DEAR CAROLYN OF SEND ME YOUR DREAMS (featured every Wednesday in The Herald):

I know you help people interpret dreams and I’m hoping you can help me sort out this dream that I had. Here goes:

In my dream I was in a gathering place that looked very much like our City Council Chambers, and there was a meeting going on. I was there to represent the Community Sustainability Commission and the 2014 grant process. There were a lot of people sitting in the public seating area who represented organizations and entities that had submitted grants requests — 13 in all. They were there to see how the Council would discuss and make a decision on their requests.

I remember we said the Pledge of Allegiance, and right at the moment we finished I felt the prick of a needle in my neck. There was a lingering smell of gasoline and the next thing I knew I began to see the world in a brand new light.

I know that in the dream, I had walked into the meeting understanding there were some challenging issues to be understood by the Council. For instance, there were two categories of grant funding from the Valero-Good Neighbor Steering Committee Settlement — not taxpayer dollars. The one category of settlement funds that totaled $1.6 million was available to the city and community, rather than for Valero’s proposed water conservation project known as the Condensate Recovery Project, IF it was “. . . used for other water conservation projects identified, reviewed, and approved by the city prior to the Sustainability Commission review of CRP.” Since the commission hadn’t reviewed the Valero project and the city said Valero had not received the necessary permits for the project, there was a sense that the money was available for Benicia.

The second category of money from the Settlement was for future projects and it totaled nearly $800,000. Together they represented nearly $2.4 million for Benicia.

With this in mind, grants were submitted, reviewed and recommended — or not recommended — to the Council.

But, in my dream, after I had been injected, a new understanding of EVERYTHING swept over me. It wasn’t ironic, after all, that Valero, who had also been one of the 13 grant applicants, had applied for exactly ALL the remaining money ($800,000) in the settlement monies for future projects. Why use any corporate money for a project that would have less than a year’s return on investment when money could be taken from the city? Brilliant! This ploy would also be sure to bring cash bonuses to management. It’s easier than taking candy from a baby!

The Council, in my dream, obviously unaware that Valero is a multibillion-dollar corporation, that the project’s water saving is less than .03 percent of their annual water usage, that they would achieve an ROI in less than one year and that the commission had scored them the lowest of all the grants based on these criteria, brushed passed the other grants.

Still under the influence of the injection, I could only think, “How cool was that?!”

Come on down!

Things got even better when the city manager voiced uncertainty whether the conditions of the settlement had been met by Valero. I remember a letter was rushed into Chambers saying, in effect, “Oh yes we did too” opening the door for “Let’s make a deal.” (I think the city manager may have been injected like I was, but I’m not sure about that part of the dream). How neat that the Valero decision-makers just happened to be present!

So then Council proceeded to grant all the future money left to the city and to make a deal on the $1.6 million … yes, in the dream, it happened right there during a Council meeting — not with all the settlement agreement parties present. Now, some things in the dream get fuzzy because it seemed to take a long time, but I recall in my dream that the $1.6 million was divided like Solomon’s baby.

You couldn’t help but laugh — it was fantastic. Valero came in with nothing and left with nearly a million dollars that could have been used by Benicia and Benicians! Those applicants and the commission didn’t know what happened to them . . . just a little roadkill on our Big Oil highway of life.

Then the dream nearly ends, except with a great little final episode. When a citizen came to the lectern to speak, being unfamiliar with the protocol of public comment (in my dream, only the public had to follow protocol), she was told that continuing to talk on a closed item like she had would result in her or anyone else being put on the sidewalk.

The dream ended and I woke up, with a tremendous headache, still smelling gasoline and wondering, Carolyn, what does it mean?

Learn more

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Constance Beutel is the chair of Benicia’s Community Sustainability Commission. She is a university professor and videographer and holds a doctorate from the University of San Francisco.