APTOS—Cabrillo College President Matt Wetstein in a March 31 email thanked voters who supported Measure R, which would have funded construction and infrastructure projects at the college’s Aptos and Watsonville campuses.
The $274 million bond measure would have placed about $20 per $100,000 on the assessed value of Santa Cruz County homes.
It would have, among other things, funded a public safety training center for the Watsonville area and an upgrade to the college’s technology.
But fell just two percentage points of the 55 percent it needed to pass in the March 3 election.
Wetstein said that the ballot measure suffered the same fate as the majority of others across the state.
“Outside of a few wealthy enclaves, nearly every community college ballot measure went down to defeat,” he wrote. “This pattern played out in both Democratic and Republican strongholds. It happened to colleges in Riverside, Merced, Sacramento and Orange County, to name a few.”
Wetstein said that several factors contributed to the defeat.
Voters, he said, likely shied away after seeing Proposition 13 on the same ballot, which would have funded K-12 education statewide. The measure also failed, the first time in 20 years a statewide education bond was rejected by voters, Wetstein said.
“Having voted for Prop 13, voters tended to say no or skip voting at higher levels when deciding on the local bond measures,” he said.
In addition, many voters who showed their support for local measures that benefitted K-12 schools were less inclined to do the same for Cabrillo, Wetstein said.
Measure V, which will fund Soquel Union Elementary School District, passed with 63.5 percent of the vote. Measure Y, which extends the 2014 Measure G sales tax to fund public safety in Watsonville, passed by more than 78 percent.
Wetstein also attributed Measure R’s defeat to depressed voter turnout, and to an unsteady stock market.
“Despite the outcome, all of us involved in the campaign are proud of our efforts,” he said. “Surveying races across the California landscape, we are one of the districts that came closest to victory.”
