A taste of the French Quarter in Benicia – Dueling Pianos to return to St. Paul’s Courtyard (bring your instruments!)
– Artist Josie Grant’s ‘Jungle’ piano, featuring a natural scene with lush plants and colorful animals, is returning to First Street with Hippo. | Photo by Will Stockton.
May 26, 2024
This Thursday, May 30th, at 5:30pm, Benicia’s Arts and Culture Commission will host a community event St. Paul’s courtyard to celebrate the seasonal return of its two popular play-art pianos, Hippo and Jungle.
Inspired by the lively, collaborative atmosphere of New Orleans and its French Quarter’s musical scene, the Arts and Culture Commission has invited local musicians and performers to participate in a “Dueling Pianos” experience that is sure to attract music lovers from all ages and backgrounds.
Local officials are expected to speak before the commission launches an open mic opportunity available throughout Benicia’s 2024 Play-Art Piano Season, during Benicia’s weekly Farmer’s Markets, on Thursday evenings.
Community members are encouraged to bring all types of instruments to join in the festivities this Thursday’s Farmer’s Market for a fun, inclusive and very vibrant musical experience.
[Note from BenIndy: ENOUGH ALREADY. California Forever’s cynical use of the “job-hating NIMBYs” refrain to dismiss opposition to its new city needs to stop. With so much money at its disposal, CF’s PR team should be able to come up with something better than these lazy, insulting, and honestly embarrassing attempts to stifle discourse with mean-spirited and just plain silly generalizations. This manipulative spin factory is not only offensive but also an exercise in what younger generations would call CRINGE. For all the money they’re throwing around, they can’t even manage decent propaganda. A lot of good could come from how much cash is feeding this dying albatross, and it’s a shame to see it wasted on the development of talking points that have the same intellectual weight of a middle school bully’s playground taunt. We need affordable housing now, and it needs to be actually affordable.]
SOLANO COUNTY, Calif. — Opponents of California Forever’s East Solano Plan met Thursday afternoon to distribute lawn signs to share their disapproval of a proposed new Solano County city.“It will dramatically change life in Solano County,” said Marilyn Farley, of Solano Together. “I’m not in favor of it.”
Farley is part of a coalition of Solano County community members opposed to the proposed new city that has been pitched and backed by a group of Silicon Valley billionaires. The development would require thousands of acres of land — purchased by the investors and currently zoned for agricultural use —be rezoned for urban development.
“The traffic is a concern. The nearby habitat is a concern, vernal pools,” Farley said. “It’s just how they went about it and how secretive they were.”
On Thursday, Farley and others concerned about the project met in Vacaville for a sign pickup. Two opposition groups both produced signs to be handed out.
Michelle Trippi is an organizer of the Facebook group California ForNever. The name, she said, may be satirical but the online forum is a real place for people to share their concerns with the proposal and California Forever, she explained.
“I’m just opposed to the lack of transparency and dishonesty,” she said. “They could have sold me had they filled in the blanks, but there are just so many unknowns.”
Michael Fortney, California Forever’s director of partnerships, shared a statement with KCRA 3 in response to the opposition. It reads:
“We are delivering on the promises of the East Solano Plan. We protected Travis AFB, brought a dozen new employers who are excited to come to Solano County, and delivered $500,000 in nonprofit grants for the county. And Solano residents are recognizing that we can deliver – people are reaching out to me daily, excited and energized by what we can do together. Meanwhile, a small group of vocal opponents are busy chasing away new employers from Solano County, and preventing the building of homes that can keep our kids in Solano. Let’s not let a small minority shout down new ideas for Solano County and instead work together to build opportunity for everyone.”
Farley isn’t convinced. She said Solano Together will continue its work as a potential ballot measure that could go to voters this November.
“I never thought I’d be doing something like this,” she said. “We believe in Solano County and our way of life. We believe in protecting our farmland and our open space and we’re going to do what we can to protect it.”
The Solano County Registrar of Voters told KCRA 3 that California Forever submitted its petition to place the measure on the ballot with more than 20,000 signatures. Elections officials are in the process of verifying those signatures. An update is expected in mid-June.
A new group of Solano County residents has emerged to oppose the tech billionaire–proposed new city that many believe threatens Solano’s essential character and, ultimately, its future.
California ForNever is a nonpartisan grassroots group described as “a satirically titled group serious about opposing and calling out the lies and misinformation, continually perpetuated by Flannery, aka California Forever, aka “The East Solano Homes, Jobs & Clean Energy Initiative.” Its members have dedicated themselves to rallying residents to reject the development of a new city in Eastern Solano (a project once known as California Forever and now called the East Solano Plan), protecting residents against allegedly misleading claims made by the project’s funders, and safeguarding the county and its locals.
How to Say “No!”
Through its website, California ForNever is urging all Solano residents to fill out a brief form sharing why they are opposed or statements of opposition to California Forever/East Solano Plan; these will be presented to elected officials, including the Solano County Board of Supervisors, when they are considering the proposal.
Click the image to be redirected to the CaliforniaForNever.org Share Your Thoughts page to submit a comment.
Some submissions can be seen on a page called “Solano Speaks.” Comments range from specific to general, citing frustration with everything from the Flannery group’s lack of transparency, to the public antics of its leadership and major funders, to failures of local officials to properly disclose financial interest tied to the city’s realization, and more.
“The proposed California Forever project is not for Solano County,” one comment reads. “[…] Their ‘city’ isn’t for us either. It’s for Silicon Valley people.”
“We need economic growth yes,” another comment says, “but we need to invest in our towns and our communities not build a new one. Our Vice Mayor is violating the trust of his people by taking loans from these people in an act of quid pro quo.”
Vacaville’s Vice Mayor Greg Ritchie, who was by many accounts the first Solano public official to endorse the initiative, holds four DBAs (“Doing Business As” or “trade names”) connecting his home loans company to California Forever by name.
Swag, Signs and Merch Show Fellow Residents the Way
California ForNever is also encouraging residents opposed to the new city to purchase lawn signs and other merchandise to spread the word about the widespread opposition to the proposed development.
Clicking the image will redirect you to the page to purchase signs.
Signs come in various sizes and include stakes. California ForNever has also welcomed special requests for custom-sized signs, or banners, via email (info@californiafornever.org). Tees, stickers, hats, and more are also available at CaliforniaForNever.org/merch.
Clicking the image will redirect you to the page to purchase swag.
California ForNever and Solano Together, another group known for its opposition to the initiative, are unaffiliated; Solano Together is a coalition of organizations and groups operating political campaign, while California ForNever is staying out of the politics of the project to position itself as a community resource, providing news, updates, and fact-based information to Solano residents.
By Elizabeth Patterson, first published in the Benicia Herald on May 17, 2024
What is sustainable development?
Sustainable development has become a popular planning expression used abundantly but often not understood. “Sustainable development meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Benicia General Plan, 1999).
Most of us get that we need to reduce greenhouse gases that drive climate change and increase climate instability; in short, stop adding carbon to the atmosphere. The state has attempted to achieve this by adopting law to reduce vehicle miles traveled. This makes sense because 40% of carbon is from transportation, and so far there are not enough electric vehicles to drive down the amount of carbon from transportation.
If you support sustainable development, it is helpful to ask questions about the City of Benicia’s projects and processes. To what extent are the City’s decisions reducing greenhouse gases, or at least not increasing greenhouse gases? Everything is connected – economics, public works, land use, recreation, culture – like bones in a skeleton – it all has to work together by connecting the dots.
The first dot is, fortunately, defined in the Benicia General Plan. General Plans are the constitution of land-use planning. Like the U.S. Constitution, one cannot just have an idea and expect to implement it without an assessment of its consistency with the General Plan and thus its “sustainability.”
It is not advice, it is the law. Community development and sustainability are at the heart of the goals developed in the Benicia General Plan. I have heard from time to time that the General Plan is old – it is – and out of date – not really. Would a new, updated General Plan delete sustainable development? Anything could happen I suppose – one needs to stay alert.
The second dot is that the Benicia General Plan is the principal policy document for guiding future conservation and development in the city. It reflects the community’s shared values and determination of what Benicia is and should continue to be – an uncommonly special place. Just a quick read of the city-adopted Downtown Conservation Plan reveals how “uncommon” it is:
“The failure of the various attempts in the 19th century to transform Benicia into a major city has resulted in the retention of the scale and character of the historic downtown, which presents a rare view of the evolution of architecture from the mid-19th century to the 20th century in California.”
This means that one should not destroy the “evolution of architecture.” Goals expressed by city officials at public meetings to be like American Canyon’s “hotel row” is not protecting the gem of the uncommon qualities of Benicia attracting residents, visitors, and businesses.
The third dot to connect is the public process. You really ought to read about the public process involved developing the General Plan: start at page two here. People were engaged, met together, received mailed surveys, and we even had help from University of California at Davis for outreach, especially to young people.
Want to know what young people wanted? Check it out at the link. The General Plan is the outcome of a process which began with the General Plan Oversight Committee (GPOC) and the Work Program (1994–1997). It is a process in which the GPOC held more than one hundred meetings and, with public participation, identified the Goals, Policies, and Programs (GPPs) which are the heart of the General Plan.
The GPOC survey identified the following 10 issues receiving the highest level of support (69% or greater) as being important to the community:
Feeling safe in residential areas at night
Feeling safe Downtown at night [ed: this is before tree lights and mixed-use development in the early 2000s]
Good public schools
Balance growth to ensure maintaining Benicia’s quality of life
Small town atmosphere
Growth should maintain small-town character
Citizens need a voice in growth decisions
Attract businesses that sustain environmental quality
Pedestrian-friendly streets in the Downtown and other commercial areas
Library facilities
The fourth connecting dot is that while the City may decide to amend this plan, the primary position of the City will be to implement it as adopted. This will honor both the principle of stability and the extraordinary degree of community participation that went into the formation of the plan. In short, is the General Plan still in step with community values and conditions, to wit: sustainable development, reducing our carbon footprint for future generations’ quality of life?
The last dot to connect is the so-called Seeno project at Lake Herman Road and East Second. If we are going to reduce vehicle-miles traveled, do we build the stuff that has been built over decades for car-centric development? Or do we avoid business as usual and design and build projects that are walkable, clearly reducing the need for increasing vehicle miles travelled?
It is a simple question. Think of roads as bones. The bones tell us how we move.
Remember Lucy, Australopithecus, discovery by Donald Johanson? Lucy represents the transition from walking on four feet to walking on two feet by standing up. Bones tell it all.
Well, the roads of development are exactly the same: are we going to drive or walk? The transportation road design of any project will make that clear. Business as usual or taking the path for future generations to have a livable community and planet?
Here are three planning principles for walkability:
Don’t cluster commercial development in one blob,
Do integrated commercial in workplaces and near residential areas within walking distance, and
Don’t build suburban sprawl.
Watch the decisions about projects and you will learn if we are meeting the vision of sustainable development. God help us if we are not.
Elizabeth Patterson, MA Urban and Regional Planning
Mayor (2007-2020)
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