The results…depressing

Yes folks, the results are in and thanks to a running tally by Tony Daysog and David Kirwin I was able to relive the experience of last night, which I was trying to avoid.

Here’s the major inequity of our voting system.   When the Constitutional Amendment to limit marriage as only between a man and woman comes up for a vote come November, it only requires a simply majority (50% +1) to wrest away basic civil rights from a significant portion of our population.   But try and get funding for basic necessities in our town, our own city, that takes a super majority of a 2/3 vote, yet another reason to thank Prop 13 for.

But as Tom Pavletic opined on the Don Roberts show when asked about his efforts to bring down Measure H as opposed to simply running for yet another office, broadly summarizing here since I don’t have a photographic memory, he stated that since his message simply doesn’t resonate with people, as evident from his showing in the last few election, bringing down parcel taxes like this was so much easier because you only needed to get 1/3 of the vote rather than even a majority.  Ahh…nothing says “democracy in action” like doing the very least you need to just get by.

In the end, the amazing efforts of all those involved in the KASE campaign was simply not enough to reach the threshold required.   However, there are provisonal ballots left to be counted (as reported by Michele Ellson courtsey of Mike McMahon’s site), and as supporters all pray for a miracle that the provional ballots will turn out enough votes to make the difference.   

What makes this too close to count finish even more depressing is the number of other cities that have resoundingly said, “yes! Schools are important in my community, I want to help” in the form of parcel taxes passing all over the Bay Area, including “kid and family unfriendly” San Francisco, which was passing at a rate of 70%.   Mountain View’s parcel tax passed at a staggering 83% rate   Los Gatos’s passed at an 82% rate for a much higher parcel tax at $290 per parcel.

Yet in our Island Mayberry, so touted for being “family friendly” with its small town feel, couldn’t find enough community spirit to pass a pittance of a tax to support the education of its most valuable residents.  Here’s the bright side though, there were lots of people writing into the Sun and Journal and to this blog and others to tell us exactly what the school district was doing wrong and what they should do to change it.   So, hopefully after this is all over, those opinionated folks who know how a school district should really be run should be invited to a meeting with the Superintendent and CFO to share their ideas of cost cutting measures for the school district.   They can start at the top trying to eliminate all the perceived excess postions, and run their way down the chain of command and demand that teachers be compensated less to do more work.   That’s the spirit of community, how can we as a community make our education system do more with less and less every year!   What can we just “get by” with?  After all, it’s just the education of our kids, our future leaders and caretakers of our futures.    

I think we’ll all enjoy having these discussions as well when we need to talk about adjustments in fire and police services too.

Oh yeah, and Loni Hancock won.