The following comments were submitted before the Novato City Council, last evening during public open time.
Good evening Mr. Mayor, Councilmembers and staff,
Early this year, Novato mailed residents slick multicolored flyers at taxpayer expense. Those flyers are misleading. They show a representative dollar indicating that the City of Novato (headed by this Council) gets only 7% of the property taxes paid by Novato taxpayers.
Below that, it shows a list of city halls with Novato on one end, as the smallest, and ten other Marin cities listed in the order of the property taxes each receives. That chart indicates that Novato taxpayers receive the smallest share of property tax of all Marin cities.
I’ll bet that got everyone’s attention!
What those charts fail to show is that all the other Marin cities use the property tax funds they receive to pay for not only police, streets and parks as does Novato, but also - importantly - for firefighting! - either on their own, or jointly with others (a refreshing idea - save resources by joining up with others!).
So, if you add the 14.5% of the property tax the Novato Fire District receives to the City of Novato’s 7%, you are looking at 21% benefitting Novato taxpayers, moving Novato to among the top tier in the County from dead last.
In addition, other Marin cities also pay for library services out of their property tax increments. But the library is not a service the City of Novato covers. So, when you add the amounts (or percentages) Novato taxpayers receive from those separate districts, that raises Novato to almost the top of Marin’s cities!
Has Novato told us that? NO!
That is all the more inappropriate because not only do you expect your own city government to be absolutely straight with you, but in addition, the City is using taxpayer dollars to pay for those misleading flyers, thus using your taxes to get you to pass a new measure to collect even more taxes from you!
Lastly, Novato will not need to cut staff and curtail services should Measure M fail. Novato, if it so choses, has sufficient funds to operate above current levels through June 2027, allowing voters time to approve a sales tax increase with an end date, just like San Rafael and Mill Valley, ensuring accountability with the ultimate guardrail, a sunset clause.