Backers of Measure D may have been beaten at the polls Tuesday, but they are not defeated.

Officials with the Santa Barbara County Association of Governments, which drafted the proposal, refuse to concede until they see the final vote tally, which is expected in the coming weeks.

Only when the count is official, an SBCAG spokesman said, will they go back to the drawing board to craft a new proposal.

SBCAG staff members are quick to point out there are still 24,000 absentee and 3,000 provisional ballots to be counted.

However, a reversal of Tuesday's outcome seems highly unlikely.

Unofficial election returns show the measure - which proposed a three-quarter-percent sales tax to generate $1.6 billion for transportation projects over 30 years - received 54.1 percent approval. However, it needed 66 percent to pass.

“Number one - we are going to wait for all the votes to be counted,” said Gregg Hart, spokesman for SBCAG. “Then we will look carefully at the vote breakdown by region to see what we can divine from that information.”

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The next update on results is expected today, and the tally remains unofficial until it is certified by the county Clerk-Recorder-Assessor.

A review of preliminary results by precinct indicates that the measure was generally supported on the South Coast, got mixed reviews in Santa Maria, and rejected in Lompoc and the Santa Ynez Valley.

The proposal, which was a reauthorization of a 1989 transportation sales tax plus an additional quarter-percent, seemed to be the most popular in the county's South Coast region.

A review of precinct breakdowns indicates that more voters said yes in the Santa Barbara, Goleta, Isla Vista, and Carpinteria areas. However, those areas also had a large portion voting no.

Moving north through the county, the measure seemed to lose ground, with more voters tending to say no in Santa Ynez, Solvang, Buellton and Lompoc.

In Guadalupe the measure found more favor; it was defeated in most Orcutt precincts, and Santa Maria seemed split.

Officials with SBCAG also noticed the divide between north and south, Hart said.

“We knew all along it would be difficult. Getting a two-thirds vote countywide is never easy but it can be done,” he said, noting that other counties in the state found success Tuesday, mostly after multiple attempts.

The last time county voters approved the transportation sales tax only a simple majority was needed, Hart said, but that changed with a state constitutional amendment.

In 1989 the original Measure D got about 55 percent approval This time, since officials are planning to earmark money for specific projects, the law requires the two-thirds threshold.

Officials from all eight cities in the county voiced strong support for Measure D throughout the campaign season, saying it would have provided a major funding source for local and regional road budgets. Without the money, many programs - from public safety to parks - will suffer in many of the eight cities, because money will have to be diverted from other programs to pay for road repairs, city officials said.

Failure of Measure D is expected to have a negative effect on Lompoc, said Mayor Dick DeWees, though he vowed that the city's road repairs will continue.

“We're going to do our very best to maintain the level of service that residents have enjoyed in areas such as streets and alternative transportation,” he said.

In Santa Maria, Measure D money is the primary source for the road maintenance budget, according to city staff.

“Without Measure D funding we will rely on gas tax to do our maintenance work,” said Dave Whitehead, Santa Maria public works director and city engineer. “That will not allow us to maintain the same level of street maintenance and roadway repair that we are doing.”

The current sales tax measure is not set to expire until 2010, giving officials enough time to present an alternative proposal in time for the next general election in 2008.

Hart acknowledged that some of the bond money passed by California voters on Tuesday will come to Santa Barbara but said it is not nearly enough to complete the projects listed in Measure D. He also noted that some of that bond money is in the form of competitive grants, and without a source of local matching funds the county will be at a disadvantage to other counties that do have local sources.

The difficulty in crafting a proposal that will appease the various factions in the county is more complex then people think, Hart said.

“It's a multi-level chess game,” he said. “The simple answer is to go to the half-cent (proposal), so what projects do you lose and what votes as a result?”

What happens next is up to the SBCAG board of directors, said Santa Maria City Manager Tim Ness. He added that since the next likely election is two years off, there is no need to rush to judgment.

Santa Maria officials were not immediately supportive of the Measure D renewal plan but after further talks and tweaks to the plan the council decided to push the proposal.

Ness noted that he and other city managers favored a proposal that saw two separate measures - one as a straight renewal of the half-percent sales tax and the other as a quarter-percent tax that could be used for more of the alternative transportation projects.

“I believe that when it became and represented a three-quarter-percent that they reduced the likelihood of its passage,” Ness said.

SBCAG is slated to meet next week, but Hart did not expect Measure D to be the main topic of discussion.

First, he said, “we have to sit and carefully look at the numbers.”

Malia Spencer can be reached at 739-2219 or mspencer@santa

mariatimes.com. Staff writer Randi Block contributed to this report.

Nov. 10, 2006