Election night final: Will Madera County voters renew Measure T’s 0.5% sales tax?
The vote count in favor of a citizen initiative to renew a 0.5% sales tax in Madera County that raises funds for transportation projects, such as road work and transit, was just above the minimum threshold required for approval as of the final tally on Tuesday night.
A 0.5% transportation sales tax has been in place in Madera County for 30 years, in different versions.
As of 11:51 p.m. Tuesday night, 18.304 voters, or 51.86%, said yes to Measure T, while 16,993 voters, or 48.14%, said no. As a citizen initiative, the measure requires only a simple majority to pass. If approved, it will extend the existing 0.5% sales tax for another 20 years.
District 4 Madera County Supervisor Robert Poythress, a supporter of the measure, told The Fresno Bee on Tuesday night that he felt confident the measure would pass.
“We will continue to be able to leverage state and federal dollars,” he said. “We will continue to have additional funding for road repairs.”
Poythress said initial results tend to be negative toward initiatives like Measure T. But he also said he saw a huge voter turnout in recent days, and he credited that for his confidence that the measure will pass.
Measure T supporters, many of them local elected officials, and opponents, many of them residents of the county’s mountain communities, agreed that the county will be losing out on hundreds of millions of dollars that are crucial to maintaining infrastructure and growing if Measure T disappears.
Both sides argued with each other in the comment sections of social media posts in recent weeks, with supporters saying the renewal proposal reflects what county residents asked for, and opponents saying the oversight structure of the measure leaves too much room for elected officials to choose to fund projects residents might not want.
The version currently in effect was approved by voters in 2006 and expires in 2027. A renewal attempt two years ago received 52% of the vote, but it required a super-majority approval (66% of the vote).
This year, as the draft of the renewal proposal made its way through local government, a group of county citizens gathered enough signatures to launch the proposal as a citizen initiative. The citizen initiative is almost identical to the one that was drafted as a government initiative, which was created after several months of work with citizens steering committees consisting of members from across the county.
The renewal proposal document says Measure T is expected to generate $22 million annually for a total of $440 million in the next 20 years. Here is the proposal’s investment plan for the anticipated revenue:
▪ Local streets and Roads: 80%, or $352 million, with 10% set aside for disadvantaged communities.
▪ Regional projects: 14.5%, or $63.8 million.
▪ Transit: 4%, or $17.6 million
▪ Administrative expense cap: 1.5%, or $6.6 million
Madera County District 5 Supervisor Bobby Macaulay told The Bee last week that the new proposal addresses the complaints opponents had in 2022 because it includes an expiration after 20 years and it allocates more for local road maintenance rather than for building new infrastructure.
“That’s what everybody wanted,” Macaulay said.
Mark Reed, who served on one of the steering committees during the proposal’s creation but is opposing the measure, told The Bee last week that the make-up of the county Transportation Authority is his main issue. Reed ran against Macaulay in 2022 and is part of a group of residents from Madera County’s mountain communities that has been vocal in its opposition to Measure T’s structure for years.
Reed said opponents of the proposal want the make-up of the Transportation Authority changed to also include citizens in order to improve accountability and transparency. The Transportation Authority, established by the 2006 Measure T ordinance, consists of the same elected officials who sit on the Madera County Transportation Commission, which is the regional planning agency that includes three county supervisors, two Madera city councilmembers and one Chowchilla city councilmember.
“The people around me believe that there is a quantifiable value that an elected official brings to the Transportation Authority,” Reed said. “However, there’s also a massive, quantifiable value that qualified citizens on the Transportation Authority would bring to the budget selection process.”
Those who support this idea say state law is vague on the composition of transportation authorities, and that it is county law that has established the current make-up of the one in Madera.
Kendall Flint, a consultant who helped plan the proposal before it became a citizen initiative, told The Bee last week that Reed’s proposal is not a viable path. A pro-Measure T site created by the consulting firm she works for, DKS Associates, includes a response to the idea that says it would ultimately require approval of the county Transportation Commission board, half of which is comprised of city councilmembers from Chowchilla and Madera who would be unlikely to vote to dilute city representation on those boards.
Who funded the Measure T renewal effort?
As of Nov. 1, a political action committee in favor of the citizen initiative to renew Measure T had $293,237.92 in total contributions. The PAC, called Moving Madera Forward, drew massive monetary contributions from many large businesses and organizations, including:
▪ $10,000 from Caglia Environmental
▪ $10,000 from Tesoro Viejo Development Inc.
▪ $10,000 from Fresno developer Richard Spencer
▪ $100,000 from the Picayune Rancheria of the Chukchansi Indians
Frontpoint Partners LLC. contributed a “signature gathering service” worth more than $84,000. The firm’s contribution and involvement has been questioned by opponents of the citizen initiative, who point out that Frontpoint has a registered address listed online as a unit in a shared workspace in Southern California, and a registered agent with an address listed as an office for an out-of-state financial services company.
Alex Tavlian, a known Fresno-area political consultant and principal officer of the pro-Measure T PAC, did not respond to The Bee’s request for an interview last week.
This story was originally published November 5, 2024 at 8:56 PM.
