Measure UP, Pasadena Area Community College District

The stakes

Your college district’s boundary, rather than your city, determines whether Measure UP is on your ballot. The county’s ballot data puts it on the Rosemead and Temple City ballots checked, and not on the San Gabriel, Monterey Park or Alhambra blocks checked.^{Note 5} The district says it serves “portions of San Gabriel,” but its catalog lists the school districts it covers without San Gabriel, and no document on disk shows which San Gabriel addresses are inside.^{Note 6,Note 7}

Owners inside the district already pay for its bonds: this year the county levies $11.929 per $100,000 of assessed value on three lines.^{Note 8} Two lines, totaling $8.645, appear to trace to Measure P, the college’s 2002 bond, and the third, $3.284, to Measure PCC, its 2022 bond.^{Note 9,Note 10} No tax line carries a measure’s name, so both matches are inferences.^{Note 9,Note 10}

The district describes UP as an extension: Measure P “will soon be paid off,” and UP “would simply extend the current $9 per $100,000”.^{Note 11} The tax rate statement projects $9 per $100,000 for UP alone through 2065-66.^{Note 2} For a home assessed at $500,000, that comes to $45 a year before exemptions; the statement notes that assessed value “is not the same as market price”.^{Note 12}

A no vote withholds the new borrowing and leaves the taxes for bonds already sold in place.^{Note 13} Either way, the Measure P lines would step down after August 2027 and end no later than August 2031, if nothing more is sold under the 2002 authorization; that end date is an inference from the audit’s bond maturities, since this year’s refinancing schedule is not on disk.^{Note 14} The bonds matched to Measure PCC mature by August 1, 2052 either way.^{Note 15}

What changes

Measure PCC authorized $565 million in 2022; as of the district’s September 2026 report, $130 million had been sold, leaving $435 million.^{Note 16} UP would add $485 million, bringing the total with PCC to $1.05 billion in permission to borrow, not debt owed.^{Note 1,Note 16}

The ballot question names training space for nursing, health care, firefighting and EMS, construction, hospitality and the skilled trades, and repairs to “deteriorating roofs, plumbing/electrical systems”.^{Note 17} The full list also includes a new science and technology building, student housing, parking lots and garages, satellite campuses, land purchases, and refinancing building leases, including the Armen Sarafian Building.^{Note 18,Note 19} The list puts artificial intelligence literacy alongside parking garages.^{Note 18} It names a “New Rosemead Center Phase 1,” with no amount or date.^{Note 20} Measure PCC money has paid $19.1 million toward a “Rosemead Site Purchase”; no document says whether that site and the UP center are the same project.^{Note 21}

The full text bars spending the money on “teacher and administrator salaries or pensions or other operating expenses.” It also lets the money reimburse district staff time spent on bond projects; the measure’s documents do not say how the two fit together.^{Note 22}

How it works

If UP passes, the Board sells bonds in batches and picks which projects go first.^{Note 1,Note 23} The list says its order “is not intended to indicate priority” and that, without state matching money, the Board “may undertake fewer than all of the projects listed”.^{Note 23} Each year the county sets the tax at no less than what the bonds due that year require.^{Note 24} The $9 is an estimate; the statement says actual rates and years “may vary”.^{Note 25}

The Board must establish a citizens’ oversight committee within 60 days after it enters the result in its minutes; the measure also requires annual independent performance and financial audits.^{Note 26} State law puts an enrolled student on the committee and lets a district resident taxed on real property there sue to stop bond spending the state constitution does not allow.^{Note 27}

What it costs, or the tradeoff

If every bond is sold as estimated, repaying $485 million would cost about $1.01 billion in principal and interest, or about $2.09 for each dollar borrowed, without adjusting for inflation.^{Note 28}

The ballot question also says the measure would provide “$27,000,000 annually while bonds are outstanding”.^{Note 29} The ballot does not say what that figure is.^{Note 30} By the county’s 2025-26 valuation, $9 per $100,000 raises about $10.8 million a year; raising $27 million at $9 would require a base about 2.5 times as large.^{Note 30} Divide the statement’s repayment total evenly over the 39 fiscal years from 2027-28 through 2065-66 and it comes to about $26 million a year, close to the label’s figure.^{Note 30} The two fit at a steady $9 only if property values grow. Assuming all bonds sell as estimated, full tax collection starts in 2027-28 and assessed values grow at a constant rate from the 2025-26 base, that growth is about 3.8 percent a year, a low-confidence scenario rather than a district figure; the reviewed documents give no assessed-value projections.^{Note 31}

The ballot materials and the district’s UP page do not mention renters, tenants or exemptions beyond telling owners to check their own tax bills, and do not say whether owners pass the tax on in rents.^{Note 32}

The strongest complication

No argument against UP was filed.^{Note 33} Five people signed the argument for it: Senator Adam Schiff, Representative Judy Chu, Assemblymember John Harabedian, Thomas Wong and Charmayne Mills-Ealy.^{Note 34} Reform California’s voter guide recommends no and calls UP a “Bond and Tax Increase”; I could not find another objection in the county’s ballot materials or the district’s pages.^{Note 33,Note 35} The guide’s sentence about “wasteful spending” appears word for word under a Bellflower school bond, and it cites nothing specific to UP.^{Note 35}

The UP tax is projected to run to 2065-66, decades past the year the Measure P lines would end.^{Note 2,Note 14} In any year when both are collected, both would be on the bill.^{Note 11,Note 14} I could not find a document giving the first UP tax collection year, so whether that happens is open.^{Note 36}

The argument also calls the project list “legally binding”.^{Note 34} The list itself says its order is not a priority and the Board may change a project’s scope.^{Note 23}

The district says many classrooms were built 60 to 90 years ago and pipes are failing.^{Note 34,Note 37} It says it assessed every classroom and facility, but the documents reviewed give no condition ratings, priced project schedule or priority order.^{Note 37}

Where I land

I haven’t formed an opinion yet. My standard: a tax described as “no increase” should come with the schedule that shows it.

What gives me pause is that “no increase” rests on timing the documents do not give: whether, and in which years, the first UP tax lands beside the Measure P lines.^{Note 11,Note 14,Note 36} The ballot’s $27 million a year does not match its own $9 on the 2025-26 tax base held constant, and the ballot does not say how it was set.^{Note 30}

I would move to yes if, before November 3, the district published when it plans to sell the first UP bonds and its first collection year fell after the Measure P lines end. I would move to no if its plans put a UP tax on the same bills as those lines.

What I will watch

The size and date of the first UP bond sale, and the county’s tax rate lines for the district from 2027-28 on, which will show year by year whether a UP tax and Measure P lines are collected together.^{Note 14,Note 36} Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day, November 3, and conditional registration runs through that day.^{Note 38}