Medical Marijuana Measure Leads; ‘Fair Trade’ Coffee Lags

Voters here were approving a measure Tuesday that would direct officials to study whether to establish this liberal city as among the first nationwide to grow and distribute its own medical marijuana.

In a first-step gesture of defiance against the federal government’s zero-tolerance marijuana policy, returns showed San Franciscans approving Proposition S by nearly a 2-to-1margin.

The measure calls for officials to investigate issues ranging from where medical pot could be grown to what liability and legal consequences the city might face.

“We consider this vote a mandate” for the city to start growing and selling its own medical marijuana, said Supervisor Mark Leno, a sponsor of Proposition S. “But there are still many questions we need answered.”

Across the state, Californians confronted a host of issues from the substantive to the quirky. Rallying behind Mayor Jerry Brown, Oakland residents were headed toward approving a measure to hire 100 new police officers in a city troubled by a rising homicide rate.

In adjacent Berkeley, meanwhile, residents were soundly rejecting a ballot initiative requiring that all coffee sold in city cafes be “fair trade” as a way to help struggling Third-World growers.

The measure also called for all Berkeley coffee to be environmentally sensitive organic or shade-grown.

The proposal, Measure O, was inspired by a Bay Area attorney who wants growers of coffee sold by the cup in local cafes to be paid a fair-trade price of $1.26 per pound of coffee. That would be three times the 43-cent worldwide average.

The measure was opposed by Starbucks and other major coffee sellers. One glossy mailer sent to Berkeley households the week before the election showed a man being led away in handcuffs by police. “The crime: serving the wrong kind of coffee,” the ad read.

In San Francisco, a city overwhelmed with a growing homeless population, voters were handily passing a measure to change the way the city assists indigent residents.

Sponsored by Supervisor Gavin Newsom, a mayoral hopeful, Proposition N slashes city welfare payments made to about 3,000 homeless people from $395 to just $59 a month.

The savings would create more affordable housing and add services.

Voters in other California cities continued a long-running ballot-box war over urban sprawl, weighing in on more than two dozen local measures that pit development interests against citizen activists from coastal communities to one-stoplight farm towns.

In early returns, anti-sprawl activists appeared to be winning many of those battles, from a hillside housing proposal in Ventura to a fight over a 22-acre rail yard in Alameda. And in rural Nevada County, a controversial pro-property rights measure was narrowly losing. The initiative was proposed to create a streamlined process for compensating property owners when county regulations block full development of their land.

California voters also tackled a variety of water issues Tuesday. With 94% of the votes counted, San Francisco residents were passing Proposition A, a $1.6-billion bond measure to help finance the revamping of the region’s Hetch-Hetchy water system, which serves 2.4 million customers in the Bay Area.

The 13-year, $3.6-billion project involves the repair, expansion and earthquake retrofit of the nearly century-old city-owned system.

The remaining $2 billion will come from the system’s suburban users.

The measure, however, does not direct any funds to study whether to tear down the O’Shaugnessy Dam and reservoir -- the source of the city water along the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park -- and return the once-pristine valley to its natural state.

Reprising the environmental battle started by pioneering naturalist John Muir a century ago, advocates failed to attach a provision to Proposition S that would have paid for the feasibility study.

In Folsom, early returns showed voters supporting a charter amendment prohibiting citizens from paying for a water line retrofit that would require many to meter their water use for the first time. If voters pass Measure P and reject water meters, federal officials say, they will cut off about a fourth of Folsom’s nonessential water supply.

The city of about 50,000 near Sacramento is one of a shrinking number of holdouts in California that don’t bill customers according to use. That puts it out of step with prevailing conservation practices and -- U.S. Bureau of Reclamation officials say -- with federal policy. Elsewhere, measures to prohibit the addition of fluoride to city water systems were winning in Redding and Watsonville. State officials kept a close eye on San Francisco returns, because previous elections have been marked by allegations of voter fraud and the city has seen a revolving door of election chiefs.

In one election, ballot box lids were found mysteriously floating in San Francisco Bay.

This year, Secretary of State Bill Jones hired a special consultant to watch over and advise city election officials.

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Contributing to this report were staff writers Jenifer Ragland in Ventura, Lee Romney in Los Angeles and Times correspondent Emily Gurnon in Eureka.