‘A win for public safety.’ Renewal of Measure C appears headed for easy approval
Measure C, a half-cent sales tax that funds public safety and essential city services, appears well on its way to being passed by voters.
The measure received 69.2% Yes votes from voters casting ballots, well ahead of the 50% plus one vote needed for passage. There were 3,827 Yes votes compared to just 1,701 No votes of the 5,528 votes that were counted in Tuesday Primary Election as of 11:18 p.m.
“The initial reaction is it’s a good number,” said former Merced Mayor Mike Murphy. “The initial results were at about 70%, that’s a hard number to change. We’ll continue to watch it. It’ll probably take a couple weeks before the county can officially certify, but it’s a good night for us.”
Murphy led the citizens’ campaign “The Committee for a Safer Merced” to get the renewal bid on the ballot.
Measure C was passed by voters in 2006 and since then the local sales tax has significantly bolstered Merced’s police and fire departments, as well as public works projects like road and street improvements.
However, the measure was only granted a 20-year lifespan and is slated to expire in 2026.
The Merced City Council declined to put the renewal before voters in 2022. That’s when Murphy and “The Committee for a Safer Merced” began the campaign to get the Measure C renewal as a signature driven ballot measure.
“City Council said no we’re not going to do it and took it out of the hands of voters,” Murphy said. “In some ways that was a gut punch to public safety and to those of us who value public safety in the City of Merced. It did knock us down, but we quickly regrouped and we said there’s another pathway, and that involves getting signatures, so we said, let’s do it.”
The committee needed 3,988 valid signatures to put the issue on the March ballot. They collected nearly 5,000 signatures in four months.
“We did it in four months because it was easy to get support,” Murphy said. “People said, ‘Yeah, we don’t want to defund our police department. We don’t want to reduce funding for first responders in the City of Merced.’ So here we are.”
City officials estimate that without Measure C, Merced would face a $7 million annual budgetary shortfall, according to information previously provided by the city.
Measure C roughly funds 30 police and fire department jobs, according to officials.
“If this didn’t pass in the fire department we have 25% of our firefighters who are funded by Measure C.,” said Chad Englert, who is the president of the Merced Firefighters Union. “That’s a fourth of our department that we would lose. We have three shifts, we would almost lose an entire shift of firefighters.”
Englert says downsizing their staff would affect response times, create safety issues for the remaining firefighters and possibly lead to the closing of fire stations in the community.
“It feels good when you serve the community — we have a lot of interaction with the community, not just on calls, we’re present and active in the community — and then you put something forward like this and you see the support that you’re getting, it’s very overwhelming,” Englert added.
If approved by voters, Measure C would again have a 20-year lifespan and would be reviewed by a citizen’s oversight committee.
Measure C also helps address homelessness, prevent gang activity, maintaining neighborhood-based policing, improve safety in schools and parks and helps make park restrooms cleaner and safer.
“Measure C was a referendum on how we value public safety in the City of Merced,” Murphy said. “Do we value public safety enough to renew Measure C is what it came down to and an overwhelming number of people said yes.”
“In Merced we want an officer to come, we want a firefighter to come if we’re in distress, so this provides some insurance so those services won’t be reduced,” Murphy added. “That’s a win for Merced. That’s a win for public safety.”
This story was originally published March 5, 2024 at 11:41 PM.
