Beaumont Measure B Fails: 2020 Primary Election Results

RIVERSIDE COUNTY, CA — The Beaumont Unified School District will not get an estimated $98 million from taxpayers to improve its campuses and build new facilities.

Beaumont voters overwhelming rejected Measure B during the March 3 Consolidated Presidential Primary Election:

Super Tuesday's results are not final, but the chance of the measure's passage are slim. To move forward, the measure needed 55 percent of qualified voters who turned out for the election in the Beaumont USD to cast a "yes" ballot. Countywide, approximately 125,000 vote-by-mail, 50,000 provisional and 10,000 damaged ballots that require duplication still must be processed. Work on those begins Wednesday morning. Ballots that are postmarked on or before Election Day and received no later than Friday also remain to be counted.

The next updated results from the County of Riverside Registrar of Voters will be posted at 6 p.m. Friday.

More information on Measure B:

What would Measure B passage have cost Beaumont residents and businesses? If you're a property owner in the BUSD boundaries, you could have expected an annual tax assessment of $50 per $100,000 worth of property you own — a payment that would have extended for the next 30 years. The final year in which the tax was anticipated to be collected was 2049-2050. If you're wondering about debt service fees the district would have needed to repay, the best estimate (if all of the bonds were issued and sold) was $179,328,947, according to the BUSD.

What you could have expected in terms of BUSD improvements if the measure passed: Money generated by Measure B — estimated to be $6,000,000 annually while bonds were outstanding — would have been used to renovate, upgrade, and repair aging infrastructure and construct buildings, classrooms, and school labs. The bond money would not have been used to fund the salaries, pensions or benefits of any board members, administrator, and/or teachers, or for other school operating expenses, according to the district.
Existing BUSD campuses and facilities targeted for bond money if Measure B passed include:

If enough bonds were sold, new schools might also have been funded through Measure B, according to the district.

Although $98 million is the target, keep in mind that Measure B passage did not guarantee the proposed projects would be funded beyond the local revenues generated. Also, the district was banking on getting matching state funds, but any such funding would likely need future approval from the state Legislature.

What did it take to pass Measure B? Fifty-five percent of qualified voters who turned out for the March 3 election in Beaumont had to cast a "yes" ballot. (A "yes" vote would have allowed the BUSD to sell bonds and levy the taxes to pay for them.)

If Measure B was approved, the BUSD board would have appointed a citizens' oversight committee, and conducted annual independent financial and performance audits to ensure that bond funds were spent only on the construction, modernization, and renovation of school facilities, furnishings and/or equipment, or the acquisition or lease of property for school facilities, and for no other purposes, according to the district.

SEE ALL RIVERSIDE COUNTY ELECTION RESULTS

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