April King County special election results: LWSD levy passing, Evergreen bond failing

Today was an elec­tion day for vot­ers in a num­ber of juris­dic­tions across Wash­ing­ton State, although you could be for­giv­en for not know­ing that because scant atten­tion was paid to the elec­tion in the mass media and on social media.

In King Coun­ty, six juris­dic­tions placed mea­sures on the bal­lot for con­sid­er­a­tion by vot­ers. The Lake Wash­ing­ton School Dis­trict pro­posed a cap­i­tal levy, Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict #2 (Ever­green­Health) pro­posed a bond mea­sure, and two fire dis­tricts asked vot­ers to approve con­tin­u­a­tion of ben­e­fit charges. A third fire dis­trict asked its con­stituents if they want­ed to merge into anoth­er fire district.

Final­ly, the Vashon-Mau­ry Island Park and Recre­ation Dis­trict asked vot­ers in the coun­ty’s west­ern­most juris­dic­tion to extend an expir­ing prop­er­ty tax levy to fund oper­a­tions and main­te­nance costs from 2020 through 2023.

The ini­tial returns are now in, and here’s how each mea­sure is faring.

The Lake Wash­ing­ton School Dis­trict cap­i­tal levy is pass­ing by a com­fort­able mar­gin. 53.95% of vot­ers par­tic­i­pat­ing were back­ing the mea­sure, while 46.05% were opposed. The thresh­old for pas­sage is a sim­ple major­i­ty, thanks to the 2007 con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment that low­ered the bar for pas­sage of school levies.

The levy is for six years. If ulti­mate­ly approved, $120 mil­lion would be raised and the dis­trict says it would be spent on the fol­low­ing projects:

Per­ma­nent class­room addi­tions (capac­i­ty for 1,052 students):

• Lake Wash­ing­ton High School (20 classrooms)
• Rachel Car­son Ele­men­tary (4 classrooms)
• Ben­jamin Franklin Ele­men­tary (8 classrooms)
• Rose Hill Ele­men­tary (8 classrooms)
• Mark Twain Ele­men­tary (4 classrooms)

Core facil­i­ties and com­mon spaces

• Addi­tion­al aux­il­iary gym­na­si­um and com­mons space at Lake Wash­ing­ton High School
• Addi­tion­al core facil­i­ties* at: 
  • Rachel Car­son Elementary
  • Ben­jamin Franklin Elementary
  • Rose Hill Elementary
  • Mark Twain Elementary

*pend­ing feasibility

Safe­ty enhancements

• Exte­ri­or secu­ri­ty cam­eras at ele­men­tary schools.
• Mod­i­fi­ca­tions to entrances of: 
  • East­lake High School
  • Lake Wash­ing­ton High School
  • Red­mond High School

Also pass­ing are the two ben­e­fit charge propositions.

Wood­inville Fire & Res­cue’s ben­e­fit charge has the sup­port of 83.42% of vot­ers in its juris­dic­tion, with only 16.58% opposed. King Coun­ty Fire Pro­tec­tion Dis­trict #40 is doing even bet­ter, with 87.67% approval.

Mean­while, the pro­pos­al to merge Fire Pro­tec­tion Dis­trict #10 (which is locat­ed in the Fall City area) into the larg­er near­by Fire Pro­tec­tion Dis­trict #27 (East­side Fire and Res­cue) is fail­ing. 54.7% of vot­ers there are say­ing no, while 45.3% are say­ing yes. Based on these ear­ly results, it looks like a merg­er isn’t going to happen.

The Ever­green­Health bond is also fail­ing. 57.38% of vot­ers in Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict #2 are back­ing the propo­si­tion, which is a robust major­i­ty, but the mea­sure actu­al­ly needs a 60% yes vote and a min­i­mum turnout of 40% to pass under the Wash­ing­ton State Con­sti­tu­tion because it is a bond measure.

Vot­ers were asked to sign off on $345 mil­lion in gen­er­al oblig­a­tion bonds for seis­mic safe­ty and oth­er cap­i­tal improve­ments, as stat­ed in the bal­lot title:

The Board of Com­mis­sion­ers of King Coun­ty Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict No. 2 adopt­ed Res­o­lu­tion No. 895–19 con­cern­ing a propo­si­tion to finance improve­ments to its health care facilities.

The improve­ments include Seis­mic and Infra­struc­ture upgrades; a new Crit­i­cal Care Unit; updat­ing the Fam­i­ly Mater­ni­ty Cen­ter; new Med­ical Office Build­ings for Spe­cial­ty Care Expan­sion; Tech­nol­o­gy Sys­tems Improve­ments; and oth­er improve­ments. Approval of the bal­lot propo­si­tion would autho­rize issuance of up to $345,000,000 of gen­er­al oblig­a­tion bonds matur­ing with­in thir­ty years to pay for such improve­ments and the levy of annu­al excess prop­er­ty tax­es to pay the bonds, all as pro­vid­ed in Res­o­lu­tion No. 895–19.

The Ever­green­Health Foun­da­tion —  a 501(c)(3) char­i­ty affil­i­at­ed with the peo­ple who run the hos­pi­tal dis­trict — poured more than three hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars into a cam­paign to con­vince vot­ers in the Kirk­land and Red­mond area to vote yes. Curi­ous­ly, the hos­pi­tal dis­tric­t’s board opt­ed against par­tic­i­pat­ing in the voter’s pam­phlet, caus­ing King Coun­ty Elec­tions to issue the fol­low­ing notice:

Why are there mea­sures on my bal­lot that are not in my pamphlet?

Pam­phlets are only print­ed for a spe­cial elec­tion when request­ed by a dis­trict. For this elec­tion, Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict No. 2 did not request to par­tic­i­pate in the voter’s pamphlet.

The above dis­claimer appeared on the back of the fold-out voter’s pam­phlet tucked into each bal­lot pack­et mailed to vot­ers in the Red­mond-Kirk­land area.

The Approve Ever­green­Health effort turned to well known right wing oper­a­tives to try to pitch the hefty bond mea­sures to vot­ers, includ­ing Matthew Lundh and Josh Ama­to’s Mer­cer Island-based Ser­mo Dig­i­tal, which has done work for Rob McKen­na, McKen­na’s strate­gist Randy Pep­ple, Steve Lit­zow, for­mer Ohio gov­er­nor John Kasich, and Shift­WA, a right wing web­site that con­sists almost exclu­sive­ly of blog posts denounc­ing pro­gres­sive elect­ed offi­cials and organizations.

Addi­tion­al­ly, an out­fit called Ele­phant Grass­roots was hired to do phonebank­ing, and GMA Research of Belle­vue was com­mis­sioned to sur­vey voters.

(If you’re won­der­ing why right wing oper­a­tives would be hired to pitch a bond mea­sure to vot­ers, the answer is that there are sev­er­al Repub­li­cans on the board that gov­erns King Coun­ty’s Pub­lic Hos­pi­tal Dis­trict #2.)

Ser­mo Dig­i­tal cre­at­ed and mailed at least three direct mail pieces to vot­ers in an attempt to per­suade them to vote yes. Each heav­i­ly empha­sized seis­mic safe­ty, with one ask­ing: “Is your hos­pi­tal ready for the ‘big one’?” and not­ing: “Sci­en­tists say a 9.0 earth­quake is com­ing, we just don’t know when.”

Emer­gency pre­pared­ness is not a theme we usu­al­ly see in cam­paign ads. Ser­mo Dig­i­tal was work­ing with a premise that had a lot of potential.

Unfor­tu­nate­ly for their client, their exe­cu­tion was bad.

For exam­ple, they tried to incor­po­rate pho­tos of the actu­al hos­pi­tal into their mail­ers instead of rely­ing exclu­sive­ly on stock pho­tog­ra­phy. Good idea, but… some of the source images were of an insuf­fi­cient res­o­lu­tion for print pro­duc­tion, result­ing in mail­ers with fuzzy, pix­e­lat­ed pho­to back­grounds. Yikes.

Worse, the firm failed to intro­duce a human ele­ment into the ads. All the pho­tos in the three mail pieces obtained by the North­west Pro­gres­sive Insti­tute are of build­ings or hos­pi­tal equip­ment. None are of people.

Fur­ther­more, the ads do not explain how the whole com­mu­ni­ty ben­e­fits from a hos­pi­tal com­plex that is seis­mi­cal­ly sound. The ads only explain how the hos­pi­tal would ben­e­fit. For exam­ple, here’s a para­graph from one of the mailers:

The core areas of the hos­pi­tal con­tain crit­i­cal ser­vices and infra­struc­ture that allow the rest of the cam­pus to oper­ate. They also hap­pen to be housed in our orig­i­nal (and old­est) parts of the hos­pi­tal. Retro­fitting these 1970s build­ings — and not tear­ing them down — will ensure that patients will expe­ri­ence less impact as we improve safety.

This para­graph sounds like it could have come out of a strate­gic plan writ­ten by a hos­pi­tal admin­is­tra­tor. A bet­ter approach would have been to cre­ate mail­ers star­ring peo­ple from Ever­green, like a doc­tor, a nurse, and a patient, with each explain­ing the val­ue and neces­si­ty of the bond mea­sure to the community.

Ordi­nar­i­ly, secur­ing 57% of the vote would be con­sid­ered a smash­ing suc­cess. But the bar for pas­sage of this bond mea­sure is 60%. It seems unlike­ly the hos­pi­tal will be able to secure both the 60% yes vote and the 40% min­i­mum turnout it needs.

Ever­green­Health’s board set itself up for fail­ure from the get-go by sub­mit­ting this bond mea­sure to the April bal­lot instead of the Novem­ber bal­lot and then opt­ing not to par­tic­i­pate in the voter’s pam­phlet for the spe­cial election.

The Vashon-Mau­ry parks levy also appears head­ed for defeat. Cur­rent­ly, 52.28% of vot­ers on the islands are back­ing the levy, while 47.72% are opposed.

Like the Ever­green­Health bond, the mea­sure needs a 60% yes vote.

“This levy mon­ey will be approx­i­mate­ly a 34% increase, about $450,000 more col­lect­ed,” wrote pro­po­nents Hilary Emmer, Karl Stet­son, David Hat­tery in a state­ment urg­ing a yes vote pub­lished in the voter’s pamphlet.

“Over the next four years, this will allow us to tack­le essen­tial infra­struc­ture projects and need­ed main­te­nance: to Agren and BARC fields, Lis­abeu­la and Agren park­ing lots, major work on Belle Bald­win house, Inspi­ra­tion Point wall, var­i­ous projects at Point Robin­son, install restrooms at all our parks, and work on inva­sive species reme­di­a­tion,” they explained.

Since Repub­li­cans in the Leg­is­la­ture aren’t inter­est­ed in chang­ing the Con­sti­tu­tion to low­er the thresh­old for pas­sage of school bonds, it seems unlike­ly that the sixty/forty require­ment for bonds of all kinds is going away any­time soon.

How­ev­er, the Leg­is­la­ture could, by major­i­ty vote, embrace the idea of less is more and abol­ish the Feb­ru­ary and April spe­cial elec­tion win­dows, leav­ing local gov­ern­ments with just two high­er turnout options for future bal­lot mea­sures: the Top Two elec­tion or the gen­er­al elec­tion. Get­ting rid of spe­cial elec­tion win­dows would save mon­ey and reduce elec­tion fatigue. It’s a move we need to make.