LAKEPORT >> Consideration was given to an interim urgency ordinance which was aimed to place a moratorium on the issuance of use permits for commercial cultivation of cannabis within the unincorporated area of Lake County at the Board of Supervisors meeting Tuesday.
There was also a note on this agenda item with a recommendation to continue this item at a future date in time.
District 1 Supervisor Helen Owen, the sponsor noted she did not have a certain date. “There were pertinent changes needed, and I had met with the senior deputy, Carlos Torrez (an attorney in County Counsel’s Office), last week,” she said. “One of the things that needed to be removed is the urgency. Lloyd Guintivano, county council, said he had sent over a response on Monday as to whether it should be an urgency ordinance or not. “At this point the request is to be moved to a specific day and time, ” he said. “We can still stay on that course under the same caption, then staff can have further internal discussions on the issue that was raised. The date and time we are thinking is 12 August at 1 p.m.”
“Does this need to be noticed,” asked Owen. “That’ll be part of the discussion … the request for a continuance pertains to the captioned item- which is still an urgency. After public comment for the request of continuance, your board can just approve that by motion, you can continue on Aug. 12.”
District 2 Supervisor Bruno Sabatier noted the board received a lot of comments requesting for a bit more time. “I’m not sure where the board stands, I have an idea based on members’ philosophy. I don’t mind having an open public discussion; do we want to move forward and use more staff time to finalize an ordinance? Are we interested in a moratorium or not? That’ll come later once the ordinance has been finalized.”
Owen conceded she did not intend her proposal be an urgency ordinance. “That’s not what I intended,” she said. “I wanted a moratorium- or a pause, until we got our cannabis ordinance written and accepted. Otherwise, we are going to have a number of cannabis grows that are illegally noncompliant.” She went on to say that she wanted to avoid people who don’t have a permit, since there are a number of applications that have not been accepted so, she would like to see all those with applications be fully compliant.
Guintivano noted there is an ongoing process of revamping a portion of the zoning ordinance by staff and he made the recommendation the tool to do that is an interim ordinance under an urgency measure, under government code: 68658. He went on that if the board did not use this government tool, that may result in defaulting back to the procedures for adopting amendments to a zoning ordinance, in order to implement this proposed moratorium, it would have to go through that process instead of Government Code 65858.
That process, adopting a zoning ordinance may be more extensive and have more procedures and take more time. Staff indicated that it would take at least 30 days, because we’re talking a regular ordinance as opposed an urgency ordinance. So, one of the main distinctions between a regular ordinance and urgency ordinance, is typically of a temporary nature. Once adopted it then expires and may be subjected to further extensions. Ordinary ordinances have to have a first and second reading then they are adopted. they are subsequently repealed, sunsetted or amended.
So for the purposes of the board on Tuesday, Guintivano said, “is a continuance request of this item, which as captioned as an urgency ordinance.” Owen then told Guintivano that she was not informed of this information when she visited Torrez in June to get it on the agenda. “I wasn’t aware of that, but it seemed to be delay and delay,” she said. “So, I was looking at, can we do the urgency (ordinance) at this moment? Then while waiting for the moratorium process.”
“So, the process we’re in right now, is doing it through the interim urgency ordinance,” he said. “If your board adopts a moratorium based on the interim urgency ordinance, there would be no need to impose a similar moratorium under a regular ordinance.”
“I just want it to coincide with the ordinance, so when the new ordinance is adopted, we don’t have additional projects that are noncompliant,” she said.
“So there’s a lot of built-in provisions of this Permit Streamlining Act, which goes into what constitutes an incomplete application,” Guintivano said. “That is one of the issues staff looked into that culminated into the response to what is expected to be a finalized version of this Draft Urgency Ordinance. But to answer your question (Owen), what’s being proposed now, any applicant that has submitted before the effective date of the Urgency Ordinance, will be exempt from the moratorium. And that would include any applications received by the CDD and currently being reviewed by the Community Development Department and also deemed incomplete by the CDD, all that’ll be included under that category.”
Chair E.J. Crandell asked Guintivano if the board should table discussion of the proposed ordinance in order to allow further direction to staff to work with Supervisor Owen or work on the nonurgency provision of the ordinance.
Owen then withdrew the item after the rest of the board consented to do so.
