Transportation tax falling short
Tight race to fill supervisor post vacated by Nadia Lockyer
An unprecedented plan to raise taxes to pay for transportation upgrades in Alameda County was short Tuesday night of the twothirds majority needed to pass.
Measure B1 would have made an existing half- cent sales tax permanent, and added another permanent half- cent tax – a strategy never tried before in the Bay Area. It was a few percentage points short of the 66.7 percent needed.
The race to represent District 2 on the Alameda County Board of Supervisors was tight in the early going, with Richard Valle holding a narrow edge over Mark Green and Mary Hayashi.
The winner will fill the final two years of Nadia Lockyer’s term. She resigned after a short, embarrassing drug- and- sex- fueled tenure.
Bill Harrison held a slim lead over Steve Cho in the race to be Fremont’s mayor. Cho would be the city’s first Chinese- American mayor.
Anu Natarajan was running third in her bid to be Fremont’s first elected female mayor. Aziz Akbari — an 18- year- old college student and a 2011 graduate of Washington High School — received just a smattering of support.
Vinnie Bacon and Suzanne Chan led in the race for two seats on the Fremont City Council, with John Dutra a close third.
In Union City, Carol Dutra- Vernaci ran unopposed to be that city’s mayor after Valle pulled out of the race to run for the board of supervisors. The community leader and former councilwoman is the city’s first female mayor. Incumbent Jim Navarro had a more than a 2- 1 margin over Jose Estrella for the one contested council seat in Union City in early returns.
Dutra- Vernaci, 57, who served three consecutive terms on the Union City council, is the chair of the city’s Economic Development Advisory Team, the chair of the city’s City Community Emergency Response Team and the incoming president of the Washington Hospital Healthcare Foundation.
Counties throughout the Bay Area have passed local sales taxes to fund transportation projects for the past three decades. But Alameda County’s Measure B1 marked the boldest effort ever in the region, as it would have doubled the existing half- cent sales tax to a penny and make it permanent.
Some of the region’s most congested roadways were targeted for upgrades on the ballot measure — the interchange at Interstate 680 and I- 580, northbound 680 over the Sunol Grade and I- 880 from Oakland to Fremont, plus Highway 84 between 580 and 680, and the Gilman Street and Ashby Avenue interchanges on I- 80 in Berkeley.
Millions of dollars were also targeted for BART, ferry service and AC transit, plus pedestrian and bicycling projects. And $ 2.3 billion of the projected $ 7.8 billion raised over the next three decades was earmarked for pavement repairs, much of it targeted to streets in Albany, Berkeley, Oakland and San Leandro, which have some of the area’s bumpiest roads.
Alameda County’s half- cent sales tax for transportation, Measure B, originally was approved by voters in 1986 and reauthorized in 2000 by an 81 percent margin.