King County Elections released the final certified results on Tuesday for the special election, and Redmond’s propositions 1 and 2 failed.

Redmond’s Proposition 1 garnered a “no” percentage of 53.07 (4,089 votes) and a “yes” percentage of 46.93 (3,616 votes). It addressed public safety, infrastructure and walkability, and would have cost about $18.13 million over the course of six years.

Proposition 2 amassed a “no” percentage of 54.03 (4,168 votes) and a “yes” percentage of 45.97 (3,546 votes). The proposed six-year, $6.9 million levy focused on capital projects in the parks department and parks maintenance.

Both propositions needed a simple majority to pass.

While sitting around a table in a room at Redmond City Hall on Tuesday, Mayor John Marchione and council members Hank Margeson and John Stilin offered insight into why they feel the propositions failed.

The trio was out amongst residents on election night, Aug. 4, which coincided with National Night Out Against Crime. They split their time between about 30 National Night Out block parties, and residents voiced their opinions in person after checking boxes on their ballots.

“For the most part, what I heard was, ‘The city’s doing a great job, that’s why I voted against the levy,’” said Marchione, adding that residents were satisfied that the police respond in five minutes, the parks are clean and tidy and the roads are fine. “There’s no crisis. And without a crisis, they didn’t want to raise their taxes. The other reaction I got was, ‘I need to save the $100 because the county and the state and the school district are coming for it.’”

Margeson added that the people he visited with felt there wasn’t a sense of urgency around the level of service and said they were taxed enough.

“These were enhancements to our current services and they weren’t necessarily the basics, so we weren’t necessarily cutting things,” Margeson said. “And really we played the game by the rules, which is to say, ‘If you want to enhance your services, go to your voters and ask them.’ And we did and they said, ‘No thanks, not now.’ So, fine. We’ll take this, we’ll move on and learn from it.”

Stilin said people might have questioned what the changes and additional services were that the city was planning to offer. For example, he explained to some residents at National Night Out parties that the city proposed to add police services because of an increase of property crimes.

He, too, heard that residents weren’t keen on a tax hike and that people have confidence in the way the city is being run sans the propositions passing.

Redmond City Council picked the items to be included on the levy through citizens’ outreach, so voting in the special election “takes the divining rod out of our hand and goes back to the citizens.”

Margeson said it’s a “little bit of disappointment” that the propositions didn’t pass, but it’s democracy at work.

Redmond proposed a levy in 2006 to pay for ongoing services and it failed 61 percent to 39 percent, but the percentages were better this time out, Marchione said.

“More people voted for it, but not enough to carry the day,” said the mayor, adding that the special election tuned people in to local government and he liked the public engagement on the pros and cons of the propositions.

“I think it’s unusual for a levy to fail because the city’s providing very good service, so it’s a back-handed compliment, and the employees feel the same way, that we’re doing good work,” Marchione said.

“We ran the levy this year to know how many resources we’d have in the budget next year. So now we know the size of the bread box of our budget and that we’ll be maintaining our level of service,” the mayor added.

Marchione said that at this point, there are no plans for a tax levy for increased services. Next up, he thinks the city could be eyeing its facilities, whether it’s roads or a community center pool, but no decisions have been made at this time.

The Reporter reached out to residents for feedback on the propositions failing and here’s pro and con comments:

“Along with the majority of citizens in Redmond, I think that things in Redmond are in good shape right now, but I’m disappointed we weren’t able to take advantage of this opportunity to invest in our city and address issues before they become more serious problems,” resident Sherri Nichols said.

Added Brent Schmaltz: “It was a difficult decision to publicly support voting ‘no’ on propositions 1 and 2. Taken at their face value, they both seem reasonable and valuable to the community. My reasoning was to send a message to the city administration that priorities such as police support, fire protection, existing park improvements and safety need to be above optional items as expressed in letters to the Redmond Reporter by numerous contributors. The city administration has approved millions on new parks and improvements in the vicinity of new development, yet had to resort to levies to provide priority items, maintenance for existing parks and safety.”

From Aaron Knopf: “I’m disappointed the propositions didn’t pass. Those who publicly opposed passage advocated that funding should have come from the recently adopted general budget — not in the form of tax increases. But it never was clear exactly which city services they would be willing to cut in favor of the projects and programs that would have been funded with passage of the propositions. Maybe that’s the question that needs to be asked in future budgetary discussions if people aren’t willing to raise revenues. Personally I’m happy to fund more to get more, but I seem to be in the minority.”

For another citizen viewpoint, here’s a letter to the editor.