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closeCounty voters swatted down by a two-to-one margin an attempt to tax residents more to pay for control of mosquitoes and other vectors, the county clerk recorder’s office said Wednesday.
County Clerk-Recorder Julie Rodewald told The Tribune there were 23,631 ballot against the proposal and 15.581 in favor.
Roughly 38,000 property owners voted, but the vote was weighted according to the property assessment. By that measure, the proposal lost 340,492 to 164,645.
“The proposed vector control program will not be implemented,” Penny Borenstein, county health officer, said in a press release.
Opponents, including rural landowners and the Farm Bureau, mounted a strong campaign against the added vector control.
The proposal asked property owners if they would agree to have their property taxes increased to pay for more services to control pests that spread communicable disease. A single-family house on less than an acre of land would have seen an increase of $9.80 a year.
The effort to increase property taxes to cover the cost of controlling disease- carrying pests suffered a significant setback last month when the county Board of Supervisors voted to withhold its vote.
That meant the county's $5,661 worth of weighted vote was cast neither for nor against the measure. That amount is worth approximately 700 single family dwellings, said Penny Borenstein, county health officer.
The vote came after a supervisors hearing at which many county residents spoke against the measure.
If approved, the measure would generate $1.1 million in additional property tax revenues which would be used mostly for mosquito control activities.
-Bob Cuddy
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