Honest Response: Fire Chief Mike Urquides calls voter happiness with Carmel Valley’s ambulance service “a great comfort.” Nic Coury
9-1-Win
Carmel Valley voters solidly back ambulance tax.
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The first results for Tuesday night’s special elections were Tweeted.
MontereyVote, Monterey County Elections Department’s Twitter account, Tweeted the preliminary tallies around 8:40pm. Ten minutes later election staffers posted the semi-official results to the department’s own website, www.montereycountyelections.us.
With 34 percent of precinct votes counted, Measure F was passing by a landslide, with 86 percent voting in favor of the Carmel Valley property tax and 14 percent opposing it. The measure, which supports continued ambulance service by the Carmel Valley Fire Protection District, needed two-thirds voter approval to pass.
“It’s pretty consistent to what the vote was last time in 1998,” says Fire Chief Mike Urquides, referring to a previous vote in which Carmel Valley residents approved a $75 per dwelling parcel tax to support the ambulance service. This year’s vote will bring the total ambulance-supporting fee to about $150 per household, which generates about $600,000 for the service.
Urquides says that’s enough to maintain the current billing structure, in which Carmel Valley residents and their guests are not responsible for ambulance fees beyond what their health insurance will pay.
“It’s a great comfort,” he says. “Obviously people are very happy with the service they’ve been getting and the four- to six-minute response time.”
As of 8:50pm, the Alisal recall was also passing by more than a two-to-one margin. If confirmed, the vote will remove Alisal Union School District trustee Jesus Velasquez.
MontereyVote has been Tweeting since May, with comments ranging from local filing deadlines, to American voting history, to donkey-delivery of ballot materials in Afghanistan.
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