Tag Archives: Vallejo Sun

SafeQuest, Scott Morris, Vallejo Sun

Benicia proceeds with SafeQuest Solano housing project, despite controversy

SafeQuest Solano executive director Mary Anne Branch speaks at a Benicia City Council meeting on Tuesday. | City of Benicia.

The city council sidestepped allegations made by former employees that SafeQuest’s shelters went largely unused for months.

Vallejo Sun, by Scott Morris, November 9, 2023

BENICIA – The Benicia City Council on Tuesday voted unanimously to proceed with a plan to sell city-owned property to the nonprofit SafeQuest Solano to open new transitional housing for victims of domestic violence, sexual assault and human trafficking, despite recent allegations that SafeQuest has misused public resources.

The council’s vote followed an emotional public hearing where proponents of the organization read statements from survivors who had been assisted by SafeQuest and one woman gave an account of leaving an abusive marriage and staying with her children in a safe house operated by SafeQuest for three weeks.

But members of the city council sidestepped allegations made by former employees that SafeQuest’s shelters went largely unused for months and that an attorney for the organization lived in a shelter rented from the city of Fairfield for $1 per year. The allegations, reported by the Vallejo Sun in June, have spurred calls for an investigation and led to eroding support for the organization.

Each councilmember reported during the meeting that they met with SafeQuest executive director Mary Anne Branch privately to address concerns. But the councilmembers did not ask for a public explanation. Branch and SafeQuest have declined to answer questions from the Vallejo Sun, both before and after publication of the June investigation.

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Fairfield CA, Housing, Scott Morris, Vallejo CA, Vallejo Sun

Tonight, Benicia considers awarding city property to controversial nonprofit SafeQuest Solano

A SafeQuest advocate said she encountered a lawyer for the organization outside a shuttered safe house in 2021. | Illustration by Tyler Lyn Sorrow.

SafeQuest has faced eroding support and calls for an investigation into its practices after a Vallejo Sun investigation.

Vallejo Sun, by Scott Morris, November 6, 2023

BENICIA – The Benicia City Council will consider at its meeting Tuesday whether to sell or lease two city-owned buildings to be used as shelters by SafeQuest Solano, a nonprofit that provides domestic violence support services.

A proposed resolution on Tuesday’s Benicia City Council agenda does not say how much the city would charge SafeQuest to purchase or lease the property, which totals about 3,100 square feet across both buildings. Another nonprofit, House of Hope, which focuses mainly on rehabilitation facilities, would help operate the shelter, according to the resolution.

SafeQuest has faced eroding support and calls for an investigation into its practices after a Vallejo Sun investigation published in June reported that former employees said that its existing shelters were sparsely used and SafeQuest allowed an attorney for the organization to live at a shelter rented from the city of Fairfield for $1 per year.

Benicia City Manager Mario Giuliani and community development director Suzanne Thorsen did not respond to a request for comment. SafeQuest Executive Director Mary Anne Branch did not respond to written questions.

The contract with Benicia would come as the city of Fairfield considers cutting ties with SafeQuest. Following the publication of the Sun article, Fairfield issued a request for proposals to find a new operator for its shelter.

However, only SafeQuest submitted a proposal, according to Fairfield Mayor Catherine Moy. SafeQuest has sought a long-term extension of their lease since last year, but amid questions about how the property was being used, has remained on a month-to-month lease.

Moy said that she has no plans to bring a new lease for a vote by the City Council and that Fairfield City Manager David Gassaway “continues to be uncomfortable with extending the contract.”

According to Moy, Branch met with Fairfield city officials to dispute the Sun’s reporting on its shelters. SafeQuest has declined to answer any questions from the Sun and has not sought any corrections to the articles.

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News deserts, Print journalism, Vallejo Sun

The Vallejo Sun – Benicia residents should think about subscribing!

Local journalism is so important…

By Roger Straw, September 27, 2023

The Vallejo Sun is celebrating it’s second anniversary, and has earned my respect with excellent in-depth reporting on police, local government, schools, arts, and local events.  Recently, I re-subscribed with a voluntary increase in my annual renewal amount. You can subscribe here.

Understand – I’m a longtime supporter of our own small town press, the Benicia Herald, and our next door neighbor paper, the Vallejo Times-Herald. And gosh, wouldn’t ya know, I read the Benicia Independent, yes! I hope you do, too, because local journalism isn’t on firm ground anywhere in the U.S. these days. We need a variety of perspectives – and no one source can cover it all.

Here’s how Scott Morris of the Vallejo Sun puts it on the occasion of the Sun’s second anniversary:

Scott Morris, co-founder of the Vallejo Sun. Scott is a journalist who covers policing, protest, civil rights and far-right extremism. His work has been published in ProPublica, the Appeal and Oaklandside.

Dear readers,

I’m writing because the Vallejo Sun just passed a major milestone: Our second year anniversary. While this is cause for celebration, it remains to be seen whether we can keep going for another year. So I’m also asking for your help.

We founded the Vallejo Sun in 2021 because we saw a need for in-depth reporting about local government, policing, and extremist movements in the region. In 2022, we expanded to cover Vallejo’s rich arts and culture.

We hope you’ve enjoyed our in-depth reporting on police, local government, schools and arts, and have found our extensive event listings useful. We think it’s important to bring you the best information available. But we can’t do it without your help.

This year we’ve overcome some challenges. Our founding member John Glidden departed for a new role with the county. Upheaval at social media companies has made it harder for news publishers to reach consumers.

But we remain committed to bringing you the news and added six new contributors in the last year. These new voices have expanded our breadth of coverage and brought you even more of the in-depth news you’ve come to expect from us.

For the first time, you can make a tax deductible contribution to the Vallejo Sun through our fiscal sponsor, the Alternative Newsweekly Foundation. Your contribution means more work for local journalists and more thought-provoking, impactful stories.

Click here to make a tax deductible donation to the Vallejo Sun.

Click here to become a paid subscriber to the Vallejo Sun.

Air Monitoring, Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD), Benicia Community Air Monitoring Program (BCAMP), Valero Benicia Refinery

Benicia mayor says Valero’s latest alleged emissions violations ‘should bother all Benicia residents’

Valero Benicia Refinery. | Scott Morris / Vallejo Sun.

Vallejo Sun, by Scott Morris, August 10, 2023

BENICIA – The Bay Area Air Quality Management District announced Thursday that it had discovered continued violations at the Valero Benicia refinery during its investigation into years of toxic releases.

Specifically, the air district said that Valero had failed to install required pollution control equipment on eight pressure relief devices,  safety devices that prevent extreme over pressurization that could cause a catastrophic equipment failure. The violations led to 165 tons of illegal emissions, the air district said. [Emph. added by BenIndy contributor.]

The air district said it is seeking an abatement order from its independent hearing board that would require Valero to immediately correct the violations.

“The extensive violations discovered at Valero’s Benicia refinery are of great concern,” air district chief counsel Alexander Crockett said in a statement. “Our priority is to protect the health and well-being of our communities, and we will vigorously pursue enforcement measures to achieve cleaner and safer air for all residents of the Bay Area.”

A Valero spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Benicia Mayor Steve Young said in a statement that Valero’s alleged continued pattern of emissions violations is “particularly concerning” and “should bother all Benicia residents.”

“The City is also waiting, with increasing impatience, to see how the separate, bigger, case of 16 years of unreported hydrogen emissions will be ultimately resolved,” Young said. “The citizens of Benicia deserve much more transparency from the refinery about these operational deficiencies than we have been receiving.”

The air district discovered the violations during its investigation into the release of toxic emissions from a hydrogen vent at the refinery that went on for nearly 20 years. The air district separately obtained an abatement order for those violations last year, though by the time it revealed the excess emissions publicly, it had already worked with Valero to correct them for some time.

Those excess emissions were first detected by Valero in 2003 when it started measuring output from the hydrogen vent, but the air district believes it likely had been going on even earlier and has no measurements from that time.

Since 2003, the air district estimates that the vent was releasing about 4,000 pounds of hydrocarbons per day, far more than state regulations allow. Overall, the district found that Valero released more than 10,000 tons of excess hydrocarbons over 16 years, including 138 tons of toxic air contaminants ethylbenzene, tolyrene, zolerine and the especially carcinogenic benzene.

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Read more! As Air Quality is so essential to our health, you might want to check out these resources: