PROPOSITION 26 FAILS — Wednesday, March 8^th was a gloomy day for those of us hoping to level the playing field on local bond elections. Proposition 26, which would have lowered the 2/3 vote requirement to a simple majority, failed by the slimmest of margins — 154,494, or roughly 7 votes per precinct. Obviously, the results were not uniform across the state. The measure carried in 12 counties, mostly in the San Francisco bay area. Three valley counties were among the 12 — Fresno, Merced and Yolo. The range of vote by county ran from 67% yes in San Francisco County to 65% no in Modoc county. Los Angeles County had 50% on both sides. This probably caused the failure, since the voting pattern for statewide school bonds usually relies on a large plurality in Los Angeles county to carry the less supportive rural and agricultural areas.

It’s little consolation, but the measure was significantly more widely supported than the earlier effort of Proposition 170 in 1993 which only garnered about a 34% yes vote. The better economic times certainly improved the support for Proposition 26, but as one wise old former legislator observed "you lost."

TWO COMMUNITY COLLEGE BOND MEASURES ALSO GO DOWN — Two local community college bond measures also suffered defeat in Tuesday’s election albeit by a close margin. Los Rios CCD sought approval of a $215 million measure, but failed to secure the necessary 2/3 when the measure received only 65.5% approval. The other measure was a $49.2 million measure sought by College of the Sequoias CCD, which failed with a 65.3% approval.

This brings the number of post Proposition 13 community college elections to 20, of which 8 have been successful. This 40% approval rate is somewhat less than the 53% success rate for K-12; however, only 4 of the elections that did not pass failed to attain 60% approval, and 2 of those were more than a decade ago. The point is that virtually all of the elections are very close to success. West Hills CCD failed by the slimmest of margins, and then succeeded in the very next election. A complete tally of community college local bond election outcomes can be found on the CCFC web site.

CCFC SCHEDULES LOCAL FINANCE WORKSHOPS — CCFC is scheduling a workshop on various aspects of local financing for facilities. Despite the failure of Proposition 26, local funding is still critical, since the state is unable to meet the needs for our facilities. The workshop will be presented twice (once in the San Francisco bay area, and once in southern California). The dates are tentatively scheduled for May 9 in Costa Mesa and May 11 in Pleasanton. The locations are still being selected, but will be at local hotels. We expect brochures to be in the mail very shortly.