A new tax for parks in western Contra Costa and Alameda counties narrowly passed, according to returns completed early Wednesday.

"We'll now be able to do something for the parks on the west side of the hills," said Norman LaForce, who co-chaired the campaign committee supporting the measure. "Hopefully, we can look at doing something like this on the other side of the hills."

Measure CC was tailored for the west side of the two counties after the East Bay Regional Park District failed to pass similar tax measures districtwide in 1998 and 2002.

Although the district includes all of the two counties, polls over the past several years showed that the tax could pass in the western portion of the district, a region that Measure CC supporters said also includes the district's older parks.

The measure will levy $12 a year on homeowners. For apartments, the measure will cost $8.28 per unit each year.

The money will go for maintenance and improvements in parks owned in the western portions of the district.

Completed returns showed the tax received 67 percent of the vote, a fraction of a percentage point above the required two-thirds.

The tax affects Alameda, Albany, Berkeley, El Cerrito, Emeryville, Kensington, Oakland, Piedmont, Richmond and San Pablo, and a portion of Pinole.

Revenues from the tax will be used only in parks in and around those cities, and the measure included language to guarantee funding would not be shifted away from those parks to pay for improvements in areas outside the zone of the new tax.

Park District board president Doug Siden said it was too early to say if the district would attempt to pass a tax in the rest of the district, as LaForce suggested.

"We need to establish how well our plan does before we even consider that," Siden said. "I think that would be a consideration in the future."

Opponents of the measure argued unsuccessfully that it would unfairly tax residents in some of the East Bay's poorest cities while not taxing residents east of the Oakland hills. They also argued the park district wastes money and does not need the new revenues.

Park district officials for years have faced a financial situation in which, thanks to state bonds and a park district bond approved in 1988, they have had resources to buy land to expand parks and develop new ones. But with a bigger land base and tightening revenues from state sources, the district was short on money to operate and maintain that land.

The bonds authorized in 1988 are running low, and park district board members and others have said they wanted to shore up revenues with new taxes before going back to voters to authorize more bonds.

"It (Measure CC) gets us part-way there," said Siden, who added that it will be a couple of years at least before the park district seeks authorization for new bonds.