Incumbents hold commanding lead for Benicia City Council while tax measure flails

BENICIA – Incumbent Benicia City Councilmembers Terry Scott and Kari Birdseye took a commanding lead in early election results on Tuesday.

Scott and Birdseye took 40% and 37% of the three-way vote while software engineer Justin Zollars took 23% of the vote. The top two candidates will both be elected to the council.

Zollars primarily ran in opposition to automated license plate reader surveillance provided by Flock Safety, which has become a national issue amid pushback against extensive police surveillance.

“Tonight's results weren't what we had hoped for,” Zollars said in a statement posted to Facebook.

“I ran because I believe Benicia deserves a council that defends our Fourth Amendment rights and personal liberty, respects taxpayers, maintains our roads, and preserves the character of our community,” he said. “Those convictions haven't changed.”

A series of tax measures on Benicia’s ballet received a more mixed response. While Measure X, which would restructure the city’s business license taxes to be calculated by the types of business, was poised to pass with 63% of the vote, an attempt to set new property transfer taxes appeared headed to failure for a second time.

Benicia voters overall appeared supportive of the Measure Z transfer tax measure, which had received 51% support as of 9:19 p.m. However the measure also requires passage of Measure Y, which would make Benicia a limited charter city, which was failing with 55% opposed, suggesting some Benicia voters were confused about the relationship between the two measures.

Two similar measures on the 2024 ballot both failed. For this year, city officials revised the tax structure and argued that the measures were necessary to address that the city’s revenue streams have been unable to keep pace with the cost of providing services, a problem that is expected to only grow more pronounced with the closure of the Valero refinery this year.