The Brief

L.A. Mayor Karen Bass and the City Council approved a $14 billion spending plan for the upcoming fiscal year, which starts in July and runs through June 2026. It eliminates hundreds of city jobs and reduces spending across a large swath of city departments, though it shifts some of the cuts Bass originally proposed in April.

L.A. residents foot this bill through a combination of property taxes, sales taxes, utility taxes, permit fees, parking tickets and more. Property taxes are the biggest share of the city’s revenue, making up 20% of the general fund that’s used to pay for most services — homeowners and renters contribute to this, since renters likely help their landlords pay this tax through their rent.

The taxes you pay to the city aren’t going down. What’s changing is how they’re being spent, and what kind of services you’re getting in return.

Try our calculator below to find out how much you’re personally contributing to fund city services this year, and how it compares to how your money was spent last year. It’ll give you an approximation of how your property tax dollars get allocated according to the city’s budget.

How it works

Put the amount of property tax you pay each year into the calculator to see your results. It’s not a complete estimate of how much you pay for city services, since it doesn’t factor in contributions like sales taxes or parking meter fees, but it’s the simplest way to get an idea of what your receipt looks like. Know that your actual total contribution is likely higher than what this calculator shows.

The median property tax bill in L.A. is $5,438 per year, according to the Tax Foundation. When in doubt, use this number in the calculator.

To get a more precise figure, you can look up a property tax bill by address with the following steps:

1. Type in your address on the L.A. County Assessor’s website and find the 10-digit Assessor’s Identification Number, or AIN.
2. Enter the AIN here (no dashes) to pull up the most recent property tax bill.
3. Find the number on the top right that corresponds with General Tax Levy. This is the portion that goes to city and county general funds. Use this number in our calculator below. If you’re in a large apartment building, this number is going to be pretty big. You can divide it by the number of units in your building to estimate your contribution.

More on how the city spends its money

Wondering what discussions led to some of these budget decisions?

The $1 billion deficit the city faces this year comes after the devastation of the Palisades Fire, expected cuts in federal funding and soaring payouts for liability claims.

The L.A. Police Department has been a major focal point of the City Council’s budget discussions, as it receives the largest share of city funds but struggles to hire its target number of sworn officers. Bass also faced scrutiny over funding for the L.A. Fire Department after its former chief publicly criticized funding cuts in the wake of the Palisades Fire. Liability payouts have climbed year after year, reaching more than $300 million this year. Meanwhile, departments like the Bureau of Sanitation and Bureau of Street Lighting are proposing raising other fees to fund their services as city finances get tighter.

Here’s more context behind some of these figures along with LAist’s recent reporting on city department budgets.

About 280 civilian LAPD jobs will be eliminated in the new budget.

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LAist

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Police

The Police Department receives more city funding than any other department. More than 95% of its budget comes from the general fund.

The number of sworn police officers has been falling in recent years. Today there are about 8,700 sworn officers, down from roughly 10,000 before the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the 2025 budget negotiation process, Bass clashed with the City Council over how much funding to allocate for hiring new recruits. Ultimately, the 2025-26 plan allows for hiring an additional 240 new officers, and the City Council agreed to find funding to hire an additional 240. The plan keeps the current number of sworn officers stable when accounting for employee attrition.

About 280 civilian jobs will be eliminated, including specialists who analyze DNA evidence.

Although the number of sworn officers has declined, their pay has gone up. In an effort to boost recruitment, Bass in 2023 supported officer salary hikes worth $1 billion over four years, a deal the L.A. City Council approved. The raises are guaranteed under a contract with the police officers’ union that expires in 2027.

More reporting:

• LA City Council saves 1,000 jobs in revised budget; plan reduces LAPD staffing
• McDonnell confirmed as new LAPD chief, says he won't cooperate with ICE
• LA City Council approves major police salary hike

Fire

The Fire Department’s budget has been a topic of conversation since the Palisades Fire erupted in January. (The LAFD was not in charge of fighting the Eaton Fire, which burned the unincorporated area of Altadena. That was managed by the L.A. County Fire Department.) This department’s budget comes almost entirely from the general fund, with less than 1% coming from a half-cent sales tax all Californians pay for local public safety agencies.

Before the fires broke out, then-L.A. Fire Chief Kristin Crowley had warned that the department was understaffed and that emergency services were suffering. With just under one firefighter per 1,000 residents, the LAFD is among the smallest fire departments per capita of any major city. Response times have also increased in recent years as the city’s population has grown.

The L.A. City Council approved a labor contract in 2024 that boosted firefighter pay and funded new equipment, but Crowley said that wasn’t enough to address understaffing.

The adopted budget for 2025-26 increases the department’s budget to add 58 new positions and purchase new fire trucks. However, District 11 Councilmember Traci Park, one of three council members who voted against the budget, said it still wasn’t enough to meet the department’s day-to-day needs.

More reporting:

• Before the latest firestorm, LA had been warned that its Fire Department is too small
• LA faces $9.5M payout for unpaid firefighter OT — on top of $1.2 billion already spent
• Imperfect Paradise: The fallout over LAFD funding: Bass vs. Crowley
• LA City Council saves 1,000 jobs in revised budget; plan reduces LAPD staffing

City employee benefits

One of L.A.’s biggest costs is its annual contribution to retirement and pension funds for city employees, which come from the general fund. For the fiscal year ending this June, the city paid $1.42 billion — about 17.9% of the general fund — to cover those payments, plus some short-term borrowing costs to cover cash flow gaps. Sworn police and fire employees receive the biggest portion of these pension funds. That funding level remains roughly flat in the upcoming fiscal year’s budget, even accounting for impending job cuts.

In 2024, L.A. city voters passed Measure FF, which raised the overall cost of pensions. It allowed about 460 park rangers, port police and other peace officers the option to move from the civilian pension system to the more generous plan reserved for fire and police officers. An analysis from the city administrative officer said the measure would cost the general fund a $23 million one-time payment and about $1 million annually.

When the stock market performs poorly, the city has to contribute more of your tax money to pension funds to make sure pension recipients get what they’re owed. That’s one of many ways the national economic outlook will have a big impact on L.A.’s finances in the years to come.

More reporting:

• Voters shape the L.A. city budget too — here’s how

Homelessness programs

The dollar amount shown in this calculator represents only a few of the city’s services for unhoused people that aren’t part of other departments’ costs, including Inside Safe, Bass’ initiative to move thousands of unhoused Angelenos to temporary hotels and motels while they await permanent housing, and CIRCLE, a crisis response program that sends mental health workers to respond to nonviolent calls involving unhoused people.

This figure for the 2025-26 fiscal year reflects about $41 million of projected spending on homelessness out of about $350 million budgeted for homeless services from city funds.

The homelessness spending not reflected here also includes city department funds for homelessness-specific services — for example, job support programs for unhoused people through the Economic and Workforce Development Department’s budget, or park encampment cleanup resources through the Recreation and Parks Department’s budget.

The city budgeted another $602 million in homelessness spending this upcoming year to come from state and federal grants as well as taxes or bonds that L.A. city voters passed. (That’s Measure ULA, which sets aside 4% of L.A. city property sales of more than $5 million and allocates them to homeless services, and Proposition HHH, which authorized the city to borrow $1.2 billion to build 10,000 units of housing over a decade.)

The city also contributes money to the joint city-county agency Los Angeles Housing Services Authority, or LAHSA, for its services including the annual Homeless Count, street outreach and case managers for placing unhoused people into available housing. L.A. County lawmakers recently voted to withdraw its funding for LAHSA and create a new county-run agency. L.A. City Council members are exploring the possibility of pulling funding for LAHSA as well. This year’s signed budget for the coming fiscal year slightly increases spending on homelessness by 0.2%.

More reporting:

• LA City Council votes to explore pulling its funding from beleaguered homelessness agency
• LA County to strip hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars from homelessness agency
• Judge blasts LA homeless spending as a ‘train wreck’ and threatens to seize control
• Will an LA program that diverts mental health calls to clinicians instead of police continue?
• Study finds LA would have more affordable housing if ‘mansion tax’ did not apply to new apartments
• Fraud investigation launched into homeless service provider for LA’s Inside Safe program

Liability claims

This year, the city of L.A. is expected to pay more than $300 million to settle claims and lawsuits against the city for wrongdoing. It’s more than triple the amount the city budgeted for liability claims.

That budget remained at $87 million for the past five years despite payouts regularly amounting to double or triple that amount. The budget for the upcoming fiscal year ends that trend, raising the budget to $187 million — more than double that of the previous year, but still not near the $300 million expected to be spent this year.

Some of the most expensive settlements include claims over housing discrimination, police use of force and injuries caused by decaying city infrastructure.

More reporting:

• As LA veers toward a financial crisis, $320M in liability payouts play a big role
• LA is on the hook for more than half a billion in liability payouts in just 2 years. 4 of the costliest cases

L.A. residents will see their trash fees rise in coming years.

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Sanitation

Only about 13% of the Bureau of Sanitation’s funding comes from the general fund in the upcoming budget. A large portion of the rest comes from fees that residents pay for trash, recycling, water usage and other services.

The department has been facing staffing shortages and budget gaps, which is why earlier this year it asked the L.A. City Council to raise trash collection fees. The rate increase was approved, and customers will see trash rates rise through 2029.

More reporting:

• LA trash fees could soon nearly double. Here's what you should know 
• There are nearly 10,000 vacant city jobs in LA. What's causing the shortfall?

Street lighting

If the figure shown in this calculator seems small, that’s because it’s not the full amount we actually pay for street lighting services.

Most of this department’s budget comes from a property tax that’s specifically for street lighting. If you pull up your property tax bill (see instructions near the top of this story), you’ll see a section called “Direct Assessments.” Underneath that is a line for “City Lt Maint” — that’s most of what you’re contributing to this department’s services.

This fee hasn’t increased since the late 1990s. That has put stress on the department’s budget, which is also seeing rising costs due to copper wire thefts and frequent outages.

Last year’s budget eliminated about 17% of positions from the Bureau of Street Lighting, which were vacant at the time. The adopted budget for 2025-26 cuts it by another 7%.

More reporting:

• LA has a backlog of complaints about streetlight outages. Why haven't they been fixed?
• Copper wire thefts leave LA neighborhoods in the dark. Here’s what officials are doing to try to stop it
• With broken streetlight complaints on the rise in LA — 46K last year alone — lag on repairs keeps growing

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman is blaming Boeing and his own agency for botching a test flight of the Starliner spacecraft, designed to take astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

A 311-page report details the issues that led to the failure of Starliner's first crewed test flight, which in June 2024 launched NASA astronauts Butch Willmore and Suni Williams to the International Space Station from Cape Canaveral Space Force station in Florida.

The duo's launch was initially a success — but as their Starliner spacecraft approached the station, multiple thrusters failed, hampering the crew's ability to steer toward the station and dock.

After months of deliberation, NASA and Boeing made the decision to send Starliner back to Earth without Wilmore and Williams on board. Instead, the astronauts remained on the space station and returned home nine months later — in SpaceX's Crew Dragon capsule.

In a news conference Thursday, Isaacman said the report classified the failure as a Type A Mishap — the highest classification for a mission failure. The Space Shuttle Challenger and Columbia accidents, along with the Apollo 1 fire, were also classified as a Type A Mishap. While those accidents resulted in the deaths of crewmembers, the Starliner mission was "ultimately successful in preserving crew safety," according to the report.

The report identifies the thrusters as a key technical issue leading to the failure, although an investigation is still ongoing and a root cause has not yet been found.

"Starliner has design and engineering deficiencies that must be corrected," said Isaacman. "But the most troubling failure revealed by this investigation is not hardware. It's decision making and leadership that, if left unchecked, could create a culture incompatible with human spaceflight."

He said those organizational and leadership problems were seen at both Boeing and NASA, Isaacman's own agency.

The report identified an erosion of trust between the two organizations and leadership that was "overly risk-tolerant."

Isaacman said that the more than 30 launch attempts for this mission led to "cumulative schedule pressure and decision fatigue." When discussing whether to return Wilmore and Williams in Starliner, Isaacman said the "disagreements over crew return options deteriorated into unprofessional conduct while the crew remained on orbit."

Isaacman said there would be "leadership accountability," but didn't offer any details.

"These are very complex programs, and complex programs like this fail in complex ways," said Don Platt, department head of aerospace engineering, physics and space science at the Florida Institute of Technology in Melbourne, Florida. "Those organizational issues are oftentimes, maybe even more important than the technical problems that they're facing."

Such a public scolding of NASA and one of its contractors by its own leader is uncommon, says Platt, who worked on the construction of the space station.

"I think it's really setting the stage for sort of the new way that NASA plans to do business here in his administration," says Platt.

He says that could mean greater transparency and oversight over NASA's contractors

Despite NASA's plans to decommission the space station by the end of the decade, Isaacman says he is still committed to flying Starliner. That would leave NASA with two options, Boeing and SpaceX, to fly astronauts to the station — something SpaceX already does with regularity.

The report offered 61 formal recommendations ahead of the next crewed Starliner mission.

"We're grateful to NASA for its thorough investigation and the opportunity to contribute to it," Boeing said in an emailed statement. "We're working closely with NASA to ensure readiness for future Starliner missions and remain committed to NASA's vision for two commercial crew providers."

Copyright 2026 NPR

The Long Beach Unified Board of Trustees on Wednesday authorized the school district to end the employment of close to 600 employees, a move the LBUSD says is necessary to stabilize its ballooning deficit.

Board members approved two separate resolutions, the first of which does not renew the contracts of 515 certificated employees, who are on temporary contracts that must be re-upped annually. Though it is common for the district to choose not to renew some temporary contracts, the non-renewal of hundreds of TK-12 teachers, early childhood education teachers and social workers represents a massive change for the next school year from the current workforce of 10,000 total employees. While schools across the district will feel the cuts, Poly and Jordan high schools may be especially hard hit; 14 and 12 teachers at each site are listed on the district’s document of non-renewals.

The second resolution authorized the district to formally lay off 54 classified district positions: non-teaching staff members ranging from office support staff to instructional and recreation aides to library media assistants to parent liaisons.

The board votes come after months of warnings from the district that costs and spending have outpaced the district’s funding, saddling LBUSD with a $70 million deficit. The district is now attempting to shrink that deficit through a fiscal stabilization plan that “has prioritized preserving core instructional, wellness, and student support services,” the district wrote in an agenda item related to the cuts.

Prior to the vote, Superintendent Jill Baker framed the proposed cuts with the historical context of significant enrollment declines, the expiration of funds following the Great Recession and COVID-19 pandemic that had allowed the district to develop a healthy reserve, uncertain federal and state dollars and low attendance numbers, for which the district is penalized — “a really grave situation, fiscally,” she said, one that many districts across California are grappling with.

Baker walked board members through the significant efforts the district has made to manage costs, saving more than $47 million, including through significant central office reductions. Despite these efforts, it’s still not enough, Baker said.

“The release of temporary certificated contracts is one way of reducing the number of employees without impacting permanent certificated employees,” the district wrote in the agenda item.

For those 515 certificated employees who will be notified that their contracts will end, it’s a way that “the district can get away with letting teachers go without calling it a layoff,” said Peder Larsen, vice president of the Teachers Association of Long Beach, which represents certificated employees in LBUSD.

Some of them could be rehired, especially if their positions are in high demand, like science, math and special education teachers, Larsen said. Yet, it throws hundreds into a tailspin of uncertainty and fear, unsure if their jobs have definitively ended and how long they will have health coverage, he added.

While he said the district has not officially announced that no permanent certificated employees will be cut (they have until March 15 to do so), he said he is “reading the tea leaves” and predicting those permanent positions will be safe this year.

In his comment to the board during public testimony, Larsen advocated for examining the money spent annually on consultants and contracts and urged the board and district to re-examine their priorities and “choose to protect the people who serve students every single day.”

On both votes, School Board Member Maria Isabel López was the lone vote against the resolutions, voicing her opinion that some of these positions could have been saved if fiscal priorities had been different and major contracts had not been approved.

Other board members acknowledged that the votes will change lives. “There’s not one of us in this room that takes this lightly,” said Board President Diana Craighead before voting in favor of the cuts. Board Member Doug Otto said he was voting to adopt the resolutions “sadly, reluctantly and necessarily.”