LAKEPORT— Tuesday in the County courthouse, and online via zoom, the Lake County Board of Supervisors held their weekly meeting, this time saying goodbye to District 4 Supervisor Tina Scott as she resigned to take a position with the Lakeport Unified School District. They also discussed an Interim Urgency Ordinance implementing a temporary moratorium on issuing early activation permits for cannabis and heard a review from Community Development and LACO Associates, the county’s contracted planning consultants for cannabis operations.
Supervisor Scott said her goodbyes this week as Tuesday was her last board meeting before her resignation takes effect on July 31. Many members of the community came together to thank Scott for her devoted service and achievements while wishing her well in her new position. District 3 Supervisor Eddie Crandell gave a heartfelt speech saying “Our board and the county is pleased, very pleased, Tina Scott will remain a leader and transformative leader for years to come entering service with Lakeport Unified School District this fall. Now therefore be it proclaimed Tina Scott is hereby commended for her dedicated service to all Lake County connected individuals…” Supervisor Scott thanked everyone sharing “Everything that I’ve been able to accomplish and succeed has been the work of the passionate employees that we have here in the county of Lake. Nothing could have been done without them, I just want to thank them for all their hard work and dedication, coming to work every day. A lot of the work is not with widgets it’s with people and that’s hard, you’re dealing with real people when you’re making decisions, and I just want to remind this board when we’re making decisions about people, we need to remember that.”
The board also heard from Deputy Director Mireya Turner regarding a temporary moratorium on early activation cannabis permits. Turner suggested the temporary moratorium to be in place until the Cannabis Task Force’s first meeting on Aug. 1 where they can make it the task force’s first priority. Lake County Cannabis Alliance Policy Director Sara Bodnar expressed the group’s support via zoom for cleaning up the early activation permit process but urged the board to consider other structural elements such as staffing. “We hope as you’re looking at this program and looking at cleaning up early activation, also look at what CDD really needs to succeed,” said Bodnar. The interim ordinance was passed with a 5-0 vote placing a moratorium on early activation permits.
Deputy Director Mireya Turner presented again alongside Cannabis Program Manager Andrew Amalong and Byron Turner, representing LACO. According to Amalong, since their contract began in Aug. 2021, six projects had been approved, 37 project review status memos submitted, 10 projects have review underway and five are in the planning commission phase. District 2 Supervisor Bruno Sabatier said he was disappointed that only six projects had been approved. “I want to see that number be a whole lot different than six because personally that’s not a good enough number for me,” said Sabatier. Byron Turner explained this number stating, “For an example, another county we do cannabis services in the first six months I think was six to eight projects, the following year was around 90, so that’s an exponential growth that will happen and I anticipate that to happen here as well.” Lake County Cannabis Alliance Vice President Erin McCarrick commented via zoom. “If there was a possibility having transparency and maybe it goes through the cannabis ad hoc committee where people are updated with that list, the queue basically of what projects are up, that would be helpful for transparency,” she said. In response the Supervisors discussed a current software program they have that could be used to do so. Ultimately the board decided they should return for review again in six months.
As part of their consent calendar, the board approved the extended use of the County Juvenile Hall facility for a temporary support shelter targeting the county’s chronically homeless population through September 30. This comes in the wake of an announcement made by the Elijah House Foundation that the homeless shelter in Lakeport will close on Sept. 4, 2022. “Elijah House Foundations is talking with Lake County Continuum of Care and other agencies that address homelessness in hopes of identifying a nonprofit willing to take over operations of the Elijah House COVID Shelter.”
Justin Ammon, whose foundation is based out of the area in Oroville in Butte County, said Tuesday that the foundation will continue to offer services at their Lucerne location located at 6110 East Highway 20 including housing navigation, case management and the “Back to Work’ program because these services are not part of the initial grant associated with running the Lakeport shelter and are being funded directly by the nonprofit.
Agendas, minutes, and videos of the Board of Supervisors meetings can be found on their website at lakecountyca.gov.
