California ballot ruffles feathers

Rooster owners here will have to silence their flocks.

A local ballot measure seeking to stifle round-the-clock cock-a-doodle-dooing and prevent cockfighting won by a more than 2-1 margin Tuesday.

The initiative was one of several ballot propositions that California voters decided, including one that approved thousands of new slot machines.

Voters gave four wealthy Indian tribes the rights to 17,000 additional slot machines in exchange for promises to share hundreds of millions of dollars annually with the cash-strapped state.

The tribes' nonstop television ads in recent months have promised California will get about $400 million annually from the deals through 2030, totaling nearly $9 billion.

A proposition failed that would have lowered state community college fees and changed the way state funding is allocated to the huge system — 2.5 million students on 109 campuses.

Supporters, including the California Federation of Teachers and the California Labor Federation, said the initiative would protect community colleges and create a smarter, higher-earning work force.

Critics said it would have siphoned money away from other areas because it lacked a new source of revenue, a concern considering the state's looming multibillion-dollar deficit. It was strongly opposed by the California Teachers Association, as well as the University of California and California State University systems.

Voters also narrowly rejected a change in state legislators' term limits, ending the hopes of lame-duck lawmakers who could have run for re-election this year had it passed.

The proposition would have shortened the overall time most legislators could spend in Sacramento, but it would also have allowed 34 termed-out lawmakers — including three of the Legislature's top leaders — to run for up to three additional terms.

In San Francisco, Alcatraz escaped plans for change, with voters rejecting a proposal that would have torn down the island's notorious prison to erect a global peace center.

The rooster measure in Riverside, a rapidly growing city about 60 miles east of Los Angeles, limits residents in certain areas to seven roosters per property, instead of the 50 birds now allowed.

The ordinance also requires that birds be confined to an "acoustical structure" at least 100 feet from neighbors from sunrise to sunset.