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June 7 Election to Feature Region-Wide Ballot Measure

On California’s June 7 election day, voters across the San Francisco Bay Area will encounter a historic ballot measure, believed to be the first ever put before all nine counties in the region as a whole.

The measure seeks approval of a 20-year, $12 annual parcel tax, expected to generate $25 million per year ($500 million total) for funding shoreline projects to protect and restore the San Francisco Bay by “reducing trash, pollution and harmful toxins, improving water quality, restoring habitat for fish, birds and wildlife, protecting communities from floods, and increasing shoreline public access.” The measure is being placed by the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority, a regional government agency created in 2008 through Assembly Bill 2954 (Lieber) with the mandate to raise and allocate resources “for the restoration, enhancement, protection, and enjoyment of wetlands and wildlife habitat in the San Francisco Bay and along its shoreline.”

At its January 13 convening, the agency’s six-member board of local elected officials unanimously decided to place the measure. Prior to its decision, the board heard a presentation from Ruth Bernstein of EMC Research, whose survey of likely June 2016 Bay Area voters predicted that receiving the necessary two-thirds approval to pass the measure will be “difficult, but doable.” Also ahead of its decision, the board chose to move forward with agreements under which the approximate $2 million cost of placing the measure on the ballot would be covered by the Santa Clara Valley Water District ($1.5 million), the East Bay Regional Park District ($250,000), and the Sonoma County Water Agency ($250,000), all to be reimbursed if the measure passes.

In the public comment leading up to the board’s decision, Audubon California Executive Director Brigid McCormack, Bay Area Council Policy Director Adrian Covert, and Bay Planning Coalition CEO John Coleman all spoke in support of placing the measure. Zelda Bronstein, writer for the San Francisco news website 48hills.org, raised a concern that the measure would be subsidizing large technology corporations vulnerable to sea level rise along the water in Silicon Valley. She contended that development of the measure had been “happening behind the scenes,” concluding that “what you’re doing is not democratic.”

After the board’s decision to place the measure, Association of Bay Area Governments Legal Counsel Ken Moy gave a report on the complicated logistics that will be required to coordinate the unprecedented nine-county effort. He explained that since Santa Clara County has the largest population of the nine, its registrar of voters will serve as lead registrar in working with the authority. Moy explained that the measure’s specific placement on ballots—whether it be designated as a county measure or a district measure, for example—may vary from county to county. He said another update on such issues would be provided in February.

The board’s meeting may be viewed in its entirety here, courtesy of Ken Bukowski at Bay Area Regional Videos.

For coverage of the San Francisco Bay Restoration Authority’s past efforts to develop a parcel tax ballot measure, see “Regional Vote on Bay Restoration?” from the February/March 2014 edition of the Monitor.

The forthcoming February/March 2016 edition of the Monitor will feature further coverage of efforts to restore wetlands in the Bay Area.

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