UKIAH, CA., 5/4/26 — Thursday evening, about 50 Ukiah and Mendocino County residents attended a workshop to discuss the City of Ukiah’s new proposed annexation map the city released on April 23.
The workshop began with an introduction by Deputy City Manager Shannon Riley, then two sessions of public comment sandwiched a 20-minute breakout room session where attendees could choose between four rooms: finance, land use, Local Agency Formation Commission (LAFCo) and public safety. Before the final public comment session, the presenters from each breakout room gave a short summary of what they talked about in their rooms.
During Riley’s preliminary talk, she gave an overview of the new map, called sapling, which is smaller than the city’s original option called the valley oak map, first presented a year ago. That map was met with pushback from county and city residents as well as from the county itself.
The new proposed option, the sapling map, is larger than another option that the city looked at, called acorn. Riley said that, after detailed analysis, acorn was deemed “too small to be financially viable.”
“In order to provide the level of services that this community deserves, there simply has to be enough revenue generated by the annexation,” Riley said.
In an earlier interview, Riley explained that the sapling map includes more of what the county and city’s master tax sharing agreement term the designated area, which generates more revenue through sales tax and would be able to help fund services for the entire area.
Most of the questions that were asked during the first public comment period were met with a suggestion from Riley with which breakout room might provide an answer.
During both comment sessions, several attendees expressed dissatisfaction with the breakout room format. Riley said that the city had tried doing workshops consisting only of public comment and workshops with only breakout groups. She noted that city staff were criticized for both formats, so this was a try at something new.
“What we’re trying to do is allow for the public comment that you have asked for, but also an environment where you can learn and ask questions that are more property-specific,” Riley said. “This is by no means our final community engagement. We appreciate the input, and we look forward to modifying future engagement to meet your needs, but sincerely, tonight was an attempt to accomplish the things that we heard from you the first time around.”
Several public comments criticized the city for not addressing ongoing issues before starting an annexing process, such as vacant buildings and abandoned cars in town as well as the number of unhoused people.
The finance breakout room
In the finance room, Dan Buffalo, finance director for the city, explained how sales tax would transition from the county to the city in the areas proposed to be annexed. Buffalo noted that counties rely more on property taxes than cities do, and cities rely more on sales tax.
“There’s about two and a half million dollars of sales tax out there right now that the county collects in this area,” Buffalo said. He explained that according to the master tax-sharing agreement proposed by the city, the county would slowly lose that money over 15 years, 1/15th at a time. “We’re talking about $150,000 each year,” he estimated, then noted that the county general fund is $250 million.
Riley explained that the county collects nearly 3% sales tax in the City of Ukiah and the city collects 2%. Those percentages don’t change with annexation.
“The county continues to collect sales tax from within the cities,” Riley said. “In fact, the county receives more sales tax from within the City of Ukiah than the City of Ukiah does.”
Buffalo also explained how property taxes would be split between the city and the county if annexation goes through. Buffalo noted that 1978’s Proposition 13 means that when a property changes title, it’s assessed at 1% of the new value, which then cannot go up more than 2% in any given year.
Buffalo said the city and county would split the increment on property taxes 50/50 in the annexed areas in accordance with the master tax-sharing agreement, with a cap on how much the city gets.
Buffalo also said that the county would be relieved of several expensive road repair projects that the city would take over if annexation happened, such as part of North State Street and all South State Street. These projects, which Riley said are scheduled for 2029-30, would be joined by repairs on Brush, South Dora, Laws and Tedford, all scheduled for 2031-32.
“The county would not have to necessarily spend what we would estimate could be anywhere from $12 to maybe even $20 million depending on whenever the project is engaged and completed,” he said.
Before the final public comment, a presenter from each room spoke about what was discussed in their topic room.
Jesse Davis, chief planning manager for the city, managed the land use room, and said that they explored several topics in the breakout room.
“We’re matching the county zoning that allows existing businesses to remain and existing entitlements to remain, but we’re encouraging people to continue to reach out to us with individual property questions,” Davis said.
Buffalo, from the finance room, said in his summary that the city would be in a deficit for the first few years after annexation. He explained that annexation revenues wouldn’t start coming into the city for about six months after annexation, and that those funds would be coming primarily from Measures P and Y, which are city sales taxes that fund fire and police services and city services such as street repairs and maintenance.
“On day one, we were projecting that the city will probably be running a deficit for the first three years. At which time, we would expect it to start breaking even and then start accumulating resources to enhance levels of service, mainly for public safety and streets.”
Uma Hinman of LAFCo led that overarching commission’s breakout room. LAFCo is an independent state agency tasked with promoting orderly growth and the efficient delivery of services and would be the entity that OKs any proposed annexation. The commission has a process that citizens can use to protest a boundary change or annexation. If there is no protest, a seven-member commission makes the decision on the change.
Hinman explained that the question asked most was how the protest vote works.
Landowners and registered voters in the area to be annexed would receive a notice of a protest process, Hinman explained. If the commission receives less than 25% disapproval, then the commission decision will go through; if it receives 25 to 50% disapproval, then the matter must go to an election. If the commission receives more than 50% of voters and owners returning a negative form, the commission will terminate the application, and the city wouldn’t be able to reapply for a year.
Ukiah Police Chief Tom Corning, who led the public safety breakout room, announced that the force is close to being fully staffed with 34 officers in total. Corning said ideally an additional four officers would be brought on if annexation occurs.
Addresses can be checked for whether they fall into the proposed annexation range at the city’s webpage for the new map.