MEASURE Q TALLY SHOWS CITY DIVIDED

What follows are excerpts from the Inside Opinion blog by Press Democrat editorial writers Paul Gullixson and Jim Sweeney. The blog can be found on WatchSonomaCounty.com.

The final tally on the measure calling for district elections for the Santa Rosa City Council was 59.8 percent opposed, 40.2 percent in favor. In short, Measure Q got thumped. But take a closer look at the results, and you'll get a picture of politics in Santa Rosa.

There is no Berlin Wall, but if you draw a line along Highway 101 and Franklin Avenue, you'll see a city of Ossis and Wessis.

Bill Steck, a member of last year's charter review committee, plotted the precinct results for Measure Q. His color-coded maps -- including one available on WatchSonomaCounty.com -- put the line in sharp relief.

On the east side of Santa Rosa, where political power now lies, Measure Q lost in a landslide. In most precincts, the "no" vote ran far ahead of the citywide total. Opposition was strongest in Fountaingrove, with Oakmont not far behind. On the west side, it was a close contest. Measure Q got a majority in several precincts, and the "yes" vote ran ahead of the citywide average almost everywhere. Measure Q also scored well in the Junior College neighborhood, South Park and other neighborhoods around the fairgrounds and all along the Santa Rosa Avenue corridor.

A few other details stand out from Steck's analysis. In the precincts strongly opposing Measure Q, the Latino voting-age population was less than 10 percent. It was 31 percent in the precincts where it carried a majority or near majority. There was a $23,000 difference in median income, and 56 percent of the voters in the strongest "no" precincts were over 55. In the precincts where Measure Q did best, just 38 percent of the voters were over 55.

The takeaway: Santa Rosa voters weren't ready to change the election system in 2012, but the issue won't go away. A voting rights act lawsuit is one possibility. Beyond that, demographic trends and city policies favoring growth in pro-Measure Q areas point to a different outcome at the polls within a few years.

-- Jim Sweeney

Sonoma County is on the clock once again concerning garbage. After getting bombarded with criticism three years ago for exporting all of the county's garage by truck to distant counties -- while negotiating a plan to sell its landfill -- the Board of Supervisors quickly changed directions and reopened the dormant Mecham Road site.

But the landfill's current capacity is scheduled to reach its limit in September -- unless the county can come to an agreement on a complex, long-term deal for operating the landfill before then.

The supervisors are expected to vote possibly late next month on a 20-year contract handing operation over to Republic Services of Arizona. Under the plan, the county would retain ownership of the facility.

Representatives from Republic told the Editorial Board on Friday that the contract calls for them to take full responsibility for getting a new permit from the state's North Coast Regional Water Quality Control Board, to get state approval for expanding it and to take responsibility for closing it when it reaches capacity in 30 years or so.

But in return, Republic wants a 20-year commitment from the county and the cities -- excluding Petaluma -- to send their garbage to the Mecham site.

The means that between now and September, Republic and supporters of this deal need to finalize the details, get county approval, get approval from each of the cities and then hire a construction team to build the new phase, which will take roughly five months. As former Supervisor Eric Koenigshofer, now a spokesman for the trash hauler Ratto Group, said, "This is the cat-herding phase."

There are a number of questions that still need to be answered about this deal, particularly concerning the specific diversion rates that Republic will be required to meet. But all in all, it could be a good deal, particularly for the environment. The liner once suspected of leaking has already been fixed, and there's no further risk of contamination.

And, according to Rick Downey, operations manager for Republic, the new liner will be far better. Usually a site like this would require a single composite liner, he said. But in the case of the planned expansion area of the landfill, there will be two. The total thickness of the new liner: 12 feet. "That means there will be 12 feet between where the garbage is and where potential water is," he said.

My guess is that's almost equal to the height of all the reports, contracts and minutes of meetings spent on this issue in recent years.

The state water board is scheduled to vote on the new permit on March 14. Staff is recommending that it be approved.

-- Paul Gullixson

Scanning the morning papers recently, I came across an editorial tribute in the Fresno Bee to my namesake. I'm not related to Jim Sweeney, the former Fresno State football coach, and I never met him, yet he helped me out more than once. He almost certainly didn't know it, but I appreciated it just the same.

For much of the 1980s, I covered state government and politics for a newspaper in Southern California. When I called on someone in the Central Valley for the first time, I was frequently asked whether I was related to the Bulldogs coach. It may have been the only reason some people took the call. They probably would have preferred to talk to him, but they usually answered my questions anyway.

My distant association with the other Jim Sweeney -- or am I the other Jim Sweeney? - goes back even further. When I was a little boy in Montana, he coached at Montana State. My dad got transferred to Portland, Ore., and soon afterward, he started coaching at Washington State. Someone missed a memo somewhere, because he stayed put when we decamped for Denver. But soon after we arrived in California, he was coaching for Fresno State and, briefly, the Oakland Raiders.

The closest we came to meeting was when we stayed at the same hotel in Los Angeles. He must have been on a recruiting trip, and a couple of his phone messages got routed to me. I returned them via the front desk; perhaps I should have tried to deliver them myself.

This old baseball fan always took a little extra interest in football when Jim Sweeney's teams were playing. And I'm sorry that he's gone.

-- Jim Sweeney