San Jose's minimum wage will soon be $10 an hour instead of $8 after voters approved the increase during Tuesday's election.
"We're ecstatic," said Elisha St. Laurent, a low-wage earner, single mother and behavioral science and sociology double-major who has been working on Measure D since its humble beginnings in a San Jose State University social action class two years ago.
Although the measure had some formidable opponents, including the San Jose Silicon Valley Chamber of Commerce, it had garnered 59 percent support as of early this morning, with some votes remaining to be tallied.
The measure was born in the classroom of San Jose State professor Scott Myers-Lipton. Students in the class created a draft of the measure then collected enough signatures to place it on the ballot.
Myers-Lipton said that while opponents of the initiative put ads on television and radio stations, supporters focused on walking the local precincts.
"We had the whole community and they had money," Myers-Lipton said.
Also in San Jose, a measure that would have allowed more card tables at the city's two casinos did not pass. That initiative, Measure E, received only 41.9 percent approval, based on unofficial results.
Santa Clara County's one-eighth-cent sales tax, Measure A, garnered more than the majority approval it needed, coming in with about 56.2 percent approval, based on unofficial results.
Palo Alto voters overwhelmingly defeated Measure C, which would have allowed three medical marijuana dispensaries to open in the city.
Preliminary election results showed that 62.1 percent of voters opposed the
proposal.
The City Council had unanimously come out against Measure C.
Before the election, veteran city councilman Larry Klein said he worried that the measure would have made Palo Alto "the marijuana magnet of the Peninsula."
The Santa Clara Valley Water District's parcel tax renewal, Measure B, also passed, with unofficial election results showing it received 72.6 percent support -- far more than the two-thirds approval it needed.
Voters in the El Camino Hospital District appear to have narrowly approved Measure M, which will limit the compensation paid to executives, managers and administrators at El Camino Hospital.
All of the education bond measures proposed in the county's school
districts got at least the 55 percent approval they needed to pass. The
districts were Morgan Hill Unified, San Jose Unified, the East Side Union
High School District, Alum Rock Union Elementary School District and the
Mount Pleasant School District.
Berryessa Union School District got the two-thirds approval it needed for Measure K, which will renew a $79 annual parcel tax for educational programs and library services.
--Bay City News Service
