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OAKLAND — Voters approved adding 100 police officers to Oakland’s streets, but refused to raise taxes to pay for them. Supporters say that means they want the department to increase efficiency, but some opponents argue voters didn’t understand the ballot. 

Measure FF, which passed Tuesday with 53 percent of the vote, would put 100 new police officers on the streets, paying their salaries with new tax revenue. The proposal was put on the ballot by Mayor Jerry Brown in response to the city’s rising homicide rate. 

But the three separate measures intended to fund the new jobs failed — all with more than 56 percent of the vote. They would have raised taxes from 7.5 percent to 8 percent on hotel stays, parking and utilities including electricity, gas and alternate fuels, as well as telephone and cable television. The tax increase would have amounted to $63.5 million over five years. 

That additional revenue would have paid for the new officers, who were to form new foot and bicycle patrols and work in neighborhoods impacted by the recent rise in crime. 

“People want more police and more crime prevention programs,” Brown said Wednesday. “But they want City Hall to prioritize and become more efficient. The voters are saying, ’Take a second look, do your job, but don’t come back to us with more taxes.”’ 

But a leading opponent of the measure, Oakland City Council member Nancy Nadel, said the outcome doesn’t necessarily mean that people want more cops on the streets. She said the measure, called “violence prevention” on the ballot, was confusing. 

“It’s very hard to vote against violence prevention, but most people don’t consider cops to be violence prevention,” Nadel said. “We need actual job programs, a mini WPA for our ex-offenders, after-school programs ... Police are just a small part of it.” 

Oakland, with a population of 406,000, is on track to surpass 100 homicides by year’s end for the first time since 1995. This year’s pace harkens back to the years of 1986 to 1995, when the city averaged 138 murders a year. 

As voters went to the polls Tuesday evening, the city’s murder toll rose to 96 when a 38-year-old man was killed in East Oakland just before 6 p.m.