Quick Take
Watsonville Community Hospital leaders say they’re holding their breath as they wait for the final votes to be counted for Measure N, the $116 million bond measure in Tuesday’s election. The approval rate was 68.15% heading into Friday's vote update from the Santa Cruz County Clerk.
Watsonville Community Hospital leaders say they’re holding their breath as they wait for the final ballots to be counted for the $116 million bond measure put before voters in Tuesday’s election.
The hospital needs 66.7% of the votes for Measure N to pass. As of the most recent vote tally early Wednesday morning, the hospital bond had an approval rate of 68.15%, though ballots are still being counted Friday and into next week.
Hospital leaders were anxiously watching that narrow 1.45-percentage-point margin. “It’s close,” said hospital spokesperson Nancy Gere. “But we’re cautiously optimistic.”
About 90% of the district’s registered voters reside in Santa Cruz County and the rest live in Monterey County. In Tuesday night’s final vote tally from Santa Cruz County, there were 5,782 votes in favor of Measure N (68.58%) and 2,649 (31.42%) opposed.
In Monterey County as of Wednesday, election officials had tallied 473 out of 4,486 possible votes, with 65.58% of ballots in favor of the measure, bringing the combined approval rate down slightly to 68.15%.
Gere said campaign committee members were feeling good going into Tuesday considering their outreach and the support they received when they were knocking on doors. About 50 to 60 committee members and volunteers gathered Tuesday evening at the Watsonville Public House brewery to watch as the first batch of votes came in. While there, Pajaro Valley Health Care District board member Tony Nuñez thanked the volunteers, including nurses and doctors, who went door to door to raise awareness about the bond measure.
Nuñez, like Gere, told Lookout he’s hopeful but cautious about the results. He said he felt the turnout was shaping up to be what he expected, with about 9,000 voters casting their ballots so far. Nuñez projected that about 11,000 voters – in a district of almost 47,000 – would cast ballots this month (a turnout rate of around 23%).
“We knew it was going to be close because not only is it a tax, but just thinking about the reality that people still don’t know what the Pajaro Valley Health Care District is,” he said. “A lot of folks still don’t know that the hospital is a nonprofit now.”
While it’s difficult to be certain, Nuñez said he’s expecting about 1,000 additional total votes to be counted for Measure N by Friday afternoon.
If the bond is approved, about $40 million of the funding would go toward purchasing the hospital building and the land it sits on. The rest of the $116 million would go toward infrastructure improvements like replacing the roof and heating, ventilating and air conditioning systems as well as the CT scanner and MRI unit.
“We’ll see how everything goes,” said Nuñez. “We’re just crossing our fingers hoping that we did enough to win and right now, it looks like it might be enough.”
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