OPPOSITION TO RAISING SIZE OF CANNABIS GROW AREAS:
This is short as you are busy and I am too. There will be a group of very concerned citizens appearing before you this morning to ask that you put the approval of doubling the size of permitted cannabis grows from 10,000 s/f to 20,000 s/f back on the Board's agenda after proper notification to the public. The BOS clearly gave B&P Staff direction, on a unanimous vote in September, 2024, to come back to the Board with written language reflecting the 10,000 s/f size limit. Done deal! Then, in October, just because the room was filled with pro-cannabis increase advocates, the Board reversed their direction to staff. This is an important decision that should have been given proper notice to the public.
The many citizens appearing before you today come from cannabis-impacted neighborhoods, mainly in the Redwood Valley area. My winery business is impacted every day because of the cultivation on property just over the fence from the tasting room. These are people who pay their federal and state taxes, contribute to our communities' non-profits and believe in protection of personal property rights.
I believe it would be very feasible to go back to standing at the post office, on street corners, using large data bases to secure signatures that would put the issue of terminating the permitting of any cannabis in Mendocino County on the next ballot. Let the voters decide. Remember the 6,000+ signatures that were turned in the last time the BOS decided to upend the cannabis permitting process? It may well be time to do garner those signatures again.
Well, here we are again. I wish you County supervisors would honor the principles of democracy that got you elected, and comply with the repeatedly-expressed will of your constituents by listening to our concerns and abiding by the decisions you make to address them. Instead, you bend over backwards to please a handful of moneyed special interests that show up en masse to one meeting, while you are unaware and uninterested in their background or county of legal residence, and then inexplicably reverse your previous decision that we voters were led to believe was final.
In the summer of 2021, dozens of tax-paying County residents gathered 6,000 signatures from their fellow citizens--including local legacy cannabis growers themselves--in sweltering heat at the height of the Covid pandemic, for a referendum to halt the expansion of commercial cannabis cultivation in rural Mendocino County. You finally made the decision back then to comply with the wishes if this overwhelming number of concerned citizens and wisely voted against expansion. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, thinking this decision would be honored.
Silly us. In April last year, the County’s cannabis department informed the General Government Committee, in a meeting without adequate public notice or even the Board’s knowledge, that its staff had arbitrarily re-interpeted the ordinance and would be allowing per-parcel expansion of up to double the originally permitted size, and then hastily started to issue permits to expectant applicants, still without the public’s or Board’s knowledge or approval. So again, at the BOS's September10th meeting, we members of the public, armed with irrefutable legal backing, had to step up and protest this absurdity, and you Board members, albeit reluctantly in a couple cases, were forced to re-direct the cannabis department to follow the intent of the original interpretation. Again, phew! Another close call.
But now here we are again. Once again the big growers are complaining that their multiple harvests per year and on multiple parcels, even if allowed to double their size, are not enough to compensate for their hefty investment. And once again we residents, many of whom moved out to the rural areas of this County to get away from the noise, light and other forms of pollution of more populated and industrialized areas, have to step up and remind you of your role as our elected officials, and of the people to whom you are actually answerable. In your September meeting one of you lamented that it was “very sad” that there is a “stigma” around commercial cannabis cultivation. Could there be a valid reason for this stigma, perhaps? I’m sorry if our attempts to hold on to Mendocino County’s unique but constantly-threatened rural quality of life make you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps, then, you would find more satisfaction in a different profession, one in which you understand your role and its limitations.
Come on, Board of Supervisors. Take a hint. We don’t want this beautiful county to become an infestation of row upon row of plastic hoop houses and related industrial development. If you must insist on expanding this already-saturated industry, how about in the zones that are already zoned industrial and have all the infrastructure already in place? If big-ag cannabis and other intoxicant-related industries are your vision for restoring this county's economy, it’s time to leave your office as its representatives. We the people have fought too long and too hard for a different, better and more sustainable vision.
OPPOSITION TO RAISING SIZE OF CANNABIS GROW AREAS:
This is short as you are busy and I am too. There will be a group of very concerned citizens appearing before you this morning to ask that you put the approval of doubling the size of permitted cannabis grows from 10,000 s/f to 20,000 s/f back on the Board's agenda after proper notification to the public. The BOS clearly gave B&P Staff direction, on a unanimous vote in September, 2024, to come back to the Board with written language reflecting the 10,000 s/f size limit. Done deal! Then, in October, just because the room was filled with pro-cannabis increase advocates, the Board reversed their direction to staff. This is an important decision that should have been given proper notice to the public.
The many citizens appearing before you today come from cannabis-impacted neighborhoods, mainly in the Redwood Valley area. My winery business is impacted every day because of the cultivation on property just over the fence from the tasting room. These are people who pay their federal and state taxes, contribute to our communities' non-profits and believe in protection of personal property rights.
I believe it would be very feasible to go back to standing at the post office, on street corners, using large data bases to secure signatures that would put the issue of terminating the permitting of any cannabis in Mendocino County on the next ballot. Let the voters decide. Remember the 6,000+ signatures that were turned in the last time the BOS decided to upend the cannabis permitting process? It may well be time to do garner those signatures again.
Martha Barra
Well, here we are again. I wish you County supervisors would honor the principles of democracy that got you elected, and comply with the repeatedly-expressed will of your constituents by listening to our concerns and abiding by the decisions you make to address them. Instead, you bend over backwards to please a handful of moneyed special interests that show up en masse to one meeting, while you are unaware and uninterested in their background or county of legal residence, and then inexplicably reverse your previous decision that we voters were led to believe was final.
In the summer of 2021, dozens of tax-paying County residents gathered 6,000 signatures from their fellow citizens--including local legacy cannabis growers themselves--in sweltering heat at the height of the Covid pandemic, for a referendum to halt the expansion of commercial cannabis cultivation in rural Mendocino County. You finally made the decision back then to comply with the wishes if this overwhelming number of concerned citizens and wisely voted against expansion. We breathed a collective sigh of relief, thinking this decision would be honored.
Silly us. In April last year, the County’s cannabis department informed the General Government Committee, in a meeting without adequate public notice or even the Board’s knowledge, that its staff had arbitrarily re-interpeted the ordinance and would be allowing per-parcel expansion of up to double the originally permitted size, and then hastily started to issue permits to expectant applicants, still without the public’s or Board’s knowledge or approval. So again, at the BOS's September10th meeting, we members of the public, armed with irrefutable legal backing, had to step up and protest this absurdity, and you Board members, albeit reluctantly in a couple cases, were forced to re-direct the cannabis department to follow the intent of the original interpretation. Again, phew! Another close call.
But now here we are again. Once again the big growers are complaining that their multiple harvests per year and on multiple parcels, even if allowed to double their size, are not enough to compensate for their hefty investment. And once again we residents, many of whom moved out to the rural areas of this County to get away from the noise, light and other forms of pollution of more populated and industrialized areas, have to step up and remind you of your role as our elected officials, and of the people to whom you are actually answerable. In your September meeting one of you lamented that it was “very sad” that there is a “stigma” around commercial cannabis cultivation. Could there be a valid reason for this stigma, perhaps? I’m sorry if our attempts to hold on to Mendocino County’s unique but constantly-threatened rural quality of life make you feel uncomfortable. Perhaps, then, you would find more satisfaction in a different profession, one in which you understand your role and its limitations.
Come on, Board of Supervisors. Take a hint. We don’t want this beautiful county to become an infestation of row upon row of plastic hoop houses and related industrial development. If you must insist on expanding this already-saturated industry, how about in the zones that are already zoned industrial and have all the infrastructure already in place? If big-ag cannabis and other intoxicant-related industries are your vision for restoring this county's economy, it’s time to leave your office as its representatives. We the people have fought too long and too hard for a different, better and more sustainable vision.