Some like to argue that without a cannabis industry, this entire county will dry up and blow away. You can agree with that or not, but if all you know about Humboldt County is gleaned from the agendas of bodies you’d be forgiven for thinking it were the case. We spend an enormous amount of public time on the industry. 

Though other topics were discussed, today’s Board of Supervisors’ meeting wasn’t much of an exception. The two big-ticket items were laser-focused on the demon weed. 

The seven spots in the Redway Business Park slated for cannabis production.

On the cannabis plus side: The board approved a proposal to allow indoor cannabis cultivation at seven separate parcels in the Redway Business Park, the little business zone up Evergreen Drive between Redway and Garberville. Supervisor Michelle Bushnell, who represents the area, said that the park is “largely empty right now.”

The proposal, brought forth by Jesse Jeffries of local cannabis firm Evergreen Exotics, would apply an overlay zone – a “Q zone” – over those seven properties, which would open them up for weed production. The water for the operations would come from the Redway Community Services District.

It was largely uncontroversial, but for one stickling matter. Supervisor Mike Wilson wondered: Why are we “spot zoning” these parcels? Why just those seven? Why not allow cannabis production in all the sites at the business park?

Planning Director John Ford said that the list of seven parcels was developed in consultation with property owners in the park and the RCSD. Basically, the seven were the ones interested in cannabis production. The others were not. Also, there were concerns about water usage. Would Redway have enough water to support that much cannabis production at the park?

In any case, Ford said, the proposal at hand was only for the parcels in question, and there’d be some bureaucratic hassle if Wilson were to look to expand it now.

“If you want to either have everything within the Q or not at all, then what we need to do is go back and coordinate with the other property owners, re-advertise this, because it’s not currently advertised to zone those other parcels,” he said. “And so we would need to go take a step back and propose to place that zoning on the other properties and then come back through the Planning Commission and to the board.”

Later, Ford also disputed Wilson’s characterization of the project as “spot zoning.” The board wasn’t being asked to rezone the parcels, after all; they were being asked to add an overlay over parcels that would allow expanded use (i.e., cannabis cultivation).

After a bit of discussion about the philosophy of long-range planning, the board voted unanimously in favor of the project.

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Immediately afterward, the board spent about nine minutes — an absolute blink of the eye, in Board of Supervisors terms — revoking another 15 cannabis permits for failure to pay their Measure S taxes. Last week the board erased 21 such permits for the same reason, and more are coming.

This tranche of 15 owed the county about $211,000 in unpaid Measure S taxes, in addition to about $65,000 in unpaid invoices from the Planning Department.

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It wasn’t all cannabis. First 5 Humboldt, which exists to serve and support Humboldt County families and children, presented its annual report to the board after all the weed talk was done.

Mary Ann Hansen, the organization’s executive director, painted a little bit of a grim picture. The base funding for First 5 Humboldt, like all the organizations in California’s First 5 network, is financed by a tobacco tax.  Those monies have dropped by about a third in the last few years, Hansen said, largely due to the fact that people aren’t smoking as much. Also, Proposition 31, the California ballot measure that banned flavored tobacco, took a big bite out of the market.

The drop in funding will lead to the cancellation of some of the county’s First 5-sponsored playgroups, which have served more than 15,000 of the county’s children in the last two years. 

Slide from the First 5 presentation.

Nevertheless, Hansen said, First 5 receives funding from a number of other sources, and it will continue to look for grants and partnerships that will allow it to keep its programs going.

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At the time of this writing, the Board of Supervisors has taken a break for lunch. When they come back they’ll address Assembly Bill 263, legislation sponsored by our own Assm. Chris Rogers designed to keep water in the Scott and Shasta rivers — tributaries of the Klamath — in order to protect salmon populations.

County staff have drafted a letter in support of this legislation, which you can find here. The board will decide whether it wants to approve this letter as-is, or maybe it’ll talk about whether it would like a few tweaks.