With voters rejecting Sierra College's $394 million bond measure, Kevin Ramirez wonders how his district will serve a growing student population without the money to build more classrooms.

On election night, the college president said the district would put another bond proposal on the November ballot. He was less definite Wednesday, saying more analysis is needed before determining a course of action in a heavily Republican, anti-tax region.

"Can you move that very conservative base north of 55 percent?" Ramirez asked.

That was the percentage of votes needed to pass Measure E, which would have financed expansion and repairs at the college's campuses in Placer and Nevada counties.

With the measure getting 49 percent approval, Ramirez is unsure about the answer to his question.

"We don't know," he said. "We're going to be busy in the next couple of days analyzing the results and analyzing the message here and then determining what - if any - are the necessary conditions to pass a school bond in Placer County."

In addition to Placer and Nevada counties, the Sierra Joint Community College District includes portions of Sacramento and El Dorado counties.

About two-thirds of the votes on Measure E came from Placer County, and in a county-by-county review, the measure fared worst in Placer. Its strongest support was in Nevada County, where 54 percent of voters approved the measure.

For homeowners, the bond would have added an annual tax of $19 per $100,000 of their assessed property value. For someone with the district's median assessed home value of $173,000, the tax would have been $32.

Enrollment at the college grew 48 percent between 1995 and 2002, officials have said, and is expected to increase by 10,000 students by 2015. With the bond's failure, Ramirez said, his board of trustees faces difficult decisions on whether to borrow money for some of the repairs and expansions needed.

For example, he said, the aging heating and cooling system at the Rocklin main campus soon will perform at an "unacceptable" level of service.

Ramirez said the board will vote on borrowing about $1.5 million to buy five portable classrooms, one portable chemistry lab and a portable bathroom for the Rocklin campus.

"I have to do that to create enough capacity here so these students can move on and transfer (to a university) or become nurses or do whatever they're going to do to contribute to the community," he said.

Ramirez said his district rarely has borrowed money, and decisions to do so were reached after contentious battles among fiscally conservative trustees.

Yet some bond opponents don't see the administration as conservative enough.

"Why isn't there regular maintenance and repair costs built into running a school?" asked Loomis resident Jeanne Zindorf. "Rather than the money going to maintenance and repair, I think it's going to the administration."

Ernie Pippin of Rocklin said the college did not adequately advertise how much of the bond money would go toward each proposed project.

"I would feel better with a fresh administrative crowd over there and a revamping in priorities in what they need in terms of money," Pippin said.

Across the state, 12 community college districts had bond measures on Tuesday's ballot, according to Linda Michalowski, interim vice chancellor of the state's community college system. Sierra College and College of the Sequoias in Visalia are the only districts in which the measures failed, she said.

In the previous election, only one community college bond measure failed, "and it was because of clear-cut local issues between the college and the community," Michalowski said. "I'm not aware of anything like that in Sierra's case. I thought they had a wonderful relationship with the community."

Although most community college bond measures passed in Tuesday's election, they earned six to 10 percentage points less support than polling had predicted, said Barry Barnes, a consultant who worked on Measure E and measures in two other districts.

For Sierra College, where pre-election polling indicated approval in the mid-50 percent range, that margin amounted to failure.

"It was never a runaway victory," Barnes said. "We knew it was going to be difficult because Placer is a conservative county."