Measure F inches toward approval

Newport-Mesa school bond has 55.5% of the vote late Wednesday. District officials begin to discuss implementation.Unofficial results Wednesday showed the Measure F bond holding on to a tentative victory in Tuesday’s special election, with the school-renovation plan passing by a slim margin.

The $282-million bond, which the Newport-Mesa Unified School District approved in August, had garnered 55.5% of the vote late Wednesday. While all 979 Orange County precincts had turned in their ballots, spokesman Brian Watkins of the Registrar of Voters said the results would not be final for another two weeks, when officials had counted all the provisional and absentee ballots.

Now, Measure F has just enough support to pass. The bond measure, which will entail the largest renovation in the history of the school district, needs 55% of the vote.

“I think we’d all like a definite answer, but we’re just going to have to wait now,” said district spokeswoman Jane Garland. “It looks good for us.”

Supt. Robert Barbot said even though the final result was still up in the air, the district would proceed with its plans over the next two weeks. The next step for Measure F is to create a facility advisory committee and an oversight committee, a pair of community groups whose job it will be to mediate the sale of bonds and ensure that all areas of the district receive equal funds.

“We don’t want to be assuming anything, but at the organizational level, we’ll begin to look at a number of things -- to give the board a timeline to make sure, assuming it passes, that the pieces we promised the community are appropriately followed and put in place,” Barbot said.

The facility advisory committee and the oversight committee will be independent of the district and will consist of parents and other residents. Deputy Supt. Paul Reed said that after the committees are staffed, work should begin on campuses within a year.

The school district hasn’t created a schedule for the Measure F projects, citing probable changes in construction costs over the next decade. Among the hoped-for improvements are a football stadium at Estancia High School, an Olympic-sized swimming pool at Costa Mesa High School, a districtwide teacher training center, and science classrooms at all elementary schools.

The Measure A school bond, passed in 2000, provided repairs and renovations for 28 Newport-Mesa schools but did not add new facilities. Furthermore, the $110-million bond did not cover all of its intended projects, and one of the new bond’s goals is to complete the leftover Measure A tasks.

Some, including the Orange County Young Republicans and a number of local city council members, opposed the bond. While nearly everyone agreed that Newport-Mesa’s campuses needed more improvements, opponents of Measure F decried the use of tax dollars to pay for them.

The district has promised that Measure F will not increase the property tax rate set under Measure A five years ago. Under the first bond, residents cannot pay more than $22.35 per $100,000 of a property’s assessed value; the combined payments for measures A and F may not exceed this limit.

Although its 55.5% lead is smaller than the 72% for Measure A, the bond enjoyed the distinction of being the only Orange County ballot measure, as of Wednesday morning, to be approved by voters. The other five measures on Tuesday’s ballot -- B, C, D and G -- all received less than 50% support.

“It’s pretty staggering to think of people going down that list, voting no on every measure and finally voting yes on us,” said Measure F campaign chairman Mark Buchanan.

Tuesday night, Buchanan, Newport-Mesa officials, parents and other campaigners sat in a back room at the Newport Rib Co., watching the statewide results on television and checking for Measure F updates online. Although the election results the following morning were incomplete, some supporters still considered it a victory.

“I feel very positive,” said Katrina Foley, a Costa Mesa councilwoman and mother of two children at Sonora Elementary School. “I don’t have any concern that it’s going to drop in votes, because I think that our get-out-the-vote effort on election day is what won the election for us.”

Also in Tuesday’s election, voters throughout California turned down propositions 74 and 76, a pair of education-related measures that most Newport-Mesa officials scorned. The former would have made it more difficult for teachers to attain tenure, and the latter would have given the governor more unilateral control of education funds.

School board president Serene Stokes expressed gratitude over both measures’ apparent defeats -- particularly the latter, which she said would make yearly planning a difficult task.

“We can’t survive not knowing how much money we’re going to get, nor could we survive if in the middle of the year, the governor decides to take some of the money back,” Stokes said. “You can’t plan programs under those conditions.”

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