Funding for a new fire station, road repaving, library renovations and more will be voted on in the city of Santa Clara next month. Voters in the Silicon Valley suburb of 127,000 people will decide whether to participate in a $400 million bond program to fund improvements.

Californians have made decisions like this hundreds of times over the decades, but this time there’s a twist. No one knows how many votes it will take to win.

This uncertainty stems from the peculiarities of California’s complex electoral system. In past years, municipal bond campaigns like Santa Clara’s Measures I Passage required two-thirds support. Now, a statewide ballot measure, Proposition 5, could change that.

If approved by a majority of California voters, Prop. 5 would lower the approval threshold for municipal bonds from two-thirds to 55 percent, providing funding for low-income housing, road and transit expansion, park renovations, and more. Easier construction of other public infrastructure projects. .

If Proposition 5 wins, Measure I and 17 other municipal bond measures on the November ballot will benefit from the floor threshold at the same time. That means their fate may depend not just on local voters, but voters across California.

“It’s like falling into a black hole and holding your breath,” said Santa Clara City Councilwoman Karen Hardy, a Measure I sponsor.

At first glance, Proposition 5 may seem like a dry, bureaucratic change to the way communities pay for public improvements. But it has the potential to create a slew of new projects and raise taxes to finance them.

Since 2002, California municipalities and special districts have put 151 bond measures before voters, said Michael Coleman, a municipal finance consultant who tracks the issue. Just over half passed, securing the necessary two-thirds margin. If 55% had been the threshold instead, 86% of bond measures would have been approved.

“That would have made a huge difference,” Coleman said.

If Proposition 5 passes, Coleman expects more local governments to put bonds on the ballot. These are one of the few ways to raise property taxes, which often fund bond repayments, given the public financing rules put in place by the passage of Proposition 13 in 1978. Voters lowered the approval threshold for local school bonds from two-thirds to two-thirds. In 2000, it was 55%. A surge in introductions and passage.

Supporters of Proposition 5 include worker, affordable housing, and local government interests.

Longtime Contra Costa County Supervisor John Gioia said the needs of cities and counties are as great as those of schools. As climate change leads to more frequent and severe natural disasters, local governments need to find ways to fund clean water, resilience and sea level rise projects, he said. These concerns only add to the homeless housing and traditional infrastructure shortages facing communities across the state, he said.

“The cost of doing nothing is greater than the cost of doing something,” Gioia said.

Initially, the coalition supporting Proposition 5 wanted broader changes in tax policy. State lawmakers who voted to put Proposition 5 on the ballot also planned to lower the threshold for special tax approval at the local level from two-thirds to 55 percent. But they backed out and limited the proposed changes to bonds.

Supporters of Prop. 5 also hoped the measure would make it easier to approve what is expected to be the largest affordable housing bond in state history.

Officials in nine Bay Area counties have long pushed to get a $20 billion affordable housing bond on the November ballot. However, the bond measures were withdrawn in August. Supporters cite unequal voting and lawsuits.

The layoffs don’t surprise Susan Shelley, a spokeswoman for the Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Association, a group founded by the author of Prop. 13 and the main opponent of Prop. 5.

“It’s true that Californians are feeling squeezed,” Sherry said.

Sherry said the importance of the changes proposed by Proposition 5 should not be underestimated. The two-thirds voter threshold for municipal bond measures was written into the California Constitution in 1879. He said the requirement for supermajority support discourages politicians from proposing big, flashy projects that taxpayers will have to pay for decades from now.

“If you have to get a two-thirds vote and you have to get consensus at that level, you either need to ask less or you need to be more focused on what you’re doing,” Sherry said. spoke.

Polling on Proposition 5 is sparse, but a close race is expected. a Last month’s voter forecast survey A poll by the nonpartisan Public Policy Institute of California found that 49% supported the bill, 50% opposed it, and 1% were undecided, a difference that was within the poll’s sampling error.

Even some bond supporters are divided on the proposal.

Hardy, the Santa Clara City Council member, said he knows it could be a boon to the bond measure he supports, but he doesn’t know how he would vote on the statewide measure.

The city of Santa Clara needs to upgrade its sewer system and build a new fire station to accommodate larger, modern engines, and the fate of Prop. 5 could determine whether those projects become reality. she said. But she worries that lowering the threshold could weaken important bonds in the future.

“From a local perspective, oh, that would be helpful,” Hardy said. “But you can’t make decisions based only on the short term.”