Voters in the Coast Life Support District, which runs the ambulances for the Sonoma and Mendocino coast from Timber Cove and Seaview north to Irish Beach, decide Measure D on Tuesday, Nov. 3, 2026. It would raise the district’s emergency medical services parcel tax from $61 to $101 per “unit of benefit,” so a typical single-family home would pay $303 a year instead of $183. It needs a two-thirds vote to pass.
The measure is on Sonoma County ballots in the district’s coastal and inland communities and on Mendocino County ballots on the south coast. For every other measure on the ballot, see our 2026 Bay Area election guide.
What a yes or no vote does
A yes vote approves the higher tax, which the ballot question says would bring in an estimated $1,972,934 a year until it is amended or repealed. The rate would rise every July 1 with the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward consumer price index, rounded to the nearest dollar. The measure also raises the district’s spending limit so it can use the money, through fiscal year 2030-31 unless voters extend it.
A no vote leaves the current $61 rate in place, district head Bronwyn Golly confirmed to The Mendocino Voice. The district’s separate urgent care tax is not affected either way.
Who pays what
The tax is charged by land use, not property value, according to the county counsels’ impartial analysis. Undeveloped farm, timber or pasture land counts as zero units, a vacant buildable lot one, a single-family home three, a farm with a residence four, a duplex six, other apartments and trailer parks eight, and stores and offices 10. Hotels, motels, restaurants, golf courses and theaters count as 20 units, which works out to $2,020 a year at the new rate. Government agencies are exempt. The money must go into a separate account for ambulance and emergency medical services.
Why the district says it needs the money
The district’s board placed the measure on the ballot on a 6-0 vote on April 27. Supporters, including Golly, wrote in the ballot argument that the district covers close to 500 square miles, answers more than 1,000 calls a year and keeps two ambulances staffed with a paramedic and an emergency medical technician. They say emergency calls have doubled and costs per call are up more than 25% with no increase in the tax. A hospital round trip is over 100 miles and regularly takes more than six hours, the argument says.
The Mendocino Voice found a smaller rise in billed ambulance runs, about a fifth more over comparable nine-month periods, though that count leaves out calls where no one was taken to a hospital. The outlet also reported that the district ended June with a surplus of $266,150, but only because of $189,692 in donations and money from a Medi-Cal matching program that Golly says ends in 2029. Without those, it would have run about $211,000 short.
If Measure D fails, Golly told the Voice, service would not stop on Nov. 4, but the district would have to rethink its model, and keeping only one ambulance on duty at some hours is “definitely something that could happen.”
Who is for and against
The argument in favor is signed by Andrea Lunsford, Golly, community members Barbara Burkey and Janis Dolphin, and board member Naomi Schwartz. No argument against Measure D was submitted.
Sonoma County voters also decide the countywide parks sales tax, explained in our Sonoma County Measure H guide, and the Santa Rosa Junior College Measure AB bond.