Chemeketa Community College leaders thought they had a slam-dunk ask for voters on Tuesday – extend property taxes at the same rate to pay for a new science lab, space for career programs and security improvements across six campuses. Instead, returns near midnight from Marion, Polk, Yamhill and Linn counties showed 58% of voters rejecting the $140 million measure. While tens of thousands of local ballots remain to be counted as of Wednesday, Nov. 6, Chemeketa’s supporters are expecting to lose the measure. “It was shocking to me. It was shocking to everybody because there’s no opposition to it,” said Chuck Adams, a longtime Salem political operative who was the chief consultant on Chemeketa’s campaign. The college served about 12,600 students last school year, most of them part-time. The surprising outcome stands out in an election where local voters appeared to opt for the status quo. Results late on election night showed incumbent state representatives from both parties led in all four districts that include significant portions of Salem. Voters overwhelmingly reelected sheriffs in Marion and Polk counties despite rare contested races. The Chemeketa measure, which would have let the college borrow money to be repaid by local property taxes, was endorsed by the Salem Area Chamber of Commerce and local businesses. It would have kept property taxes at the current rate – 27 cents per $100,000 of assessed property value, or about $61 a year for the average Salem home. Chemeketa’s proposal had bipartisan support and polled strongly with voters last December, before college leaders decided to put it on the ballot. Two-thirds of voters polled said they’d likely vote for the measure, and that number rose to almost 73% after they learned what it would pay for, and that taxes wouldn’t increase, according to data Adams presented to the college’s board. “We had tremendous public support from everything we saw, so as much as this is disappointing it’s also surprising,” said Jessica Howard, Chemeketa president. She said she suspected the message that tax rates wouldn’t increase may not have registered with voters. “I think it looked like a tax increase, and given where we are with inflation I think that we were caught up in voters’ concerns about inflation,” she said. Voters across Oregon were especially unfriendly to funding measures from local governments this year, said John Horvick, senior vice president at DHM Research, an Oregon polling firm. Such measures typically ask voters to approve property tax increases, or renew existing taxes, to pay for services like fire departments, school operations or infrastructure projects. Early returns showed just over half of local funding measures across Oregon failing, “which is unusual,” Horvick said. In elections since May 2020 between two-thirds and three-quarters of such funding measures passed, according to Horvick’s analysis. Horvick said with votes still being counted and many measures not settled, it’s too early to assess what led voters to reject such measures at a high rate. He suspects more than just inflation and the economy, because voters were more friendly to tax increases in 2022 and 2023 when inflation rates were higher. “It’s been a pretty good run the last few years,” Horvick said. Chemeketa’s loss comes as other local governments have considered pitching their own property tax increases to back services. Leaders of the Salem-Keizer School District and city of Salem have polled voters on levies that would pay for general operations in an effort to balance budgets. City voters overwhelmingly indicated in a recent survey that they weren’t willing to pay more to avoid cuts to Salem services like police, fire, the library and parks. Neither the city council nor school board have advanced a tax proposal so far. Howard and Adams said they’ll look at results more closely once all votes have been counted to understand what went wrong and what the college’s next steps might be.  “We have to figure out what happened,” Howard said. Contact reporter Rachel Alexander: [email protected] or 503-575-1241. A MOMENT MORE, PLEASE– If you found this story useful, consider subscribing to Salem Reporter if you don’t already. Work such as this, done by local professionals, depends on community support from subscribers. Please take a moment and sign up now – easy and secure: SUBSCRIBE. The post Chemeketa’s construction measure had bipartisan support and kept taxes flat. Voters still said no. appeared first on Salem Reporter.