ut a residency minimal on that like you have to bid in a residence for a year, five years, 10, 15, whatever. Once the conditions are met and I always cite inspections and conditions have to be met, but once they're met, my thinking as a cannabis is like any other crop, we should be able to grow it, farm it just as we would. The more legal growers that we bring into the fold, the more safety I think there is for the environment. There's fewer hazards, potential issues are addressed up front and can be corrected. Cultivators are made aware of potential fire hazards. They're reminded of forbidden things like pesticides, rodenticides, proper land use, et cetera. And the last thing regarding setbacks, if it applies to the cottage is new, but I saw the setbacks on there, 1,400 and 200 was talked, that kind of thing. When we're talking about setbacks and you're talking about a cottage, you've only got two and a half acres, that's 115 feet from dead center of a square cottage grow to the property line. With an RA, it's only 233 feet. So anyway, thank you for taking that in consideration. Thank you. Good afternoon, welcome. Good afternoon. My name is Tom Bird. We are a retired residence in Bruce McPherson's fifth district and lived there for over 20 years. We've been cultivating medical cannabis since 2010, donating a major portion of our sungrown, organic cannabis flowers to WAM, Veterans Alliance, and to Santa Cruz residents who are suffering from Parkinson's disease, the effects of Agent Orange, various forms of cancer and for children suffering from epilepsy and autism. We grow non-psychoactive cannabis. In other words, no one gets high from our products. We paid $500 registration fee, assuming that the amount would be applied towards a license fee. We have since found out that it's not so and now need to pay the same fee as does a larger canopy farm operations, $800 and then $2,500 in addition to the state license fees. It's simply prohibitive for cultivators of small gardens like ours. We respectfully request that a sliding fee scale be developed to accommodate the cottage garden category. This will enable us to continue to provide medical cannabis at no cost to those in need and who have limited financial resources. Thank you very much for your time. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you for this opportunity. My name's Christine Jennifer and I'm the president at Suncrest Nurseries, Inc. in Watsonville and I'm gonna read this statement. We believe it is necessary to have a clear distinction between nursery cultivation and flowering cultivation in the definition of canopy, a separate nursery license in congruence with state definitions. As a plug and liner supplier of young plant material, Suncrest Nurseries along with other nurseries must maintain a mother stock in order to propagate. The mother stock never flowers and shall not be sold. The current county definition of canopy does not provide sufficient clarity for a cultivator or county officials to accurately and consistently calculate the canopy size. Nursery cultivation is very different than flowering cultivation as we have different needs, different consumers, different customers, different markets and so we believe we should have a different license, producing only clones, immature plants and seeds. In conventional farming nurseries already have a separate nursery license and the definition of canopy needs to be rewritten. We believe some of the benefits of that include that stacking young plant material in greenhouses will limit use of natural light, increase energy use and cost, improved regulatory ease, fewer problems with co-location of multiple licenses, improved efficient use of resources. It's much harder to maintain and self-regulate a crop if it must be separated by walls or distance, excuse me, on the property and safety. As walkways, aisles, rows are necessary for safety and crop maintenance and should not be counted as part of the canopy so this additional and needed space should be excluded, excluded from the canopy definition. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome. Hi, Pat Malo, I'm with Green Trade Santa Cruz but I've also served on the C4 committee and also was a founding member of the RCSE group who ran the referendum. These maps I have right here illustrate a specific point that we had to make two years ago, hence the two year old maps, of what the different setbacks from habitual or habitable structures, sorry, it's been a long morning already, look like. And so the first one is with no setbacks and then you can switch thing. And then we start seeing at 100 foot setback from the structures, areas start going gray and the next one is 200, getting grayer. 300, grayer still. And then the last one, since the last time this idea came up that it was proposed 600, not 400 and we didn't wanna go get new maps, this is the point of what it looks like at 600. And the point of all this is that, we were in the C4, we discussed a lot of these issues. We discussed that not all parcels were perfectly square and when you start hitting different real life examples of what different parcels look like, that these 100, 200, even to 300 start excluding a lot of the folks that we're hoping to get into this. On top of the other exclusions that we have that are represented there, like the coastal zone, et cetera. And so what I have is a letter that Josie Roberto wrote about these issues specifically. I think all of you got this in a packet and email. Her and Cricket couldn't make it today so I picked up the maps from her house and thought we'd come up and show them to you again. Nick and I carried these very same maps two years ago, almost to the day. So thank you. Thank you, Mr. Milo. Appreciate it. Good afternoon. Hello, thank you for having this hearing. My name's Jeff Insand from the Live Oak area. I also own a parcel down near the Buena Vista Dump. I was looking at the buildability of my parcel. I came across what I thought to be kind of a catch 22 with the requirement for indoor growing. However, it had to be in the existing structure. I feel this is, I understand it as an attempt to limit the cultivatable parcels. However, I feel it's not fair and favors those with existing buildings. It excludes any parcel that may be ideal for cultivation but not having an existing structure. Again, this rule appears to be arbitrary and inappropriate as to the intent of the new law. What I recommend is striking this arbitrary rule or at least allowing an exception whereby an application may be evaluated on an individual basis. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon, welcome back. Thank you. I'm so glad to be here. I was very heartened after the last board meeting that the cottage license has finally made it. That's something that I've worked very hard for over these past number of years and something that I truly believe in. And that really is what the history of cultivation in Santa Cruz started from. When you consider that there was a survey done that showed that the majority of cultivators in Santa Cruz were cultivating on parcels that are very small, obviously, that shows you a great need to help those longtime heritage farmers continue on. And so when the cottage license finally appeared on the ordinance, I'm just thrilled. However, adding the additional setback eliminates almost all of them. And I hope we're gonna have some real discussion here today about the economic impact that this is going to have on our county and the people who, as of January one, are losing their ability to survive in this county. So I encourage you to please think about the people that are here that have been good actors. There aren't complaints against them. I myself paid the $500 registration. I have a 100 square foot grow in my garage and that has paid my taxes and my mortgage as of January one, even though I have, and I've only sold to dispensaries, I've paid my taxes. Thank you very much. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Mike Rotenbaugh. I would definitely echo that lady's comments, but want to speak more broadly about the January one 2013 eligibility requirement. Essentially, that is going to kill the craft cannabis industry in Santa Cruz County before it can even start. It essentially, you're only allowing cultivation licenses to the largest grows, or to grows that have been existence continuously and commercially, whatever that means, it's not defined, for the past six years. You're completely shutting out any new entrance from the business from what we can consider to be no rational purpose. It's discriminating between large businesses and small businesses, again, for no rational purpose. There must be some less discriminatory ways to accomplish whatever goal you're trying to accomplish, but the way it looks to the public and to a lot of us who own land in the mountains is that you're simply voting in favor of large grows and precluding with setback requirements and with eligibility requirements any small businesses from entering this space. Thank you. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. My name is Roland Yardsoff. I'm a cannabis farmer with 25 years experience. I wish to address the nursery issue. Under the state licensing scheme, every category of cultivation has a maximum square footage of canopy limit with the exception of nursery, and that is for good reason. The signed value per square foot of a canopy of flower is more than 20 times that of a nursery square foot of canopy. So in order to be viable, the state, for a nursery to be viable, the state has chosen, and I think quite correctly, to have no limit on canopy for nursery. If someone attempted to have a competitive nursery in this county, they would have to compete against other nurseries and other jurisdictions which have no canopy limit, which means they would be competing against a business entity that is able to make use of scale of economy. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon, Ms. Krau. Welcome back. Good afternoon. Thank you for the opportunity. I wanna just mention, just a historical perspective, is 25 years ago, when I first came here after being arrested, well, Jim Hart was part of that, Al Noren's team. The first and second time we were arrested, all kind of began here, and 25 years later, we're still talking about the same thing. I'm grateful for the strides that we've made, and I know it's been a phenomenal undertaking. And considering compassionate access, and I really was pleased to hear you moving toward that last few weeks ago, there are some considerations that we really need to address and to at least begin to think about. I met with the BCC of some representatives from the BCC a few weeks ago, and there was a kind of key strategy that we're trying to approach for compassionate access, and that's to reduce excise tax, perhaps allowing counties and cities, municipalities to deal with considerations of taxation on their own, and to eliminate or to affect state taxes and fees. So I think that there's a consideration, maybe a letter to be written. The BCC is not a taxation arm or branch, it's a licensing branch, but they can create a license that is exempt or creates an exempt category, and they agreed whether or not they will do it, I think they need a push. I wanna ask a question about how when the pharmacies take over medical, which is not that far away, genetic modification is part of that strategy. GMO, Monsanto's already genetically modifying for Monsanto slash Bayer, they call themselves Bayer, take two, Safe for Children. And I think that we need to think about what will happen, both what will happen for compassionate access and what's going to happen with genetically modified cannabis. This GW Pharmaceuticals has license to distribute in the United States, and Donald Trump's talking about it. When he's talking about it, we know it's big money. So. Thank you, Ms. Grohl. Thank you. Appreciate it. Good afternoon, Mr. Coffes, welcome. Good afternoon, gentlemen. Thank you for having me, and thanks for all the work that you've done and that the county staff has done on this. I think that you're about to take a pretty significant step in the 50 years that I've been an observer and the cannabis policies in this state and nation. And so I think some congratulations is in order. However, I would echo the sentiment of Robin earlier that what's happening today is we're taking a first step. Green trade will continue to advocate for more inclusive ordinance. We think that this step you're taking today will be a significant step forward in terms of about half the producers in the county. And so half or more of the producers in the county are still left out. And I'm particularly interested in this woman's comment about those people who did not register, who have never cultivated cannabis before, but who now since it's legal and above board and out in the open, might consider it. And I think that the board needs to consider that as well, moving into another phase of this ordinance as quickly as possible so that we can bring more people into the regulated system. So I appreciate everything that you've done. I fear that we're not going to become strangers anytime soon. And I look forward to more progress and thanks again. Thank you, Mr. Coffes. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Leflora Cunningham Walsh of Boulder Creek, Mr. Rick Fiersen's district. First of all, I agree with a lot of what has been said, especially the questions in regards to new cultivation, even though it doesn't particularly apply to me, I'm still interested in us fleshing that out as much as we can, as well as I was very interested in nailing down the time of the anonymous applications and making sure that that is very clear because as someone who's come that far and even as we've all sat in this meeting together, I think we appreciate the time we've put in and no one wants to miss because of just miss wording on the deadline. I'm very happy that the cottage industry has been brought front and center a little bit and that some of the issues have been addressed. The setbacks is not something that necessarily applies to me, so it hasn't been brought to my attention, but in solidarity with my other cottage industry, I'd like to say let's make that work for the people who are truly concerned about it. And I would just like to say I'm mostly here advocating for my parents who've lived in this county. My dad's lived here since he was five. And I want to make sure that the $500 that they put in to apply gets applied to something and that we're not seeing a whole bunch of more fees stacked up for basically something that's supposed to help them in their retirement and if it's something that hinders them in their retirement, that hinders what they can do in this county, what I can do in this county, how much I have to help them. And so I really want us to see a generational success in this program so that everybody from all the ends can be really successful. And thank you very much for everything you've done and I look forward to the rest of the meeting. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome. Jack Alger, I'm a partner in a farm in District One in Mr. Leopold's district. And I just want to say that we're here in solidarity with just the reconsideration of the new setbacks because we're a 20 acre farm that has been a traditional, a very old apple farm in that area for a long time. And even with 20 acres, three, two, three, 400 feet of setbacks puts us out of the playing field. So I just wanted you to say hey and please reconsider. Thank you. Excuse me, how long have you been growing cannabis on that site? A few years now. And have you ever had complaints from your neighbors? Never. Have they ever contacted you about the order? I don't think there's been any issue whatsoever. In fact, we have a great relationship with our neighbors and we want them over to our place often, you know? Okay, thank you. Yep, thank you. Good afternoon, welcome. Are there others that want to address the fact after these two speakers? Please do. I figured there was, there were. Yeah. Hi, my name's Aziz, I live in District Four. And I'm here kind of about the setbacks. It's affecting a lot of people. It's affecting people in the mountains. It's affecting people in commercial ag. And especially in commercial ag, there's an expectation to be subject to agricultural practices and odors. I don't know if you've driven past any of the lettuce fields. They smell pretty bad. So just take that into consideration. It may not completely wipe everybody out, but it's gonna wipe some people out. Some people's parcels are gonna completely disappear. So thank you, thank you for everything. Robin, you're awesome. And see ya. Thank you. Good afternoon. Hi, I'm Dave Rubin on the board of Rural Bonny Dune Association and on Coalition for Environmental Santa Cruz. I've been sending you all various reports and emails and recommendations and comments for two and a half years, representing not commercial interests but neighborhood and environment issues. I confess, I haven't read the latest version of the recommendations. I was swamped with a preceding one. But going back, as of a few months ago, there were only a few counties in the state that allowed commercial growing on residential RA-type properties on less than 20 acres. I'm not sure if that's changed or not. Our cottage grows two and a half acres would make us, in that regard, the most lenient in the entire state. So I urge you not to make us too lax. Thank you. Good afternoon, welcome back. Hello, everybody. Good to see everybody's still on the job. Eric Hoffman, CESSC. First, I'd like to start by thanking you. I think the legacy for all five supervisors will be the central, the coastal zone plus one. With the hotbed of biodiversity we have there, we're one of five areas in the entire United States that's known as a hotspot. And to protect that in some form, I think is an excellent thing. And I applaud you for doing that. I'd also like to applaud you for appointing the people to the Planning Commission who took time out to absorb a lot of material very quickly and did an excellent job in refining the ordinance with recommendations that you mostly approve on the areas of discretionary use of staff in making decisions and tightening up the entire picture. I think that was an excellent move. And I applaud you for both appointing them and then also agreeing with them. An area of, I'd like to address real quickly some of Patrick Malo's comments, which I was on the same committee with him. I think the discussion on setbacks was all about trying to get areas fit into small pieces of property like 2.5 acres. We've been now going with a five acre minimum. So I think if you think of it in that terms, the 400 feet does not sound so vindictive or strenuous. The problem with setbacks in general were on C4, which is predominantly dominated by grow people. The idea was to get as much space as available in small acreages, but there's another issue there. There's people living near it and the 100 feet and 200 feet. If you look at any of the other ordinances in the state, you won't see those small setbacks because for a simple reason, the odor will be overwhelming. So you either have to address the ordinance through some other means in terms of the odor, which has been or do something else about it. To others. No, we need to, I appreciate it. Thank you for understanding. Good afternoon and welcome. Hello, Board of Supervisors. Joshua Rich from Responsible Cultivation Santa Cruz. And thank you staff and thank you the tank. I want to thank the Board for all the energy and the time that this take in to go down the path and to get to an ordinance finally. I want to start off with the setbacks and just kind of to review what we did here. So we have the 300 foot setbacks and then this is the 600. So this is just kind of gives you an idea where we're setting with the 400 foot setbacks. If you want to show that to the audience too, Eddie. Thank you. So I'm just going to read something quickly. We took seven real life examples from parcels that are currently in the County's Cannabis registration program. We downloaded a map of the parcels from the County GSI map and measured a 400 foot setback and a 200 foot setback from habitable dwellings on neighbor in parcels. Neither 400 nor 200 foot setbacks leaves any room on the 2.5 parcels. The two 5.5 parcels were almost wiped out with the 400 foot setbacks. There was a reasonable room with a 200 foot setback. The eight acre parcels leave no room with the 400 but reasonable with 200. So this kind of just was trying to demonstrate that how the setbacks do affect. And so the gray here is basically essentially no cultivations able to take place on the gray areas. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome back. Hi, I'm Bob Strickland from Bonnie Dune. Cannabis odor is a major complaint of people living near cannabis sites. Outdoor grows generate odors for months during the flowering season. Indoor grows generate extremely obnoxious odors when the greenhouse is vented. I know from personal experience inventing a 1200 foot square foot, 1200 square footish greenhouse a quarter mile away makes it impossible to open the windows in the evening. Denver and Santa Cruz both have regulations limiting neighborhood noise pollution. Denver also regulates odor pollution from various sources, including cannabis. Please specify cannabis odor limits and olfactory meeting to enforce the odor limits. Without specification, odor pollution enforcement is a fuzzy area. With specifications, the CLO can determine if the odor is above or below the specification and respond accordingly. Either the neighbors don't have a legitimate complaint or the cannabis site will have to make changes, move indoors, reduce growth size, et cetera, to reduce the impact to the neighbors. Specifying cannabis odor limits is better for neighbors because it limits exposure to odors, is better for the industry because it eliminates unwarranted complaints, is better for the county because it eliminates trying to enforce fuzzy guidelines. Denver has a nuisance odor that's specific and olfactory meeting in place detect one part, nevermind. Santa Cruz, if Santa Cruz doesn't allow cannabis around neighborhoods, Santa Cruz must specify cannabis odor limits. In the last meeting, there was an analogy made to Gilroy and the garlic. There's a big difference there. In Gilroy, the garlic was there decades before the people moved in. This is the case where the people have been in Bonny Dune and the mountains for 50 years and now we're moving cannabis in. So we're changing the nature. If you don't give us some defense for, and give Robin the tools she needs to know whether it's a legitimate complaint or not because if people are living in and around cannabis such as where you guys have one right across the street from each other, the RAs are going to complain. Thank you. Thank you. Welcome back, Mr. Nordahl. Hello, thank you. It's exciting to be here on this historic day or what seems like it could be a historic day. Thank you for all of your work and help on all of these issues. I would like to say in solidarity, I think the setback 400 feet is extreme. It doesn't affect anything I'm personally working on, but I can definitely see, especially for the cottage folks that that makes most folks virtually impossible, mathematically. But if things go according to plan, we do have an ordinance. I just want to let everyone know that this is just the beginning. Right now as we speak, I'm receiving emails from the state, alerting me that my temporary state licenses are running out in less than 30 days. So I hope we can keep momentum here and I really hope that we can collaboratively work with the county here during this transition period so we can all stay in business without having to shut our doors. So thank you very much. And again, this is exciting. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome back. Hi, Trevor Luxon. I would just quickly like to draw some attention to a new provision in the most recent draft, restricting the combining of adjacent parcels to reach a minimum parcel size in RA and SU's owned property. It's very, very common in this county for properties to actually be multiple parcels that have been joined together. This provision was never included in earlier versions of the ordinance over the last three years. It's really caught a lot of people off guard. I'm aware of people who have SU's owned properties that are over 25 acres that are actually made up of three eight to nine acre parcels and therefore wouldn't qualify to cultivate. And it just, it seems like there's no real logic to it. And that's it. Thanks. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome back. Joe Smith. So Cal, I was delighted when I saw that you put the cottage garden in as we've asked for smaller parcels. So thank you for listening to your constituents. However, but then I saw the 400 foot where I live in the mountains. And I think most of the cottage people are in the mountains. You've probably heard it from other people here today. Look, the mountains come down like this. It's full of trees. There's a flat bench land, then it goes down and there's more trees. Most of the houses are gonna be planted in that flat area. So consequently, it's very difficult, and virtually impossible to be 400 feet from anything. I'd urge you to go back to the 100 feet or give us an option. Say 100 feet, if you get it signed off by the neighbors, which was your original thing. But the 400 feet just puts everybody right back out of business. I mean, I feel like Roseanne, Rosanna Dan, it's always something. Yeah. So thanks for the two and a half acres, but please do something about the extension. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome back, Mr. Schmidt. You understand that. Good afternoon, I'm a chair of friend, members of the board, Kirk Schmidt. I'm a grower on CA land in the Pajaroa Valley and I'm also speaking on behalf of the Farm Bureau. We appreciate all the work that you, the planning commission and the planning staff have done. They've been particularly, the staff has been remarkably receptive to concerns that commercial growers have on CA land, both within and without the coastal zone. And remarkably, we're down to one issue. And that is the definition of canopy. The definition that the county has proposed is identical to the state's definition with the exception of two words, except nurseries. And there's also a definition in the state that is defining nurseries. And on their website are different ways to show how you can segregate your mature plans for your nursery plans from a regulatory point of view. The state scheme is to allow nurseries as a separate license. Indeed, all of the county proposed licenses line up identically with the state licenses. The specialty cottage in the state is a CG. Specialty is an RA. We get down to small is an ATP, et cetera. Medium is CA. And the only thing missing is the nursery category, which is a separate license. As other people who have been before you have pointed out, there's a true economic reason why nurseries should be separate for mature plants, both because of their cost and their value is much lower. And also so that they can maximize the growing area for their mature plants for sale. And I encourage you to make this one final change by inserting except nurseries in the definition of canopy and adopting a definition of nurseries to supplement that. Thank you very much. Thank you, Mr. Schmidt. Good afternoon, welcome back. Hello, good afternoon. I'm Nicole Lagner with Clark Newbert. I just wanted to say that I know a lot of folks are worried about the timeline for their temporary state licenses. And I have recently learned that the CDFA is considering allowing people to extend their temporary rather than having to apply for their annual. So I think one way you guys can do is to extend whatever local authorization you've given to folks who are on the path to licensure during this process. It sounds like that might help a lot of people in this room, although that does not apply to businesses that have to apply through the BCC, which would be the first person who spoke about his distribution business. And then I also just wanted to say that hopefully, I know you've worked so hard on this ordinance, but the tax issue, it's gotten a lot of press. And it should definitely be something that all local governments are considering, because when it gets to be so prohibitive, the illicit market just thrives. And I'm sure you've been noticing the trends in Oakland and Salinas and Monterey. They're all considering how they can reduce the tax burden so that the people can comply with all of these grand steps to regulation. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon. Welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you. My name is Sam Rashkin. I'm from Carmel Valley in Monterey, California. I'm here as an economist and an analyst. I do not have any clients or projects in Santa Cruz County. But what we do have is data. And the data that just came out of Oregon for 2017 shows legal production of cannabis at 1.1 million pounds. And the legal consumption was 350,000 pounds. And what's happening is it's a crop that can be produced very quickly and very efficiently. And I worked with some farms in Monterey County. And what the last speaker said is correct. They're looking at lowering the tax burden, but partially because the prices are plummeting. My farms are producing at $200 a pound. And they're projecting $50 a pound three years out. And I'm encouraging you to open up as many of these restrictions as you can to encourage people to apply because most of them aren't going to make it anyways. It's really sad, but it's true. The burdensome paperwork and the fees and everything else is going to disqualify a lot of people. Secondly, folks, this is Santa Cruz. And we're not talking about patients anymore. And we started it right here. There needs to be a farmer to patient model somehow. So I'm encouraging you to open your minds. If you look at the data, so if you look at the actual data we have out of Monterey, there's not a lot of complaints about crime or traffic or smell. It's a very well-regulated business run by very smart people who care. So thank you very much for all you've done. If you can, we remove the setbacks. Folks, this is a conditional use permit that can be pulled for any reason. So bad players can be removed instantly. And we have the power to do it, but we have the power to do good today, too. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome back. Hi, Phyllis Strickland from Bonnevue. I have two points I'd like to address. One is manufacturing with ethanol and CO2 in RA zone districts, residential, agricultural. I just think that we're going towards a model where we're introducing commercialization into communities that have fought commercialization over long decades. And it's an important issue. And once you open this door, that residential nature of that community goes away. So I would urge you to follow the cottage industry guidelines and eliminate the CO2 and ethanol from the manufacturing allowed in RA zones. If I had my preference, I would increase the acreage minimum as well. The other thing is enforcement. And I think that probably everybody in this room can agree that there's a lot of fees, a lot of registration, and a lot of rules. And if the enforcement against the black market and prioritizing that against really bad actors and large growers does not happen, then you've let down the community. So I would like to see a lot of money upfront the first two years just really hit it hard. And then we'll see where it is. But it's really not fair to all these folks who have tried so hard to get these licenses and comply to not really make a concerted effort to really hit the bad actors. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon and welcome back. Thank you. This is Victoria Selle Alexander, civil society activist. And I want to let public know that I suffer from PTSD. And I'm a medical marijuana user. I want to be able to remind members of the public that the American public enjoys celebrating success and achievement. And we have to allow the American public to continue to endeavor and develop this burgeoning market. The cannabis is very important. And Santa Cruz has always been liberal, and I love Santa Cruz. And I want to be able to, the American public, like I said, we need liberating policies. They're going to help this industry in putting people to work. It's a good thing. And I want to be able to say this, that you guys are, this is a great county and you guys are great men. We have to do great things. And the great thing that we need to be able to do is we need to be able to have these liberating policies within the 100 buffer for all structures. So it gives everybody an opportunity. A dress gone rider, they do a magnificent job of creating berries. Santa Cruz has an opportunity to shine and teach the world what it is to cultivate cannabis. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to address us after this individual? All right. Hello, I'm Gene Brown. And my agency is Pacific Cannabis Insurance Services, two of the things most businesses hate is taxes and insurance. But they're necessary evils. I'm up here just to let you know that these are good actors. Everyone who I'm involved with, Santa Cruz, Monterey, Watsonville, all over, they are doing the right thing, ensuring their crops, ensuring their businesses, just like any other business. You're looking at worker's comp, general liability. Now we have to have surety bonds for each and every license and permit that's coming. And by the way, someone just said they're running up against a deadline. So please, help these businesses thrive. So hard to do business in California as it is. So keep that in mind when you make these decisions. Thank you so much. Thank you. Good afternoon. Thank you all for waiting, by the way. Hi. Good afternoon. Claire Machado, former co-compliance investigator here for about 10 years, been in private practice doing land use consulting. I've watched this process in the county and others. I want to applaud your staff and everyone who's worked on this ordinance, including all the commission members who have spent a lot of time. I appreciate the fact that you've opened up in the RA area parcels over five acres and larger parcels. From an enforcement perspective, and forgive my drafting today, because it's not quite to scale. But I just wanted to show just a basic graphic. The top square represents 1,000 square feet by 1,000 square feet, relatively the size of a five-acre parcel. Parcel is a little over 200-foot square in a perfect case-square scenario. When you deduct a 200-foot setback from all around that square and that fee of acres, then you're only left with an area of 600 by 600 square, which is three acres. If you have a 400-foot setback, you're left with a smaller area of only 200 by 200 square. So if you apply a 400-foot setback, you're reducing a five-acre parcel to a one-acre potential. 200-foot setback, same five-acre parcel to a three-acre potential. If you apply that to a two-acre parcel, a 400-foot setback wipes out that whole parcel. A 200-foot setback would allow you half of that parcel. So just as a small graphic in a perfect world, that's what your current regulations allow or don't allow. So for the smaller producers, the cottage producers on 2 and 1 half acres, they really don't have much area, although we appreciate that. Thank you. Thank you very much. And just as an important clarification, it's from another habitable structure, not from the property line. You're drawing a property line graph, which is significantly different than from a habitable structure, as, by the way, the maps that were shown are from all structures, not habitable structures, that Mr. Malo had and others. That is a very significant difference than what's being considered by the board, which is from a habitable structure. You could be much, much, much further away from where another adjoining habitable structure is. And I think it's important that the community recognize the difference of what has been proposed by the board. But I just thought that I'd provide that clarification. I appreciate that fact. But in many cases, more often than not, they're actually closer to a habitable structure is closer to a property line than that from a development perspective. I appreciate it. But your depiction was from a property line. So I wanted to make sure. Yes, sir. OK. Thank you. That's correct. Thank you very much. Good afternoon. Welcome. Good afternoon. Thank you. My name's Darren Toskey, farmer in special use and CA. Couple things. Definitely the nursery being separated is really important for us in canopy. That's a huge benefit for us competing with other counties and having a viable market for Santa Cruz. I know that's been talked about a lot. Setbacks, too. I've worked in a few counties. And for the most part, I've seen setbacks aren't an issue. It's case by case. So if we could come up with a reasonable thing, like let's say 100 to 200 on 100 even. And then if it was a case where it was pressing on the neighbor, they could sign off. And that would, as you can see today, help a lot of people. Another major thing for me and a lot of the mountain farmers is having a house in special use and RA, which we've been farming in the mountains, as you guys know, for years without that CA, you don't have to have a house. I mean, we have more problems in ways in CA with crime and stuff than we do necessarily in special use, where we have gravity feed solar systems that are really appropriate for smaller development and less impact. So at the minimum, having a grace period for all these people and see in SU and RA of a structure or special cases is very viable to those regions, which grow really nice plants for Santa Cruz County, the mountain regions, versus CA, we got to put them in a greenhouse a lot of times to protect the crops from the client. I mean, climate, excuse me. So having provisional time and a grace period for RA and special use is crucial to people. To develop our beautiful properties, and it's going to take time and money, as you know, to build it like some of the nice vineyards we have in the mountains where the climate is best. Thank you, too, for all the work. This is awesome. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to address us? All right, seeing none, we will close the public hearing and bring it back to the board. What I'd like to do is first just begin with questions from each board member, and then we'll move on to people that would like to make modifications to the actual proposed ordinance. As a reminder, the board already voted on this proposed ordinance and concept, in essence, a couple of weeks ago. So my hope is that there aren't major modifications to it, which also do delay the process. There were discussions here about the need for expediency, but any major changes the ordinance today will delay this ordinance and more. We'll start with Supervisor Caput and just work the way down the line for questions specifically or comments specifically, but it won't be time for motions. The comments will be later if the questions are now. Well, you can do questions and comments now, but the motions part, because I believe some people will be looking to modify the proposals in front of us. I think we should do after all the questions and comments have been made, so go ahead. All right, I'm pretty good with what's proposed here, but if we see a change in the motion, that's what I'm concerned about. I wanna make it clear for residential ag areas, we are talking about, we're talking about questions that were brought up. It's a 400 foot setback that we have in the report. That's from dwelling to the actual growth of the marijuana, is that correct? Yes. Okay, it's not from the property line. True. Okay, so then that brings up a problem if somebody owns a acre, we'll say a home on a residential ag property. People do wanna move out to the country, and they don't wanna have a lot of problems when they live there, but they also might wanna build an additional living habitable dwelling, and if marijuana growth does come in on the adjoining property, they would not be able to build an additional dwelling within that buffer. That's not accurate, this is not a restriction on the neighboring property owner's ability to use their parcel. It's meant to protect folks from the impacts of a grow, and there may be situations that come up like that from time to time, and we would do an analysis in conjunction with the cannabis licensing official at that time to determine what the best result could be out of that situation, but it wouldn't automatically, the existing rules we have right now would not automatically prohibit someone from building an ADU on their parcel because there is a cannabis grow on adjoining lot. Okay. Does that make sense? And that grow, all right, let's say someone builds an additional dwelling next week. The 400 setback would apply to that new dwelling that's being built. Well, then I think that the existing operator of the cannabis farm next door might have arguments that the person was basically coming to a quote unquote nuisance at that point. I mean, these are the issues that are gonna have to be fleshed out over time, and all of these licenses and land use permits are discretionary, and they're reviewed on a yearly basis, and so there are gonna be times when folks aren't gonna agree about, there's gonna be times when something is set in motion, and then properties are gonna be sold amongst people, and new people are gonna move in, and these are things that are gonna have to be dealt with over time, I think. It's very difficult to deal with all of the potential hypothetical situations when you're, you know, when you're basically preparing the meal to be served. Sure. Yeah, as compared to entitlement, which once we give an entitlement, that stays with the property. True. It would run with the property then. The cannabis grow, if somebody puts it in, then sells the property, they would be able, the next person or the next person would be able to continue that, or not continue. No, the system is created so that you need both a license and you need a land use approval, and so it's correct that once you get the land use approval, one might argue that they have entitlement to grow on that parcel, but nobody ever has an entitlement to a license. Okay, okay, that's good. And then, well, we're talking about, again, neighborhoods, residential ag, less density, of course, than maybe a city neighborhood, but again, people do move out there for certain reasons. And maybe we're talking about a buffer because of odor, we're talking about it because of changing the environment of maybe the neighborhood they're moving into. So that's a real concern of people that I've talked to that live in certain areas, one particular area and near Watsonville, and with the pressure to have more and more people moving into the county and some of them moving into residential ag, we're protecting the property rights of people that want to move into neighborhoods. So anyway, I'm arguing for some actual 400 foot setback from a property line, but anyway, that's what I'll propose here, maybe on the motion. But the other would be tax distribution. It's clear from all the maps that a lot of the tax money that's brought in is gonna be from district four. And then that money's gonna be split five ways evenly throughout the county. But if one area is generating more tax money, I think that area maybe should get more of that money. But there's no way of doing that, I guess, right? I've looked into it and it seems, I don't know. I mean, the benefit of the burden we're talking about here. This is a general fund and so like there's same thing could be said about sales tax and adult tax and so forth. And so it's distributed by the board, county-wide it. There's no, we don't do Citus distributions within the county for general fund purposes. Yeah, but I do see with other tax money disbursement, they'll go by like we'll say with measure D, it's road miles. They'll say, okay, more money is gonna go because there's more roads in a certain area. How about more money goes to an area that generates most of the money? You know, again, that's a formula. District four is gonna have a big part of the burden here. And I just wanna make sure that we get our share of benefit but and also with less problems because the pressure is to build and to grow in district four. I do wanna be cautious and be careful that we're talking about the matter that was noticed here today. And be careful that we don't stray too far and start talking about taxes and things like that and get into a place where we're talking about getting into a Brown Act issue or something like that. So before your board today, I think it would be good to stick with the ordinances that are before you and maybe postpone that conversation regarding taxes to a time when it's on your agenda for discussion. Something like that. I can understand that. I just wanna make it clear. Definitely set on this 400 foot setback. I don't wanna see it shrunk. I don't wanna see it any smaller or any kind of maneuvering on it. And my biggest concern now is I do wanna protect the environment of the whole county and I know the way that it's going, it's being destroyed. So but if we pass something that is workable here and enforceable, we can protect the environment and also protect the people that live within the grow areas. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Thank you, Mr. Chair. I'd like to acknowledge again as we have in every one of these meetings the work of the Planning Commission, the Planning Department, our Cannabis Licensing Officer and the Cannabis Cultivation Choices Committee or C4 for all the work they've done to get us to this hopefully answer after three years of real deep study. And I'd like to acknowledge that the cannabis industry, the reality of it all is going to be a vital part of our economy now in this county and you've heard particularly from some of my district that deserves not only protection but I think promotion in the best way that we can do it. The ordinance isn't perfect to everyone but I think this is a very good ordinance that works to protect our small but celebrated small growers, our environment and our wildlife. I have a difference of opinion from Supervisor Caput and I'm not directing these at it but this is the way I see it and this is not a motion but just from the input we have item seven incorporating the revisions on setbacks. I think it's clear from the maps that we've seen that the 400 foot distance just isn't the answer. And I think we have three basic choices. One that we could leave at the 400 foot mark but with discretion given to the Cannabis Licensing Officer to allow 100 to 400 foot setbacks. I think we can accept the C4 recommendation that was 100 foot minimum based on parcel size or we can go back to the 200 foot setback that was included in the previous version. And we're trying to address the issue of order here and I really don't think we're getting a good handle on it and I'd recommend staying with the 400 foot setback with the allowed discretion of the Cannabis Licensing Officer with a further, and again I'm not trying to get ahead of ourselves in a motion but included in this I'd like to see us make sure that we have staff collect a map on order complaints and report back to us annually at least and then staff continue to investigate the effectiveness of these nasal rangers if I call them. I guess is that the right terminology? I don't know but for lack of a better description I don't think this is going to delay the process and I think it allows for needed flexibility that we have as we begin, we start up this organization. I don't want to see a lot of people become criminals because of a foot or two or something and I think that there's going to be some instances where discretion is going to be very well received and should be. That's, so my basic thought is that we should have the 400 foot that allows 100 to 400 foot setbacks of the discretion of the C.L.O. But so I'm, excuse me if that's not a motion but I'm just, and then the Item 10 Incorporating the revisions that address the Cottage five excuse me Cottage five, Garden 2.5 acre. We have had requests in the recent days and at the last hearing to that, to require the level five review of these applications but I'm concerned that we don't have the staffing to really conduct the surge of these applications. I think we kind of answered this question before but I want to make sure that we have that we, I suggest that we keep the level four review and not the level five and I just want to make sure I'm more clear on that. I think it's, I would like to, I'd hope that the County Council and the Cannabis Licensing Office would work with the state to allow existing and relocating businesses to move forward to apply for state licensing while ensuring the process for CEQA. Some people are getting caught in the middle here and time's running out and under that same item, there's an option that would be to allow for an additional percentage like 25% of nursery plants that would not count against the Canobie cap. I think that might answer some of the concerns of the ag industry. I'm just not here to try to give everything everybody's asked for but to be reasonable and to see how we can make this as workable as possible. And so I would like to see us land on 25% that would be allowed for nursery stock. As part of the enforcement plan, this, there's been a lot of talk about the revenue that this is going to bring in and I agree that I think maybe our tax decision was too high but we'll see how that works out in the years to come or a year to come but I would like to recognize too, although we're gonna have a lot of revenue from this, there's gonna be a big cost. I mean, we're gonna have added deputies and law enforcement, we're gonna have an additional code compliance investigator, seems environmental health is gonna require additional staff. So this isn't going to be a net net game of gains, financial gains, it's going to be, the enforcement plan is critical and I would like to see that the enforcement plan discusses the interagency body that we'll meet. I'd like this group to report annually again to the board with information including the impacts on fire, water, wildlife, health and safety and criminal justice. This would be in addition to the report regarding the number of permits issued and pending so forth. The civil penalties issue too is we have civil penalties ranging from 2,500 to 7,500 dollars and I think after the third violation of a provision within one year, why should a cultivator be allowed to renew his or her license? I think this is gonna be an enforcement issue.  And then just as I do, as you know and I think I know we all were very sensitive to the compassionate use component, but we do have to wait and see what the state might do in this regard, so I see that. I just wanna remind people that that's on the minds of the board and the city and its legal water issue. I might wanna hear back from you about how that seems to be a legitimate request to me that the licensing staff verified the supplier of the water has a legal authority to seek bulk water to the final destination. I don't know if that adds more on your plate than you really need right now, but. Does that? So Loretta and I had some conversations about the city's comments on the licensure of a water purveyor. Currently the way the ordinance is written, non-potable water actually wouldn't be available to be tracked onto a site, except in an emergency and the BMOP, the way it's written, does have some requirements for licensure of the purveyor. We have, however, talked with the state about including some additional language regarding the legal ability of a purveyor of non-potable water to provide water and if your board directs us to bring this back for another first reading we would include some additional language. So would that delay this whole process then further alone? Our opinion is that it's okay as it is. We don't need to make this change because it's already restrictive in terms of what water can be used, but if we come back for other reasons that we could include a clarification to allow non-potable water to be used. It's an option. Just add on to that. The BMOP is gonna be adopted by your board via resolution, so we can make changes to, it wouldn't hold up if you want to make changes to the BMOP. If you wanna make changes to the ordinance, it would hold things up, but if you wanted to direct staff to make changes to the BMOP to comply with the suggestions that have been made by the city, we could do that and return on May 8th with those changes to the BMOP and it would not hold things up. I think we can address it in a short time period but I don't think it's the right thing to do at this point. Thank you for that non-motion motion, Supervisor McPherson. I was gonna say. Well, I mean, right? We know what your motion's gonna be, so, Supervisor Coonerty. Sure. So a lot of my questions just got answered. I guess, Supervisor McPherson's comments about the nursery, 25% and the nursery canopy, is that doable and does that cause another first reading or is that? Both, it is doable and yes, it would cause another first reading and it also, it's not the recommendation of staff to go with that and I wanna make sure that everybody realizes that. Staff's recommendation is to accept the ordinance the way it's drafted but we've provided your board with options in case you wanna do something different. Okay. So there's that. I guess on Supervisor McPherson's discussion of setbacks, I understand the concern from people in the community and the pushback that I don't think it was intended to sort of wipe out so many parcels. However, odor is a major, major issue and it will be a termination. Just to come back to you, you would have the discretion to either terminate or not renew a license based on odor complaints? Or modify. Or modify. Add mitigations, even reducing the canopy, moving the canopy if necessary and just a reminder that we're only talking about outdoor for the 400, just I don't know that that's been. Right, yeah, we're only talking about the outdoor and I think it's gonna be one of the reasons we went for the larger setback was an idea of trying to get people on both sides, some sense of security, but that if they're sort of adequate encouragement for people to comply and that you have the discretion and ability to revoke a license based on odor, that's a barrier or change or modify. That could be, that's a very important tool and I wanna make sure you have that full authority. Okay, I think the rest of my questions got answered. Are there questions Supervisor Leopold before we move into the motion phase? Yeah, I have a couple of different things that I would say. First of all, I think we're at a good point because the areas where we still have disagreements between what is proposed and what has been talked about is small and even some of the greatest critics and the greatest supporters didn't even make it here today because they generally where we are is we're in a relatively good place and it's a reflection of many hours of testimony, many hours of meetings at the commission level, at the C4 level, in the community, community discussions. And so to me, that's the process working. So I think that where we have some disagreements here is it could be closer to the margins. I wanted to get some clarity because there were some testimony, you made a remark at the beginning and then there was some testimony about a couple of things that I just wanted to get clarity on. The level five requirement would be for RA zone parcels that are not getting a cottage grow and A zone parcels. The rest of them would be level four. It depends and SU with the residential TP, so there's still a pretty good chunk of- So SU would also require level four and TP. Level five. Level five, sorry. I'm trying to get clear on that. There was testimony and I wanted to get clarity on about SU if someone owns multiple parcels of SU contiguous, but as the case was made, eight here, nine there, 10 there, do we treat those as three different parcels if they're owned by the same person and therefore limiting their ability to- There's nothing that prohibits any property owner who owns multiple adjoining properties from actually combining them, like going through the assessor or the planning department and physically combining them. They obviously lose some development capacity moving forward. So that exists, but to treat them as a parcel without physically combining them was taken out. That's right, for the SU and RA. Yeah, that's unfortunate, but it seems it works against someone who's assembled some parcels to be able to do what they wanna do. There was also testimony from a woman concerned about CO2 extraction or ethanol in RA zones, but I thought that we prohibited that in the RA zones. The way it's written right now, it's prohibited on parcels less than five acres. But as a point of clarification, you can't do something less than five acres, so the motion that you changed from 10 to five just meant that it's available in all RA now from the last meeting. It's potentially a cottage grow conceivably the way the ordinance is written now. A cottage grow could have that activity. But not with this five acre, sorry. So prior, if the five acre restriction wasn't there, a cottage grow could conceivably do those other types of manufacturing activities. All right, so the testimony wasn't exactly correct? Not precise. Okay. One of the things that during the course of these many, many meetings of discussion, there have been some comments from board members commenting on the new farmers that are part of cannabis. And we've had someone from the Farm Bureau come to us a couple of times talk about definitions and trying to get something that has a definition that relates to agriculture. And I'm trying to figure out why we're not still in sync with our common agricultural practices. It seems to me, we're pretty close on the canopy, but this nursery piece is not there. And I'm trying to figure out why we're not taking the suggestions of the Farm Bureau. I mean, it's a policy decision, certainly. The concern as we have expressed in the past was simply not wanting to have an expansion of development that would incorporate multiple types of grows and stages of grows. We really just wanted a box. And it would be up to the individual cultivator to figure out what fit into that box. We've made it advantageous for folks in CA who co-locate within existing structures. There's virtually no limit to the canopy. So in those cases, you could have a nursery, you could have multiple types of cultivation activities. But again, I mean, I understand both sides. I look at things from an implementation and enforcement piece and it just seemed like it would be hard for us as a land use matter to try to figure out who was, without having a nursery license type to sort of figure out what was what. Yeah, I wonder if Mr. Schmidt could just come up for a moment. I just wanted to ask him a question, because the way I understood it, at least from the farming representatives, is that there's sort of a clear chart of nursery versus canopy. And so I respect that there's lots of things I count on our attorneys to do. And I have a great deal of respect for all the work that's been done, but here's a guy who grows plants. And Mr. Schmidt, I was wondering if you could just say a little bit about why the definitions we have now don't work. The, it's one thing to propagate a plant and another thing to raise it to maturity. There in other areas of commercial agriculture, we have companies throughout the Central Coast that only raise seeds to transplants and sell them to other growers. In the flower industry, which used to thrive here, we had people who would raise nursery stock to sell to the rose growers who would grow it up to maturity and sell the flowers. And their separate approaches, their separate fertilization techniques, and there's clearly different light demands. The state of California has two separate licenses and has diagrams on the CDFA website since they're separate licenses, showing how you have to designate them as separate areas. So they're not co-mingled. We're not, the CDFA doesn't want you to co-mingle the mature plants with the immature plants and goes to great lengths to show you how to designate it on the maps that are required as part of their application process. And the current definition of canopy, if they were to include this 25% piece, would that work? As Supervisor McPherson has suggested. No, I understand that and that's appreciative because it gives additional space so that if I have 22,000 square feet on CA land, it would now expand by another 25%. I'm not quite sure how that will line up with the way the state wants you to demarcate the nursery license that you would have to obtain and the cannabis cultivation license you would have to obtain for what Santa Cruz County sees as one license. Right. And maybe that's a question for a council about. Yeah, I wanna make sure we're using the same terms and talking about the same thing and that we're not mixing the definition of nursery with the definition of immature or non-flowering plants. Those are two different things and we don't have a nursery license. Your board has not created a nursery license here within the county. And so when we start using state definitions of nursery and intermixing with what we're doing, we're not really talking, we're talking apples and oranges and to answer your earlier question, what does it look like on the ground? The problem it looks like on the ground is when a person in Robin's office wants to go out and do an enforcement action or even to do an inspection, they wanna go out there and be as efficient as possible and they wanna look at the box and they don't wanna get into arguments with folks about, well, my immature plant stock is over there. So let's go take a look at my immature plant stock and say, okay, wait a minute, now there's a flower on that plant right there. Does that mean that it's no longer an immature plant and why isn't that flowering plant over in your box that is supposed to contain mature flowering plants? So there's complexities from a logistical nature that the state isn't concerned about when the state is creating its rules that we're concerned about on the ground. But again, it's all up to your board. Your board can make whatever policies and decisions that you wanna make and will implement and will faithfully implement whatever those decisions are. And I've never doubted that in any way, shape, or form. I'm just trying to, where my comment is as do, when you give this example of the immature stock and the flower, I'm not sure whether a farmer would say we would never allow a flower there because that causes some other process. I won't pretend like I know. That's the difference in the definition of in the state definition of a mature versus an immature plant, a mature plant is flowering. And we basically didn't want to get, don't want to create a system where we're basically just cutting off our nose to spite our face when we go out to do enforcement. That's what we're trying to do. We're trying to find. No, I get that. And I guess the question for Mr. Schmidt is do, with these immature stocks, do people let it go to flower or do they move it? Because once it gets a flower, it has changed. Any ordinance is adopted is based on the presumption that most people will strive to obey it. And since the state has this as a separate license, they will strive to obey that and that only immature plants would be in the nursery area and flowering plants would be in the cultivation area. I can't, I don't want to surmise what someone who with illegal motives would do. Yeah, well, I mean, that's not our purpose. I just didn't know whether that immature stock going to flower, whether that causes some problem for the rest of the immature stock. I think the immature stock, if it's before it starts to flower, would be moved. That's what I would think, too. But my attorney is concerned that that may not be clear. So that's what I'm trying to get to. I guess the question for our counsel is if the state has a nursery license and we don't, what happens for the person who is raising seed stock or these immature plants, these clones, right? We've heard testimony for clones. They would get a cultivation license here and they would apply for a nursery license with the state and that would, that could coexist. Even though we only have one type here, they could have two types from the state. That's true. The last question I'll ask and thank you, Mr. Schmidt. If we made changes to either our canopy definition or a nursery definition, would we not be able to do a first reading here today? No, we would not be able to do that. Those are significant changes. We would need to come back for another reading. However, what we could do if your board is concerned about these issues is you could do a first read and a second read on this ordinance and direct us to do more work around this issue and come back and maybe make changes to the ordinance three months from now, four months from now, et cetera. We can keep working on this. As we've said multiple times, this is a work in progress and we expect that we're gonna be bringing back additional things for your board to consider over time, not just related to this one issue. The last area which I'll talk about is the 400 foot setback. You know, I voted against this last time because I don't think that there's, well there's no science connected to why 400 feet as compared to 200 feet as compared to 1,000 feet. This is really a fear-based part of the policy over the concerns of the possibility of smells. And I don't, I don't wanna downplay the fact that some of these plants stink, right? And some of them are even prized for their smell. But to have a policy that seems incredibly restrictive with this large setback, it just doesn't make sense to me. It seems to me that as the point I made last time, which is, you know, a pesticide could be sprayed 200 feet from that habitable structure, but we're not gonna let a flowering plant grow. It just, I fail to see the value of this part of the policy. Maybe with discretion that works, but I like the recommendation that came from the 100 plus hours of meetings from the C4 committee that included both cannabis and neighbors and the lawyer and former planning director. I mean, we tried to include a lot of voices in that. They spent a lot of time on this issue. And it seems to be a better way to work it rather than setting this, what I would consider arbitrary number. To that point, I wanna make sure that you and the other folks understand that that exception is in the current ordinance right now. So there's a 400 foot setback, but it can be lowered to 100 foot, depending on the discretion of the license official with a level five hearing review. So we wouldn't have to make changes to the ordinance in order to implement what you're talking about. Yeah, I get that, but I think that someone brings it, says I need a less than 400 feet. Now you have to do a hearing and then you put the zoning administrator right in the cross hairs of a completely unrealistic goal, right? Which is you have neighbors who have fear, not fact, expecting 400 feet and a licensing official who has fact and close examination and you're saying, and we're gonna get, it's gonna be like a cell phone tower thing. It's like people are gonna have some expectation about something and in the end we're not gonna, we make a decision that will be unsatisfying because we've set an arbitrary limit that's not based on any fact or evidence or any idea that 400 feet is gonna cause any lesser problem with smell than 200 feet or 1,000 feet. We just don't, we don't know. And the idea that we have one year license, which gives us a chance to actually have real information and say, yeah, it was really bad for a couple weeks. That's real and the other part of it is guesswork and I think that's a bad way to make policy. Those are my comments. All right, thank you. I'll be brief so we can get to the motion side just in general just so the community knows. I'm supportive of the proposed ordinance. I think that this has been a significant process of compromise by all sides in order to get to an ordinance that works. The board's stated goals have never changed from environmental and neighborhood protections with the desire to provide adequate access. And there's still many within the environmental community that feels that this ordinance doesn't do enough to protect the environment. And I think that to the point that there's no science behind the setbacks, I think we could make an argument that the entire process, while very thorough and vetted, has a capriciousness to it where one could argue that all of the acreage minimums are arbitrary. All of the setback requirements are arbitrary. The taxation is a best guess. This whole thing is trying to make policy in advance of knowing what the externalities will be as a result of the policy. We don't have a history in this country of other models that we can look to to say this is what worked. The difficulties we're having in Colorado work into Washington, including the economist that spoke of oversupply but then advocated for additional supply here, which is a very unique, because I thought that economics 101 was matching supply and demand, not having additional supply when there's lower demand, but maybe I flunked that class. But the idea is still the same, which is that there isn't really, we don't know how this is gonna play out. We should be honest with the community about that. We don't know if the policy is gonna be, the regulations are gonna be overly burdensome, or we don't know whether it's going to not protect the environment and neighborhoods enough. We don't. And I think that the commitment that the board should have is that we be flexible over the course of the coming 12, 24, and 36 months to look at everything that we're doing. But on the flip side, I think that it's also responsible to have a policy that does try and confine things in an enforceable and reasonable way so that we don't have a lot of other issues that would be difficult to put the genie back in the bottle for the not. I mean, I recognize the economics of it. I recognize that this is something that's ingrained within this county, but I also recognize that environmental beauty, agricultural protections, rural residential protections, I don't see why they're given less weight than the discussion of what makes people a bunch of money. I don't understand that, I haven't understood that for three years in this discussion. So I do think that there is in general a sense that we should recognize that we're making a policy that we don't know what will come about of this policy. It's an imperfect process. That gives me pause, but it doesn't paralyze me for making a decision on this component. I think that the degree that the fact that we've reached an element of compromise here, there are definitely things in this ordinance I'd like strengthened. I could go through a whole large laundry list. I just don't really know that at this point, after this many hearings, after this much public process, this much, now's the time to just say that we should make changes and go through another first reading and debate that time, get a whole other set of interest groups that don't like a change. I was made at that time to come in and make the same arguments in a couple weeks and delay, delay, delay. I think there were at a point that we need to move forward recognizing it's an imperfect policy made though through a thorough public process and we're gonna be learning together, moving forward on this and hopefully it's something that's good for the county moving forward. And I think that we've done a pretty good job on that. Now I think what we should do is move toward people that wanna do modifications with understanding that functionally, any modification you make to this means that it delays this process for those that are concerned about that. Supervisor Caput had said that he was not interested in making any modifications. Is that correct or proposing a modification to the proposal? And I can explain that. You can put me on the timer if you want, put me on the screen on the timer. If only. Okay. Oh, this will. Okay. At one time, if I understand it was 600 feet was one proposal right? Can you use the microphone? Supervisor Caput, please. Thank you. That's correct. At one time it was a 600 foot buffer. At one time that was suggested. These buffers have honestly gone through so many changes in regard to so many different pieces of infrastructure where you talk about municipal boundaries, schools, you know, drug treatment facilities, residences. So it's been, you know, 600, 100, 400, they've all been considered. It remains 600 for a school. True. Right. Okay. I'm gonna just go back and I'm gonna do this quickly because I wanna hear the other comments too. If we go back a couple of years, the motivation in this room was mostly compassionate use, medical use and whatever. And in less than a year, the motivation seems to be on a lot of people's mind. It's about more money. It's about being able to make more of a profit. I'm sorry to see that change or shift. Not everybody, but it seems to be a shift in the argument.  So what I'm getting at is neighborhoods and protecting neighborhoods for people really moved out to get away from problems. And if you leave them alone, they're gonna be okay. The closer we pack them in and the closer we have encroachment, the more complaints we're gonna get, the more strain on public safety sheriffs and everybody and the whole process. So a bigger buffer is a reasonable thing to ask for. And if you look at what we're talking about now, all the concessions that we're giving seem to be going towards the grower who wants to grow more rows of cannabis, marijuana, to make more money. And very few concessions are given on the part of those neighbors that are living out there and saying, hey, leave me alone. I moved out here.  I don't wanna have to be battling with all this. So what I'm saying is it's a balancing act of benefit, burden, and also concessions. I'm saying a little more concession for the people that just wanna live out there and a little more concession, 400 feet to me is okay. I mean, at one time I was for 600 feet, but that's a concession for the ones who wanna grow. And hopefully when all this works out, we're gonna have less complaints and we're gonna have more people complying.  So that's where I stand. And hopefully that's where we are. Thank you, Supervisor McPherson. Is there a proposed modification to the ordinance you'd like to make today? Just to make clear then, we can leave it at the 400 feet, but as it is now, you have the discretion that's correct. And I do not like to put you on the crosshairs either, but to be fair with a level five hearing. So it's the discretion of the Candidate's license officer with a hearing. The concession would be brought back to us though. Is that correct? No, no, to the licensing officer. And if they wanted that discretion to reduce it, then it would go to a level five review. Otherwise it's level four. Depends on the license type, but yeah, right for cottage, for instance. Okay. So we don't really have to change that under the circumstances, I believe then. But I would like to keep map and data on the order complaints. Do we have that, can that be added as a direction without extending this? I wanna get this thing done. Can I ask, does a point of clarification? I mean, this would not modify the ordinance in a way that would be substantial, but are there any privacy issues, are there any legal issues with keeping a map specifically of where the complaints are that would be released publicly, or is it something that would be general enough that it would be okay to have on a. To keep a map and a running log of complaints and where they are. Would it be the complaint that would be mapped or would it be the grower that would be mapped? Yeah, no, no. Because the grower's got a discretionary permit, that's one thing that isn't as big of a concern, but in our standard code compliance process, we don't just out people that file complaints, and we wanna encourage people from filing complaints where there's a concern and not feel a concern that their information's going to be made public. Without specific direction from your board, I think that there's no way that we would be releasing the individual names and contact information for complainers. We would treat that consistently with the way we've treated all of our other code compliance policies. My, what I'm thinking about is whether there's a concern with creating a map of businesses that have been complained about, and I really don't think that there is, because these businesses are coming into the light, they're being treated like every other business that there is, and to the extent that there are complaints or problems about them, it seems like they're as fair game as the Chinese food restaurant down the street or any other business that we have in the county. Okay, thank you. So, would you like? I'm not, yeah, I'd like to still, we have to collect that data. It seems like that's fine to do. One of the other things that, after the third violation of a provision within one year, I don't think a cultivator should be allowed to renew the license. Would that have an impact on? Yes, it would have an impact on the coming back, but from a practical perspective, the licensing official has discretion to yank somebody's license after one violation. Depending on the nature of the violation and how egregious it is, they don't have to go through a progressive type of a process like that. And I think you've vested the discretion in your licensing official to make those kinds of determinations that if somebody is having a problem four times in a row with the same issue, eventually that's gonna be the result. And I'm gonna guess that on many situations, it's gonna be the result before they get that far. Right, okay. I don't think that's necessary. I'm not ready to make the motion. I'd really like to have somebody else talk about this, but I think some of those questions have been answered to my satisfaction. So when we do make a motion, though, I believe that there'll be additional direction associated with it that would just require an annual report. What I wrote down, please let me know if this works for you, Supervisor McPherson, is to have an annual report on the impacts and complaints, it seemed, because you talked about firewater, number of issues, but I think if we'd probably define it as impacts and complaints, then I think that that would provide discretion for the staff to come back to the report that works for them. That's correct. Okay, Supervisor Coonerty. I'm not sure where to go here, but I guess, I mean, in order, in the interests, let me make a comment, which is, we are on the cutting edge, other counties have moved forward, Monterey County moved forward in a very specific way, in a very targeted way, with only a few properties. We are trying to figure out how to recognize our historical grows and cannabis community and balance that with a new economic and regulatory reality. And so, I think what we all have to understand is that this is an interim step, and that any changes that we'll learn as we go, and the licensees we'll learn, and hopefully not too many will learn in a way that it causes them to have their license revoked, we will learn what regulations work and don't work, and then we can start to see whether we need to expand or contract this. So, I'm sort of, at this point, in the interest of getting this going and getting folks into compliance, I think I'm ready to move the staff recommendation with the idea that I'll entertain additional directions, but if people want to make changes, they can do so after adoption in order to, as we learn more. So, there's a motion for the recommended actions. One second, though. There's a second from supervisor, Caput, other, supervisor Leopold, I know you're interested in modifications, so. Yeah, I mean, I'm interested in getting to square one, which is that we have an ordinance that staff can start working on, that cultivators can start working on a license. I would like staff to work with the Farm Bureau on the question of the nursery definition and the possible nursery license type and to come back in August with a report back about the possibility of looking at having a nursery license type. I think that makes sense. That's a friendly, that's a friendly amendment. I would offer that as a friendly amendment. So, there's a friendly amendment been proposed, as a seconder, consider that friendly amendment to have that come back in August, just as a report back, to see whether there's action from that point. It's a report back, not a change back. It's not a requirement to flesh this out so we could actually decide what we wanted to do it. And as long as I understand my second still, it's a 400-foot setback. Correct. And we're going by the staff recommendation. Correct. Nothing added, nothing subtracted that I don't know about. Yeah, so theoretically. Nothing to do with tax. Yeah, normally that question's asked before you second that motion. But to be fair, the answer to all your questions is yes, but so are you okay with that, with the report back in August on that issue? Okay, so the friendly amendment's been added. Part number two? Yeah, there's a lot that I support in this ordinance and I think the 400-foot setback is not wise and I understand my colleague's suggestion that there's a lot that we don't know. But I would say that where we don't know, we should look at our existing practices and try to follow them. And if we would follow our existing practices, we would say can't be worse than pesticides and they have a 200-foot buffer. And so I would do that, but I'm not sensing that there's support on the board to do that. So if I vote for this ordinance, I will grudgingly accept that and hope that we get a report back that maybe we could look to modifying that to something that's actually reasonable. We have a motion and a second. I'd like to ensure that Supervisor McPherson's request for an annual report on the impacts and complaints, including odor, fire, water, a number of other issues he raised is something that's also a part, friendly amendment? That's a friendly amendment. You're okay with the annual report? I just want to say, I agree. I'm grudgingly going along with this whole thing too, just to make it come to an end. And I'd like to make a friendly amendment based on Council's comments that in the second, as part of the resolution, the BMOP has the language that the city of Santa Cruz is requesting, so it doesn't impact the ordinance, but it's specific to the resolution. So just confirming that that would not impact a first reading issue today. It would be handled in the resolution. We could tighten up the language as requested, correct? Yes. Correct. Okay, so would you consider a friendly amendment as well? Absolutely. Okay. A motion and a second with some minor modifications. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Thank you all. I'll give just a minute to clear the room. We actually do have a couple more items that I'm sure that you are all dying to hear about, but we have some pulled items from consent that we would like to address as well. I'm just going to go like this. Thank you guys. Thank you. All right, everybody, if we could quiet up a little bit. We've got some additional direction to go. Everybody, we have some additional items. We are going to move on to item 60.1, which is pulled item 29, which is to accept and file a quarterly report on measures to reduce the number of people held in jail before trials, recommended by the Chief Probation Officer. Mr. Alexander, you pulled this item. Yes, I did. I was able to peruse the light item agenda and really scrutinize that. They're submitting this for acceptance and I'm going to say this, just seeing the language and stuff and the lack of community involvement in shaping these policies. I would ask that we reject this and allow faith leaders and community leaders to add input into measures that will reduce if people held in jail before going through trial. I would say is that the probation department should have a measure of control where they have a site and release. They can release people that aren't probation and release them. And not only that, but then also the jail. The jail needs to have a site and release also program. So when people are coming through there, when they arrested me at the G.A. office, you know how long I stayed in jail and they told me I was going to be site and release. It took me 12 hours. So it just showed me how unaffected they were. They released me at like two o'clock in the morning with no buses and nothing just left outside. So I would say is that the report is not adequate because there's no community involvement in the report. And light item 30, are we on the number 30? No, no. Okay, sorry, sorry. All right, so we have to take this item on its own. So is there anybody else who'd like to address us on this item? Item pulled 29, which is now 60.1. Seeing none, we'll close that item and bring it back to the board. Move approval. Second. A motion from Coonerty. A second from Leopold. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. We'll move on to item 30, which is now item 60.2, which is an acceptance file report on the recommendations contained in the jail utilization study report that's recommended by the sheriff corner, Mr. Alexander, you pulled this item? Yes, once again, I read the report. And I wanna inform members of the public there's no community involvement. So we got the sheriff, we got the probation and it does have language where the court, it was very important that the presiding judge participate in this because in Santa Clara County, they have a just as a public safety meeting where members of the public can try to at least weigh in. When there's no community involvement, these once again, functionary bureaucrats are drafting up these policies that don't really help members of the public. What it actually does, this is the clever way of the slave management, people of the emissary population that are just being managed here, managed there and just being mistreated. And these policies are not really designed to help the people. We need community leaders, we need faith leaders to help shape these policies. So I'm asking to reject this policy and I'm asking for members of the public to push up on the County Board of Supervisors with moral force and ask them to do the right thing. Thank you. Thank you. I think we need like to address this on this pulled item. Move approval. Second. Seeing none, we'll move back to the board. We have a motion from Supervisor Coonerty, a second from Supervisor Leopold. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. We move on to the third pulled item, which was pulled 34. Now 60.3, ratify authorization for submittal of grant application to the Central California Alliance for Health and the amount of $300,000 to offset costs of recruitment salaries and benefits for two full-time equivalent psychiatry positions and take related actions. As recommended by the Director of Health Services, Alexander. I do apologize. I pulled the wrong one, so I'll yield the floor. Thank you. Okay. Well, this item was approval. Does anybody like to address us on this item? Seeing none. Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Leopold, a second from Supervisor Coonerty. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. Now you pulled 35, which is 60.4, which is approve amendments to CalWorks Domestic Violence Prevention Contracts with Monarch Services. Reducing the contract amount by $10,000 for a new amount of $52,550 and with Walnut Avenue Family and Walnut and Women's Center, reducing the contract amount by $20,000 for a new total amount of $47,000 to align contract budgets with demand for services and take related actions, recommended by the Director of Human Services, Mr. Alexander. Yeah, yeah. When it comes to the emissary population that are depending on food stamps, because the CalWorks is people that are receiving the food stamps, when you got the Humanitarian Services, the Health Department working with this domestic violence issue, it's overlapping with the courts. The courts are already providing all these services and there's a lot of programs, community-based programs that are providing that and it just seems like the money is just, you know, I want to be honest with you, the Human Services Department is constantly in there just trying to hustle more money. Thank you. Is there anybody else who'd like to address this on this item? Seeing none, move back to the board. Move approval. Second. We have a motion for the recommended actions from Supervisor Coonerty, a second from Supervisor Leopold. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? Passes unanimously. The last item was item 36, which was now 60.5, which is approve amendment to the CalFresh Employment and Training Contract with Homeless Services Center, reducing the contract amount by $6,332 to a new amount of $181,712 to conform to available federal funds and take related actions, as recommended by Director of Human Services, Mr. Alexander. Yes, so once again, going back to the Human Services Department, these are humanitarian services that need to be provided, but when it comes to the Health, the Human Services Department and the Director, when it comes to helping the emissary population, they're exploiting the people with these brutal exploitations. They're actually having these programs, these providing employment readiness services, and the way they're gaining the people experience is having them go through this Catholic charity program to go clean graves. And the emissary population shouldn't be acclimating if you guys want to exploit them, or like Santa Clara County, paying the living wage, paying for failing wage so they can pull themselves up. I'm not knocking down the CFET, but when it comes to the Human Services for the homeless people and the people that are on GA is that they're abusing these programs by exploiting the people. Thank you. Thank you. Is there anybody else that'd like to address us? Just as a point of order moving forward, you could have made those comments during the consent calendar. It's your right to pull, but I just wanted to note that it didn't strike me that anything that you did was necessary for pulling the items. I do apologize. There's other civil society activists, for whatever reason, they were not able to show up. We did consult regarding these, and they said if I was here, they wouldn't be able to speak on it, but they're having trouble, so I do apologize. Okay. Thank you. Is there a motion? Second. We have a motion from Supervisor Coonerty, a second from Supervisor Leopold. All those in favor? Aye. Opposed? It passes unanimously. That will end today's meeting. I'd like to thank the Sentinel and the Community TV for covering, and we'll be back here on May 8th.