commercial development with no master plan, limited infrastructure improvement and legacy problems of pollution that range from monitoring to major cleanup or mitigation – in 2003 dollars about $50 million that ultimately was reimbursed to the developers by the Army. Yep. The United States Army left stuff that could be catastrophic. Some areas can never be safe and that is why we have a few open spaces with trails and not homes.

In the early 2000s there was a “McMansion”* proposal of 16 large, expensive homes for the Historic District C – between the Commanding Officers’ Quarters and Jefferson Mansion and the open space and parade grounds. The city council certified a report that declared there was no environmental impact and approved the project. No impact to the President Lincoln commissioned Arsenal. No impact to the historic parade ground and oak trees planted like sentinel soldiers to guard the Civil War enclave.  A large and passionate group organized, sued the city for failure to asses the impacts and also gathered signatures for a referendum on the city council approval. The applicant and city settled with us and we put the money toward beginning restoration of the Commanding Officers’ Quarters where Arts Benicia is now. 

The Secretary of the Interior and the State Office of Historic Preservation have written in the past that too many new structures will impact the historic integrity of the district. It may be removed from the National Register.  President Lincoln’s commissioned Arsenal – removed from the National listing because the city leaders acquiesce to misguided state legislation that the city interprets in a manner that favors the applicants.

Here are the links to the appeals filed by Benicia Arsenal Park Task Force and Benicia Arsenal Defense.

*In suburban communities, McMansion is a pejorative term for a large “mass-produced” dwelling marketed to the upper middle class.

P.S The first link is one appeal and the second link is the other appeal – just can’t make a link work for two documents. I hope you read them. They are short.

See earlier on BenIndy:

Anti-racism, Benicia Black Lives Matter, Education

Latest ‘Our Voices’ – With the right approach to learning


BENICIA BLACK LIVES MATTER
…OUR VOICES…

From BeniciaBlackLivesMatter.com
[See also: About BBLM]

“With the right approach to learning, I know our schools can provide a more holistic, respectful, and equitable educational experience for all of our young people in the future. “

August 29, 2022
Branden Ducharme, White male, age 20
Lifetime Benicia resident

As a person who spent all of their elementary and secondary education in Benicia schools, I can vouch for the consistent underlying tones of racism that run through the school system and much of the student body.  I witnessed it regularly.  Sometimes I was a part of it – not to be deliberately demeaning, but because I wasn’t aware.  

There were passing comments among the students that denigrated students of color, and of course, racially biased jokes.  There was self segregation of the various races during lunch and breaks, which I believe is because kids do not feel welcomed or comfortable with students who are unlike themselves.  There were incidences of students using racial slurs towards other students to deliberately insult them, particularly when tempers flared.   

To my shame and embarrassment, I can recall repeating a racially insulting joke about police shootings when I was in the fourth grade. I had heard the joke from older friends, one of whom was an adult and staff member at an afterschool center I attended. They were all laughing at the punchline, so I thought it was cool. I shared this “joke” with my friends at school, a few of whom were Black.  To their credit, my Black friends called me on it. They complained to the administration. I was called into the principal’s office to be reprimanded, rightfully so. Rather than have a proper discussion about the reality of racism in America and the interpersonal and societal impacts of racist jokes, racial bias, and exploiting Black trauma, I was merely told that my joke was offensive and racist. There was no in-depth analysis of what “racist” truly means. I was made to reflect on my racist comment and write a letter of apology to my peers. However, how can one reflect without proper guidance at such a young age? How can one genuinely apologize for what they do not fully understand? Sadly and understandably, the friends who reported me chose to no longer remain friends with me.  Their actions said way more than the principal (who evidently is now a prominent figure in the district and a roadblock to anti-racist initiatives) had, and losing their friendship was the bigger part of this life lesson for me. I could see their pain and disgust but I did not understand the roots of it, which was a failure on the part of Benicia schools. 

Racism is prevalent systemically as well. For example, in my thirteen years in the District I can only recall three Black teachers and one Black administrator.  As an aside, the Black high school administrator was the friendliest and most positive vice principal I have yet to encounter, yet he was dismissed mid-year and replaced by a more conservative and traditional white woman who was not able to make the connections with the students that her predecessor forged.  Discipline, when involving white students and students of Color, typically favored the white students. And if highly charged and insulting racial slurs were the provocation of an escalated situation, the impact of those remarks were not validated or treated as very significant when directed at a student of Color.

One of my biggest concerns about the perpetuation of racism in the schools is the curriculum.  Most of the history and literary texts used in Benicia schools are very white-centric. They approach history primarily from the experiences and perspective of the white settlers and their progeny, while largely ignoring the violence, betrayal and subjugation that whites frequently committed upon others from that point forward. History curriculum is rarely, if ever, presented from the perspective of Black, Asian, Indigenous, or Latin people, nor the many other populations and cultures that make up this country.  We did discuss slavery and civil rights but only minimally and, for the most part, only during Black history month.  The literature introduced in school was nearly always written by whites, and most commonly about whites, rather than reading books from the wealth of important and excellent literature written by marginalized voices. I can only imagine how minimized students of Color feel when their history and culture is largely ignored by the very school from which they are getting their basic education.  

As I got older, I became more aware of prevailing racism, both at school and in the community.  Around age 15, I was walking around First Street with two Black male friends. It was a weekend evening around 9pm, and we were laughing at something funny one of us said. As we passed by Sailor Jacks, a middle-aged white woman exited the restaurant, and came towards us, clearly angry at something.  She was obviously inebriated and immediately directed her anger at my friends for laughing too loudly.  She did not address me, even though I was participating in the hilarity.  My friends were harassed and berated for disturbing a supposedly quiet night when her own behavior, in my opinion, was out of line.  She was loud, she was publicly intoxicated, and she was racially biased in her actions. Most importantly, we were doing nothing wrong, yet for some reason, this woman’s bias guided her self-proclaimed right to treat those she thought socially beneath her with inappropriate contempt.  

I have found that it is easy to be racist and not even know it.  People, those who are white in particular, develop bad patterns because they are not taught early enough to be more open, accepting, and equitable in their minds and actions. Social and interpersonal conditioning make bad behaviors even more difficult to unlearn.  Our experiences in elementary and secondary school have a huge impact on who we become as people. As I prepare to attend UCLA this fall to study sociology, I am making it my goal to generate change within this inherently racist country. With the right approach to learning, I know our schools can provide a more holistic, respectful, and equitable educational experience for all of our young people in the future. Schools are a vessel for change, insofar as what is taught in them reflects a desire to confront inequality, racism, sexism, patriarchy, and all other forms of bigotry or flawed ideology.

Previous ‘Our Voices’ stories here on the BenIndy at
Benicia Black Lives Matter – Our Voices
     or on the BBLM website at
beniciablacklivesmatter.weebly.com/ourvoices