SMART tax repeal effort fails
RepealSMART considers second ballot attempt ‘in the next few days’
By Eric Gneckow, Business Journal Staff Reporter
NORTH BAY — An effort to allow voters to repeal the 2008 sales tax measure that funds a proposed commuter rail system in the North Bay has failed after election officials in Sonoma and Marin counties collected fewer than the minimum signatures required to advance the matter to the ballot.
The Marin County Registrar of Voters completed a count of 9,111 signatures this morning. That brings to 14,582 the number of signatures submitted from both counties, including an initial tally of 5,471 Sonoma County signatures turned in Friday.
The county registrars said they would verify the petitions only if they exceeded 15,000. That’s the number repeal proponent RepealSMART contended was necessary to put a repeal measure before voters in November, a threshold set by the state’s Prop. 218 and roughly 15 percent of residents in both counties.
However, officials from Sonoma Marin Area Rail Transit argued that 39,000 signatures must be collected for a ballot measure to repeal Measure Q, a quarter-cent tax that voters in Sonoma and Marin counties approved with a 70 percent majority in 2008.
With this failure of the repeal, funding from a $191 million bond sale in December will be released from escrow and used to fund additional contracts for the proposed transit system. SMART General Manager Farhad Mansourian said that the legal process to release the funds would take 2-3 months, and he hoped for at least two more construction contracts to be awarded by this summer.
“This has been a cloud over our heads for a long time,” said Valerie Brown, chair of the SMART Board of Directors and Sonoma County supervisor. Ms. Brown said that the board valued the democratic process, “but now we can really get the wheels rolling.”
Clay Mitchell, co-chair of RepealSMART, said he is among those who reversed their support of the tax after the economic downturn forced SMART to scale back plans. Instead of a 70-mile line spanning the length of both counties, the agency chose to phase construction, starting with a 38.5-mile stretch between Santa Rosa in Sonoma County and San Rafael in Marin.
Voters should be given a chance to repeal the tax after those changes to the SMART project, Mr. Mitchell said. RepealSMART in August filed an intention to petition for a ballot measure and spent the next six months gathering signatures, all the way up until a few hours from the Jan. 27 deadline.
Despite the failure of the measure, the results showed that an increasing number of people have come to question the proposed transit system, according to Mr. Mitchell.
“It shows clearly that there are more than 13 people who support taking another look at this, unlike (what) Mr. Mansourian has said,” he said.
Mr. Mitchell said he and other repeal supporters believe that they weren’t given clear requirements during the petition process, delaying their efforts. Additionally, since the SMART board of directors would determine if the signatures were sufficient to call an election, the board was unlikely to support the lower threshold, he said.
RepealSMART’s core members will be meeting soon to determine their future plans, according to Mr. Mitchell. Those plans will likely include filing a notice of intent to collect signatures for a new, identical ballot measure “in the next few days.”
SMART’s board awarded a $103 million design-build contract for its first phase of construction early this month to railroad specialists Stacy and Witbeck Inc. and and Herzog Contracting Corp. The work will entail many underlying elements of the system, including tracks, railroad crossings and bridges.
The initial segment of the SMART system between Santa Rosa in Sonoma County and San Rafael in Marin is expected to be completed in 2015 or early 2016.
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by robert richard
The fact that the Repeal SMART signature campaign could not muster even 15,000 signatures is quite significant if one considers that for an investment of $15,000 my college bound son and his buddies would be totally able to gather that many in no time. I suspect that emotional trigger language used by the signature gathers like the one stationed outside of Bed, Bath and Beyond that employed anti-government bureaucratization, unfair taxation, and high density housing development around SMART stations really turned off the thoughtful citizens doing their weekend shopping.
by Clay Mitchell
Mr. Richard-
I believe that you under-estimate the difficulty of collecting 15,000 valid signatures- not from a standpoint of public opinion and willingness of the public to sign, but from the actual logistical standpoint.
Especially in the face of a “blocking” campaign by supporters of the train, where they target and interfere with signature collection activities, as we have faced over the last month.
Message creep and message discipline is a challenge with an almost all volunteer organization- each volunteer often adds their own patina to what started out as a very simple, straightforward message about the right of the people, who are paying for the project, to have a chance to ratify or refuse the changes that have been made.
That being said, if your son and his buddies want to give it a go, I’m sure that we can raise the rest of the $15,000 you think it would take, and we’ll re-file and have them bang it out “in no time”. If they did, we’d probably even give them each a substantial bonus.
If you’re serious (and I kind of doubt that you are), feel free to contact me and we’ll get them all set up. clay@repealsmart.org
by John Reed
(Press Democrat 1-31-12): “(The) repeal of the Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit sales tax officially ended in failure Monday…”. That means that the work on the project can now proceed, and over a thousand construction jobs for local residents will be created, and a critical transportation infra-structure link will be put in place for future generations. This is a good thing, and we should be celebrating this progress.
The SMART Riders Coalition, composed of business, labor, environmental, and land-use organizations, came together to defend the project, which was approved by an almost insurmountable 2/3rds majority just a few years back. We were appalled that a small group of ideologically motivated individuals could use a fifty dollar filing fee to derail a $750M public works project, which had just sold its bonds and started the construction work. We mounted a public education campaign to meet with the public in the field and let them know what the actual consequences of signing this misguided petition really were. We succeeded in making our case, peacefully and legally, and our position prevailed with the public. We now ask the repeal leaders to acknowledge that verdict, instead of continuing to seek to cause a train wreck that would be hung up in court for years.
We invite the leaders of the repeal campaign to make good on their stated intention to improve the project by putting their energy into helping secure the funding necessary to build out the entire line as soon as possible.
Hopefully, this next Congressional election will deliver progressive majorities in both the House and Senate who will enthusiastically support mass transit and commuter rail in the federal budget. A show of widespread community support for the SMART project will improve the chances that we will rise to the top of the line in terms of securing both state and federal transit funding to speed completion of the line, and the accompanying bike trail.
If Parnell and Mitchell are sincere in their stated goal of holding the project to its original promise, that would be a far more promising course of action than launching yet another divisive and doomed repeal effort.
This is the moment of truth for both of you. What are your real intentions? Are you honest stewards of the tax-payers investment or stalking horses for a hidden right-wing anti-government agenda? Your actions will tell.