If the trend from Nov. 4 election night continues, Friday Harbor residents can expect to have $240,000 more a year to spend on improvement of town roads.

With 638 ballots tallied on election night, or 47 percent of the town’s 1,356 registered voters, only 78 votes separated “yeas” from the “nays” on a proposed .02 percent increase in the town sales tax.

But the upward trajectory may be sufficient to put the measure over the top, which would raise the sales tax in town from 8.1 percent to 8.3 percent over the course of the measure’s 10-year span.

Placed on the ballot by the town’s newly created Transportation Benefit District, a state-sanctioned entity unto itself, revenue raised by the sales-tax hike can be used only for those projects that appear on the roster of the town’s six-year transportation improvement plan.

While revenue generated by the tax won’t cover the cost of a major improvement project by itself, town officials maintain it is well-situated to be used as leverage for loans, grants or the local match typically required by the state, at 10 percent, for grants for local road projects, similar to the recent reconstruction of Blair Avenue.

The town six-year transportation improvement plan includes more than $10 million in street improvements.

— Scott Rasmussen