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# Ukiah Ends Annexation Push As Residents Request the County Exit Tax-Sharing Pact
- URL: https://www.mendolocal.news/ukiah-ends-annexation-push-as-residents-request-the-county-to-exit-tax-sharing-pact/
- Published: 2026-09-02T06:14:12.000Z
- Updated: 2026-09-02T06:19:12.000Z
- Description: Prominent citizens, including the county's own treasurer-tax collector, urged the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors to rescind the county's master tax sharing agreement following a bruising fight over annexation of county land.
- Author: Elise Cox

The City of Ukiah has ended its two-year push to annex a swath of the unincorporated Ukiah Valley — and the morning after that announcement, three speakers, including the county's own treasurer-tax collector, urged the Mendocino County Board of Supervisors to go further and rescind the county's master tax sharing agreement.

In an Aug. 31 statement, the city said its City Council Annexation Ad Hoc Committee was suspending work on the annexation initiative and would not advance further efforts to revise the draft proposal. Two years of technical, environmental, and fiscal analysis, along with workshops, hearings, and written comments, had raised questions about the proposed boundaries, costs, service capacity, land use, representation, and public process, the city said, and the feedback "made clear that the current proposal does not have the foundation of public support and shared understanding needed to proceed constructively."

"People can disagree about the best long-term structure for serving the Ukiah Valley," City Manager Sage Sangiacomo said in the statement. "Continuing to advance the current proposal would not build the trust and shared understanding needed for a decision of this significance. At the same time, the regional service and infrastructure pressures that prompted this discussion have not gone away." The city said aging infrastructure, rising service demands, limited housing, and responsibilities divided among jurisdictions remain, and that it would keep working with regional partners.

The next morning, at the board's Sept. 1 meeting, the annexation's end drew three speakers to the public-expression podium, each asking the county to act on the master tax sharing agreement — the 2024 agreement that sets how property-tax revenue is split when a city annexes county land.

Chamise Cubbison, the county's elected treasurer-tax collector, told the board she was speaking as a resident of the City of Ukiah rather than in her official capacity, and asked the supervisors "to consider giving notice to rescind and get out of the master tax sharing agreement."

Ross Liberty called the situation "accidental abdication." Unincorporated residents never got to vote for the Ukiah City Council that sought to annex their land, he said, and by signing the master tax sharing agreement the board had left those residents "somewhat powerless" to stop a future annexation. He asked the county either to exit the agreement — a step he noted takes five years — or to add a clause letting the board "at their discretion, opt out" of an annexation. He also faulted the protest-petition process, arguing it set a high bar because an unreturned form is counted as support for annexation.

Julie Golden asked the board to terminate the tax-sharing agreement outright and begin the required notice to the cities and the Local Agency Formation Commission. Approved in June 2024, the agreement had been "sold as shorthand," she said, but "used as a proxy to push annexation of unincorporated land without the informed consent of the people who live and own property there." A 20-year blanket formula "is not a substitute for talking to landowners, looking at each parcel, and deciding whether annexation actually serves the public," she told the board, and once the county signed it, "we lost our voice through abdication." She urged the county to instead negotiate tax-sharing case by case, "one proposal at a time."

The board returned to the subject later in the meeting, under a post-withdrawal debrief listed as Item R15 — but stopped short of rescinding anything. Supervisor Madeline Cline said the city repeatedly floated changes to the annexation map, including adding the Brush Street Triangle and dropping some Williamson Act land at the south end of town, without notifying the county's ad hoc committee, and never supplied a timeline despite being asked at every meeting. Chair Bernie Norvell agreed, saying the most frustrating part was learning the city had a timeline it disclosed only at a city planning commission meeting.

Supervisor Ted Williams cautioned against a unilateral move, saying a collaborative rewrite with the city would produce better results than a rescission fight. "These are our neighbors," he said. "They're trying to make their city stronger and look at sustainability. Frankly, they're ahead of us as a county. I don't think we're looking at sustained sustainability 20 years out, right? The city is at least grappling with, if nothing happens, it's pretty bleak future."

Williams said the county's own finances are not sustainable, citing law-enforcement costs rising "eight and a half percent a year" against revenue growing "more like four or four and a half percent," and deferred maintenance "in the hundreds of millions."

Supervisor John Haschak moved to direct staff to bring the master tax sharing agreement back for board discussion on Oct. 20 — or as soon as possible after the county ad hoc can meet with the City of Ukiah — to weigh modifying the agreement or other options, including rescission. The motion passed 5-0.