Poll: 70% of voters in Sonoma, Marin counties support SMART rail sales tax extension

Nearly 70% of Sonoma and Marin County voters support extending a quarter-cent sales tax that would help pay for the North Bay’s commuter rail system for another 30 years, according to poll results the North Bay Leadership Council released Wednesday.

The poll comes more than a month after Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit officials revealed the rail agency could face multimillion-dollar deficits within the next three years, if they fail to garner support from two-thirds of voters in both counties for a proposed sales tax renewal. That outcome would likely lead to SMART cutting in half the rail service that began in August 2017 and displacing dozens of its 200-member workforce, rail agency officials said last month. The 43-mile rail line runs from near Charles M. Schulz-Sonoma County Airport south to San Rafael.

The poll, conducted by San Francisco political consulting firm The Wickers Group LLC in early September, provided a cautiously optimistic view of SMART’s chances of gaining sufficient voter approval for the sales tax extension.

The sales tax, first approved through Measure Q in 2008 by a 70% vote, expires in 2029. It’s generated $289 million in its first? 10? years, roughly $166 million short of initial projections for the measure within that time frame. SMART board members have until Dec. 6 to decide if they want to add a sales tax extension measure to the March 2020 ballot, nine years before it would sunset. A reporter’s calls to SMART officials on Wednesday for comment on the leadership council’s poll results went unreturned.

Of the 500 registered and likely voters in Sonoma and Marin counties who participated in the poll, 69% said they would back a ballot measure to extend the SMART quarter-cent sales tax for another 30 years. Support for the sales-tax extension was higher when looking at respondents who identified as Democrats, with 77% saying they supported it.

Republicans, roughly 19% of the people who responded to the poll, were more divided, with 60% in favor and 30% saying they would oppose the tax renewal for the rail agency. Independents, or 17% of those who participated in the poll, were split 54% for and 28% against. The study had a margin of error of roughly 4.4%.

“It doesn’t matter what subgroup of the electorate you look at, voters across-the-board support the 30-year ¼-cent sales tax extension for SMART,” said Cynthia Murray, CEO the North Bay Leadership Council, an employer-led public policy group.

Murray, who served as chairwoman of SMART’s successful sales-tax campaign in 2008, confirmed in July that she’d be involved in the upcoming lobbying to get voters to approve extending the quarter-cent sales tax, but said she would not spearhead the effort. She didn’t return calls Wednesday to answer a reporter’s questions about the recent poll.

The poll also showed nearly 90% of those who responded recognized the SMART name. Those who have ridden a SMART train were more likely to rate the rail system as “favorable” (88%), while only 59% of all people polled came to the same conclusion.

The results should be encouraging to rail agency officials after a brutal summer when at least five people were killed in SMART-related train collisions. Three of those people were men who took their own lives. The deaths led the rail agency to bolster suicide-prevention efforts and tap local mental health groups for the creation of a regional task force intended to suggest ways to reduce suicides along the rail line.

You can reach Staff Writer Nashelly Chavez at 707-521-5203 or nashelly.chavez@pressdemocrat.com.