Burbank Republican Party
The Record
A running, dated record of what we publish — voter guides, letters, statements, and documents. Newest first.
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We Recommend Yes on Measures CC and CD
Outside committees spent $302,462 in the last Burbank City Council election, and more than $200,000 stood behind one current member’s seat, for a job with base pay under $23,000 a year. Measures CC and CD would elect the council by district. We recommend a yes vote on both.
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November 3, 2026 General Election Voter Guide
Our guide to the November 3, 2026 general election covers every contest and measure on a Burbank ballot. We recommend only verified Republicans, we oppose every tax increase and bond, and each position links to a full explanation. A printable edition and a marking card are included.
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Vote No on County Measure E
Measure E guarantees a new county ethics office at least $14.3 million a year, rising every year, and writes into the charter that about $314 million a year goes to one set of programs that cannot fund law enforcement. The program left $392 million unspent last year.
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Vote No on County Measure A
Under Measure A, contract disputes for about 17,000 county public safety workers go to binding arbitration, and the Board of Supervisors cannot reject the award. The county's own safeguards were left out, and Sheriff's overtime already ran $303 million over budget last year.
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Burbank’s 11 Percent Sales Tax: Overtaxed, One Half-Cent at a Time
On October 1, 2026, the sales tax in Burbank rose to 11 percent when Los Angeles County’s Measure ER took effect. It passed with 50.64 percent as a general tax, its money goes to the County’s general fund, and its ordinance ends it on October 1, 2031. We traced every one of the thirteen slices to the State’s own rate tables and the measure texts, showing where each cent of an $11 tax on a $100 purchase goes. The statewide rate is unchanged since 1996, while county and city add-ons grew from 1 cent to 3.75 cents. Two of the county’s three taxes sold as temporary, Measure R and Measure H, were extended with no end date before they ran out. Of 483 California cities, only 19 charge more than Burbank. Our team believes Burbank is overtaxed.
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Merry Christmas. Now Take It to a Park.
On Friday, November 20, more than a mile of Magnolia Boulevard will close for Holiday in the Park. The organizer's own listing sells sponsorships from $1,500 to $20,000 and booths up to $1,000, and the same team has announced a second Magnolia street fair offering corner placement upgrades. We went store by store through the Magnolia Park merchant directory: a handful of grab-and-go food shops win, and nearly everyone else loses a day. The City told us in writing that it cannot confirm whether vendors had sales in Burbank and does not enforce sales tax collection, while local merchants charge 11 percent. The closure ordinance, quoted in full, lets two City officials decide with no notice, hearing, or vote, and nobody asked the neighbors. Public records show fifteen sworn officers, including detectives, sergeants, and lieutenants, assigned to the event, and the City cannot document that its costs are recovered. Whitnall Highway Park is around the corner.
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When a Parent May Ask for a Religious Opt-Out
In Mahmoud v. Taylor the Supreme Court held that religious parents were entitled to opt their children out of particular elementary-school lessons: a district’s authority over the curriculum is broad, but it is bounded by the First Amendment where instruction seriously burdens a family’s religious practice. This guide sets out what the ruling does, what it does not do — it is not a veto over the curriculum — and the practical point most easily missed: California Education Code section 51938 already lets a parent excuse a child from sexual health instruction, which is broader and better defined than a constitutional claim, so a Burbank family should check the statute first. It sets out the four things a request must identify and includes wording a parent can send to the principal and the district.
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Where Your Campaign Cannot Go in Burbank
Almost every piece of campaign advice tells a candidate where to go. This is the opposite list, and it applies to everyone seeking a Burbank office on November 3, 2026 — the three City Council seats, City Clerk, City Treasurer, and both Board of Education trustee areas. Six rules, with the statute and the penalty behind each: the hundred feet around any polling place, vote center or ballot drop box; public property and the public right-of-way, which is wider than most candidates assume; anything paid for with public money, where Education Code section 7054 reaches resources rather than buildings and a violation is a misdemeanor or a felony; United States Postal Service property, where campaigning is prohibited outright; private property without the owner's consent, along with the narrow limits on what a homeowners association or a landlord may actually forbid; and a school campus after being asked to leave. It closes with three traps worth knowing, including how seeking a party endorsement can cause a nonpartisan race to be treated as partisan under the Hatch Act for a candidate whose own employment is federally funded.
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Parents Have a Right to See Their Child’s School Records
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act gives parents the right to inspect their child’s education records, to ask that inaccurate information be corrected, and to a hearing if a district refuses. It reaches Burbank Unified School District because the district takes federal education funding. California adds a deadline the federal law does not: under Education Code section 49069.7 a parent is generally entitled to inspect the records within five business days of asking. This guide sets out what counts as an education record and what does not, what the United States Department of Education established in its June 2026 enforcement action over records of a student’s gender transition, and the limits of the law — it is not a right to control the classroom and it carries no automatic right to sue. It includes a written request a parent can copy and send today.
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Your Power Bill Is a Tax Bill
Every Burbank electric bill carries a seven percent utility users tax and a seven percent in-lieu transfer, together worth $34,178,000 a year to general city operations. Both rise when rates rise, and the budget attributes next year's growth in both to a 9.9 percent electric rate increase adopted in May 2025. This report reads the City of Burbank's proposed budget for fiscal year 2026-27 line by line: a recurring deficit in every year through 2031 that the city itself calls a structural imbalance; unfunded pension liability payments climbing $13.2 million in four years; a general fund up 42 percent in five years to $2,627 per resident; 947 employees paid over $100,000; and citywide software spending tripled since a $2,094,774.15 Microsoft licensing agreement passed on the consent calendar without a published needs assessment. It sets out where document work could cost less, what that is conservatively worth, and why the saving should reach residents as lower fees.
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What Burbank Parents Are Entitled to See
Three years ago 797 Burbank residents signed a petition asking Burbank Unified to let them examine curriculum materials and to require a parent signature for gender identity lessons. Almost none of them accused anyone of anything — they asked to be told, and to be allowed to choose. This guide sets out what a parent may inspect under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and California Education Code section 51101(a)(8), what a parent may refuse under the Protection of Pupil Rights Amendment and the Healthy Youth Act, what Mahmoud v. Taylor changed in June 2025, and where the law between Sacramento and Washington is still unsettled. It includes a two-page form addressed to the principal and the Superintendent.
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One in Four Burbank Candidates Changed Party Before Running
Two years ago thirty Burbank residents signed an open letter asking that local elections stay nonpartisan. They were right, and the California Constitution agrees with them. So we checked the county voter file. Of the forty people who have appeared on a Burbank ballot since 2022, ten changed their party registration — one in four, against 13.3 percent for Burbank voters generally — and nine of the ten did it before the election they ran in. The signatories themselves split ten Democrats to ten Republicans, which turns out to be the most interesting number on the page.
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Who Is Registered to Vote in Burbank
A complete count of party, age and gender across all 74,234 active registered voters in Burbank. Republicans number 16,039, or 21.6 percent; Democrats 36,067; and 20,044 voters — more than one in four — belong to no party at all. Republican registration climbs from 17.8 percent of voters under 25 to 36.6 percent of those 85 and older. Includes the county’s near-abandonment of the gender field since 2016, the tested method used to fill it, and the Elections Code section that permits the research.
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Why Burbank Must Repower Olive Now
Burbank Water and Power’s own Chief Financial Officer says renewable power now costs three times what it did a few years ago, and the City Council just approved a 9.9 percent annual electric rate increase. Meanwhile the Olive Power Plant sits idle and third-party purchases rose from $75 million in 2023 to $90 million in 2025. The purchase records, the fuel mix, a documented repower precedent next door in Glendale, and why the city doesn’t need to wait for a study due in 2029.
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Trump v. California — Supreme Court Sides With the President on Election Integrity
The Supreme Court stayed a nationwide injunction blocking President Trump’s election-integrity Executive Order, ruling 5–4 that California and 22 other states sued before they had a real injury to sue over. What the order actually says, what the Court decided (and didn’t), both dissents, and the full opinion.
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Why you must vote no on Measure C
Measure C asks Burbank voters to raise the hotel tax again. Before you vote, a look at the city’s own budget: a building left vacant since 2003, an animal shelter budget nearly six times what comparable cities pay, and a local nonprofit sector sitting on $2.5 billion in assets nobody has asked for help.
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The 340: Where Los Angeles County’s Young Republicans Live on Campus
Of 4,973 registered voters aged 18 to 24 living in student housing across Los Angeles County, 340 are Republicans — and more than a third of them are at two campuses. The numbers, the method, and what the analysis does not show.
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Why Burbank Should Elect Its City Council by District
Burbank is the last body in this city still elected city-wide - the school board already elects by trustee area. Where we stand, and the part we played in how this reached the ballot.
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The Tax That One in Five Burbank Voters Passed
On October 1 the sales tax in Burbank goes to 11 percent for five years. Measure ER passed countywide by 25,770 votes - and 40,264 registered Burbank voters did not vote on it.
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Open Letter to Burbank City Council Candidates: What the Overtime Is Really Costing Us
Six City employee organizations will offer to interview or endorse every Council candidate — and their pay, overtime, staffing and contracts are what that Council spends four years voting on.
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Open Letter to Burbank Board of Education Candidates: Guard Your Independence on Union Endorsements
As trustee-area campaigns begin, we urge every candidate for the Burbank Board of Education to weigh whether an endorsement from the teachers’ union—whose pay, benefits, staffing, and working conditions may come before the Board for a vote—could affect, or appear to affect, their independence. Our concern is not with teachers; it is with the independence the office requires.
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Burbank precinct map: where the Republicans are
An interactive map of Republican concentration across Burbank, plus the full party registration table for all 135 precincts, built from the 2026 Los Angeles County voter file. Aggregate figures only — no personal information, and precincts with fewer than ten voters are withheld.
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Prop 98 was sold as a floor. Sacramento made it a ceiling — and Burbank pays twice
We oppose California’s school-funding scheme, plainly: it takes Burbank’s income, sales, and property taxes, routes them through a Sacramento formula, and diverts them to other districts — while Burbank ranks 35th of 39 in the county and taxes itself again to fill the gap. The history, the money in one pie, and our demand: keep our community’s money in our community.
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Our streets are not a campground: a plan to protect Burbank’s neighborhoods, services, and taxpayers
Burbank already bars RVs 22 feet or longer from a public right-of-way without a displayed permit, caps any stay at 72 hours, allows no more than 96 permit-days a year, and treats shuffling within the same block as one act of parking. What Burbank lacks is enforcement, and any ordinance directed at living in a vehicle. We call for the ordinances on the books to be enforced, for enforcement data to be published, and for a vehicle-habitation ordinance written on the Los Angeles section 85.02 time-and-place model.
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When the city can’t tell you what it spent, that isn’t preservation — it’s a blank check
A public records request into the historic designation of one ordinary house at 1515 East Alameda Avenue came back with four words every taxpayer should read: there are no records to furnish. Burbank charges no fee, tracks no staff time, and recovers no cost — by design — while a permanent 2018 sales-tax increase keeps the money flowing. We call for full cost recovery, real cost tracking, a high objective threshold, and an end to the taxpayer subsidy.
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Open Letter to Judge Frank M. Tavelman: Restore Small Claims Proceedings in Burbank
The Burbank Republican Party asks the Los Angeles Superior Court to restore a full-time, part-time, or periodic small-claims calendar at the Burbank Courthouse, improving local access to justice for residents and businesses.
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How to file to run for the Burbank Board of Education — step by step
One form, one signature, one deadline — filing closes Thursday, August 7, 2026 at 5:00 PM. The plain-language walkthrough, including the notary option in Elections Code sections 8028 and 8040 so you only drive to Norwalk once, or not at all — plus the county's official pick-up authorization form, viewable right on the page.
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Get help running for office in Burbank
Republicans thinking about a run for City Council, City Clerk, City Treasurer, or the Board of Education can get free help with the filing paperwork and nominating signatures. Tell us which office interests you and we will connect you.
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The 60-Mile Toll on Democracy
Every candidate for the Burbank Board of Education must file in person at the county registrar in Norwalk — a sixty-mile round trip, thirty miles each way — before the August 7 deadline. The Burbank Republican Party asked Los Angeles County to send a representative to Burbank so residents could file in the city they seek to serve, and has received no reply. Ballot access should not depend on your commute.
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Run for the Burbank Board of Education Before the August 7 Deadline
Two Burbank Board of Education seats are on the ballot — the one elected office that drives the bonds and parcel taxes on your property tax bill. Candidate filing closes Thursday, August 7 at 5:00 PM, with no fee and no signatures required. An open letter urging Burbank property owners in trustee Areas 3 and 4 to run, or to help us find a candidate who will.
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Enabling Is Not Compassion: A Warning Burbank Cannot Ignore
A man in recovery told a city council that free pipes, free foil, and free housing kept him and his brother sick, while jail and accountability saved him. A state-licensed drug-detox home already operates at 1134 North Lima Street in a Burbank single-family neighborhood, opened with no hearing and no notice to neighbors. Burbank should say no to homeless shelters, tiny homes, and drug services.
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You Do Not Need an Appointment to Run for Burbank City Office
No appointment is required to pick up, complete, sign, or file nomination papers for Burbank City Council, City Treasurer, or City Clerk. A plain-language guide for prospective candidates, plus a detailed legal analysis under California Elections Code sections 10227 and 10224.
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Time for Tax Cuts, Not Handouts
Los Angeles County just raised the sales tax through Measure ER while handing out more than twelve million taxpayer dollars via its Commercial Acquisition Fund to buy commercial buildings for a chosen few, even as Burbank rents keep climbing. The Burbank Republican Party objects. The answer is tax reductions, not handouts.
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Open Letter to the Burbank City Clerk on Neutral Notice for the By-District Elections Measure
The Burbank Republican Party asks City Clerk Kimberley Clark to give voters early, frequent, and neutral public notice about the November ballot measure on by-district City Council elections.
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The Taxpayer Smoke Shop: How California Funds Pipes and Needles Instead of Recovery
A government-documents review of California's state-run paraphernalia pipeline: 786,304 drug-smoking supplies distributed in 2024 (up 779% since 2021), 25.8 million syringes in a single year, and a $10 million-per-year state "Clearinghouse" — with our conservative estimate that taxpayers fund at least $15-20+ million annually. Every citation is a state, county, or legislative document.
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Supreme Court Protects Girls' and Women's Sports
In West Virginia v. B.P.J. and Little v. Hecox, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that States may keep girls' and women's sports for biological females. The full opinion is posted, viewable on the page.
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Mahmoud v. Taylor: Parents Can Opt Their Children Out of LGBTQ+ Lessons
In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that public schools must let parents opt their children out of LGBTQ+ storybook lessons that conflict with their sincere religious beliefs. The full opinion of the Court is posted here.
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Burbank Unified Household Pay: Rodney and Lynn Rothacher
A 2013-2024 analysis of the BUSD household compensation records for Rodney S. Rothacher and Lynn Koontz Rothacher, including household pay, benefits, and year-over-year change.
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Burbank 2026 Local Election Information
A public information page on the Burbank City Council, City Clerk, City Treasurer, and Burbank Unified School District Board of Education seats scheduled for November 3, 2026.
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Stop Wasting Burbank Ratepayer Money on Paper Water Reports
Burbank Water and Power mails a full printed water-quality report to every home, but federal and state law already allow digital delivery. A call to switch and save ratepayer money.
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Open Letter to the Burbank Fire Chief on Out-of-State Fire Staffing
The Burbank Republican Party calls on the City to adopt a lawful 40-mile residency-distance standard for fire department personnel, after learning a Burbank firefighter is living in Texas. The City records and Fire Chief confirmation are posted as evidence.
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The True Cost of Building a Home in Burbank
A deep-dive, agency-by-agency breakdown of the taxes and fees embedded in building a new single-family home in Burbank.
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When Citizens Can Sue on Behalf of Their Own City
Moving Oxnard Forward, Inc. is using the California False Claims Act to recover taxpayer money for the City of Oxnard over a broken auditor-rotation rule. The case page now includes the first and second amended complaints.
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June 2, 2026 California Primary — Voter Guide
The Burbank Republican Party's recommendations for the June 2, 2026 California statewide direct primary.
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Gutierrez v. City of Burbank — The District Elections Case
The court record of the California Voting Rights Act lawsuit that put district City Council elections on the November 3, 2026 Burbank ballot — complaints, demurrers, rulings, and the settlement.