Staff Writer
The Nevada County Board of Supervisors continued its annual workshop Thursday at the Gold Miners Inn in Grass Valley. One of the topics discussed was the status of cannabis regulation.
Brian Foss, director of planning for the county, spoke on the subject and offered a take on what has transpired since last year’s annual workshop.
“The board objective was to maintain and continue to improve the cannabis permitting and enforcement,” said Foss. “More specifically, discussion at last year’s workshop included enforcement changes as well as adding additional license types from what we’ve heard from the industry that would be helpful.”
Foss added that future plans could include discussions regarding accommodating larger canopy sizes, addressing parcel allotments and the role cannabis grows play in subdivisions.
Thomas Maioli, senior code compliance officer with the county’s Cannabis Compliance Division, lent his knowledge to the meeting and provided numbers to update the board on the status of the regulation of cannabis cultivation in the county.
“For the 2022 cultivation season, we received 205 complaints – 64 unfounded, 24 unverifiable,” Maioli said. “121 were verified. 117 abated and 86 open. These statistics are dynamic. A change from previous years to last year is the addition of one more staff member for code compliance. (A) proactive approach to egregious cultivation sites, this was something new to us. We knew they were out there, however, they were complaint driven and now we’ve modified our program and are moving into a proactive approach.”
Maioli said that his division has added drones to its program, an instrument he said was “the last tool in our tool box.” The drones, he explained, were only utilized when access to a property couldn’t be found by any other methods.
“In 2022, we had slightly more (egregious) cases (than the prior year) – 222 to 205. However, the cases abated has gone from 43% to 58%, so that’s less complaints, more abatements,” Maioli said. “Cases unfounded has gone up slightly. This is due to received complaints or addressing complaints and seeing changes in the marketplace. The storm in December-January (of 2021/22) affected cultivation sites. Cases unverified from 35% down to 11%.”
Maioli said that the drone usage was implemented on 120 properties, and his agency was able to verify 69 of those. He added that they have received no formal complaints about the drone usage.
Annual cannabis permits issued topped at 126, with 45 of those being procured by first-time applicants.
Local agencies addressing cannabis included the Nevada County Sheriff’s Office, Cannabis Compliance, California water boards, California Department of Fish & Wildlife, and several others.
Foss said the cannabis program has been operating for three-and-a-half years and his agency has made some improvements along the way, working with the industry as well as neighborhoods.
“But we still think there are some additional things that need to be looked at or potential changes or analysis that would … include additional zoning district,” Foss said. “There’s also, in talking with the cannabis industry, a desire to have a direct-to-consumer type model of an allowance, kind of like a farmers market or a temporary event where a number of vendors could come to a site and sell product during the day or maybe over a weekend.”
Supervisor Lisa Swarthout said more discussion was needed on these topics.
“Three areas we need to have a discussion on would be: on-site consumption, cannabis tourism, and also permitting for special events,” Swarthout said. “If you are tying cannabis to economic development, those are three areas that will truly bring economic development.”
District 4 Supervisor Sue Hoek also weighed in.
“I think the one thing, especially with illegal cannabis, I just want to keep supporting our team that is working out there really hard,” Hoek said. “I support you 100%. What you do with the illegal cannabis, it only helps support our folks that are here really trying to do the right thing.”
“We’ve come a long way. It’s been a lot for planning, specifically,” Hoek said. “The one thing I struggle with is, how do we protect the neighbors? I get challenged with that. You get a bad neighbor, that really wrecks it for everyone. It is a hard business to be in right now, cannabis. We need to support them any way we can.”
The annual workshop continues today at the Gold Miners Inn with topics including housing and homelessness.
No formal decisions will be made as all topics and discussions are informational only at this time. Topics may be brought back during future board meetings for potential decisions.