Measure S: Why Did It Fail?

So, after sharing such information as is currently available on what happened, and writing about some odd things that took place on Election Day, it’s time for the main event: trying to answer the question “Why did Measure S fail?”

I say “try” because I’ve heard roughly twice as many explanations as people offering them 🙂 . There is some degree of overlap, but not all that much.

Here are some of the explanations I’ve heard:

• The campaign was poorly run
• The campaign didn’t seem to reach [ people | any of my neighbors | an important constituency ]
• We needed signs, and there were no signs
• The campaign message was [ unfocused | muddled | inconsistent ]
• Measure S was aimed at saving programs already paid for by the San Carlos Educational Foundation
• The campaign was late getting information to absentee voters
• The campaign didn’t do enough outreach to senior citizens, particularly on how they could exempt themselves from paying the tax
• The campaign didn’t use viral marketing approaches, and email, effectively
• Measure S shouldn’t have been put on a lengthy ballot in a general election. It got lost, except among those who opposed it
• There was a lack of polling
• The “no end date” nature of Measure S doomed it
• The District [ didn’t need the money | has a big financial reserve ]
• Many [ parents | teachers ] didn’t understand why Measure S was necessary
• The economic environment was very poor, strengthening the natural tendency to oppose additional taxes

In what follows, please remember that we are all – including me – just guessing at this point. The information to choose between most of the explanations simply isn’t available. At least not yet.

Some of the explanations are arguably true, but aren’t actionable going forward. For example, the campaign did fail, and thus wasn’t run well, or at least not well enough. I say this as one of the people who played a pretty big role in running the campaign. If any of my colleagues on the campaign are hurt by that statement, they shouldn’t be. It’s not meant personally, but we do have to admit the possibility we didn’t run things well enough. Unfortunately, doing so doesn’t point to what needs to be done better next time.

Others seem unlikely to have played a role in the loss, because the Measure S campaign was run very similarly to the June 2003 Measure D parcel tax campaign and the November 2005 Measure E bond campaign. For example, signs weren’t used in either of those earlier elections, both of which were successful (in fairness, Belmont used signs in their recent victory). The same amount of polling was done before Measure D as Measure S, too.

One small piece of information we do have available is that, of the 14 parcel taxes on the November ballot in the Bay Area, only two — San Carlos’ and Oakland’s — failed. The other twelve all passed. If what I’ve heard about Oakland’s initiative is true — that it was put on the ballot by a state administrator who was appointed to oversee the district when it went bankrupt several years ago — then San Carlos earned the dubious distinction of having the only “homegrown” measure which failed.

The only obvious difference I could find in surveying the various initiatives was that ours didn’t have an expiration date. All the other measures did. This difference is particularly interesting because the District did not test community reaction to it when polling before putting Measure S on the ballot. Instead, the Board acted on advice from its polling consultant that the term of a parcel tax didn’t mean much anymore. That was probably a mistake (which I participated in making, by the way).

Personally, I think the “no end date” issue played a role but wasn’t decisive. I think the reason Measure S failed was simple: there was no sense of crisis in the community. When Measure D went before the voters in June, 2003, it was after the District spent nine months wrestling, in a very public way, with a financial crisis. Layoff notices were issued to teachers, programs were cut with more to follow, fourth grade class sizes were increased, money was taken back from school sites, etc.

There was hardly a week that went by during the 2002/2003 school year without an article in some local paper or a message from the PTA, the Foundation or the District administration about the financial crisis. It was a deluge of publicity, and it drove home a very clear choice: vote no and see a large number of truly draconian cuts imposed, or vote yes and reverse most of them.

The lack of a clear and present danger this time around allowed people the luxury of wondering if the District’s reserves might be large enough to weather the storm (they’re not). Or if maybe they were being bamboozled into paying for something the Foundation already covered (they weren’t). Or, for that matter, wondering whether they were comfortable with the lack of an end date (you don’t worry about the long-term when your house is burning down).

The lack of constant publicity no doubt also made this campaign’s outreach effort — which was greater than in the cases of Measure D and Measure E — less effective. It’s always easier selling someone when they’ve developed a general awareness of both the problem and the solution being offered.

Ironically, the reason there wasn’t a crisis was because the District had been doing a good job managing its finances, after being badly burned prior to the 2002/2003 crisis. There was a reasonable reserve built up, and a much better early warning system in place (the District essentially stumbled, blind, into the 2002/2003 fiscal crisis). Given the level of support for our schools that the polling showed, and the impending crisis, the thought was the case could be built upon that foundation of fiscal prudence (“we wouldn’t ask unless we really needed it, and we really do”). Unfortunately, that didn’t happen.

Equally ironically, the failure of Measure S, coupled to the rapidly deteriorating fiscal situation in Sacramento, guarantees an immediate fiscal crisis. I don’t see how the District can avoid drastically cutting programs or managing compensation very tightly. Sadly, I think much of the program restorations done over the last five years will end up being rolled back. In the end, when the next parcel tax goes on the ballot,  voters will face the same stark choice they did back in June, 2003.

Part of me finds having to have the house on fire before people will seriously consider passing the bucket frustrating. But maybe that’s just the way things are. There is, after all, an old maxim to the effect that democracies never do anything except in times of crisis.

Another part of me wonders if maybe more outreach could have made a difference. Where the money and energy to do that would have come from I don’t know. The Measure S campaign barely raised enough money to cover its expenses, even though those were relatively modest ($55,000; Belmont spent over $100,000). As for energy, it seemed to me Measure S had at least as much “full time” volunteer support as Measure D did. It’s possible we fell short this time in terms of the “casual” volunteer effort (e.g., people speaking to neighbors). But, if we did, that, too, was probably due to the lack of a clear and present danger.