Sonoma County tax measure gains support from college students, military veterans

As a coalition of seasoned campaign strategists and powerful political groups in Sonoma County mount their campaign in support of a sales tax measure to boost local road repair, a smaller corps of advocates, including military veterans and college students, is making its own push for the tax increase, to pave the way for free bus fare for its ranks.

The veterans and college students - an unlikely political alliance - are seeking to marshal voters for the June 2 election and secure the simple majority needed to pass the countywide quarter-cent sales tax increase.

With light voter turnout expected in the off-year, summer election, the parallel campaigns could prove pivotal to the fate of the tax proposal, dubbed Measure A.

“This is going to be such a dreadfully low voter turnout, so this could help draw people out, particularly with the Santa Rosa Junior College constituency, because it’s a much larger number of students,” said David McCuan, a Sonoma State University political scientist. “The biggest questions are whether they can raise enough in terms of resources and how strong their opposition is.”

The benefit of the sales tax increase for veterans and college students is clear.

Sonoma County supervisors, who placed the five-year sales-tax initiative on the ballot, said they intend to use up to 10 percent of the $20 million in anticipated annual revenue to continue funding a program that, for the past three months, has provided free public transportation for college students and veterans. The $265,000 pilot program for Sonoma County Transit - the first of its kind in the Bay Area, according to county and regional transportation officials - currently is paid for through discretionary dollars from the county’s general fund.

Public transit advocates supporting the tax increase said the county program provides valuable assistance to county residents struggling to make ends meet.

“This is substantially alleviating the huge burden students face every day when going to college, with fees and tuition and rising rents,” said Omar Paz, a student body leader at Santa Rosa Junior College and activist with the North Bay Organizing Project, which is helping to drum up support for the tax measure. “This is also about helping people achieve an education who might not be able to, from low-income areas of the county.”

Other groups involved in the drive by students and veterans include Sonoma County Vet Connect, a nonprofit service organization, and veterans with the Military Order of the Purple Heart. Their combined efforts so far include campaigning on campus and lobbying elected city officials, with plans to roll out a voter registration drive aimed at students.

The larger and separate push for the sales tax is being advanced by a coalition of politically active organizations, including labor and construction groups whose members stand to benefit from work funded by the extra tax money. Supporters include the Operating Engineers Local 3, the North Coast Builders Exchange, Sonoma County Alliance, Sonoma County Conservation Action and the North Bay Labor Council.

Donations totaling $31,500 since January have come from the Sonoma County Alliance, BoDean Co., the Santa Rosa asphalt manufacturer, and Save Our Sonoma Roads, the advocacy group, according to campaign finance records.

The campaign conducted polling earlier this year and has phone surveys underway of likely voters. Supporters said they are set to ramp up their public efforts this month. Vote-by-mail ballots are set to go out May 4 for the election.

Road funding advocates who initially were opposed to a set-aside for transit have embraced the bus-fare spending sought by students and veterans.

“In the beginning, we didn’t think we needed a tax increase, but we bit the bullet and decided it’s something we need because of how bad our roads are,” said Craig Harrison, a founder of SOS Roads and a spokesman for the Measure A campaign. “We’re coming at this purely from a public advocacy point of view. We believe the additional tax revenue is going to benefit all users of our road system.”

County officials settled on the tax increase as the best option to close a chronic shortfall in road funding and forestall further deterioration of the local road network, which is consistently ranked among the worst in the nine-county Bay Area.

Bringing just the county-governed 1,382-mile network up to good condition could cost an estimated $954 million over the next 20 years, according to the county. If approved by voters, Measure A would give 44 percent of proceeds to the county, with the remainder of the sales tax revenue divvied up among each of the nine cities based on population and number of road miles per jurisdiction.

Opponents of the measure, including taxpayer advocates, say the proposal is a political grab bag for special interests with little to no guarantee that the additional tax funding will be spent on roads.

“Don’t be fooled by empty promises that Measure A is a roads tax intended to repair aging and crumbling roads,” the Sonoma County Taxpayers’ Association stated in its official ballot argument against the measure. “The tax would just be another general purpose tax divvied up among the county and its cities.”

Taxpayer groups said the county should have sought a special tax for roads. Such a measure would have required two-thirds of the vote to pass.

Taxpayer advocates also note that the county’s economy is recovering, and with tax revenue increasing, the county is no longer in the financial trouble it found itself in during the recession. The revenue increases should be spent on roads, they say.

“We have elected officials taking the easy way out,” the Redwood Empire Tax Committee said in its ballot statement opposing the measure.

Supervisor David Rabbitt, who helped develop the tax initiative for the Board of Supervisors and who is actively campaigning for it as a private citizen, said he is attempting to persuade would-be voters that elected officials will spend the money on road repair. He voiced strong support for the bus pass program.

“If the measure is successful, we’ll have five years to prove it,” he said. “I have always intended to dedicate 90 percent of the funds on pavement preservation, and the other 10 percent on continuing the transit program.”

Since the January launch of the bus pass program, student ridership has increased to nearly 29,000 trips in March, a 26 percent jump over ridership last year at the same time, according to county transportation officials. The figures include the county’s two largest colleges, Sonoma State University and Santa Rosa Junior College, with a combined 66,000 students.

County officials tallied a total of 2,241 trips last month by veterans under the free bus program. There are an estimated 33,000 veterans living in the county.

Veterans representatives said the program has made an impact for current and former service members seeking access to health care, housing, jobs and other services.

“So many veterans are homeless and don’t have money to buy a bus ticket to get to their medical appointments or to their job if they have one, so this is helping us immensely,” said Richard Jones, president of the nonprofit Sonoma County Vet Connect. “I would hate to raise taxes, but this is getting veterans the services they need.”

Prior to the free transit program, Jones said Vet Connect volunteers used donations to purchase around $400 worth of bus tickets per month mainly to assist veterans in getting to medical care at a clinic in Santa Rosa and in San Francisco. Now, Jones said he is able to use that money to purchase warm clothing and used furniture for needy veterans.

“This has relieved us a whole lot,” he said.

Vietnam War veteran Eagle Lone Fight said being able to ride the bus for free is saving his life.

Lone Fight, 64, who was homeless for nearly 40 years and recently received veterans housing, catches two county buses on his commute to get to his medical appointments. He said he suffers from diabetes, post-traumatic stress disorder and other health complications from injuries sustained in Vietnam.

“I go to the VA every day. I used to have to panhandle in order to get there,” Lone Fight said. “Now I don’t have to, so this is helping me tremendously.”

Sonoma County’s program is unique in the Bay Area. Though colleges and some counties offer free bus rides, Sonoma County’s pass program is the only one in the region paid for with general-fund money, according to regional transportation officials. San Francisco allows people with disabilities and the elderly to ride its public transportation for free, but those rides are funded by the city’s transportation agency.

Jake Mackenzie, a Rohnert Park councilman and vice chairman of the Metropolitan Transportation Commission, applauded the county’s initiative to bolster public transit, but said government-funded programs that offer free rides can be politically and financially tricky to adopt.

“In great nirvana, all public transportation would be free,” said Mackenzie, also a longtime transit advocate. “But in reality, there’s no free lunch. It takes that fare box recovery to pay for it.”

Like the Board of Supervisors, the Santa Rosa City Council has endorsed spending up to 10 percent of the city’s portion of Measure A dollars on expanding public transportation on its transit line, CityBus, said Santa Rosa Mayor John Sawyer. But decisions as to how, specifically, the revenue would be spent have not been made.

“We understand the great value there is in public transit,” said Sawyer, the Santa Rosa mayor. “We have a train coming to town, and we need to do everything we can to get people to it.”

The county has pegged the cost of the June 2 special election at $361,602.

You can reach Staff Writer Angela Hart at 526-8503 or angela.hart@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @ahartreports.

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Editor’s Note: The City of Santa Rosa plans to consider offering free or subsidized bus rides to students and veterans should a countywide sales tax measure on the June 2 ballot pass. This article originally mischaracterized plans to extend its CityBus public transit line. It has been corrected in the article above