Measure M: Tam high schools parcel tax winning easy approval

The Tamalpais Union High School District’s proposed nine-year parcel-tax renewal is headed for an emphatic victory in the Nov. 3 election.

As of Nov. 4, Measure M had earned 73.6 percent approval from voters, well over the two-thirds’ margin it needs to pass.

The Marin Elections Department is still counting more than 50,000 vote-by-mail and provisional ballots countywide — about a third of all ballots cast — with turnout expected to be about 90 percent. Totals will be updated by 5 p.m. Wednesdays and Fridays beginning Nov. 6.

Measure M would renew the existing $469 parcel tax, which is set to expire in June 2022, through June 2029. Like the current tax, the renewal would carry a 3-percent cost-of-living escalator, putting the tax at about $590 by its expiration.

District officials have said that without the parcel tax — which nets about $16.8 million in revenue annual and accounts for 17 percent of he district’s budget — the district would be forced to make sweeping, significant cuts to academic and elective programs.

The ask on the Nov. 3 ballot followed the district’s unsuccessful attempt to pass Measure B, a 10-year tax increase and extension, in March. That measure, which would have raised the current tax by $190, to $645, in its first year, failed with just 63 percent approval.