Tam Union Measure A supporters blame poor turnout, ‘untruths’ in loss

A lower-than-expected voter turnout and an aggressive opposition campaign likely combined to sink a Tamalpais Union High School District bond measure in the March 5 primary election, supporters said this week.

Charles Heath, a district consultant on the bond measure, said at a meeting of the board of trustees on Tuesday that voter turnout was less than half of the nearly 90,000 voters in the sprawling high school district.

“This was only half of the eligible voters,” he said. “We expected another 15,000 votes.”

The district’s $517 million bond measure lost by about 565 votes out of 45,345 votes cast, according to the Marin County Elections Department.

Measure A received 53.76% yes votes, only 1.24% short of the 55% majority it needed to win, according to the county results.

Total Marin turnout on March 5 was 53.42%, or 90,757 ballots cast out of 169,893 registered voters, the county said. Heath said the lack of controversial races in the Marin primaries possibly affected the turnout.

Also, low turnout tends to skew the likely voters to older households where there are no school-age children, Heath said. Nonetheless, Heath said other comparable school bond measures on the ballot around the Bay Area and the state did pass, “but I don’t think they faced the same level of opposition we did.”

Heath told trustees he will conduct surveys of both the “no” voters and the non-voters in the next few weeks to determine why they voted against Measure A or why they didn’t vote at all. Trustees said they would analyze the survey results before deciding whether to repost the ballot measure in November.

“I have some questions why people voted ‘no’ and why they didn’t vote,” trustee Cynthia Roenisch said. “I want that information first.”

Heath said the Nov. 5 presidential election is the last chance for a re-do until June or November 2026. The deadline to post a measure on the Nov. 5 ballot is Aug. 9, he said.

“Our goal is to do a thorough analysis so we can start a conversation to answer the ‘big why,'” Heath said. “What needs to be done differently, and how do we plot a strategy moving forward?”

For Yes on A campaign co-chairs Annie Sherman and Cari Dauphinais, the main reason for Measure A’s defeat was clear: a loud and active opposition campaign from the Marin Coalition of Sensible Taxpayers that they said contained many misleading statements designed to inflame voters.

“We wish we could have had more opportunities to share the real facts on how impactful Measure A would have been toward improving student academics and learning,” Sherman said.  “Instead, we had to spend a large amount of our time debunking a whole list of misconceptions and untruths.”

One example, they said, was COST’s insistence that Measure A was not a $517 million bond measure, but was actually a $1 billion item. The latter was the total amount of the repayment cost, with interest, after 30 years.

“We have yet to see another example of a bond measure — or a mortgage — ever using the final repayment as its cost,” Sherman told trustees.

The measure, if passed, would have assessed taxpayers $30 per $100,000 of assessed valuation per property annually. District officials said that level of taxation was comparable to taxes in other Marin school districts that have passed recent bond measures.

They said $517 million was necessary because the district serves close to 90,000 voters, or up to half of Marin’s public high school students.

“This was a well-planned bond that would have sent a message that our community values safe and modern schools,” Dauphinais said. “The arguments against us had many inaccuracies, including those in the ballot arguments.”

Mimi Willard, COST executive director, on Wednesday doubled down on the $1 billion price tag characterization.

“Tam Union’s own polling showed tepid support for this bond measure if taxpayers knew it would cost them $1 billion — a fact that they tried to hide and dispute,” Willard said in an email.

“Now they are lashing out at us – and implicitly calling the voters stupid – because their constituents decided this tax was unnecessarily large and full of misplaced priorities,” Willard said.

Another major “untruth,” according to Sherman and Dauphinais, was COST’s description of the Redwood High School rebuilding and restoration project as a “$106 million gold-plated cafeteria.”

Sherman said $106 million for the Larkspur high school project “really includes four buildings.” In addition to a new cafeteria, those range from replacing portable classrooms for art and music with a new art building and a new band and music building to adding a student services building and student collaboration spaces.

District officials have said the current cafeteria is critically overcrowded due to the state’s mandate of free school lunches for all students.

Another COST talking point — Measure A’s lack of a senior exemption — was also flagged during the campaign as misleading. That’s because the state prohibits all school districts from offering senior citizen exemptions on bond measures.

Willard declined comment on references to the “gold plated cafeteria” or the senior citizen exemption.

“Last night’s board meeting made it clear that instead of listening to the voters and developing a more modest proposal addressing important educational priorities, they are blazing ahead on the presumption they can pull a higher percentage of voters in November,” Willard said.

The trustees on Tuesday did not address the high no vote in the Ross Valley, where some voters had expressed anger during the campaign that Archie Williams High School in San Anselmo was being left behind compared to other district high schools.

According to a chart depicting 11 areas served by the district presented at Tuesday’s board meeting, San Anselmo and Fairfax had the lowest percentage of yes votes, both at 47.60%.

The highest number of yes votes were in Mill Valley and Ross, both at 58.10%; Corte Madera, 55.10%; Larkspur, 55.30% and Tiburon, 55.90%.

Yes votes also were high in Belvedere, 53%; Sausalito, 53.80% and the unincorporated areas, 54.19%.