LAKEPORT >> Although The Lake County Planning Commission finally got its turn to provide input on the drafted medical marijuana ordinance at its regular meeting on Thursday, the public in attendance ended up providing more feedback.
Just as unique was Community Development Director Bob Massarelli’s commencement of the discussion, directing the commission to shy away from the technical details and instead focus on the conceptual, long-term future.
“For today, we’d like to stay out of the weeds,” Massarelli said, apologizing for the pun. “Let’s get the big-picture items we need to address.”
Because he set the parameters, he kickstarted the conversation by listing three tentative goals his department recommends: protecting public health and safety, bringing on-going operations into compliance with state and local laws and maximizing commercial opportunities with the marijuana industry’s new business models. These include measuring contamination in consumer products.
“Let’s for example take the testing,” he added. “If we get a work force that’s trained in testing and knows how to test medical-grade marijuana, why can’t we then leverage that to other businesses like the pharmaceutical or plant genetics or agricultural development?”
That statement exhausted most of his suggestions, so he opened up comment to the large crowd in attendance.
First to the podium was Brenna Sullivan from the Lake County Farm Bureau. She reviewed the organization’s list of three recommendations it believes will preserve the agricultural land in Lake County.
Among them was a call to keep commercial grows off lands that are zoned as agricultural or agricultural preserve. The reason, according to Sullivan, is that pot growers affect the soil by importing a specialty soil.
“We feel that zoning marijuana production to the prime agricultural soils is largely unnecessary and we feel it would go better towards traditional agricultural production,” she said, adding the minimum size for a lot should be 20 acres. “We suggest zoning it to soils that are not designated as either farmland or farmland of significance.”
Some, however, felt these ideas were too rigid. Lakeport resident Michael Green, who is also President of the Lake County Growers Association, said that the best way forward is to encourage open teamwork — especially between those inexperienced owners blessed with fertile land and veterans who will be zoned out of the ordinance.
“It’s very encouraging to see where we are at in the process right now,” Green said. “One thing we cannot do is draw lines in the sand…”
Long-time resident Sue Suenram disagreed. In fact, she wanted to keep the status quo provided in Measure N.
“You guys take this slope you’re going to change the direction of this county for many years,” Suenram argued. “It is widespread in this county; it has run people out. It is ruining the real estate business.”
Yet, her statement was only supported by her relative, David Suenram. The remaining speakers, including Sheriff Brian Martin, countered by saying the county is very poor and would be wasting an opportunity like this.
By the end of the meeting, Joe Sullivan and Bob Malley were the only commissioners to qualify support.
“We’re going to have to find some ways to make it work in our county,” Malley said even though he precluded the remark by denouncing all substance abuse.
Sullivan, meanwhile, suggested the county reorganize the zoning to an area that’s advantageous for its production, just as with wine and other agricultural products.
Massarelli will bring the input back to the Board of Supervisors.
