Requests by eight Orange County school districts to raise a combined $2.5 billion through bond sales landed with a thud among many voters who may be growing weary of adding to debt paid through their taxes.

With more than 150,000 ballots left to count, and another 60,000 or so mail-in-ballots expected to arrive by Friday, none of the school bond measures were surpassing the 55% threshold needed to pass, according to returns updated by the Orange County Registrar of Voters Wednesday evening, March 4.

Anaheim Union High School District, Rancho Santiago Community College District and Tustin Unified School District were close, but several others appeared to face an insurmountable gap.

District leaders pitched their bond measures as the best way to repair and modernize their inventory of aging facilities and add needed learning spaces to keep up with the times. Day-to-day operating budgets can’t finance multi-million dollar construction projects needed at multiple campuses, they said. When districts sell bonds to finance the work, repayment is made through an annual addition to property taxes over the course of 20 or 30 years. Most of these bonds would have added about $30 per $100,000 of assessed value annually, and in some cases previous bonds are still being paid off.

Observers cited a range of reasons for the measures falling short with voters, including the effect of having a $15 billion statewide school bond measure on the same ballot, a general loss of trust in how the government spends its money and districts going back to voters not too long after their last request for financing.

If results remain on their current trajectory, it would mark a shift in Orange County where voters for years have largely supported local school bond measures.

“It’s just a piling on of money and a piling on of asks, and taxpayers are done with that,” said Carolyn Cavecche, CEO and president of the Orange County Taxpayers Association.

Between 2010 and 2018, Orange County voters approved 24 measures while rejecting only six. But between 2018 and now, taxpayers’ mindset seems to have shifted, Cavecche said. She said she noticed a lot of buzz against the measures in Facebook groups and Nextdoor discussions.

“It’s not that they don’t want good schools,” she said. “Schools are at the mercy of the voters. If voters feel like they are paying too much gas tax, schools will suffer because of that.”

Officials were cautious in interpreting the early returns, remaining hopeful later ballots could swing things in their favor.

Rancho Santiago Community College District Trustee Arianna Barrios said voters might not have been open to approving a bond just eight years after they voted to raise $198 million for construction projects – although that was just for improvements at Santa Ana College. Only voters in parts of the district served by Santa Ana College cast a ballot on the 2012 measure.

On the March 3 ballot, the district had asked voters to approve financing $496 million to help finish the 20-year-old Santiago Canyon College in Orange and add an applied technology building at Santa Ana College, along with a list of basic repairs.

Barrios also noted many in the district live in the Orange Unified School District, which four years ago passed a $288 million bond measure. “There was a strong feeling they wanted to see OUSD projects completed” before they approve a new bond for Rancho Santiago, she said.

As of Wednesday, less than half of voters supported bond measures in Brea Olinda Unified, Capistrano Unified, Fullerton School District, Fullerton Joint Union High School District and Saddleback Valley Unified.

Capistrano Unified spokesman Ryan Burris acknowledged the numbers “are not as strong as we would have liked to.”

After voters rejected an $889 million bond measure in 2016, he said the district’s leaders tried to address community concerns by floating two smaller bonds this time that targeted $120 million for campus upgrades to schools serving Capistrano Beach and San Clemente and $300 million for schools serving Aliso Viejo, Dana Point and Laguna Niguel.

“The community told us to make it local, smaller and specific,” he said. “We did all three things.”

He said the district still needs to make the improvements to its facilities. Other districts had to go back to voters three or four times – constantly tweaking measures – before winning support and that may be what Capistrano Unified has to do, he said.

“The needs don’t go away.”