Measure TCS, Temple City Unified School District

The stakes

Property owners in the district already pay about $100 a year per $100,000 of assessed value for Temple City Unified’s school bonds, on seven lines of the county’s 2025-26 tax table (the district’s boundary is not the city’s).^{Note 6} The largest, $43.47, is labeled “1998 SER B”.^{Note 6} The district’s audit lists one bond older than 2012, issued in 2001 and maturing August 1, 2028.^{Note 7} Matching the two is an inference by elimination; the audit names no series.^{Note 8}

The district calls $43 “the current tax rate” and says TCS “would extend” it.^{Note 9} If TCS passes, the district projects the new tax at $43.00 per $100,000 from fiscal 2027-28 through 2037-38, and $42.25 on average through the last projected year of collection, 2063-64.^{Note 3} On a home assessed at $500,000, $43 per $100,000 comes to $215 a year.^{Note 10} That is a projection, not a ceiling: state law sets $60 per $100,000 as the limit for one election, tested against the district’s own projection of assessed values.^{Note 11}

If TCS fails, the 1998 levy would end with those bonds, and the district’s bond rate would fall by about $43 per $100,000, all else equal.^{Note 12} That forecast rests on the inference above: no district document names which levy its “$43” means or projects the rate without TCS.^{Note 8,Note 12}

If the projection holds, a yes vote replaces that levy with a new one of about the same size, running through 2063-64. A no vote, on that inference, lowers the bill after 2028.

What changes

The district’s last bond, Measure S in 2012, authorized $128.8 million; $35.7 million remains unissued “due to tax rate restraints”.^{Note 13} TCS money can go only to buying, building, rebuilding, repairing or replacing school facilities, including furnishing and equipping them, not to “teacher and administrator salaries and other operating expenses”.^{Note 14}

The ballot question names safety, heating and air conditioning, asbestos and lead pipes, classrooms, labs and career-technology rooms.^{Note 2} The full text also includes a Performing Arts Center, pools, stadiums, parking structures, land purchases and new school buildings, and allows paying down “outstanding lease obligations and interim funding incurred to advance fund projects from the Project List”.^{Note 15} Asbestos removal and flagpoles share the list.^{Note 15}

How it works

The district would sell the bonds over time, and each year the county would levy a tax to pay what comes due.^{Note 16,Note 17} The $43 is projected: the board’s resolution bases its no-increase finding on “a projection of assessed property valuation,” and the tax rate statement says actual rates “may vary from those presently estimated”.^{Note 16,Note 18}

What binds the money is a broad project list, introduced with “may include, but not be limited to,” and the facility uses the measure allows.^{Note 14,Note 15} The district’s bond page says TCS is meant “to address Phase I of our School Facilities Master Plan”.^{Note 19} The resolution never uses “phase” and does not incorporate the plan.^{Note 20} The 2012 Measure S text incorporated its facilities plan “in its entirety”.^{Note 20} The 2023 plan priced needs across six campuses at $312.4 million, in 2023 dollars with no allowance for rising costs; TCS equals 46.7 percent of that.^{Note 21,Note 22} I could not find a list of Phase I projects or a split of the $146 million among campuses.^{Note 19,Note 21} The full text warns that “certain of the projects described above may be delayed or may not be completed”.^{Note 23}

If TCS passes, the board must appoint a citizens’ oversight committee within 60 days after entering the result in its minutes, and annual independent performance and financial audits are required.^{Note 24} The existing committee’s bylaws limit it to Measure S money, give it no say over contracts, change orders or bond sales, and leave priorities and construction order to the board’s “sole discretion”.^{Note 25} Whether TCS gets that committee, new bylaws or both is not stated.^{Note 25}

What it costs, or the tradeoff

If every bond is sold as estimated, repaying $146 million would cost about $319.1 million in principal and interest, roughly $2.19 for each dollar, in nominal dollars.^{Note 3,Note 10}

State law lets school districts exempt people 65 and older from parcel taxes, which are flat per-parcel charges; this tax is levied on assessed value instead.^{Note 26} No district document on TCS offers relief for seniors, low-income owners or renters.^{Note 27} The state’s Property Tax Postponement program lets homeowners 62 and older, with at least 40 percent equity and income under a state limit, defer current-year property taxes on their principal residence and repay them later with interest.^{Note 28} The district’s pollster tested the argument that a tax would make the community less affordable for “seniors, those on fixed incomes”; about two-thirds of respondents found it convincing.^{Note 29}

The strongest complication

No argument against TCS was submitted, so there are no rebuttals.^{Note 30} Five supporters signed the argument for it, among them Temple City Mayor William Man.^{Note 31}

First, the measure’s shape changed. In January the district’s pollster tested a $198 million bond at $58 per $100,000; support fell at that rate, and the pollster recommended a “Two bond scenario - bond extension and smaller new bond”.^{Note 32} An undated district fact sheet said the district was considering two measures; one reached the ballot, at $146 million and $43, described as an extension.^{Note 2,Note 9,Note 32}

Second, the argument for says “No funds can be used for administrators’ salaries or pensions”.^{Note 33} The full text lets bond money “pay or reimburse the District for the cost of District bond audits and staff when performing work on or necessary and incidental to bond projects,” and the resolution’s conditions bar “teacher or administrator salaries or other school operating expenses”.^{Note 34} The measure’s documents do not say how the two fit together.^{Note 34}

Third, the bond page says “Our district continues to grow”.^{Note 35} The state counts 5,287 students in 2025-26, down from 5,953 in 2014-15; an April staff update in the board’s minutes called enrollment “stabilized at about 5,299 students”.^{Note 36,Note 37} A 2026 fee study for the district counts fewer seats than students at the intermediate and high schools under state standards, and warns that those counts “do not necessarily reflect the School District’s program goals”.^{Note 38}

Where I land

I haven’t formed an opinion yet. My standard is that a tax running to 2063 should be described by what it does to the bill, and the money should be tied to the work it is sold on.

The district has documented needs well beyond $146 million in buildings it describes as more than 70 years old.^{Note 21,Note 39} I hesitate over the gap between “Phase I” on the district’s page and a list broad enough to cover a Performing Arts Center and pools, with nothing that says what comes first.^{Note 15,Note 19} “Without increasing existing tax rates” speaks to the rate as the district projects it; it says nothing about the bill an owner would see after 2028 if the measure failed.^{Note 2,Note 12}

I would move to yes if the district published its Phase I list or confirmed which levy its “$43” refers to before November 3. I would move to no if it did neither.

What I will watch

Whether the last 1998 levy and the first TCS levy are collected in the same fiscal year: the tax rate statement projects its highest rate, $43, for fiscal 2027-28 through 2037-38, and the bonds matched above to the 1998 levy mature August 1, 2028.^{Note 3,Note 40} I could not find a document that says which fiscal year’s levy pays that final maturity.^{Note 40} Measure S’s unissued $35.7 million.^{Note 13} Polls are open from 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. on Election Day, November 3.^{Note 41}