Constance Beutel to withdraw from city commitments, focus on videography, golf

Constance Beutel, the first chairperson of the Community Sustainability Commission when it was formed in 2010 and an instrumental guide to the panel since its beginning, will step down two years before her current term ends.

“It’s been five years. And it’s time,” Beutel said.

Beutel, 68, also has retired from her teaching career at Union Institute and University in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she taught education at the doctorate level.

Her most recent courses were education and technology and education and sustainability, combining three of her passions. She used such modern techniques as video conferencing to conduct classes, she said.

A St. Paul, Minn., native and Vietnam war veteran who was awarded the Bronze Star, Beutel has been in California since the U.S. Air Force assigned her to Hamilton Air Force Base in Novato, coming to the state from Duluth, Minn.

In an interview Monday with The Herald, for which she also is a long-time contributor, she said she fell in love with California while driving on Interstate 80 and seeing that the highway was planted with colorful oleanders.

“What an enlightened state!” she recalled thinking.

She first lived in Marin, where she often was invited to Benicia’s Peddlers Fair by Susan Harms, with whom she had worked in a career dealing with telephone company computers.

When Beutel decided to buy a home here 18 years ago, she sought out “a place, a center,” she said. “Benicia was an easy choice. And I’m not planning on leaving.”

After the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake, as cities and towns developed emergency response teams that could provide help until professionals could arrive, Beutel joined Benicia Emergency Response Team (BERT) and became involved in its education programs.

She stepped down from her training positions when she was appointed to the Community Sustainability Commission, but said, “I still have my cache,” or the equipment she would need should an emergency strike her neighborhood.

“I am still a proud member (of BERT),” she said.

Her appointment to the CSC opened up for her a new area for public education, she said. This time, the topic was environmental concerns.

Only Beutel and Kathy Kerridge have served as the commission’s chair in the past five years. Many times the two have alternated as chairperson and vice chairperson, though once under Kerridge, Rae Lynn Fiscalini was chosen vice chairperson when Beutel urged that another commissioner take a turn.

The commission’s public outreach and education has been its biggest accomplishment, Beutel said.

She has been a strong proponent of such workshops as “Stewards of Our Children’s Future” and “The Energy Symposium,” series designed to inform the public about greenhouse gas emissions, costs related to energy and related matters.

She said she is proud that the commission has been able to form partnerships with Solano Community College and Dominican University.

She’s also proud that those classes continue to educate the public, and not just those who live in Benicia.

“I filmed everything,” she said. “They are on YouTube.”

Beutel’s videography work, particularly what she calls “creative documentaries,” will be an area she will explore once she steps down Jan. 26, though she already has a catalogue of about 300 videos on her own channel on YouTube.

“As educators, it’s important to memorialize,” she said.

Her latest project is a year-long look at life in the city she loves. She’s compiling everyday scenes — from children bicycling to school to adults stopping for coffee to shots of the coastline at the foot of First Street — into a film she’s calling “A Day in the life of Benicia.” The film also will document some of the special events that take place in the city, she said.

She started filming the first day of the year, and will be filming at different sites during different times of day throughout 2015. “It’s a kaleidoscope of Benicia,” she said.

Beutel said she’s also dusting off her golf clubs that have been neglected for too long, and she’s reducing her commitment to The Herald, for which she has written a Thursday column for more than three years.

She called her columns “Crewmember Reports,” but said she hopes another member of the commission might continue the series. “Anyone want to pick up the pen?” she asked.

Meanwhile, she’s compiled the columns into three volumes, the third of which is being wrapped up, like the other two, for readers to get through iTunes.

There are two more CSC accomplishments Beutel considers high points of the past five years.

One is crafting the commission’s grants and the process by which people can apply.

The other is moving the city into membership in Marin Clean Energy, the community choice aggregation agency that purchases renewable energy from sustainable sources and supplies it to the grid for its customers.

Beutel assured those who worried after hearing of her early exit from the commission that her health is fine.

Nor does she intend to spend her newfound extra time seeking appointment to another advisory panel or pursuing public office: “Stop that rumor!” she said.

She promised to participate in the community, particularly involving the environment, even if she chooses not to be as active as in the past.

For instance, she’s taken an interest in Benicia’s exploration of the possibility of putting wind turbines on two city-owned properties.

“I’m excited about wind turbines,” she said. Given that the city has been falling short in its effort to reach greenhouse gas reduction goals, she said, the turbines could be important to Benicia’s future.

Like many, she has heard that some turbines kill birds, particularly such raptors as hawks and eagles. But she said that more birds are killed by feral cats and in collisions with windows than are killed by turbines, which also are turned off during migrations.

“I feel good about what has been achieved,” Beutel said of her legacy on the Community Sustainability Commission. “I’m leaving it in good hands,” she said.

But she’s also looking forward to her next adventures, particularly in filming. “It’s like what Jane Fonda wrote in her book, ‘My Life So Far,’” she said, saying she will reflect on the next phases of her life — “then, fade to black.”