The Brief

The California Science Center is putting the finishing touches on its biggest “Endeavour” yet — lifting the space shuttle orbiter into its vertical launch position in the soon-to-be Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

Endeavour was put in place overnight Monday, and it’ll soon be attached to the external tank and twin solid rocket boosters in the construction zone, completing the world’s only authentic space shuttle stack.

About the orbiter

Endeavour, which NASA named Orbiter Vehicle-105, was the final orbiter to join the space shuttle fleet.

It was built to replace the space shuttle Challenger, which exploded 73 seconds after liftoff, killing all seven people onboard in January 1986.

Endeavour has been making history since its second mission.

The orbiter took Mae Jemison, the first Black woman, into space on its second trip in 1992. It also helped repair NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope so it could see to the farthest edges of the universe, and was part of the first mission to add a U.S. component to the International Space Station.

About the final move

To prepare for the late-night lift, Endeavour moved from its temporary home for the past 11 years, the Samuel Oschin Pavilion, down the street to the construction site last Friday. It took crews several hours to move the orbiter a little less than 1,000 feet.

Jeff Rudolph, the president and CEO of the California Science Center, told LAist the orbiter isn’t quite as heavy as the external tank that made a similar journey earlier this month, but it is much wider.

With a 78-foot wingspan, crews had to maneuver around trees, signs, and other obstacles on both sides of the street. The orbiter was loaded onto SPMTs — self-propelled modular transporters — so they could slowly but surely make adjustments along the way.

Endeavour, covered in a protective shrink wrap, making a slow but steady journey past the construction zone for the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center on Friday, Jan. 26.

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Once the orbiter was parked right in front of the construction zone, it was ready for the big lift.

It was rigged on a 450-foot crane that started moving the orbiter Monday night. It was also connected to a vertical lifting swing, borrowed from NASA, that helped bring Endeavour into launch position a little more than a half hour into the lift.

Half of the lifting swing was released about 20 minutes later, and the orbiter inched its way up towards the stars for the next hour and a half, with a few short breaks for the handful of helicopters that came within the 1-mile no fly zone.

The lift wasn’t advertised to the public, but at least 50 people were watching through the chain link fence on State Drive. George Ruiz told LAist he lives about a block away and wanted to see this once in a lifetime event.

“This is in our backyard,” he said. “I just remember about 10 years ago when the shuttle came into town and it was a big party.”

People watching Endeavour orbiter being lifted vertically and into its "Go For Stack" position from State Drive in Exposition Park.

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Clare Davis and her husband were also out watching the big lift. She told LAist they’re not sure if they’ll still be living in L.A. once Endeavour is back on display, but they might come back to Exposition Park just to see it.

“I feel like it's kind of history in the making,” she said. “It's quite an amazing feat of engineering, it's been incredible to watch.”

According to Phillips, there were a few technical challenges during the roughly four-hour lift. For example, he said once the orbiter was in the air, the crane operators were concerned that the angle of the wings wouldn’t clear a nearby building crews on the ground couldn’t see.

Phillips added that NASA had 135 space shuttle missions to practice on, but putting the space shuttle stack together was brand new for the California Science Center.

Once the orbiter was put in place around 2 a.m. Tuesday, it was “soft-mated” with the external tank, which works as the structural backbone of the stack. Phillips said that basically means they put Endeavour on the tank through three points, one at the top and two on the back, and let it sit there to make sure it behaves itself.

If the soft-mate goes according to plan, they’ll then bolt it to the external tank sometime in the next few days, which is bolted to the twin solid rocket boosters. That's considered the “hard-mate” of the orbiter and will complete the space shuttle stack.

People watch as Endeavour orbiter is being lowered into its ready-to-launch from the construction zone for the new building.

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Alyson Goodall, the senior vice president of the California Science Center, told LAist this “Go For Stack” vision has been decades in the making, and it's really fulfilling watching it come to life.

“The leadership of the Science Center dreamed of this, and we have a rendering back in 1992 showing a space shuttle in launch position, and that was before Endeavour even launched itself,” she said.

What’s next

Now that Endeavour is lifted into its new permanent home, the California Science Center has to finish constructing the rest of the Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center.

Crews will add scaffolding and plywood barriers around the entire space shuttle stack to make sure it stays safe during construction, Phillips added.

A close-up of the orbiter as its slowly but surely lowered into its "Go For Stack" position next to the external tank and twin solid rocket boosters.

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The new addition, which is a 200,000 square foot expansion of the museum, will then finish being built around the 20-story Endeavour display.

The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center will include 100 exhibits, more than a dozen aircraft displays, and 100 authentic artifacts that explore the science of flight and space exploration in three different zones — Air, Space, and Shuttle.

Diane Perlov is the senior vice president for special projects at the California Science Center. She told LAist the Shuttle gallery will feature a 3-minute introductory film that was made in conjunction with J.J. Abrams’ production company Bad Robot.

“When they finish the film, there'll be some mist that goes in the gallery, and it'll be like a launch is happening,” she said. “Then all of a sudden, the screen will rise, and people will look out, and they will see the real stack.”

Perlov added that the space shuttle stack has been placed on a huge seismic isolator that will protect it from being damaged or falling over in an earthquake.

The California Science Center also needs to secure the rest of the funding first. They’re still about $40 million short of their $400 million goal.

Phillips said no gift is too small. Plus, if you sign up to sponsor one of the thermal tiles on the orbiter, your name will be featured in that exhibit.

“There are opportunities for people to get involved in this project,” Phillips said. “I mean, meaningfully involved at virtually every level. Kids can bake cookies, we'll take it."

The Samuel Oschin Air and Space Center doesn’t have an opening date yet, but construction is expected to take at least a few years.

“So [Endeavour] will be going away for a while, but it's for the better,” Rudolph said.

The Trump administration is still detaining pregnant migrant youth in a region of Texas where a lack of specialized obstetric care can be life-threatening for them, an investigation by The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom has found. The practice continues despite vocal concern from its own current and former officials, and from members of Congress.

Government records also show that at least four pregnant girls in detention have had to be transferred out of state since last July to receive specialized medical care, including at least one abortion, that is unavailable in Texas.

“The first time that happened should have been a wake-up call for the administration, and they should have stopped placing kids in any remote area where they can't get care,” said Jen Smyers, who during the Biden administration helped oversee the Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), which is responsible for migrant youth who are apprehended without a parent or guardian.

She called the policy to send pregnant children to South Texas “enraging.”

This spring, The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom published a joint investigation revealing the administration’s policy of detaining pregnant unaccompanied minors as young as 13 at a single shelter near the border with Mexico. The investigation detailed serious concerns that health experts inside and outside the government had raised about the policy, given that adolescent pregnancies are inherently high risk and there is a lack of specialized obstetric care in the region.

Since then, the administration has denied the policy exists and said it is ensuring that the girls have access to the care they need.

In an unsigned email in September, a spokesperson for the Department of Health and Human Services, which oversees ORR, wrote that "ORR's policies for placing children in its custody into care provider facilities are based on child welfare best practices in order to provide a safe environment and place the child in the least restrictive setting appropriate for the child’s needs. This is especially true for expectant minors in ORR care.”

Yet the administration’s own records, as well as interviews with multiple government officials, suggest otherwise.

The documents, which were obtained through a public records request, show that ORR explicitly directed its staff in July 2025 to send all pregnant youth to the shelter in San Benito, Tex., just outside Brownsville.

Several months later, internal agency data showed that pregnant girls started being funneled to a different shelter nearby instead, according to three ORR officials who asked not to be named because they feared retaliation.

Forty-eight Democratic members of Congress had also expressed concerns about the policy in a pointed letter to the Department of Health and Human Services back in April. They received a response in September from an assistant secretary at HHS, Alex J. Adams, who wrote that ORR “does not make placement decisions for pregnant youth based on a blanket rule or one-size-fits-all approach” and that it “takes seriously its responsibility to protect the health, safety, dignity, and well-being of every unaccompanied alien child in its custody.”

HHS did not respond to requests for comment about why, contrary to Adams' statement that there was no "one-size-fits-all approach," the government's own records indicate that all unaccompanied youth with known pregnancies have been sent to specific Texas shelters.

“They're definitely playing games,” said U.S. Rep. Gil Cisneros, (D-Calif.). “They're not looking out for the welfare of these young women.”

U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-TX, whose office authored the letter to HHS, called it “irresponsible that they would wait several months to respond to basic questions about the care of some of the most vulnerable people within the system,” adding that the administration failed to explain “what seems to be an informal but strict policy of sending these girls to deep South Texas, which lacks the medical care that the girls need.”

Unaccompanied migrant children have historically been placed in shelters across the United States, but this summer, the Trump administration began detaining far more of them — even those who are not pregnant — in Texas. According to internal reports provided independently by two officials at ORR, both of whom asked not to be named due to fear of reprisal by their supervisors, 95% of the roughly 300 children apprehended by immigration officials in September were placed in detention in Texas, up from 45% in June.

Advocates for unaccompanied migrant children, former government officials, and some Democratic members of Congress have criticized the move, arguing that the state is not prepared to handle an influx of vulnerable children who need special care.

The fact that ORR has had to transfer several pregnant unaccompanied minors from Texas to California, New York and Arizona to receive medical care, they say, proves their point.

“If the government had to fly or transport these pregnant children across the country to get them the medical care they need, why on earth did it deliberately send them to Texas in the first place?” said U.S. Rep. Judy Chu, D-Calif., who was unaware of the transfers until a journalist described the newsrooms’ findings. Chu’s district, California’s 28th, is home to several communities with high numbers of immigrants, such as Rosemead and Monterey Park.

Chu expressed concern that many of the pregnant children who enter federal immigration custody are victims of sexual assault.

“If there is a 13-year-old girl who has survived rape,” she said, “she should be met with compassion, safety and appropriate medical care. Instead, this administration is placing children like her in a state where they will be deprived of access to basic healthcare. It's dangerous, and it's cruel, and there's no excuse for treating children this way.”

Government records contradict Trump administration’s claims

Unlike Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), which detains migrant adults and families in large, prison-like facilities, ORR detains unaccompanied children in group or foster homes overseen by private contractors. Laws, agency regulations and court orders require that the children receive comprehensive healthcare and appropriate education while they’re detained.

In an unsigned email last month, a spokesperson for HHS said that placing children in Texas is “operationally efficient” and that ORR’s facilities in the state “provide all requirements and more.”

Records obtained through a public information request cast doubt on that assertion. The records show that between July of 2025, when ORR began placing pregnant girls in South Texas, and May of 2026, four of them had to be transferred to other states to receive medical care.

That’s roughly one in five of the more than 20 pregnant girls the agency placed in the region in that time frame, according to one ORR official.

In detailed notes for one of those cases, ORR staff wrote that a pregnant 12-year-old girl was transferred from South Texas to a shelter in New York on the recommendation of ORR’s division of health. The records note that the child needed access to specialists whose availability in South Texas is “extremely limited.”

An excerpt from an Office of Refugee Resettlement record detailing the transfers of pregnant unaccompanied minors out of Texas to get medical care, obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request.

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In a note for another case, staff wrote that a pregnant girl was transferred to California due to an unspecified “high risk medical need.” In at least one case, a girl was transferred out of Texas because she had requested an abortion, the records show.

Marsha Griffin, a retired professor of pediatrics at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley School of Medicine, said such outcomes were inevitable. Griffin said the shelters have very few medical staff on hand and the region does not have enough specialized obstetricians.

“Young girls who are pregnant, especially those from 10 to 14 years of age, are automatically a high-risk population,” said Griffin, who oversaw medical students volunteering in ORR facilities in South Texas.

Internal communications, also obtained through a public records request, show that officials in ORR’s own division of health warned the agency’s leadership about the lack of pregnancy-related healthcare in the region of South Texas where the girls are held.

“Texas has one of the worst rates of maternal mortality in the U.S.,” wrote Joanna Gaines, who at the time was ORR’s acting health director, in a July 18, 2025, email to Melissa Johnston, the agency’s head of operations. Gaines added that the state “lack[s] access to quality perinatal healthcare” and that “Cameron County has one of the higher rates of infant mortality in Texas.”

Four days later, ORR issued a directive to begin placing “any pregnant children” at a shelter in Cameron County called Urban Strategies San Benito.

An excerpt from a July 18, 2025 email from ORR’s acting health director to Melissa Johnston, the agency’s head of operations, warning about the dangers of detaining pregnant children in South Texas.

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On July 22, 2025, Johnston instructed staff to begin placing pregnant children at the San Benito shelter, citing a directive from ORR’s acting director, Angie Salazar.

Tracey Wilkinson, a pediatrician in Indiana who specializes in reproductive healthcare access for minors, said that even if the government is transferring children to get medical care, waiting until they need it puts them in danger.

“When you're talking about labor or pregnancy complications, every minute counts,” Wilkinson said. “If it was a medical emergency that required this young person to be transported out of the state, the risk to her survival would be lower for no reason other than she was placed in the middle of nowhere, far away from medical care.”

‘They are trying to deliberately mislead Congress members’

Shortly after The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom revealed the Trump administration’s policy of detaining pregnant migrant youth in Texas, Castro launched an inquiry into the practice. He soon arranged a visit to the San Benito shelter.

By the time of his visit on April 7, internal agency data showed that ORR had stopped placing newly detained children with known pregnancies at the facility, three ORR officials said. Instead, the agency was sending them to a different shelter, in Los Fresnos, just 20 minutes away.

Castro said he was not told of the change at the time of his visit, nor was it mentioned in ORR’s formal response to the congressional inquiry last month.

In a recent interview, he described his visit to the San Benito shelter as “a very secretive process” and said he was not allowed to see or speak with any of the children there.

An HHS spokesperson did not respond to questions about the location change, writing only that “there have been no operational changes regarding the placement of pregnant unaccompanied children.”

Chu said she believed the Trump administration made the change in order to “deliberately mislead Congress members as well as the public from really knowing where these pregnant children have been.”

Compass Connections, the San Antonio-based nonprofit that operates the shelter in Los Fresnos where pregnant girls are now being held, is one of the largest ORR contractors; it has been awarded more than $1.9 billion in federal grants to house and care for unaccompanied minors over the past four years, according to USAspending.gov.

Asked for comment, the company referred the newsrooms to HHS.

In his letter to Castro, Assistant Secretary Adams wrote that “placement and transfer decisions are individualized and consider the child’s safety, medical and behavioral health needs, pregnancy-related needs, available services, legal access, family unity, least restrictive placement requirements, and the best interest of the child.”

‘In California, they would have more access to all reproductive healthcare’ 

Congress members and advocates in California said their state offers much more support for pregnant girls in federal custody than they can receive in Texas.

“One thing is very clear,” Chu said: “There are many of us that care about what's happening to our immigrants.”

As the Trump administration has withdrawn federal support for legal representation of unaccompanied children — and at the same time streamlined the process of deporting them — the state of California, as well as several of its cities and counties, have ramped up funding for their own legal services programs for undocumented kids.

“Pregnant unaccompanied children have rights to medical care, safety, family unity and due process, but those rights mean little without a lawyer to defend them,” said Marion "Mickey" Donovan-Kaloust, director of legal services at Immigrant Defenders in Los Angeles. “California's support systems can provide pregnant unaccompanied children with the stability, dignity and specialized care they need to be safe and thrive.”

In addition to concerns about their access to healthcare and legal services, advocates worry that the Trump administration is knowingly putting pregnant children at risk to advance an ideological goal: denying them access to abortions by placing them in Texas, where abortion is virtually banned.

Current federal regulations require the government to move detained minors who request abortions to states where it’s legal. In January, the Trump administration announced it plans to rescind that rule, though it hasn’t yet done so.

An HHS spokesperson said in February that claims the department is attempting to restrict unaccompanied children’s access to abortion are “completely inaccurate.”

Cisneros said that “In California, they would have more access to all reproductive healthcare, and then they could make decisions based on discussions with their healthcare professional and what's best for them.”

Chu noted that next month’s election will determine whether Democrats regain control of the House. If they do, she said, they will redouble their efforts to ensure pregnant children in federal immigration custody are given proper care.

“There will be greater oversight,” she said, “and we will hold the decision-makers responsible.”

Mark Betancourt is a freelance journalist based in Washington, D.C.

This article is a collaboration between The California Newsroom and The Texas Newsroom.

A federal judge has denied an unprecedented, emergency request by the Department of Justice to segregate thousands of California ballots in the midterm elections.

The Justice Department wants California election officials to stop processing ballots pertaining to 20,000 individuals that federal officials say are "likely" noncitizens.

State and local officials in California have countered that the DOJ's list of "likely" noncitizens is unreliable, with a preliminary analysis by Los Angeles County showing that many on the list do not have active voter registrations. The officials also claim that setting aside ballots just days before Election Day, when voting and processing mailed ballots are already underway, would be unlawful and infeasible and would disenfranchise eligible voters.

In his 26-page ruling issued Wednesday evening, U.S. District Judge David Carter, a Clinton appointee, denied the Justice Department's request for a temporary restraining order to stop processing the ballots in question.

"Never before in American history has the federal government, on the eve of an election, sought to coerce a state and local government to abandon their own Constitutional elections procedures and bend to the will of the Executive Branch," he wrote.

Carter also expressed concern about taking action that could disenfranchise eligible voters and create chaos.

"Once a vote is segregated, lasting harm has occurred," Carter wrote at the conclusion of his order. "If the Executive can discount votes and threaten an ongoing election due to unproven allegations, then our democracy is in danger. This Court declines to be a party to such process."

The judge said that the federal government can address the issue by continuing to indict people for the crime of illegally voting as noncitizens. DOJ officials say in the last two months they have charged dozens of people for registering or voting without being a U.S. citizen.

The DOJ's lawsuit in California, which was filed Oct. 15, is among a flurry of unprecedented actions the department has waged in states close to Election Day, raising alarms about federal interference in state election procedures.

Like in California, on Monday federal prosecutors asked Washington state election officials to review a list of 400 registered voters the DOJ believes are likely noncitizens. And last week, the DOJ filed an unusual lawsuit in Alaska that seeks to stop the state from certifying the results in its Senate race if the Republican incumbent loses due to votes for a longshot candidate with a similar name who is accused of being a spoiler candidate.

In California's most recent motion to the court, state Attorney General Rob Bonta, a Democrat, asked the judge to take into account the circumstances of DOJ's demand. "This litigation is a precursor to further interference here in California," Bonta wrote. "The Court must not be drawn into this chilling degradation of democratic values and constitutional principles."

The Department of Justice is expected to appeal Carter's denial, and the matter could ultimately wind up before the U.S. Supreme Court.

The DOJ has argued the issue is urgent since ballots are already being processed. Once signatures are verified on returned mail ballot envelopes, the ballots are separated from their envelopes to retain voter confidentiality and it then becomes impossible to retrieve an ineligible ballot.

Federal prosecutors have argued that votes by noncitizens dilute the votes of U.S. citizens. Voting by noncitizens has been shown by audits and investigations to be extremely rare.

The accuracy of the DOJ's list of "likely" noncitizens is still an ongoing matter of dispute.

A Los Angeles County analysis of a small sample of people on the DOJ's list found that a significant portion had said in records they were born in the U.S. But U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services senior official Nicolas Bartell contested that in recent court filings, writing that his office's review of those individuals found none were U.S.-born.

Bartell did acknowledge the review found four of those people "might have a claim to U.S. citizenship."

He also provided the court additional details about the federal government's methodology in creating the list in recent court filings.

But University of Delaware political scientist Kassra Oskooi, who has been tapped as an expert witness by voting rights groups who are intervening in the case, responded in his own declaration to the court that he believes USCIS's matching protocol "is likely to be unreliable."

California’s Public Utilities Commission will decide on Thursday whether to claw back or keep $37.5 million in grant funding meant to bring fast, reliable internet to Catalina Island.

The island is home to more than 4,000 residents, and it draws thousands of tourists each year. Its slow, unreliable internet connection affects everything from remote learning to emergency response.

Lance Ware is CEO of AVX Networks, the company awarded the grant from the CPUC in December 2025. He told LAist host Nereida Moreno that the island depends on a very limited wireless internet link.

“When the town is busy, for instance, a cruise ship comes … the internet just gets crippled along with all the telephone services,” Ware explained.

Months after AVX Networks was awarded the grant, CPUC staff accused the company in July 2026 of breaking federal spending rules, citing insufficient justification and documentation for invoices.

The proposed plan would build the fiber-optic network under the San Pedro Channel from two points on Catalina Island to landings near Huntington Beach. Those cables will then connect to the Middle Mile Broadband Network in Stanton.

Where do things stand today? 

CPUC staff allege that AVX Networks violated several program requirements, according to records.

“Since the award, AVX Networks has not shown itself to have the requisite administrative, technical, and operational capacity to deliver on its project, and AVX Networks has failed to comply with the terms and conditions of its award,” the CPUC agenda item records state.

Ware said he “vehemently disagrees” with those statements.

“There are allegations on things in there that do not make sense to us in that we've had no due process or cure and correct period to address,” Ware said.

What’s next? 

If the commission terminates the contract and pulls the funding, Ware said the project will be delayed, but not stopped.

“This is not curtains down for us,” Ware added. “It's gonna take longer, and we'll have to find some other way to finance it, but we certainly haven't given up.”

Nereida Moreno contributed to the reporting of this story.

Southern Californians are feeling squeezed by the rising costs of, well, everything. And now their local governments are asking for more money, too.

By LAist’s count, more than 30 cities or districts in Los Angeles and Orange counties are asking residents to approve tax measures on Election Day, Nov. 3, citing stagnant revenues that haven’t kept pace with the rising costs of insurance, maintenance and infrastructure projects, and employee pensions. Big cities, suburbs and small towns are all facing multimillion-dollar budget deficits and asking residents to open their wallets — or potentially see deep cuts to basic city services.

The list of local measures on ballots from Culver City to San Clemente includes sales taxes, hotel taxes, business taxes, parcel taxes and utility taxes. Some ballot measures would extend or increase existing taxes while others are brand-new.

Much of the answer to why so many tax measures are on the ballot lies in Proposition 13, which capped property taxes in 1978.

Before Prop. 13, cities and counties relied on property taxes for nearly all of their revenue. In the decades since, they’ve increasingly turned to other types of taxes. Hotel and utility taxes, for example, were essentially nonexistent before the mid-1970s, and sales taxes represented a small sliver of revenue. Even as these taxes have grown, they’ve struggled to replace property tax revenue.

State law caps the maximum combined local and county sales tax rate, and many Southern California cities are already at or near that cap, Coleman said. And sales tax isn’t as reliable as it used to be, amid the broader retail downturn and shift to a service-based economy (most services aren’t taxable in California).

All of that means cities are increasingly turning to “ticky-tacky, peculiar taxes” to come up with revenue, according to Kirk Stark, a professor of tax law and policy at UCLA.

The “conventional tax instruments” — property, income and sales taxes — are all limited by state law, Stark said. “Local governments that are hoping to satisfy demand for any kind of public expenditure have to turn to other, less conventional sources of revenue.”

This year, cities are asking Southern Californians to say yes to a wide range of taxes. Below, we look at three examples in South Gate, Orange and Diamond Bar.

South Gate: A utility users tax

South Gate is asking voters to approve something less common: a utility users tax, or UUT for short. If Measure SG is approved, the 8% tax would be added to bills for utilities such as electricity, water, natural gas, cable and phone service. The tax would bring in an estimated $10.4 million per year.

The city is facing a potential fiscal emergency and a $9.4 million budget deficit. Earlier this year, South Gate began cutting back services, including eliminating its crossing guard program and assigning fewer police officers per shift.

At a City Council meeting on the tax measure earlier this year, several residents spoke against the measure, with some calling the deficit a result of potential financial mismanagement that shouldn’t be pushed onto residents. Others said the monthly costs would simply add a new burden to already tight budgets.

“Being a homeowner here for the past 13 years, I have seen my utilities go up as well as the cost of living, my insurance for my house, and my car insurance go up. I believe there’s got to be a way to fix this problem without the UUT measure,” one resident told the City Council.

“I’m extremely frustrated that you now want to do electricity, water, sewer, cable, cell phone, gas. ... That hurts us. You’re passing that on to us, and that is absolutely not acceptable,” said another.

The only other utility users tax on the ballot in Los Angeles or Orange counties this year is in San Marino, where residents will decide whether to extend the city’s existing 5% utility users tax, which is set to expire on March 31, 2027, and increase it to 6%. Last year, the tax provided almost $2.2 million in revenue. As of 2021, a total of 162 out of 540 California cities and counties had a utility users tax, according to Coleman’s California Local Government Finance Almanac.

Orange: Hotel and sales taxes could go up 

Most people don’t book a hotel in their own city. That’s made hotel taxes an easier pill to swallow for voters, since the tax is mostly levied on visitors.

The city of Orange is asking voters to approve Measure J, which would raise the hotel tax from 10% to 14%. Orange is one of 10 cities across Los Angeles and Orange counties where voters will decide in November whether to increase or establish a local hotel tax, also known as a “transient occupancy tax.”

Orange residents will also vote on a 1-cent sales tax measure, as the city projects a $27.6 million deficit that it calls “one of the largest financial challenges in the city’s history.” The sales tax is expected to bring in $37 million annually, and the hotel tax would add $3 million.

Diamond Bar: A new 1-cent sales tax 

Diamond Bar voters will decide on Measure Q, a 1% local sales tax that would add a penny per dollar to purchases of taxable items. The city estimates the tax will bring in an additional $6 million annually, which could help plug a projected budget deficit of $5 million a year by 2030.

“The city’s challenge is simple: costs for city services are going up faster than revenues,” states Diamond Bar’s fact sheet on the measure, which cites rising public safety costs and $100 million in infrastructure and maintenance needs.

Several other cities have local sales tax measures on the ballot, including Santa Ana’s 1.5% sales tax extension and Los Angeles’ sales tax increase for the Los Angeles Fire Department, Measure FD.

“There’s a variety because circumstances among these local governments vary. The types of economies among governments vary, the local conditions, even the preferences for what type of revenue measure or tax measure might work varies,” Coleman said. “A local government that’s looking at one of these is going to look at a number of different options and consider what might be most palatable to the voters in their community.”

What’s on your ballot?

Our LAist Voter Game Plan is here to help guide you through the Nov. 3 election with guides to races across Los Angeles and Orange counties — and that long list of state propositions — to help you cast a ballot that’s in line with your own personal beliefs and values.

But the one thing we don’t do? We don’t tell you how to vote. That part is left up to you.

You can find it all at LAist.com/Vote.

Further reading

• Voter guide for parcel taxes in Culver City, Santa Monica, Las Virgenes Unified, San Marino Unified (LAist)
• City of Pasadena Measure PFD: What to know about the tax to support the Pasadena Fire Department (LAist)
• Los Angeles Measure FD: What to know about the proposed sales tax bump for the LA City Fire Department (LAist)
• Proposition 43: Making it harder to pass citizen-led local tax initiatives (LAist)