‍Cannabis Fact of the Day # 20 - Sonoma County cannabis forecast is a pipe dream that will bring pot to your backdoor.

Sonoma County staff didn’t like their independent expert’s realistic projections of how many acres of new cannabis cultivation would open over the next 20 years –going from 20 acres today to between 22 and 42 acres. Unfortunately, that expert didn’t tell the County “That is our professional opinion, whether you like it or not,” and increased their projections at the County’s explicit request to 104 acres. County staff apparently didn’t like that answer either, so doubled the acreage to 208 acres. No justification given.

Professional experience ought to count for something…but in Sonoma County apparently it doesn’t matter.

The fact is that if staff hadn’t thwarted their independent expert’s professional opinion, it would be more than possible to have a realistic and reasonable amount of cannabis cultivation AND have 1000’ setbacks to every home near any cannabis cultivation. 

Will the Board of Supervisors demand to know why staff ignored their independent expert’s professional opinion? Will the Board of Supervisors understand that every policy in the proposed cannabis ordinance is based on a ludicrously unlikely amount of cannabis cultivation in our County, require staff to reduce the number of expected acres of cannabis cultivation and increase all residential setbacks to 1000’?

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Cannabis Fact of the Day # 21 - You the taxpayer continues to subsidize the pot industry under the County's plan

 
The Sonoma County Board of Supervisors is willing to spend $1 million of your tax money every year because they believe private cannabis businesses provides a lot of “community benefits.” Not only is there no money for “pot for potholes,” as we were promised, but now Sonoma County staff wants to increase cannabis businesses 848% (!) over the next 20 years. How much more every year will this cost you – the taxpayer? $2 million a year ofour money? $8 million a year of our money? We have no idea, because staff is pretending that private cannabis businesses will pay for themselves, in the face of overwhelming evidence otherwise.

Even worse, most of the increased cannabis business will be outdoor cultivation with the lowest tax rates and highest cost to support, costing us, the taxpayer, the most money.

Areyou OK with this? Do you think that private cannabis businesses provide that level of community benefit? And that you should be subsidizing them?

Will the Board of Supervisors explicitly quantify the community benefit that private cannabis businesses offer the County? Will the Board ofSupervisors, instead of approving a huge increase in Outdoor cannabis cultivation, instead only approve a modest increase in Indoor cannabis cultivation, carefully located, which not only doesn’t cost the taxpayers money, but brings in a small surplus?

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Cannabis Fact of the Day # 22 - Sonoma County's Cannabis Proposal Ignores Environmental Safeguards

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California’s Department of Fish & Wildlife’s job is to ensure the protection of our fish and wildlife. So why is Sonoma County staff ignoring their mandates and recommendations? Some examples:

* Instead of following the Department’s mandate that certain cannabis operations shouldn’t be allowed to use plastic hoop houses without proper environmental review, the proposed cannabis ordinance ignores the experts and allows those hoop houses without review.

* The Department mandates that certain cannabis operations can’t use imported “soils” to grow cannabis in pots, but staff ignored that expert mandate and allows use of those imported “soils.”

* To protect endangered wildlife and aquatic species, the Department mandated that certain areas of Sonoma County not be allowed to have cannabis cultivation operations. As won’t be a surprise by now, the proposed cannabis ordinance ignores this mandate, and those areas are not excluded.

Apparently, staff thinks they know more than the experts, and that mandates and recommendations from the California Department of Fish & Wildlife are just “suggestions.” They are not.

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