Costa Mesans to decide on 8 city ballot measures
A voter emerges from the Royal Palm Fire Station polling place in Costa Mesa after voting in March 2015. Costa Mesa voters will decide the fates of eight ballot measures this year, the most ever for the city in one election.
Nov. 8 will be an historic election in Costa Mesa — not just because of what’s on the ballot, but because of how much there is on it.
Local voters will decide the fates of eight ballot measures this year. That, a Costa Mesa spokesman said, is the most ever for the city in one election.
The hefty local ballot carries a substantial price tag. All told, City Hall anticipates spending north of $360,000 in costs related to the upcoming election.
Costa Mesa alone accounts for almost one-fourth of the 34 ballot measures submitted countywide for this fall’s election.
“Our City Clerk [Brenda Green] and her team did an incredible job managing the sheer volume of eight ballot measures in what appears to be a historic election in Costa Mesa,” city spokesman Tony Dodero said this week. “It’s a testament to the importance they put on the election process and their commitment to the voters and residents.”
Three City Council seats are also up for election this year.
Only two other Orange County cities, Laguna Beach and Stanton, have more than one measure up for a vote this fall. Some other municipalities have multiple local measures on their ballots when school or special districts are included.
Orange County Registrar of Voters Neal Kelley said the number of ballot measures in Costa Mesa is “one of the higher ones” he can recall for a specific election.
It’s not the highest, however.
In 2002, both Placentia and Seal Beach put 10 measures up for a vote in one election — Seal Beach in the March primary and Placentia in the November general. In both cases, most of the ballot items related to proposed amendments to the two cities’ charters.
“A lot of times when there are charter issues you will see measures related to that,” Kelley said.
Costa Mesa’s local measures cover a range of topics from growth to Fairview Park to medical marijuana to what voting system should be used for future council elections.
Residents championed half of the measures, while a majority of City Council members sponsored the rest.
This year’s historical total in Costa Mesa doesn’t even take into account a ninth ballot item — an advisory question to gauge whether there’s public support to merge the Costa Mesa Sanitary and Mesa Water districts.
Mesa Water sponsored that measure.
The local ballot could have been even larger still. Earlier this year, council members rejected a proposal from Mayor Pro Tem Jim Righeimer to put a $20-million affordable-housing bond before voters in November, citing a lack of specifics.
The base cost for this year’s election is set at $100,000, according to Dodero, and the price of processing all the measures is on top of that.
Each measure costs roughly $10,000 to place on the ballot, according to estimates in City Council agendas.
The city also racked up about $80,000 in combined additional costs for the county to verify signatures on citizen-sponsored initiatives and to pay local law firm Rutan & Tucker to draft two of the city’s measures, council documents show.
Almost one-third of the election’s cost is in the form of informational mailers a majority of council members opted to send out about the city-sponsored measures.
Dodero said the city will send out a total of 12 mailings. Council documents peg the cost of the mailings at $8,400 each. For all 12, that’s a total cost of $100,800.
Those mailers were designed by an outside consultant and later reviewed by city staff, according to Dodero.
Twitter: @LukeMMoney
