Escondido committee’s mailer hits Ukiah incumbents over 73% council pay raise

UKIAH, CA., 10/19/26 — A campaign mailer says Ukiah’s three City Council incumbents “voted to give themselves a 73% pay increase.” Mayor Susan Sher calls it “plain and simple, a hit piece containing misleading accusations and crucial omitted information.”

The mailer was paid for by Rescue California Coalition, a political committee based in Escondido. On Oct. 9, the committee got $5,000 from Ukiah businessman Ross Liberty. It reported the donation to the state the next day.

On Oct. 12, the committee spent $1,907.33 on a mailer against each incumbent: Sher, Juan Orozco and Mari Rodin. That’s $5,721.99 in all. The committee reported the spending to Ukiah City Clerk Kristine Lawler on Oct. 13. It used the state form for spending a group does on its own, without working with a candidate.

Liberty listed himself on the state report as a welder at Factory Pipe. He founded and owns the company. He’s also been a leading opponent of the city’s plan to annex land.

The mailer shows photos of the three incumbents. Under them are check marks for a “water rate increase,” a “sewer rate increase” and a “parks and recreation fee increase.” It says they “are nickel and diming Ukiah residents, while raising their own pay by 73%.” For sources, it lists council minutes from four meetings between February 2024 and June 2026.

What the record shows

The pay figure matches city records. In February 2024, the council voted 5-0 to raise its pay from $490 a month to $850, starting after the November 2024 election. Sher, Orozco and Rodin all voted yes. That’s a 73% raise. A city staff report says it was the council’s first pay hike for 18 years, since November 2006.

This spring the council voted again. In May, all five members, including Sher, Orozco and Rodin, approved a 5% raise to $892.50 a month. That rate starts after the Nov. 3 election.

City minutes also show all three voted for sewer rate increases in 2024 and 2025. They voted for parks and recreation fee increases in 2025 and 2026. Sher missed a 2024 parks fee vote.

The council itself didn’t vote on the latest water rates. The Ukiah Valley Water Authority’s executive committee set them in March. Orozco serves on that committee. In February, he moved to have staff draft the new rates, and in March he voted for them. Sher and Rodin don’t serve on it.

Only one of the four meetings the mailer cites, Feb. 7, 2024, holds a vote it describes. Another, Feb. 9, 2026, was a water authority hearing, not a council meeting.

Sher answered each charge in an email Monday. “The City Council had not voted to raise its salary since 2006,” she wrote. She takes home about $700 a month. That’s “approximately $6 an hour for the time I put in,” she said.

Orozco said in a phone interview Monday that the votes all happened at public meetings. “It didn’t happen behind doors, you know. This is a public meeting. This is public information,” he said.

People who are surprised by the raise “never attend meetings,” he said, and “everybody had the opportunity to say, no, we don’t want that.”

Ukiah raised water rates 6%, Sher said, then 4% a year for three more years. She said that was the smallest increase among the agencies in the Ukiah Valley Water Authority. Redwood Valley’s rates rose 30% at first, and Willow’s rose 19%.

The city raised electric rates in 2024 as energy prices climbed, she said. Its rates still average 48% below other utilities in the county. Many parks and recreation fees hadn’t gone up in 10 years, she said. Families who can’t pay can still get discounts.

Outside money

Sher said she’d never heard of Rescue California Coalition and has had no contact with it. “I have never seen an out-of-the-area organization pour money into a local election,” she said.

She said she wasn’t surprised Liberty was behind it. She said his goal “appears to be to sabotage the efforts of the City of Ukiah to improve the lives of our residents if those efforts do not benefit him financially.” She asked the challengers to say whether they approve of the mailer or condemn it.

Rodin called it “dark money.”

“The injection of dark money into this election by an out-of-town political action committee that is funded by Ross Liberty and other far-right interests debases our local election process,” she wrote.

All eight candidates for the three seats filed a state form. On it, each said they expect to raise and spend less than $2,000 this year. The committee spent nearly three times that against the incumbents. Sher said she wonders whether every candidate is staying under that mark. “While likely not illegal, Mr. Liberty’s funding of this mailer seems to be a cagey way of getting around those limits,” she said.

Ukiah’s $200 limit

Ukiah’s campaign law limits donations to $200 per person in an election year. The limit covers donations to candidates. It also covers donations to committees “established primarily to make independent expenditures in a city election.” Rescue California Coalition signed up with the state in March as a general-purpose committee.

The committee’s biggest donors gave $49,500 each. Among them are Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss, the New York investors best known for suing Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg.

Liberty, Orozco and the committee didn’t answer emails sent Saturday.

The election is Nov. 3. The other candidates are Robert Bazzani, Matt Froneberger, John Strangio, Mia Uribe and Sean White.