Thirty-Eight Tax Measures Are on Your November Ballot. Eight Charge Hotel Guests.

The biggest is a half-cent sales tax for the Los Angeles Fire Department, which its own ballot question says would raise about $345 million a year.

Los Angeles County’s elections office has posted the measures that go before voters on November 3, and there are 68 of them. The Registrar-Recorder’s list, in its fourth revision, dated August 14, runs to 26 pages and covers 47 jurisdictions: 31 cities, 15 school and college districts, and the county itself. We read all of it and counted. Thirty-eight of the 68 would raise, extend or widen a tax. Eight of those are written so that only hotel and short-stay guests pay them.

The rule we counted by, stated once so anyone can re-run it: a measure went in the money column if it creates a tax, raises a rate, extends an expiring one, widens an existing one to new payers, or authorizes bonds that carry a levy. That leaves 28 measures about rules rather than rates — term limits, charters, zoning, election dates — and two that would take revenue away rather than add it. Every figure below is the one printed in the measure’s own ballot question, and every rate is the rate the question names. None of them is our estimate.

Two things are worth knowing before the list. The county’s two measures, A and E, are both charter amendments — binding arbitration for certified public safety employees, and a restructuring of the county Ethics Commission — and neither one costs a household anything. And most of the county isn’t voting on much: 36 of those 47 jurisdictions put exactly one measure on the ballot, and eleven account for the other 32. A Los Angeles city voter will find as many as ten — two county, seven city, and one from the school district.

The biggest single ask: half a cent, everywhere you spend in Los Angeles

Seven measures come from the city of Los Angeles. One raises money, one gives some back, and five change how the city runs itself. The initiative ordinance the county files under the code FD would impose a one-half percent sales tax inside the city to fund the Fire Department — hiring firefighters and paramedics, vehicles and equipment, station construction, and brush clearance — and the question puts its own number on it: approximately $345 million a year, with annual audits and a citizens’ oversight committee, until voters end it.

The five structural ones are worth knowing about anyway. One would rewrite the city’s budget and contracting rules, establishing a capital infrastructure plan and a two-year budget cycle and allowing the Board of Public Works to be changed or eliminated. One would replace the Area Planning Commissions with a single Neighborhood Appeals Commission. One would strengthen the Police Department’s Inspector General and the Fire Department’s Independent Assessor, and require the City Council to meet at least weekly instead of three days a week. One would double the minimum share of the budget guaranteed to Recreation and Parks, phased in over ten years. One rewrites rules for the Harbor, Airport and Water and Power departments.

And one, filed as TE, is a tax cut: a one-time exemption from the city’s Measure ULA transfer tax for homes damaged or destroyed in the Palisades Fire, if they sell within five years of the fire. It is one of the two measures on this ballot that reduce revenue instead of raising it. The other is in Inglewood, where a measure would strip the city’s authority to allow advertising on the public right-of-way — and says so in the ballot question, in the words “resulting in a loss of general fund revenues.”

Sales tax: five cities, and two of them want a full cent

Besides the Los Angeles fire measure, four cities are asking at the register. Diamond Bar would establish a 1¢ sales tax for about $6 million a year. San Gabriel would establish the same 1¢ rate for about $7.1 million. Hermosa Beach proposes a half-cent for about $2 million. Cudahy isn’t adding anything: its measure extends the three-quarter-cent sales tax the city already collects, indefinitely, for about $1.3 million a year.

The rate doesn’t track the size of the ask. Diamond Bar and San Gabriel each want a full cent to raise $6 million and $7.1 million; Los Angeles, which would collect more than forty times either figure, wants half of one.

Property tax: twelve bond measures, and the rate runs from $9 to $60

Bonds are the largest single category of money measure on this ballot, and the easiest to compare, because each question prints its levy in the same unit — dollars per $100,000 of assessed value. Sorted by that rate, cheapest first:

Pasadena Area Community College District asks for the most money and charges the least for it: $485 million in bonds without exceeding the district’s current $9 per $100,000, which the question states as no increase, raising $27 million a year. Valle Lindo School District wants $9.2 million at about $29. Hawthorne School District wants $110 million at an average $30, and Keppel Union $27 million at an average $30. Claremont Unified asks $77 million at about $32. Glendora Unified wants $86 million at about $33, also stated as no increase to current rates, and the city of South Pasadena — not a school district, but the same instrument — wants $80 million at an average $33 for streets, sidewalks, storm drains and evacuation routes.

Then it climbs. Charter Oak Unified: $75 million at $40. Temple City Unified: $146 million at $43. Bellflower Unified: $135 million at $49. El Rancho Unified: $118 million at average annual levies the question puts below $55. And the steepest rate on the ballot belongs to Inglewood Unified, which asks for $396 million at $60 per $100,000 of assessed value — $26 million a year while the bonds are outstanding, for work its own question describes as repairing deteriorating gas lines and removing asbestos, lead paint and mold.

Inglewood Unified’s rate is nearly seven times Pasadena City College’s, and the two questions promise almost the same money per year — $26 million and $27 million. What separates them is the assessed value standing behind each levy — a fact about property values, not about the schools.

Parcel and square-foot taxes: $98 in Las Virgenes, $1,499 in San Marino

Six measures skip the bond structure and tax the parcel directly, and this is where the individual numbers get large enough to feel.

Las Virgenes Unified is renewing an existing school parcel tax at its current $98 rate, no increase, for twelve years, with senior exemptions, for $2 million a year. Santa Monica voters get a $495-per-parcel school tax, adjusted annually for inflation, exempting qualifying seniors, affordable housing, nonprofits, religious organizations and schools, for an estimated $12 million. Culver City asks for 48 cents per building square foot — commercial buildings included — for ten years, about $18 million a year for its schools.

Palos Verdes Estates would extend its police and pension parcel tax for six years at a new rate of $1,025 per taxable parcel plus 20¢ per square foot of taxable building improvements, adjusted 2 percent a year, for about $8.7 million. San Marino Unified is combining and renewing its existing parcel taxes for six years at $1,499 — the largest single per-parcel figure on this ballot, and one the question states as no increase over what property owners already pay — for about $6.1 million.

And Pasadena is asking for a fire tax of 19 cents per square foot of improved property, with a low-income and senior exemption, for about $22.1 million a year, expiring after 14 years. That rate is worth pausing on, because the county’s own list prints it as “190 per square foot” — the cent sign didn’t survive into the PDF. The Pasadena Star-News, in reporting republished by Yahoo News, put the rate at 19 cents, the council vote that placed it on the ballot at 7–0, and the bill on a 1,600-square-foot home at roughly $300 a year. Nineteen cents is the rate. The county’s file is missing a symbol.

Eight measures where the bill goes to a hotel guest

Eight cities are raising or widening the transient occupancy tax, which is the tax on a hotel bill. Several of the questions say so in the text, in some version of the phrase “paid only by hotel/motel guests.”

Hawthorne proposes the steepest jump in this group: 12 percent to 17 percent, about $3.1 million a year. Rancho Palos Verdes goes from 10 to 13 percent for about $2.2 million. Burbank goes from 10 to 12 percent for about $3 million. Culver City goes from 14 to 15 percent, then to 16 percent on March 1, 2028, for up to about $2 million. Monterey Park goes from 13 to 14 percent on hotels and from 13 to 16 percent on short-term rentals, for about $600,000.

Lynwood, which doesn’t have one, would establish a 12 percent hotel tax for about $751,315 a year. That and Hawaiian Gardens’ $563,810 are the only two revenue estimates on this ballot carried out to the dollar. Every other one is rounded. Alhambra keeps its 12 percent rate exactly where it is and extends it to short-term lodging, worth about $134,000; the measure’s own title calls it a “No Tax Rate Increase Measure,” and by rate it is telling the truth. Santa Monica’s version is the most technical on the ballot: it holds current rates, but lets the City Council declare “Major Event Periods” during which the tax reaches corporate-booked stays longer than 30 days, and tightens the refund rule so that only a natural person completing 31 consecutive days of occupancy qualifies.

Four measures aimed at businesses, and one at your ticket

Paramount is the bluntest about it. Its measure opens with the words “Without taxing residential property owners or renters” and then levies between 8¢ and 13¢ per square foot on industrial and commercial property only, with annual adjustments up to 3 percent, for about $4 million a year. Baldwin Park would apply its existing 4 percent cannabis retail tax rate to non-retail cannabis businesses, for a projected $1 million. El Segundo would restore a business license tax on nonprofits that don’t serve a charitable purpose while exempting charitable ones, worth about $700,000. Hawaiian Gardens would rewrite its business license tax to a $50 flat rate plus 95 cents per $1,000 of gross receipts above $30,000, with contractors at a $175 flat rate, for about $563,810.

Inglewood is the one to read twice. Its admissions tax measure would set tiered rates of 10 percent and 2.5 percent on large venues by seating capacity and remove the existing annual cap on how much the tax can bring in. The tax is levied on admissions; the question doesn’t say who ends up paying it, and neither will we.

Two measures land on the utility bill

South Gate would establish an 8 percent utility user tax, exempting low-income seniors, for about $10.4 million a year, under a measure whose own title uses the words “fiscal emergency.” San Marino would extend the 6 percent utility users tax it already collects, worth $2.62 million a year. One is new money; one is money the city would lose if voters said no. The ballot doesn’t distinguish between those two things, and readers should.

The threshold decides more than the rate does

The county’s list prints a passage requirement above every measure, and it is not the same everywhere. Most measures need a simple majority. School bonds need 55 percent. Six measures need two-thirds: Pasadena’s fire tax, Palos Verdes Estates’ police tax, Paramount’s commercial square-foot tax, South Pasadena’s street bonds, Las Virgenes’ parcel tax renewal and San Marino Unified’s.

Which raises a question the list poses and doesn’t answer. Santa Monica’s $495 school parcel tax and Culver City’s 48-cent school tax are both special taxes, both dedicated to one purpose, and both filed under “Majority Vote 50%+1” — while Pasadena’s fire tax and Palos Verdes Estates’ police tax need two-thirds for the same kind of money. The split is the court-made rule that grades a citizens’ initiative at a simple majority, the one that carried Measure ULA at 58 percent. We traced it in August through the Santa Monica measure, because Proposition 43 on this same ballot would close it on January 1 — 59 days after the measures graded under the old rule are counted.

The 28 that aren’t about money

Term limits are having a season: Huntington Park, South El Monte, Whittier and the Hacienda La Puente school board all have limits on the ballot, and South El Monte also asks voters to return to five council members with a mayor chosen from among them. Burbank has two separate measures on the same question of at-large versus by-district council elections — one a charter amendment removing the at-large requirement, the other an ordinance drawing the districts. Palmdale would make its mayor an elected at-large office starting in 2028. Rosemead would become a charter city. Whittier would move its April municipal elections to November.

Data centers appear twice: Alhambra asks voters to affirm a council-adopted ban in all zones, and Monterey Park’s housing-overlay measure carries a continued prohibition inside it. Redondo Beach would raise commercial development potential along Artesia and Aviation and reduce allowed housing density on some residential and mixed-use property. Bell Gardens would sell its municipal water system to Golden State Water Company. Cudahy would require voter approval to raise its 3 percent annual rent-increase ceiling. Culver City would let 16- and 17-year-olds vote for city and school district offices, conditioned on funding and logistics being in place.

And Santa Monica has four housing measures beside its parcel tax, which is why its voters get five in all: affirming just-cause eviction protections and extending Rent Control Board terms; barring eviction for nonpayment where a tenant owes less than one month of the local HUD fair-market rent; extending eviction protections to single-unit dwellings and condominiums and requiring an owner claiming owner-occupancy to move in within 60 days and stay two years.

One practical warning about letters

Don’t memorize a letter yet. The county’s list carries internal codes — FD, TE, PL, ES, PFD — and where the ballot letter goes, several questions still print a blank: “PROPOSITION ___,” “CHARTER AMENDMENT__,” and, on all five Santa Monica measures, “MEASURE ‘ ’.” The codes are how the Registrar tracks them, not what will be printed next to the box you fill in.

The election is November 3, per the Secretary of State. The deadlines that decide whether your ballot counts — registration, postmark, the signature cure that runs weeks past Election Day — are on their own page. Until then, the useful number is the one at the top of your own ballot, and for most of the county it is smaller than 68.