Voters in Sonoma and Marin counties rejected a 30-year extension of a quarter-cent sales tax for the operation of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit’s SMART train system.
Measure I needed two-thirds approval.
In Marin County, Measure I received 53.5 percent approval with all 157 precincts reporting as of early Wednesday morning. In Sonoma County, the measure got just 49.8 percent with all 526 precincts reporting.
The existing tax expires in 2029.
Final but unofficial election results for Measure J, a 35-year half-cent sales tax to raise money for local roads, buses, rail, ferries and other transportation improvement projects in Contra Costa County, fell far short of the two-thirds approval needed to pass, and in fact didn’t even make 50 percent.
Measure J would focus on improving major roadways that suffer from the worst traffic, including Interstate Highways 680, 580 and 80; state Highways 4 and 24; and arterials including Ygnacio Valley Road, Kirker Pass Road, Vasco Road, Bollinger Canyon Road, Central Avenue and Richmond Parkway.
The need for more freeway expansion and improvement, better (cleaner and more crime-free) BART service, and a ferry boat service serving Contra Costa’s north-shore cities, is almost universally acknowledged.
But critics have challenged Measure J’s lack of specifics, and contend that similar past tax measures to improve transportation in Contra Costa have had negligible effect on the county’s increasing traffic volumes.
Voting results from Tuesday’s election showed Foster City residents voting overwhelmingly to recall City Councilman Herb Perez after his repeated insults of city residents and “bullying.”
Perez, who has served on the council since 2011, has been known to call residents “delusional morons” and “malfeasant malcontents.”
The verbal abuse and accusations of Perez voting in favor of development in the city spurred a group of residents to launch the recall effort last May.
The recall effort has the support of 77.29 percent of voters while 22.71 percent of voters said he shouldn’t be recalled.
In the event of Perez’s ouster from the City Council, voters in Tuesday’s election also chose his successor from former police Capt. Jon Frooman and community activist Patrick Sullivan. Early voting showed Frooman with a clear lead of 59.6 percent compared to 40.4 percent for Sullivan.
It appears that incumbent Supervisor Federal Glover, seeking his sixth and what he says would be his final term on the Contra Costa County Board of Supervisors, couldn’t quite avoid a runoff against Gus Kramer in November, leading the District 5 field of three with almost 49 percent of the vote.
Had Glover achieved 50 percent plus one, he would have won a sixth term outright Tuesday. As it is, Kramer, Contra Costa County’s assessor for the past 26 years, garnered 27.2 percent of the vote, and will face Glover in the November general election.
Sean Trambley finished third, with 23.8 percent of the vote, with all 188 precincts reporting.
The District 5 supervisors’ race has been a contentious one at times, with Kramer criticizing Glover for past DUI arrests and for what he (and Trambley) called Glover’s lack of presence in cities in the western part of District 5, which stretches along Contra Costa’s northern edge from Pinole to Crockett and east through Martinez to the western part of Antioch.
Dublin Mayor David Haubert finished narrowly ahead in a four-way race for the District 1 Board of Supervisors seat in Tuesday’s election, but he will face a runoff later this year with Fremont City Councilman Vinnie Bacon.
With all 185 precincts in the district reporting early Wednesday morning, Haubert led the race with 26.97 percent, edging ahead of Bacon, at 26.1 percent, by 233 votes.
Dublin City Councilwoman Melissa Hernandez sat third at 24.67 percent while state Sen. Bob Wieckowski, D-Fremont, finished fourth with 22.26 percent.
The seat is being vacated by veteran incumbent Scott Haggerty. District 1 includes Livermore, Dublin, and most of Fremont as well as unincorporated areas in eastern Alameda County.
Sonoma County Supervisors Susan Gorin and Lynda Hopkins defeated their challengers to retain their seats on the board, but incumbent Shirlee Zane appears to have lost her bid for a fourth term on the board by losing to former Santa Rosa Mayor Chris Coursey.
According to unofficial results early Wednesday morning, Gorin has 13,151 votes or 58.8 percent and Sonoma City Councilman David Cook has 9,012 votes and 40.3 percent in the District 1 race.
Hopkins has 14,847 votes and 79.8 percent in District 5 and challenger Mike Hilber has 3,599 votes and 19.3 percent.
Zane has 6,904 votes and 45.7 percent and Coursey has 8,028 votes and 53.1 percent in District 3.
Voting results from Tuesday’s election showed tech entrepreneur Matt Mahan winning the election for the San Jose City Council District 10 seat outright with more than 50 percent of the vote.
With 25 of the district’s 27 precincts reporting as of early Wednesday, Mahan garnered 57.71 percent of the vote to avoid a runoff election.
That total paced Mahan’s competitors Helen Wang, a retired businesswoman, and Bay Area Women’s March co-founder Jenny Higgins Bradanini. Wang held 22.79 percent of the vote while Bradanini held 19.49 percent.
The three candidates were running to replace termed-out City Councilman Johnny Khamis, who ran for the state Senate’s District 15 seat and failed to make the top-two run-off.
An Alameda County ballot measure that would raise an estimated $150 million annually to expand access to early education and child care for all children in the county was ahead in the incomplete returns Tuesday but its ultimate fate may be decided in court.
With 31 percent of countywide precincts reporting, Measure C is ahead by a margin of 60 percent to 40 percent. The Alameda County Registrar of Voters is saying for now that the measure only needs a simple majority to win approval.
But one of the measure’s supporters, Clarissa Doutherd of Parent Voices Action, said Tuesday night that the question of whether the measure needs a simple majority or a two-thirds vote to win approval is “ambiguous” and may have to be decided in court.
San Francisco voters took to the polls Tuesday and appeared to approve all five measures on the ballot, according to the preliminary election results.
Proposition A appeared to garner more than 70 percent of the vote, well above the 55 percent needed to pass.
The measure asked voters whether to allow the City College of San Francisco District to sell $845 million in bonds to renovate the school’s buildings, including seismic retrofitting and environmentally sustainable upgrades.
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