Carl Rove seen in Benicia ...

Question: I heard that the current Mayor and your opponent have joined forces to reschedule hearings on Seeno. What do you know about this, and how might it affect the election and our future in Benicia?

Elizabeth Responds: I think we are being played for suckers. Let me suggest to you why.

October 16th was supposed to be the big hearing on the Seeno FEIR - it was announced. The Mayor is very very careful about the calendar - he even hesitated in August at the Council meeting to carefully study the calendar before he voted to make sure Seeno could be decided before his term is over.

Seeno was becoming the defining campaign issue.

Early in September, polls by the unions (Seeno) showed me several points ahead and the Seeno project unpopular. Something had to be done.

October 16th - after one City Council closed session to discuss the telecommunications UUT and the legal threats and what other communities are doing, and after two public hearings, suddenly Whitney AND Messina decide that there are problems. This is announced without any notice to staff. Why Messina? He is not up for reelection, but he does want Whitney to win. What better way to do so than to take our eyes off the Seeno ball and focus on a tax of about $20 per year per household excluding anyone of 62.

Why is the Benicia First Seeno meeting that was announced on October 16th (and earlier by the activists) now competing for a city meeting (Messina sets the agendas) on October 24th? How did this get scheduled? If Measure S is important and there was already a big meeting at the library the same night, wouldn't one choose a date that did not compete with THE defining issue of the campaign.

After watching Masterpiece Theatre last night and getting a couple of emails about these conflicting meetings, it all began to come together.

Messina sets the calendar. Messina flip flops for $20 a year minor tax when he is not even running. Messina consults with Whitney and is a "member" of the Benicia Tax Payers Association.

Seeno is working the unions. His finger prints are all over this.

So-called Public Safety (remember the city-wide poll that said the ENVIRONMENT was the most important issue and that folks felt very safe in Benicia) and Measure S versus Seeno's 240% increase in traffic, 7,000 new jobs (compared to the existing 6,700 jobs in Benicia), increased air pollution for our school children, 9 million cubic yards of dirt and God knows how much particulates for asthma (Solano County has the highest rates for children in the Bay Area).

$20 a year tax versus big boxes.

This is the sucker move of Benicia.

Do me a favor and keep your eye on the Seeno ball.

People have not heard of this Seeno project and don't realize what it is about, and to a person - Republican or Democrat or Decline to State - they do not want to lose the small town of Benicia and are opposed to the grading hills, filling in the creeks and so forth.

Take care,

Elizabeth

When the last living thing has died on account of us,
how poetical it would be if Earth could say, in a voice floating up
perhaps from the floor of the Grand Canyon,
"It is done."
People did not like it here."

God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Kurt Vonnegut (1965)

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