Nine local seats are on the November ballot. Filing closes this week.

Nine local seats go before Los Alamitos and Rossmoor voters on November 3, and the window to get on that ballot closes this week.

The two deadlines are a day apart, which is the part that catches people out. Anyone running for Los Alamitos City Council files with the City Clerk, and that window shuts at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, August 6. Everyone else — school board, Rossmoor Community Services District, the sewer district — files with the Orange County Registrar of Voters in Santa Ana, and that window shuts at 5 p.m. Friday, August 7.

The gap is not an error. Los Alamitos City Hall is open Monday through Thursday and closed every Friday, so the city's last business day falls before the county's.

What is actually up

Los Alamitos City Council — two seats. Districts 4 and 5 are on the ballot, each for a four-year term. Shelley Hasselbrink holds District 4 and Emily Hibard holds District 5; both terms end in November. The rest of the council — Tanya Doby in District 1, Gary Loe in District 2, Jordan Nefulda in District 3 — runs to 2028. Doby is currently mayor and Nefulda mayor pro tem, though neither was elected to those jobs. Los Alamitos has no directly elected mayor; the council picks one of its own members each December.

District 5 is worth remembering. When the seat was created in 2022, Hibard won it by four votes, 436 to 432 over Randy W. Hill. District 4 has not had a contested election in some time: in 2022 the council filled it by appointment rather than at the ballot box.

Los Alamitos Unified School District — two seats. Trustee Areas 1 and 3, one seat each. Marlys Davidson holds Area 1 and Diana D. Hill holds Area 3, where she is board president. The district elects Areas 1 and 3 in one cycle and Areas 2, 4 and 5 in the other, a schedule set when it moved to by-area elections under the map adopted in January 2020.

Rossmoor Community Services District — two seats. RCSD's five directors are elected at large across the community rather than by division. The two terms expiring belong to Michael Maynard and Jo Shade, the current board president. Nathan Searles, Tony DeMarco and Mary Ann Remnet were elected in 2024 and are not on this ballot. Winners take office December 4.

Rossmoor turns out for these races. In 2022, four candidates ran for two seats and 5,540 of 7,956 registered voters cast ballots — a 69.6 percent turnout.

Rossmoor/Los Alamitos Area Sewer District — two seats. This one is already settled on paper. Both incumbents, David A. Boyer and John L. Stea, have filed and qualified with the ballot designation "Incumbent." Barring a late entrant, they run unopposed. The district covers Rossmoor and most of Los Alamitos, and extends past both.

North Orange County Community College District — one seat. Both communities sit in NOCCCD Trustee Area 1, not the Coast district as is sometimes assumed. Incumbent Barbara Dunsheath qualified on July 20 and, as of the Registrar's most recent log, had drawn no filed opponent. Trustees serve four years.

A rule worth knowing before Friday

If a sitting officeholder who is eligible to run does not file by the deadline, filing reopens for five more days — until close of business Wednesday, August 12 — but only for candidates other than that incumbent. The incumbent cannot use the extension to change their mind. Where no eligible incumbent exists, because the seat is open or the officeholder is termed out, the extension does not apply at all.

This is the mechanism that produces late candidates in low-profile races, and it is why the field for some of these seats may not be final until the middle of next week.

We are not reporting who has and has not filed. The Registrar's candidate log is a running snapshot, and the most recent one was printed the evening of August 3 with four days of filing still to run. Taking out nomination papers is not the same as filing them, and several candidates in these races had done the first but not yet the second. We will publish the field once the deadlines pass and the Registrar certifies who qualified.

What is not on your ballot

A few offices people expect to see are absent this year.

The Orange County Board of Supervisors is not among them. Los Alamitos and Rossmoor are in the 1st District, held by Janet Nguyen, who was elected in 2024; only the 4th and 5th District seats are up in November. Both communities are in Municipal Water District of Orange County Division 3 and Orange County Water District Division 4, and neither division is on this year's ballot. There is no Orange County Board of Education contest for these voters either.

Above the local races, both communities vote on governor, lieutenant governor, secretary of state, controller, treasurer, attorney general, insurance commissioner, the 4th District Board of Equalization seat, superintendent of public instruction, and judicial confirmations for the state Supreme Court and the 4th Appellate District.

One change is easy to miss. Rossmoor now sits entirely in the 41st Congressional District, and Los Alamitos is split between the 41st and the 45th — 6,775 registered voters in one and 696 in the other, according to the Registrar's certified statement of vote from the June primary. In 2022 both communities were wholly inside the 45th. Both council districts on this year's ballot straddle that congressional line.

State Senate District 36 and Assembly District 70 cover both communities in full. Tony Strickland, who won SD-36 in a special election in February 2025, faces Chris Duncan. Tri Ta, re-elected to AD-70 in 2024, faces Paula Swift.

As of August 4, the Registrar had posted local bond measure notices only for Laguna Beach Unified and Westminster School District. Neither affects voters here.

Dates to keep

• Thursday, August 6, 5:30 p.m. — Los Alamitos City Council filing closes at City Hall. Filing fee is $25.
• Friday, August 7, 5 p.m. — County filing closes at the Registrar of Voters, 1300 S. Grand Ave., Building C, Santa Ana.
• Wednesday, August 12 — Five-day extension closes where it applies.
• Monday, October 5 — Vote-by-mail ballots go to every active registered voter.
• Monday, October 19 — Registration deadline. After this, conditional same-day registration applies.
• Tuesday, November 3 — Election Day. Polls and vote centers open 7 a.m. to 8 p.m.

About this story

Seat counts and office lists come from the Registrar of Voters' published list of offices on the November 3 ballot, the city's own election and City Council pages, district websites, and certified statements of vote from prior elections. Where a vote total appears here, it is the certified figure rather than an election-night count.

Two questions remain open. We have asked the City Clerk whether Hasselbrink is eligible to run again — the city's records show her appointed in 2014, elected in 2018 and appointed again in 2022, against a three-consecutive-term limit in Section 501 of the city charter — because the answer determines whether the five-day extension can apply in District 4. We have also asked the sewer district to confirm its directors' term length, which none of its published material states.

We will update this story as those answers come in, and we will publish the certified candidate list once filing closes.