LAKE COUNTY >> While the Board of Supervisors has yet to pass rural land usage regulations for medical marijuana cultivation, the Planning Commission is already holding workshops for amending Article 72 for commercial use.
The first workshop was held on September 7. The commission went over the first five sections of the proposed ordinance, with updates involving the cultivation, manufacturing, transporting, testing, distribution, retail sale and delivery of medical and commercial use of marijuana.
Nothing is being approved at this point in time. Instead, these workshops are held for the public in order for the county staff to receive input on each of the 14 sections of the ordinance.
Each section of the updated Article 72 goes over specifics on compliance on licenses and permits needed, restrictions, land usage, enforcement, what permit is required for each specific function, the pilot program and the scoring rank of priority to receive a permit after, pesticides, security and protection.
The idea behind the pilot program is not only to regulate and see who receives priority in receiving a permit for commercial growing but also to collect and monitor impacts on the various operations. This will help the county see where they should allow growth and to confirm the functionality of the regulations that are being proposed.
There are some skeptics as to whether the pilot program will be effective, given the amount of time left to run. But the county is committed to the program, said Bob Massarelli, Community Development Director.
The pilot program will run for as long as needed until the county supervisors feel enough data has been collected. Once finished they will decide a number of new applications for each license type that the county will accept, according to the Article 72 Ordinance.
There are 39 different permits that a person or business can apply for in regards to marijuana and the various businesses that go with it. The maximum amount of permits that a person or business can have is four.
“We have identified areas where we don’t want the commercial cultivation and those are identified as the community growth boundaries,” Massarelli said. “The idea here is this will be a concentration of population. There are a lot of people there and a lot of those people might not want cultivation right next door.”
Some rules that still stand with the ordinance are being allowed to grow up to six mature plants indoors, the 1,000 feet distance from schools and parks and the self-certification program. These measures are being sustained to continue the protecting the quality of life of residents in the county.
Massarelli said it is easier to start with a more conservative idea and then ease up on the policies because it will be a lot harder to become more conservative and cut back on distances and plants later in the process after growers are settled.
“We got a tremendous amount of complaints to code enforcement and people just don’t like the odor. The greater the separation we can put between concentrations of residential population is an attempt to reduce those complaints. The people that are complaining have their rights too,” Massarelli said.
Planning Commission Chair Bob Malley said there is no point in trying to prohibit the uses because there was no prohibiting of crops and uses when growers started putting in vineyards for wine purposes.
“Nobody stopped or hindered when they came in and ripped out walnut tree after walnut tree and pear tree after pear tree and put acres and acres and acres of grape trees in,” Malley said.
If farmers have crops that they are not using and want to sell or utilize it for cannabis cultivation then it is their decision to make Malley said.
The Planning Commission will meet again to continue the workshop next Thursday, September 21 at 9 a.m. The next sections the commission will be going over are seven, eight and nine and will continue going over the rest ordinance at a later date.
