Residents of East Garrison are coming to grips with taxes and fees that weren’t part of the sales pitch.

On Nov. 8, about 50 residents filed into the community room at the Monterey County Regional Fire District’s East Garrison Station with concern on their faces. Seated around a horseshoe of tables were members – resident volunteers – of the East Garrison Community Services District Advisory Committee, as well as a handful of employees with the County of Monterey, which manages the district’s finances.

Jessica Cordiero-Martinez, a finance analyst with the county, started off the evening with a mea culpa: “Your concerns are valid, and we’re taking action,” she said.“Ultimately we missed the mark, and we apologize for that.”

Residents were concerned about a recent property tax bill that showed an approximate 40-percent increase in charges related to the CSD, which pays for ongoing services, in perpetuity, for things within the district like park maintenance. (One homeowner who shared their bills from fiscal years 2022-23 and 2023-24 showed a jump from $1,586 to $2,218 for that line item.) And that’s on top of homeowner’s association fees, which run about $150 a month, and another fixed fee to pay for the “facilities” at the development, like its roads, sewers and an art park that currently has no art in it. That particular fee doesn’t expire until the bond is paid off in 2056 (though residents are able to pre-pay it, if they choose).

Residents, rather than being angry, were for the most part just trying to understand what was going on, because the various taxes and fees East Garrison homeowners pay are wildly complicated.

Cordiero-Martinez launched into a presentation trying to explain it all, starting with how the community was financed by Mello-Roos bonds, which were made possible by a 1982 state law that came in the aftermath of Proposition 13, which curtailed the property tax revenue that public agencies in the state came to rely on.

Ultimately, Cordiero-Martinez said the county had been collecting more in taxes than it was using for facilities and services, and that it had been using that surplus to reduce taxes for the next year. But this year, county staff decided to use the surplus to start building up a reserve account, though Cordiero-Martinez said the county had reversed course – for this fiscal year, at least – and will once again use the money to reduce the tax hit by an average of $515 per homeowner.

“It was a lesson learned for us,” Cordiero-Martinez said, adding that the county will meet with residents every July going forward to discuss the district’s finances. The residents then broke into applause.

But bigger questions remain. There’s supposed to be a county sheriff substation at East Garrison (but there isn’t), and the EGCSD currently pays $675,921 in taxes annually to the county for its sheriff contract.

Kadidia Cooper, who bought her East Garrison home in 2018, is a chief financial officer for a Marin County nonprofit and even she is befuddled by the tangled web of fees and jurisdictions. She also says that she didn’t learn the development was a Mello-Roos district until she was getting her home financed.

“We don’t really understand what we’re paying for,” she says. “We have to pay double for the sheriff. We have 1,000 homes here paying general property taxes – why isn’t that sufficient?”