Election over, but Tacoma road tax measure not dead yet
By a margin smaller than the number of potholes on some Tacoma blocks, the city’s voters are rejecting the largest piece of a tax package for road improvement.
The Pierce County Auditor’s office reported Friday that after counting all ballots received from the Nov. 3 election, votes in favor of new property and utility taxes for road maintenance trail those against it by 4 votes, 17,688 to 17,692.
“Nothing ever comes easy in this town,” Tacoma Mayor Marilyn Strickland said, “and so we just have to work really hard to get the resources that we need.”
Now her hope rests on the miniscule fraction of votes that the county auditor hasn’t yet added to the official total: city election ballots trickling in via mail from residents in military service or otherwise abroad, and in 347 ballots Tacomans sent in after botching the signature requirements.
Pierce County Auditor Julie Anderson said Friday that the office had received 221 ballots with signatures that do not match, and 126 ballots where the signatures are missing. Anderson said her office has used letters and phone calls to alert those voters that they can still “cure” their ballots up until Nov. 23.
The measure, on the ballot as Proposition No. 3, would add a 1.5 percent tax on utility company earnings and raise property taxes by 20 cents per $1,000 of assessed value.
City officials estimate the taxes would bring in $13 million a year in dedicated money for road work, from paving 167 blocks of gravel streets to filling potholes to adding sidewalks and disabled-access ramps.
They were packaged with a city sales-tax increase labeled Proposition A, which passed easily and will provide $4.5 million a year. It is the first dedicated road improvement money to win approval from Tacoma voters since 1968.
Strickland said that with the slim margin by which the second tax measure trails, she’s considering whether to pursue any of the options still open.
They include requesting a recount or entering into the laborious practice of “ballot chasing” — i.e., encouraging voters who cast curable ballots to wade through the bureaucracy of getting them counted.
Close elections over ballot measures, unlike elections involving human candidates, don’t trigger automatic recounts. State law instead requires five (or more) voters to petition for a recount and put up a deposit that gets pricier with turnout: 15 cents per ballot for a machine recount, 25 cents per ballot for a hand count.
With 35,380 ballots cast and counted already, the machine recount would require a $5,307 deposit; the hand-count option, $8,845. That deposit would be refunded if the group requesting the recount changes the outcome. If the recount confirms the initial count, the requester would be on the hook for the cost of the entire process.
Strickland estimated the total cost would be about $30,000. She cited both that expense and the hard labor required to go “ballot chasing” as obstacles to further pursuing ballots that already hit this year’s box. So, too, is the uncertain outcome involved in the pursuit.
“There’s always the off chance that you’ll inadvertently pick up votes for the opposition,” the mayor said.
Although her cause is a loser as the count stands, Strickland said she was “very optimistic” about the signal the outcome showed her.
“If we’re only within four votes of winning or losing an election, with some strategic targeting we can probably win it if we go out again,” she said.
On the other side of the equation, Steve Cook, whose low-overhead opposition organization TacomaNOw tried to defeat both tax measures, said he would not request a recount if he ends up on the losing end.
“I don’t have that kind of extra money laying around,” said Cook, a pastor and customer-service worker, “and I believe that it would be counterproductive to spend it on that.”
Cook let out a “Yay!” when he first saw Friday’s vote count. It was, he said, the extent of his celebration agenda.
“I’m just going to be happy that I don’t have to spend more of my money on this that I can spend on my family,” Cook said. “Then I’ll probably try to get to a City Council meeting to explain why they should not try to push it through again, contrary to the mayor’s view.”
Derrick Nunnally: 253-597-8693, @dcnunnally
Other election updates
Ten days after Election Day, two contests on the ballot in Pierce County appear headed for an automatic recount.
In a race between incumbents for a University Place School Board seat, Annie Fitzsimmons leads Rick Maloney by 30 votes — 3,250 to 3,220, according to numbers released Friday.
And in a race for the Orting City Council, challenger Nicola McDonald leads incumbent Sam Colorossi by four votes — 664 to 660.
A few other races are close but do not fall within the margin for an automatic recount paid for by taxpayers.
Candidates willing to pay for a recount could request the county auditor to conduct one.
Meanwhile, election officials will keep processing the last few hundred ballots, including ones that arrived in the mail late, were marked in ways that are hard to interpret, or were submitted with signature problems that must be resolved.
The election will be certified Nov. 24, and any recounts will take place the following week.
This story was originally published November 13, 2015 at 10:26 AM with the headline "Election over, but Tacoma road tax measure not dead yet."