MEDICAL MARIJUANA MEASURE LEADS; 'FAIR TRADE' COFFEE LAGS

SAN FRANCISCO -- Voters here were approving a measure Tuesday that would
direct officials to study whether to establish this liberal city as among
the first nationwide to grow and distribute its own medical marijuana.

In a first-step gesture of defiance against the federal government's
zero-tolerance marijuana policy, returns showed San Franciscans approving
Proposition S by nearly a 2-to-1margin.

The measure calls for officials to investigate issues ranging from where
medical pot could be grown to what liability and legal consequences the
city might face.

"We consider this vote a mandate" for the city to start growing and selling
its own medical marijuana, said Supervisor Mark Leno, a sponsor of
Proposition S. "But there are still many questions we need answered."

Across the state, Californians confronted a host of issues from the
substantive to the quirky. Rallying behind Mayor Jerry Brown, Oakland
residents were headed toward approving a measure to hire 100 new police
officers in a city troubled by a rising homicide rate.

In adjacent Berkeley, meanwhile, residents were soundly rejecting a ballot
initiative requiring that all coffee sold in city cafes be "fair trade" as
a way to help struggling Third-World growers.

The measure also called for all Berkeley coffee to be environmentally
sensitive organic or shade-grown.

The proposal, Measure O, was inspired by a Bay Area attorney who wants
growers of coffee sold by the cup in local cafes to be paid a fair-trade
price of $1.26 per pound of coffee. That would be three times the 43-cent
worldwide average.

The measure was opposed by Starbucks and other major coffee sellers. One
glossy mailer sent to Berkeley households the week before the election
showed a man being led away in handcuffs by police. "The crime: serving the
wrong kind of coffee," the ad read.

In San Francisco, a city overwhelmed with a growing homeless population,
voters were handily passing a measure to change the way the city assists
indigent residents.

Sponsored by Supervisor Gavin Newsom, a mayoral hopeful, Proposition N
slashes city welfare payments made to about 3,000 homeless people from $395
to just $59 a month.

The savings would create more affordable housing and add services.

Voters in other California cities continued a long-running ballot-box war
over urban sprawl, weighing in on more than two dozen local measures that
pit development interests against citizen activists from coastal
communities to one-stoplight farm towns.

In early returns, anti-sprawl activists appeared to be winning many of
those battles, from a hillside housing proposal in Ventura to a fight over
a 22-acre rail yard in Alameda. And in rural Nevada County, a controversial
pro-property rights measure was narrowly losing. The initiative was
proposed to create a streamlined process for compensating property owners
when county regulations block full development of their land.

California voters also tackled a variety of water issues Tuesday. With 94%
of the votes counted, San Francisco residents were passing Proposition A, a
$1.6-billion bond measure to help finance the revamping of the region's
Hetch-Hetchy water system, which serves 2.4 million customers in the Bay Area.

The 13-year, $3.6-billion project involves the repair, expansion and
earthquake retrofit of the nearly century-old city-owned system.

The remaining $2 billion will come from the system's suburban users.

The measure, however, does not direct any funds to study whether to tear
down the O'Shaugnessy Dam and reservoir -- the source of the city water
along the Tuolumne River in Yosemite National Park -- and return the
once-pristine valley to its natural state.

Reprising the environmental battle started by pioneering naturalist John
Muir a century ago, advocates failed to attach a provision to Proposition S
that would have paid for the feasibility study.

In Folsom, early returns showed voters supporting a charter amendment
prohibiting citizens from paying for a water line retrofit that would
require many to meter their water use for the first time. If voters pass
Measure P and reject water meters, federal officials say, they will cut off
about a fourth of Folsom's nonessential water supply.

The city of about 50,000 near Sacramento is one of a shrinking number of
holdouts in California that don't bill customers according to use. That
puts it out of step with prevailing conservation practices and -- U.S.
Bureau of Reclamation officials say -- with federal policy. Elsewhere,
measures to prohibit the addition of fluoride to city water systems were
winning in Redding and Watsonville. State officials kept a close eye on San
Francisco returns, because previous elections have been marked by
allegations of voter fraud and the city has seen a revolving door of
election chiefs.

In one election, ballot box lids were found mysteriously floating in San
Francisco Bay.

This year, Secretary of State Bill Jones hired a special consultant to
watch over and advise city election officials.

Contributing to this report were staff writers Jenifer Ragland in Ventura,
Lee Romney in Los Angeles and Times correspondent Emily Gurnon in Eureka.