Measures as diverse as the cities they come from

In Encinitas, residents are being asked to supply sand for the beach. In Oakland, they are being urged to boost teachers' salaries -- over the teachers' objections. In San Francisco, voters might legalize prostitution. In San Diego, they may approve construction of a huge concrete deck for a football stadium or a convention center -- or something -- four stories above a busy shipping terminal.

While sound-alike ballot measures throughout the state ask taxpayers to spend billions on new schools, hospitals and highways, the more distinctive local proposals on Nov. 4 ballots vary as wildly as the communities that generated them.

In the City by the Bay, a group that grandly calls itself the Presidential Memorial Commission is advancing a measure sure to draw worldwide comment if it passes. It would rename the Oceanside Treatment Plant in honor of the president.

Conceived over beers by a few friends who went on to gather some 12,000 signatures, the George W. Bush Sewage Plant would be "a fitting memorial for a truly outstanding Commander-in-Chief," according to the group's tongue-in-cheek ballot argument.

Opponents say it would only provide grist for talk-radio diatribes about Left Coast crazies.

"I see it as disrespectful to families of the soldiers who have fallen in Iraq and Afghanistan," said Colin Gallagher, a Republican attorney in San Francisco, who added that he's no fan of the sitting president.

"It would speak better of San Franciscans if they remained civil," he said.

San Franciscans -- for the 12th time since the 1920s -- also are being asked to pave the way for a public takeover of the city's power system. Under Measure H, the city -- not the private Pacific Gas & Electric Co. -- would provide power. More than half of the city's electricity would come from renewable sources by 2017, and all of it by 2040.

Eight of San Francisco's 11 supervisors have endorsed the idea, while Mayor Gavin Newsom and Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a former San Francisco mayor, oppose it.

Voters there also will grapple with a measure spearheaded by the Erotic Service Providers Union.

Supporters say that decriminalizing prostitution would be safer for both the prostitutes and their clients. Legal sex workers would be more likely to file police reports when assaulted by their customers or pimps, proponents say. And they would be more likely to carry condoms, which police under current law sometimes use as evidence to charge them with prostitution, according to the measure's advocates.