It may be February, but a lot of people in Napa already have November on their minds. First on the list: John Tuteur, the county’s elected clerk, assessor, recorder and registrar of voters. He’s been planning for this fall’s presidential election since November 2006, when voters faced long lines at local polling places.
Tuteur reckons more than 100 people were unable to cast ballots at their assigned precincts that day. (I was one of them.) And that was after 1,400 people had already voted early at Tuteur’s office, where touchscreen machines were available for weeks before the big day.
California Secretary of State Deborah Bowen has now clamped down on that practice, allowing early voting only the weekend before Election Day—and limiting touchscreen machines to one per polling place.
“Her slogan is ‘Yesterday’s Technology, Tomorrow,’” Tuteur says wryly.
To forestall gridlock at the polls and ensure that everyone in Napa County is able to cast a ballot in what’s bound to be a high-turnout election this fall, Tuteur has informed more than 12,000 voters that they no longer have a local polling place: They now belong to vote-by-mail precincts.
State law lets county registrars convert any precinct to vote-by-mail status when fewer than 250 voters in that precinct will show up in person at the polls. In Napa County, thousands of “permanent absentees” vote by mail in every election. Now, they’ll be joined by nearly 20 percent of county voters who had a local polling place last year.
Some voters have complained that voting by mail will force them to make their decisions early, but Tuteur says they’re welcome to drop their ballot off at any polling place (or his office) on Election Day as long as they remember to sign the envelope, as required.
The goal isn’t to save money—according to Tuteur, it costs the county no less to process mail-in ballots—but to prevent the long lines that discouraged and, in some cases, disenfranchised voters in 2006.
The county now has 58 physical precincts, down from 99 in 2006. If all goes as planned, the new setup will mean shorter waits, quicker voting and, perhaps, quicker results, since Tuteur’s staff generally has all the mail-in ballots tallied soon after the polls close on election day.
But first, June elections
Tuteur’s plan got its first shakedown in the February primary; next, Napa will hold elections June 3 for two seats on the county board of supervisors. Voters will also decide a controversial ballot measure on the ever-simmering topic of land use.
District 2 supervisor Mark Luce will defend his seat against Mike Rodrigues, a property-rights activist who heads the Napa Valley Land Stewards Alliance, and Harry Martin, a local publisher and former Napa city councilmember who also vied for the seat in 1996, losing to Luce in a runoff. District 2 includes Yountville, sections of north Napa and the western hills.
Supervisorial District 5, covering the southern part of Napa County and including the fast-growing city of American Canyon, has five hopefuls seeking to replace retiring supe Harold Moskowite. It’s a diverse field that includes county planning commissioner Rich Jager, retired county sheriff Gary Simpson, former American Canyon fire chief Keith Caldwell, San Quentin pastor Morris Curry and Cindy Coffey, a member of the American Canyon City Council.
So far, Simpson and Caldwell look to be the heavyweights in this contest: The former sheriff has been endorsed by Congressman Mike Thompson (D-St. Helena), while Caldwell has the backing of American Canyon Mayor Leon Garcia and former city manager Mark Joseph (who, observers believe, was forced out of his job in a wave of anti-Wal-Mart sentiment spearheaded by Coffey).
Don’t expect results for the District 5 election until late in the evening of Nov. 4, because American Canyon’s ballots must be trucked up to Napa for tallying. Add to that the fact that many AmCan voters are commuters, working outside the county and often casting ballots after arriving home from the job, and it can make for a long evening at Tuteur’s office. At least, that was the case in the city’s last election.
Also on June 3, voters countywide will be asked to decide at least one ballot measure that could change—or preserve—rules governing the use of open land and the redevelopment of industrial property.
A group of hired signature-gatherers (or petition-pushers, if you’re feeling cranky) has gathered enough names to qualify a measure intended to strike at an ambitious plan to redevelop the blighted Napa Pipe property along the Napa River south of town.
Investors, including former Napa mayor Ed Henderson and developer Keith Rogal, want to transform Napa Pipe into a modern “medieval village” with more than 3,000 apartments, retail to serve the residents and, perhaps, a marina for boaters. Rogal, who successfully turned an RV storage lot into the top-drawer Carneros Inn resort, says his new plan will help Napans stay in Napa instead of moving out-of-county for more affordable housing.
But opponents—including a semi-anonymous group calling itself the “Napa Coalition for Responsible Growth,” complete with an Omaha-based political consultant—want voters to approve a law aimed at spiking the project.
In turn, Henderson and several other local leaders have formed “Keep Napa Napa” in an effort to defeat the measure, which some fear will induce sprawl by limiting redevelopment of existing properties.
The battle has already been joined in the local letters pages and via direct mail; each side seems determined to spend whatever it takes to sway local opinion. Meanwhile, Napa Pipe molders on the riverbank, a desolate wastescape that once was part of the mighty Kaiser Steel empire. Now, even the water in its office building is no good to drink.
