Eminent Domain Report

When a third of California's registered voters turned up to vote this month, most of them got the chance to consider one of the 89 local bond and tax measures on their ballots.  School construction bonds made up over half of these measures, and nearly all of those passed, including $850 million for Long Beach Community College District and $950 million for Chabot Las-Positas Community College District.  Other Districts with big bond victories included:

• $245 million for Livermore Unified

• $265 million for Marin Community College

• $283 million for Dublin Unified

• $300 million for Montebello Unified

• $319 million for Irvine Unified

• $485 million for State Center Community College

And a slim majority of non-school tax measures passed as well.  Michael Coleman has a great breakdown of the local measure results on his California City Finance website.  From Coleman's website, it appears voters favored libraries and schools over police, fire and emergency services.  Can this tell us anything about the several California counties considering transportation sales tax initiatives for the November ballot?  (If you want to know if your county is one of them, check the Center for Transportation Excellence's elections website.)  Perhaps.

In the nine-county Bay Area, voters approved Measure AA -- a $12 per parcel tax for Bay conservation and clean up.  As Joel Fox states in his article "Election Prediction Record Not Bad - What do Results Mean," "the success of the Bay Area's Measure AA will prompt additional efforts to put regional measures on future ballots."  On the other hand, sales tax measures requiring two-thirds approval fared poorly -- only one of 6 passed.  Nevertheless, we can expect to see at least twice as many local measures on the ballot in November.  So stay tuned!