Support a local nonprofit

The Herald recently published excellent letters by Susan Street and Lois Requist in support of Carter Rankin and his Biz Café. I heartily agree with both writers.
I have an additional concern about the city’s refusal to renew Carter’s lease. Having worked with Carter since his arrival in Benicia, during that time I have grown uneasy about a seeming lack of support from certain city-supported organizations.
It is wonderful that the city supports so many nonprofits, including cultural organizations. And it is wonderful that often these organizations put on events that encourage people—and businesses—to come to Benicia. I have always thought, however, that the objective of these organizations was to support Benicia’s citizens, including businesses, rather than to hinder them.
Kudos to the Arts and Culture Commission for coming up with the idea of a film festival, for example. This idea was so great that Benicia was home, last year, to TWO such festivals, one sponsored by the Arts and Culture Commission, the other by Carter’s Biz Cafés.
Film festivals can provide a great economic boost to a community and not just from the sale of tickets. Many film makers and other attendees stay at Benicia hotels and eat at Benicia restaurants. Not to mention the high-class free publicity for the city, especially when such festivals are done well. And Carter’s festivals have been particularly well done.
If the city supports nonprofits so that they might support Benicia’s citizens, including its business citizens, wouldn’t the logical response to the existence of Carter’s film festival be for city nonprofits to embrace Carter’s festival?
In particular, if a private business is providing the benefits of a film festival, shouldn’t the city and city-supported organizations want, therefore, to support that business? City money used to support an Arts and Culture film festival, and city-paid employee time working on a such a festival, can all be saved and used on other worthy projects.
In addition, a profitable film festival put on by a business allows for the city to benefit from rental payments and taxes that the business pays to the city. A city commission, of course, pays no rent or taxes.
Further, with his film festivals in Benicia, Carter has sought to share a portion of the profits with a Benicia nonprofit. So, rather than incurring the expense and effort of a fund raising event, a Benicia nonprofit—like the Arts and Culture Commission—can also increase its coffers. The city benefits here too when this money is given to a city supported organization that will then need that much less city financial support.
Community support for the activities of businesses, in general, can provide numerous economic benefits. Perhaps primarily, if businesses believe they will be supported, they are more likely to want to locate in Benicia.
One way the Biz Café film festival might have been supported in 2017 could have begun with the Arts and Culture Commission being sure that the movies it showed at the Majestic over the past year—another wonderful idea—supported the Biz Cafés Film Festival and did not detract from it in any way. After Carter had determined to frame his 2017 film festival around a “Casablanca” theme, for example, the Arts and Culture Commission chose Casablanca as the first of a series of films to play at the Majestic. A quick contact with Carter and this overlap could have been avoided.
Similarly, when it comes to the use of the COQ itself—by renting the building to a private business, even if that business may, on occasion, need some help as it struggles in the real world economic climate, the city is showing support for business that can be seen by other businesses who may be considering locating in Benicia.
Another benefit here is that the city can prosper as a business prospers and property values rise—with the ability to raise rents at lease renewal time, that increased profits can support. This makes a private tenant for the valuable COQ space particularly beneficial, and possibly superior, to other types of tenants like, for example, nonprofit tenants who receive subsidies from the city. Such tenants, by definition, do not earn profits and are likely to be dependent on city subsidies throughout their tenure.

Donnell Rubay,
Benicia

What’s in your air?

Imagine seeing smoke from the refinery and being able to go online to see if the air in your neighborhood has been affected.  Should your children be doing outside recess or sports practices?  Should you be sheltering in place?  Is this a good time to take a run or bike ride?  At this moment, Benicians are unable to find out what is in our air.  There is only one air monitor at the refinery and it is on top of a smoke stack, not on the fence line or in the community.  The smokestack monitor reports are not available to Benicia residents or the public in real time.
Access to real-time air monitoring online is up and running in other parts of the Bay.  Airwatchbayarea.org is online and has a mobile app that will let you see current and historic reading from community monitors in Richmond, Crockett and Rodeo.  In Benicia, there is one private person who is monitoring the air with his monitor.  Unfortunately, the Benicia monitor only has reading for dust and particulate matter unlike other community monitors that provide data on a variety of air pollutants.
How can we get the same information that Richmond and Crockett Rodeo get?  One way is to pass an Industrial Safety Ordinance (ISO) that would require local air quality monitors along the fence line and in the community, possibly at elementary schools.  These monitors could be linked to Airwatchbayarea or another web site and provide real time data for us.  This data is essential not only to know what we may be exposed to during an accident, but also what we are being exposed to day to day.
The Air District is in the process of setting up fence line monitoring requirements.  Valero submitted a draft plan that would only have monitors on the east side of the refinery and none next to residential neighborhoods.  That’s not good enough.  We don’t know what the Air District will require, but why should we be dependent on them or on the state when we could through an ISO require monitors where Benicians would like them.  Children, who are most impacted by air pollution, deserve their air to be monitored at their schools.
Please tell the City Council to support an Industrial Safety Ordinance that provides for community air monitors with real time accessible reporting.
 
Kathy Kerridge,
Benicia

Support for Carter’s Biz

Wife Janice and I ate at the Commandant’s Restaurant in the early 1980s before it closed down. We later worked on early restoration of the building as volunteers with the Benicia Historical Museum. After the city completed extensive restoration, I was thrilled to see Carter’s Biz Cafes call it home for several events there that I attended and photographed, here’s two: the TED Talks and the Donnell Rubay book presentation on American poet Stephen Vincent Benet. Their event fliers are below.

Fliers by Peter Bray

Carter’s is a real asset to the City and cultural events in town. I hope the city of Benicia and Carter’s can work out something beneficial for all parties and all citizens of Benicia.

Peter Bray,
Benicia resident since 1983

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