Knowing the price of everything and the value of nothingx

By Elizabeth Patterson

To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there are some state legislators who, along with the governor, know the price of everything and the value of nothing.

Duncan McDuffie, an early 20th century developer in San Francisco and Berkeley, once said: “Next to our fertile soil, California’s greatest single asset is the opportunity it offers for outdoor life. It would seem to be sound business for the state to see that its major opportunities for recreation and enjoyment of the out-of-doors are left open for the use and enjoyment of both its citizens and its visitors.”

California’s magnificent state parks — from the sublime to the spectacular — are facing the most severe budget cutbacks in state history. Having governed his way along with the Legislature to a $24.3 billion deficit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has set forth a shortsighted proposal to eliminate all funding for state parks. Only parks that make money, such as off-road vehicle parks, will remain open.

This means that about 80 percent of the parks will be shut down, starting as early as September. To put this in perspective, the public will soon be losing access to about 1.3 million acres of parkland — a vast expanse larger in area than all Native American-owned forest in the United States, the Grand Canyon and the entire state of Delaware.

Californians have fewer acres of state park system land available to them per capita today than at anytime since 1930. Today we are coping with the most severe economic recession since that time, but even in those Depression days, parks were maintained and expanded. One compelling reason why parks were kept open was because most people in the cities and towns did not have the means to access large rural open spaces; they depended on urban and regional parks, small and large.

Parks are important to our quality of life. Proximity to parks is one of the most important factors people consider when locating or purchasing a home or business, because parks increase property values while providing recreation and restorative benefits.

The governor and legislators clearly believe that eliminating park system funding makes economic sense. Let’s ask them to think again:

First, think about the effects of park closure on our downtown businesses. The Benicia State Capitol building contributes about $230,000 per year in economic activity in the city. And think about the effect of closure on our property values.

Second, California’s General Fund budget for parks amounts to less than one-tenth of 1 percent of the state budget. Our state parks serve as an enormous economic engine, attracting 80 million visitors a year and generating revenues of $2.1 billion in direct expenditures and $4 billion more in indirect spending. In exchange for comparatively small savings, the state would lose these tremendous sources of revenue, as well as thousands of jobs statewide.

A survey commissioned and funded by the California Parks and Recreation Department found that park visitors spend an average of $57.63 per visit, including $24.63 inside state parks and nearby communities, and $33 in communities more than 25 miles from the park being visited.
So what’s the alternative to zeroing out the California state park system?

As the Sacramento Bee reported this week, some have suggested raising fees. But the parks have done that four times in this decade, and attendance has declined. Others have suggested that state parks should use volunteers. But the parks already have 17,000 volunteers — and only 3,000 paid staff.

The parks have also partnered with the private sector to provide services and have raised millions from private sources to supplement public dollars. But none of this can fully replace the $140 million from the General Fund.

The California State Parks Foundation supports a proposal by former Assemblyman John Laird of Santa Cruz to increase the vehicle license fee by $15. In return, any car with California license plates would get free entrance to all state parks. This fee revenue would be more than enough to cover the $143 million in the General Fund, plus begin the backlog of maintenance and repair (about $1 billion). It may be enough to begin to reach the same level of park land per capita that we had in the 1930s.

It takes a two-thirds vote of the Legislature to pass this fee increase equal to one movie and popcorn once a year, so don’t hold your breath. But urge your friends who live in Republican districts to write their representatives to support this fee. See these Web sites for district maps and names:

• http://www.sen.ca.gov/ftp/SEN/senplan/senate.htp

• http://www.assembly.ca.gov/defaulttext.asp

California should not be so entirely void of vision that its state parks become playgrounds only for those who can pay large fees — or closed off entirely to the public. As the Sacramento Bee editorial said, “The Schwarzenegger administration seems to believe that you can simply shut the gates and reopen them ‘when the budget improves.’ They’re in la-la land. Closed parks will go feral — expect graffiti, fires, illegal camping, dumping and crime.”

There are only two state parks in Solano County. They are both here in Benicia: one small historic site downtown and one small coastal park between Benicia and Vallejo. Closing these parks is not an option.

Today, June 21, a Save Our Solano Parks Day of Action — a march/bike ride and rally — will be held to oppose the proposed closure of the Benicia State Recreation Area and the Benicia State Capitol Historic Park. The rally gets under way in the Benicia SRA at 9:30 a.m. (see front-page story for details on the issue).

The Day of Action is being conducted in conjunction with similar actions in state parks across California. The California State Parks Foundation, the Benicia State Parks Association and the California Native Plant Society Willis Linn Jepson Chapter are leading the efforts in Benicia. The city of Benicia will provide a city bus to take people who need a ride from the State Recreation Area to the State Capitol in downtown Benicia. Join us.

Elizabeth Patterson is mayor of Benicia.

Confessions of an Environmentalist for Earth Day

While in college I, as a student representative, had lunch with David Brower – an environmental hero. Over nearly 25 years we would take time at various conferences and events to talk. His resolve toward sustainability was resolute. He was fond of quoting Adlai Stevenson, who said in 1965:

"We travel together, passengers on a little space ship, dependent upon its vulnerable reserves of air and soil, all committed for our safety to its security and place, preserved from annihilation only by the care, the work and, I will say, the love we give our fragile craft. We cannot maintain it half fortunate, half miserable, half confident, half despairing, half slave to the ancient enemies of humankind, and half free in a liberation of resources undreamed of until this day. No craft, no crew, can travel safely with such vast contradictions. On their resolution depends the security of us all."

During my college days, I heard Senator Gaylord Nelson’s (D-Wisconsin) call for a nationwide "Environmental Teach-in," on college campuses. Working my way through college kept me too busy to be very active in things, but this one-day “environmental teach-in” event seemed perfect for me. And that was my first experience of the energy of a grassroots explosion. More than 20 million people from all parts of the country participated in the first Earth Day. Events were held in 10,000 schools, 2,000 colleges, and over 1,000 communities. I learned the lessons of the power of grassroots organizing and successfully influencing governmental and private change.

On the 25th Anniversary of Earth Day, Senator Nelson said, "It worked because of the spontaneous, enthusiastic response at the grassroots. Nothing like it had ever happened before. While our organizing on college campuses was very well done, the thousands of events in our schools and our communities were self-generated at the local level . . . They simply organized themselves. That was the remarkable thing that became Earth Day."

That grassroots legacy can be seen this Tuesday at our Council meeting where there will be a timely presentation on the status of the closure of the former IT Corporation Panoche Facility Class I Landfill. The facility occupied 248 acres and at one time contained 45 surface impoundments, two landfills, four waste piles, and five drum burial areas. Wastes managed at the Facility included caustic and acidic liquids and solids, petroleum refining sludges, catalyst, hydrogen sulfide abatement sludges, oily slurries, truck-washout debris, inorganic precipitates, contaminated soils, organic sludges, shredded currency, and paint pigment sludges. Waste management practices used at the facility included biological treatment, neutralization, evaporation in ponds, and burial of waste in landfills and trenches. The facility received between 80,000 and 220,000 tons of waste material per year from 1968 through 1986.

Local Benicia residents including Mayor Marilyn O’Rourke, Bob Berman, Marilyn Bardet, Mary Francis Kelly Po among a few others fought for the closure of the landfill because it leaked and was a public health threat. For this Earth Day we can celebrate their success. It was not easy. There were the skeptics that things could be so bad, government regulators who minimized the cleanup, and the responsible corporation who declared bankruptcy.

For years, environmental contamination was seen as the inevitable (and accepted) consequence of economic progress. As cities grew and industries flourished, toxic emissions polluted the air and wastes were dumped into waterways or buried in the ground. Benicia was no different.

In the 1960s, Rachel Carson wrote Silent Spring, exposing the health effects of pesticides and other chemicals on our birds, mammals and us. Others wrote passionately about squandering what once seemed like the country's limitless resources. The 60s word "environment" meant more than simply preserving wilderness areas or regulating the most obvious forms of pollution. Media coverage of disasters like the Santa Barbara oil spill focused popular concern on the environment threatened by human activities and the need for protection.

At times it seemed that every day there were newly discovered threats followed by new protections. Being able to have confidence in law makers and government to address air and water pollution, we saw their efforts to protect us from ourselves as the highest calling of responsible governance. My own path to becoming a public servant owes, in part, from the examples set by Congress and the California legislature’s bold environmental protection actions.

Environmental protection was not a Republican or Democratic issue and the best of both parties coalesced around the needed action. Of course, it could have been better, stronger and quicker, but it was done. A perfect example of this bipartisan and shared sense of responsibility is the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) established by President Nixon, followed by Congress's passing of a series of laws that regulated the introduction of pollutants into the nation's air and waterways, controlled the production of pesticides and other toxic substances, and required "cradle-to-grave" tracking of hazardous waste.

The 1970s have been called the "golden age" of environmentalism in the United States, but it was also a time when the nation first became aware of a serious threat to human health and the environment.

And that brings me back to Benicia. For it is due to those myriad laws passed, and the power of the EPA, that set the stage for those Benicia citizens’ efforts demanding state regulators investigate the Class I landfill at Lake Herman Road and close it – shut it down. Without all the public awareness, regulations, and grassroots efforts, this closure would not have happened as quickly, nor been as thorough. Neither would the cleanup of Rose Drive have been possible, without Cal-EPA, the city's toxics consultant Jodi Sparks, and the hard work of neighborhood activists, especially Dick Lubin, Larry Fullington and Tom Busfield, who rallied successfully to have landfill wastes left from the Braito dump cleaned out of backyards and Blake Court.

This Tuesday, when you listen to the report about the on-going monitoring of the plumes of toxic brew that almost polluted Paddy Creek and has polluted the city’s watershed, take a moment and reflect on the drama of getting the right legislation at the right time to protect our water and air and public health. (Although we do not use the ground water now, we may want to in the future, but it will need to be cleaned up).

What Earth Day awareness did for Benicia in the 1980s for public safety, Benicia citizens working on the new General Plan in the '90s, and activists such as Gene Doherty, Kathy Kerridge, Jim Stevenson and the usual suspects have carried forward, to promote economic and environmental health. These citizens advocate for sustainability as a city priority. Staff has made exceptional effort in developing the greenhouse gas emission reduction goals and the draft Climate Action Plan. This is a new green generation of environmental protection. Next year we will celebrate the 40th Anniversary of Earth Day in 2010 by highlighting our progress at reducing greenhouse gases, increasing water conservation, providing alternative energy, transit and walkable streets – all the interconnected actions necessary to protect our planet and grow our economy.

Some say we live in dark times: we are destroying Mother Earth and many people have lost hope. But I am energized by all the efforts ongoing at our schools, in our community, our state and – at long last – our nation, again.

I am deeply touched by what Benicians are doing - we are realizing that we as individuals truly make a difference and are thinking more carefully about the effect of our actions. My greatest source of hope for the future is the energy, commitment and often the courage of our young people who are engaged in solving the peril of the warming earth.

But we cannot put off tomorrow for our youth to solve the problems of today. We must take the responsibility to ensure that their environment is not wrecked. A compassionate and successful society will invest its assets in the good health of its children – all of its children. It is up to us to weigh our responsibilities and to invest our limited resources from government, industry, and our residents, without delay addressing environmental needs including local and regional transit, clean air and water and safe community public places.

“The test of the morality of a society is what it does for their children.”
- German theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer

As Mayor, my pledge for this Earth Day is to seek:

• Policies and action, without compromise, for air and water protection and cleanup.


• Policies and actions toward a carbon-free future based on renewable energy.


• Policies and actions toward responsible, sustainable consumption.


• Policies and actions toward expanding our cleantech and greentech businesses and local jobs for our residents.


• Collaboration with Benicia Unified School District to support entrepreneurial environmental programs and prepare students for vocational green job training and careers.

Benicia LWV Garden Tour, April 26

I hope to see you on Sunday. I will be at Mary Farmer school to greet people and provide tour material.
This is the League of Women Voter's annual fundraiser which makes it possible for them to put on the various forums during elections and other times. And, this popular event is really fun! Please check out the details below and join in the fun!

BENICIA LEAGUE OFWOMEN VOTERS 2009 GARDEN TOUR
Sunday, April 26, 2009
11:00 AM - 4:00 PM
$15 Single $25 Couple (no charge for children accompanied by adults )
CASH OR CHECK ONLY

Hillside terraces, native plants and spring flowers will be showcased when six Benicia homeowners open their gardens to the public. The tour includes homes on the Westside, as well as the hills of Southampton. Additionally, three community gardens will be featured.

TOUR BEGINS AT: Mary Farmar School (901West Military)
Maps and brochures will be provided, or go to www.LWVBenicia.org

TICKETS AVAILABLE AT:
Benicia Main Street (90 1st St.)
Camellia Tea Room (828 1st. St.)
Bookshop Benicia (Southampton Shopping Center)

Benicia's Earth Day Celebration, Aprill 22

Want to learn about ways to save energy? Simple things matter and this Wednesday will be a presentation on some simple things that residents can do to save energy and be part of the solution!

Join the City of Benicia to celebrate The Green Generation, Earth Day 2009, as it relates to our community.

When: Wednesday, April 22nd, 5:00 – 8:00 p.m.
Where: Veteran’s Memorial Hall, 1150 First Street
Why: To provide tools to residents and homeowners for being energy and water efficient, and highlight resources available within the community.

** At 7:00 p.m. we are hosting a presentation for homeowners on simple things that they can do to improve household energy efficiency and water conservation.

EVENT PARTICIPANTS
Allied Waste – Recycling Techniques
Arts Benicia – Eco Art Project for kids
Benicia High School SAGE Program
Benicia Main Street – Farmer’s Market
Benicia Plumbing – Energy Efficient Products
Bookshop Benicia
CA Native Plant Society – Drought Resistant Landscaping
Farm Fresh to You – Locally Grown Produce
Master Gardeners – Household Composting
Pedrotti ACE Hardware – Green Product line
PG&E – Climate Smart Program
Raley’s – Organic and Green Product line
And more . . .

THE CITY OF BENICIA PRESENTS: Climate Action Plan; Green building and energy efficiency retrofit information; Library resources for green living and eco education; Water conservation techniques; Tree program and Mills Community Center green building efforts (LEED) Recycling, Benicia Transit and more.

ON SITE RECYCLING Visit the Battery booth to get rid of those unwanted batteries. Cell Phones – old, unused or broken cell phones will be collected. E-Waste Recycling will be on location collecting TV’s, computers, monitors and other e-waste.

You won’t want to miss the CAR DISPLAY Featuring high efficiency vehicles. Come see the new Smart Car and Hybrid Vehicles

Important Meeting on Ferry Service

The Water Emergency Transportation Authority is holding a meeting to discuss the future of ferry service in our area:

Wednesday, April 15, 6:30pm
Vallejo City Hall
555 Santa Clara Street

The Authority is seeking comments on its draft Transition Plan (for assuming control over Vallejo Baylink service) and Emergency Management Plan.

WETA must also continue to consider and develop projects requiring --

"planning for implementation beyond the five-year period. In support of this effort, WETA will continue preliminary environmental and conceptual design work associated with development of ferry services between San Francisco and the cities of Antioch, Hercules, Martinez, Redwood City commitments for construction and operation. However, none have sufficient funding to date to support full implementation, and would require the support of new funding commitments to be fully implemented".

Looking for Good People

A recent Benicia Herald news story about ways to get involved in your community described city committees, boards and commissions as one way. How can you apply for openings on the following boards and commissions? Click on the link below or go to www.ci.benicia.ca.us to the heading "Government & Officials" -Boards, Committees and Commission Openings.

Openings and Application for downloading

Sky Valley Open Space Committee meets about every 3rd month or more often as needed. Guest speakers are invited to discuss a range of topics from watershed management, public access, land use, Lake Herman Road and surrounding areas and sundry other issues as they related to Sky Valley. If you want to hep permanently protect Sky Valley from urban development (or intense rural development) this is the committee for you. There is an opportunity to use the Good Neighborhood Steering Committee and Valero settlement money for buying conservation easements. One full term to 2013 is open.

Civil Service Commission is responsible for hearing and making final determinations on personnel related appeals and to certify its findings and recommendations. Other duties include advising the City Manager and City Council on matters related to recruitment processes and personnel rules.
Meetings: Third Tuesday of every month at 6:30 pm in the Commission Room.

Open Government Commission advises the City Council and provides information to other City departments and bodies on appropriate ways in which to implement the Sunshine Ordinance or Title 4, Open Government, with a priority on simple, standard procedures. The ordinance provides rules for how city meetings are noticed to the public, and access to information. The ordinance expands the public's rights for meeting notice, minutes and timely city response to requests for documents and records (that are not protected by state law).

One of the key challenges of the Commission is to act as a conduit between the city and the public regarding meetings, minutes, information and help in navigating city appeals. The Commission also may propose amendments to the City Council of the Ordinance as needed, and reporting to the City Council on any practical or policy problems encountered in the administration of the Ordinance.
There is one full term open to 2013.
2009 Meetings: Jan. 27; March 24; July 28 (tentative); Oct. 27 (tentative)

Library Board of Trustees is responsible for making and enforcing rules, regulations and bylaws necessary for the administration, government and protection of the public library. There are two full terms to 2012.
Meetings: Second Monday of each month at 6:30 pm at the Library.

Finance, Audit and Budget Committee shall advise the City Council on matters of financial importance to ensure the accurate reporting and long range fiscal stability of the City including keeping tract of the budget and the state of the economy. While the committee makes no budget policy decisions, they are the "light house" for monitoring the budget and reporting to the Council with recommendations for potential policy needs.
Meetings: Friday following the first Council Meeting of each month at 8:00 am in the Commission Room.

We need your interest, skills and time for these important committees. Major initiatives or recommendations often begin here. Help influence the direction of the city by volunteering for one of the openings posted above.