Those of you who have been around this County for a while are familiar with my views on the weed industry.
- This county has spent more time, taxpayer money and resources on this marijuana issue than any other issue in county history — and there is nothing to show for it.
- This county still persists in unloading responsibility and accountability and pointing fingers to others when it was the Board of Supervisors who developed and implemented local rules and regulations that have never worked, resulting in their Cannabis Ordinance laying like a rotting, beached whale for all to see.
- After nearly 8 years of the Cannabis Ordinance being on the books, less than 10 percent of pot farmers have made application to the program. By any process of evaluation or measure of a program’s effectiveness, the Mendocino County pot ordinance is an abysmal failure. The people it was supposed to shepherd into legal status have voted with their feet. They will never be coming into compliance with the ordinance.
- There is no one who lives in this county who has not benefitted, directly or indirectly, from weed cultivation over the past 50 years.
I’m a poster boy for feeding at the pot manger.
While I don’t grow or smoke the stuff (as a physical fitness freak, I do use CDB ointment for workout strains and pains), but I sure have banked lots of pot dollars over the years.
I own a private sector business, the Mendocino County Observer, and I’ve never refused pot dollars for subscriptions, newsstand sales, or advertising.
I’m the long-time district manager for a local government water utility, the Laytonville County Water District, and conservatively speaking, at least 50 percent of our revenues are derived from customers who grow weed.
So for all these reasons and many more, I have always been active and involved as a participant and leader in county and state activities surrounding all aspects of cannabis laws, regulations, and policies.
Due to the total failure of a majority of the Board of Supervisors to implement a workable Cannabis Ordinance, the local economies of the unincorporated areas where two-thirds of the population reside, have been wrecked and de-stabilized.
The only hope for a compliance-friendly Cannabis Ordinance is for the Supervisors to implement a program based on the sole economic model that was successful for five decades: the small farmer “Mom and Pop” model.
That’s the model that a vast majority of county citizens support also.
You would think that county seat officials would know that also.
Evidently a majority of our supervisors aren’t aware of that fact.
Believe it or not, at their last meeting (Oct. 22), the Supes actually wasted several hours fussing and fretting over expanding by double cultivation areas.
This issue came about back in April when Cannabis Department Cannabis Department staffers “re-interpreted” a provision in the failed Weed Ordinance that they argued would allow in some instances doubling the size of cannabis cultivation areas. For example, instead of limiting a large outdoor grow to 10,000 sq./ft per parcel, by applying this re-interpretation, a person could increase, even double, the size of the area of cultivation on a single parcel. This is pure nonsense and is made out of whole cloth.
Supervisors Maureen Mulheren and Ted Williams supported the expansion proposal.
Supervisor Glenn McGourty said he didn’t know what a majority of the “industry” wanted.
Supervisors John Haschak and Dan Gjerde opposed it, saying the provision cited by the Cannabis Department has been in effect for years, and everyone understood and the practice was that grows were limited to 10,000 sq. ft., and it did not become an issue until new pot department staff raised it this year.
Haschak and Gjerde had it right a hundred percent.
The Supes also wasted more time fretting about how to figure out what a majority of the pot industry favored relative to the bogus expansion issue.
If I didn’t know better, I would think this issue hadn’t been resolved several years ago.
Some of the Supes seem to think that only the marijuana industry has the right to express their views and opinions on pot laws, regulations and “re-interpretations.”
They seem to be not aware that cannabis laws and regs are enacted for all citizens, not just the cannabis industry.
This whole issue of expansion was resolved without question several years ago when the people of this county massively supported referendums to repeal a Board of Supervisors’ proposed ordinance to expand cultivation grow areas.
So, again, the question is, why are some of the Supervisors and their unelected staff, attempting to ignore overwhelming opposition of the people of this county to cultivation expansion?
This is another example of County officials creating a problem where none existed before.
I think everyone is opposed to that.
(Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at 12 noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: http://www.kpfn.org)
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