Shoreline fire bond supporters waiting for further vote counting

By Evan Smith

Shoreline Fire Chief Matt Cowan and other supporters of the two propositions on the Tuesday ballot have been watching voter turnout.

Both of the Shoreline Fire Department propositions on the primary-election ballot were running well ahead of the required 60 percent approval rate in votes reported Tuesday and Wednesday, but Prop. 2, a bond measure, had yet to meet the validation rules that require bond issues to get approval from 60 percent of a number of votes equal to 40 percent of the number of people who voted in the previous statewide election. For Shoreline, that means 7,605 yes votes.

Election returns posted Tuesday Wednesday afternoon showed 6,077 votes to approve the bond measure and a 79.76 percent to 20.24 percent margin.

That means that the measure needs 1,528 more votes of approval. That’s likely because elections officials still have counted only about 65 percent of the expected countywide votes.

Still Cowan says that he is waiting to see the additional votes come in.

The measure would pay for updating buildings and equipment. It would cost less than the expiring bond measure.

Proposition 1, which would replace part of the property tax with a fire benefit charge, was leading 74.34 percent to 25.66 percent.

As of Wednesday at 4:30 p.m., the ballot return rate in Shoreline was 27.84 percent, well ahead of the King County average of 24.28 percent. Officials had counted ballots from only 21.78 percent of registered Shoreline voters, 19.52 percent of all county voters.

Revised and updated 10:37pm