October 11, 2022 — The Board of Supervisors went through a dozen recommendations from a cannabis ad hoc committee led by Supervisors John Haschak and Glenn McGourty last week, sending five of them to another committee. Supervisors received assurance that other items are already being addressed, but cannabis advocates who stayed in the chambers until after 7:00 at night complained about a lack of urgency as state deadlines loom and operators give up on ever making it through the permit process.
Mark Schaeffer, who has chimed in on cannabis policy at every step of the ordinance and now serves as the policy chair of the Mendocino Cannabis Alliance, wept as he spoke about losing his farm. “I used to say I had a ten thousand square foot farm in Comptche,” he said. “It’s closed. Not only can I not pay for my taxes, likely I’m going to lose my land, and I don’t even have enough money to get fuel to get home. But I’m here. Why? Because I put everything into compliance. Because I believed. I believed in myself, my government, my community. Neither the county nor the state has given any of us a pathway to success. They have not given us a pathway at all. And now we perish.”
Most of the ad hoc’s recommendations had to do with streamlining processes so local operators will have a better chance at complying with annual state license requirements.
Because the county’s ordinance did not go through California environmental review, individual growers have been struggling to keep up with regulatory requirements as they are being crafted.
Another process that has often been described, including by the Mendocino County Grand Jury, as building the airplane while it’s flying, is the rollout of the equity grant program, which was designed to aid cannabis business owners who were harmed by the war on drugs. The committee’s first recommendation was a three-part reiteration of Board direction to align the county’s program with the state’s requirements. Applicants have complained that the county has been stricter and more meticulous than the state, out of fear that the state could reclaim funds that were improperly awarded. Haschak laid out his position.
“I know that there have been issues that have gone on and on and on, for six months, a year, about trying to clarify whether a solar panel is the right size, whether the number of jars is right for the business, and that kind of stuff,” he said. “And if it’s allowable by the state, then we should just go with it and move on. Because the way I see it is, the role of the (Mendocino Cannabis) Department really needs to be getting people to their state licensure.”
Cannabis Department Director Kristin Nevedal said she believes she is already implementing that direction. She added that, although there have been bottlenecks in the equity grant program and very few awards have actually been made, no one has been outright denied at this point.
Nevedal secured another nearly $18 million in grant funds to help local cannabis business people: the Local Jurisdiction Assistance Grant Program. She described her planned approach to applications for that grant, which she hopes will save her department from multiple rounds of review, and circumvent the need to bring in outside contractors.
“I think that these will come to us, this is the hope, review ready,” she said of the upcoming grant applications. “And if they aren’t review ready, we will not be issuing an award, and folks can make corrections and apply in the next round. And I’m thinking the rounds for grant applications will be short. Thirty days. We’ll announce ahead of time, it will open for thirty days, it will close, we’ll do reviews, we’ll award, we’ll announce another opening.”
Nevedal told supervisors that she expects the cannabis department’s upcoming move to the Willits Justice Center will help remedy some of the department’s shortfalls — but she’s not sure exactly how long the move itself will take.
Another proposed simplification involved several steps that have not yet been completed. The ad hoc recommended that the cannabis department provide a ‘no objection’ status for every document or requirement that it’s referred to a state agency, after the agency has been unresponsive for thirty days. But this is problematic, when the county does not have a contract with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife, the main state agency responsible for environmental review and approval. Nevedal said her department has referred about 100 sensitive species and habitat reviews to CDFW, and that a contract is on its way to being finalized.
“It came to us as an unsigned document,” she said of the contract. “So we’ll work it through approvals at the county level. Once it’s signed at the county, I’m sure CDFW is eager to sign it so that we can pay them for the reviews they have conducted…and they have staff waiting to conduct further reviews. So I think they’re just as eager as the county to move this contract forward and resume work.”
Another layer of procedural difficulties involves vegetation modification, or the removal of trees and shrubs from grow sites. Growers have complained that their permits have been denied or terminated if they’re suspected of removing trees for cultivation purposes, even if it’s for fire safety or because the tree was dead or dying. Haschak explained the ad hoc committee’s recommendation that the Board clarify some exemptions, and establish what kind of evidence is required.
“If we’re all in agreement that tree removal has happened because of defensible spaces, for health, for safety, for the tree mortality crisis that we have going on, and I think that we really need to be clear on what the parameters are,” he said. “Because what we’re having is, we’re having a lot of, well, five years ago, I look at this satellite imagery, and I see that there was something there, and we don’t know exactly what it was, but there was something, and so it was removed, and so now you’re into the veg mod issues.”
Supervisor Ted Williams complained repeatedly that recommendations were not “shovel ready,” with plans to implement them with budget and staff.
During public comment, Susan Tibben, a frequent commenter on cannabis policy, recalled her experience planting trees in San Francisco with a group called Friends of the Urban Forest. “We did not know what that soil was going to be, until we stuck that shovel into the dirt,” she told the Board.