Mayor Elizabeth Patterson has served on the Benicia City Council since 2003.  She was elected Mayor in 2007 and reelected for a third term in 2016.  Patterson currently serves on several other regional boards, including the Solano Transportation Authority Board, SolTrans Transit Authority Board, the Solano Water Agency Board, and the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta Conservancy.

 

Ms. Patterson was born in Los Angeles and grew up in the San Gabriel Valley.  She moved to Northern California in 1968, lived and managed  a ranch in San Luis Obispo and then to Ithaca, New York for five years before returning to the Bay Area. Elizabeth has lived in Benicia since 1983, where she raised her two girls and one large dog.

 

Ms. Patterson is a member of the American Institute of Certified Planners and has been a Planning Director for two Bay Area towns.  She was Executive Director of the Partnership for Regional Livability a project for the White House Task Force on Livable Communities during the Clinton/Gore administration.

 

Ms. Patterson was project director to create the Delta Protection Commission while she was at the California State Lands Commission. She has worked before and within the State Senate.  Although officially retired from the state, she continues to work on the 2018 update of California Water Plan at the California State Department of Water Resources. In 2017 she was invited to participate in the annual invitation only brainstorming event with the San Francisco-based Meeting of Minds – a NGO that brings together urban sustainability and technology leaders to identity effective action, visionary partnership and long-term collaboration across all sectors.