From: Jennifer Dunn
To: City Council Public Comments
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Oppose more taxes
Date: Monday, July 13, 2026 6:40:28 PM
Hello,
I just read that you have an agenda 4.1 to raise our taxes and I completely oppose this. We are already paying too many taxes. For you to do this behind our backs and not let us vote for this is disgusting and shady. Where would this even go and where is the accountability? You already do too many terrible things for our city that are not
helpful but just wasteful. Enough is enough.
Jennifer Dunn
Santa Rosa resident who is tired of this terrible city council From: Sally Thornhill
To: City Council Public Comments
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Against rise in sales tax!!
Date: Monday, July 13, 2026 6:54:13 PM
Sally Thornhill,
Certified Senior Real Estate Agent
[email protected]
Sonoma, Ca. 95476
707-721-2782
From: Donna Keiser
To: City Council Public Comments
Subject: [EXTERNAL] Sales tax
Date: Monday, July 13, 2026 10:07:19 PM
Raising Sonoma County sales tax is not counterproductive. With the rising prices of food and fuel we certainly don’t need more taxation.
Sent from Yahoo Mail for iPhone
From: Frederick Allebach
To: CityCouncilListPublic; Wagner, Scott; Nutt, Jason
Subject: [EXTERNAL] 750 word PS to Revenue study session, four minutes Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2026 7:15:46 AM
Fred Allebach 7/15/26
Water under the bridge, more words into the ocean
City budget issues
Yes, a case can be made for a desperate city budget. City households are in hard times too.
Points left out of the potential revenue study session: validity of survey questions, lack of spine to go after wealthier property owners for more revenue, regressive impact of sales tax on DACs, how City cost fairness issues can be addressed.
Mitigate high costs for DACS?
If taxes and fees have us all in a bad spot, let’s show some sensitivity that 40% of the City is DAC and roll out new protections and programs with teeth to offset the disparate high costs here.
Staff report
The Downtown Station Area Specific Plan and Revenue study sessions came off as more persuasive case making than studying the full issues. These reports both led to just one conclusion. Lack of critical, probing comments and questions by Council members indicates that these study sessions were a pro forma exercise, decided ahead of time.
Safety fear rules
Want to spook politicians? Invoke safety. Are we safe enough if police and fire are at near 70% of the city budget to the detriment of other critical human services? This is a fractal of the US military budget and arms race dynamics. Anyone who suggests limits will get voted out as soft on crime and safety. Safety is a runaway train of spending that reduces quality of life in other areas. *Cut fire costs by not sending big engines to medical calls. *Cut police costs by limiting all the high-tech toys. The unending safety cost increase cycle needs to be broken in a rational way that accounts for other legitimate and critical municipal needs.
Fear of offending property owners rules
I thought when I left Sonoma Valley things would get more liberal…. I’m hoping to hear some social democracy points, reform, not revolution. Take this moral foundations quiz and find out where you stand politically. https://moralfoundations.github.io/
Nuts and bolts of tax policy
As staff noted, there is a lot of complexity. As decision makers do you just take the status quo and react or try and change it if it’s not just? A journey of 1000 miles begins with a single step.
The Council has the power to direct and get things on the agenda.
Survey
Survey response from 1.8% of City residents is not representative of “our community” as Misti Woods said. Staff citing “55% of responses” from 1.8% of city population is a statistical sleight of hand statement. This is a flimsy justification. Food, energy, gas… prices across the board are all going up, yet staff makes a case that there is citizen appetite for more tax cost bearing.
Only wealthier respondents would say that.
The people who show up run the world
This is how the survey is being used, small numbers have outsized influence. If this level of participation and influence is justified, I’m hoping for the same by showing up and writing now.
What Santa Rosans really want?
You don’t need a survey to tell you if you have 40% DACs, high cost of living, food, and housing prices are #1 concerns to be addressed. I don’t have the sense that staff or Council have this front and center. A focus on core city services should not mean concomitantly that 40% of city residents’ services get thrown under the bus. Do what you can for DACs.
Higher, regressive sale tax
Staff said this can be repealed by voters later, but through a much more difficult process than the way staff justified it in the first place, with a 1.8% survey response. This new sales tax should be repealable with a 1.8% survey response if such surveys are representative of “our community.”
Case against more regressive taxation
Property owners and NIMBYs seem to dominate Santa Rosa politics and likely will never willingly sacrifice. No one in history willingly cedes power. For new revenue, this leaves the City to lean on the 40% of its population that meets state DAC criteria. This is Exhibit A of regressive taxation. There may be no pragmatic way around this in the short run, to avoid the doomsday scenarios invoked by so many yesterday. However, the City can act towards reforming unfair systemic structures of which regressive taxes are one facet.
Upshot
I’m guilty of making this agenda item about a corollary thought: austerity’s fiscal impact on DACs.
As you juggle the many aspects of municipal administration, do what you can for fairness for Santa Rosa DACs while you are on the stage of power.
"We don't know where we're going but we have to stick together in case somebody gets there." Ken Kesey