{"id":459819,"date":"2026-09-10T22:10:09","date_gmt":"2026-09-10T22:10:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459819\/"},"modified":"2026-09-10T22:10:09","modified_gmt":"2026-09-10T22:10:09","slug":"santa-ana-measure-x-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/459819\/","title":{"rendered":"Santa Ana Measure X"},"content":{"rendered":"

Voters in November will decide whether to make a sales tax increase, geared toward funding public safety, maintenance and youth programs, permanent<\/a>.<\/p>\n

In 2018, voters approved a 1.5% sales tax increase \u2014 dubbed Measure X. That rate was designed to decrease to 1% in 2029 before being eliminated in 2039. The tax provides more than $80 million in annual revenue. City officials said the tax dollars account for about 20% of the general fund.<\/p>\n

LAist breaks down where those dollars have gone so far.<\/p>\n

How much money has come in through the tax?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The city has received nearly $500 million from the sales tax so far.<\/p>\n

A large portion of the Measure X money \u2014 $166 million \u2014 went to \u201cunrestricted\u201d general revenue purposes. This is anything from building repairs and city events to arts programs and City Council aides.<\/p>\n

The second-highest expense \u2014 sitting at nearly $123 million \u2014 went to public safety, which includes retaining firefighters and police officers.<\/p>\n

Nearly $69 million falls under the third category called \u201cMaintain Effective 9-1-1 Response,\u201d and most of those dollars went to the Santa Ana Police Department.<\/p>\n

About $57 million went toward addressing homelessness since 2019. Records show a large share of that money went to police response \u2014 about $48 million.<\/p>\n

In the other categories, $14 million went to fix streets, $39 million to park maintenance and $12 million went to youth services.<\/p>\n

You can find the full breakdown of Measure X dollars here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

General spending is the largest pot of money<\/p>\n

Tim Johnson, chair of the Measure X Citizen Oversight Committee, said the tricky part of the sales tax is that it is general-purpose, unrestricted revenue, meaning the city can spend it however it sees best for residents.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don’t know that all the voters understood that this truly is unrestricted revenue that’s coming in though, and that’s kind of probably the biggest issue,\u201d Johnson told LAist. \u201cThe city, I think, is trying to do our best to let our residents know where the dollars are being spent. But it’s a virtually impossible task to be able to track every single dollar that comes in and where it exactly is going because of this unrestricted general revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s especially an issue considering the ballot language led with firefighters, police, homelessness and youth \u2014 all categories that mean a lot to Santa Ana residents, Johnson added.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat is the category that gets the bulk of this funding, and yet it was at probably the back end of most of our voters’ [minds] when they were casting their ballot,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cAnd probably the same thing with the upcoming election. It’s important to understand that this truly is unrestricted revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

With this tax, he said, residents are putting a lot of trust in the City Council, city manager and finance department to be good fiduciaries of these funds.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe’re not only voting for the additional tax on ourselves, but we’re voting to put our trust in the City Council that they’re going to spend it wisely,\u201d Johnson added.<\/p>\n

Why it matters<\/p>\n

Before the sales tax was approved in 2018, the city adopted a budget that required a $10 million dip in its reserves to maintain city services. At the time, the city was facing a growing structural deficit that, if ignored, could have ballooned to more than $30 million by 2020, according to city records.<\/p>\n

Despite revenue generated from Measure X, the city has faced multimillion-dollar budget deficits in recent years.<\/p>\n

This year, the city managed to close a $13 million deficit <\/a>by making cuts across several departments, including police, public works, and parks and recreation.<\/p>\n

Without the sales tax dollars, officials have warned that the city will have deeper cuts to make.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe residents of Santa Ana have come to expect a certain level of service from the city that is largely dependent on Measure X dollars,\u201d Mai Do, a Santa Ana resident and member of the Measure X Citizen Oversight Committee, told LAist. \u201cSo many of the services that we depend on and enjoy, including community improvements to parks and also library personnel, are funded through Measure X.\u201d<\/p>\n

Other cities<\/a>, including Orange and San Clemente, are looking to voters for approval of their own sales tax measures to help bolster city coffers. Do said Santa Ana luckily is not panicking as much as other cities.<\/p>\n

\u201cFolks are expecting more from their local governments \u2026 in terms of providing services to everyone,\u201d Do said. \u201cWhen there’s an expectation of having these services, cities need to be able to figure out how to actually meet that demand.\u201d<\/p>\n

What\u2019s next?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Santa Ana voters will be asked in November to make the sales tax permanent. If the measure fails, the tax rate will drop to 1% in 2029 as originally planned, meaning the city could miss out on about $30 million in revenue.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Voters in November will decide whether to make a sales tax increase, geared toward funding public safety, maintenance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":459820,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[163,165,164],"class_list":["post-459819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-anaheim","tag-anaheim","tag-anaheim-headlines","tag-anaheim-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=459819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/459819\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/459820"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=459819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=459819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=459819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}