The lefty majority on the SLO County Board of Supervisors is on a tear, reversing policies created by the once-conservative majority, righting wrongs, and sparking fear into the hearts of every righty-tighty in the county.
The dreaded and much-maligned Patten redistricting map that screwed the county into the future whether it exists or not? Gone. Independent redistricting commission? On the table. Integrating the county back into the Integrated Waste Management Authority it left in such a huff? Back on the table. Correcting the mistakes made on the Paso Robles groundwater sustainability agency? Happening. The potential for reinstating some sort of inclusionary housing ordinance to stimulate affordable housing development? It’s a possibility!
Oh no! Uber conservatives everywhere are shaking in their well-worn boots.
Go, go, go!
Currently in the majority’s sights? The county’s conundrum of a cannabis ordinance. A piece of policy designed to strangle the cannabis industry’s chances of getting off the ground in SLO County and preventing the county from accruing any meaningful revenue to pay for its department of cannabis enforcers, judges, and tax collectors.
Dawn Ortiz-Legg—the county’s business-minded 3rd District supervisor—didn’t hold back in her summation of the cannabis ordinance’s current state.
“This ordinance is the most disastrous ordinance I think that anybody could possibly write in regard to trying to help a business thrive,” Ortiz-Legg said at the supervisors’ Sept. 26 meeting. “There’s more than just a couple of cleanups, so this is a long conversation in regard to how we can go about really recovering the revenues we’re losing and we can actually recoup the investment the general fund has made.”
Shots fired!
She was talking specifically to the conservative hangers-on sitting next to her: 1st District Supervisor John Peschong and 5th District Supervisor Debbie Arnold, who, together with former 4th District Supervisor Lynn Compton, designed it.
Arnold said she wasn’t thinking about business when it came to cannabis. Because why would you regulate business? She was regulating a drug! Thinking of the children! Worried about local residents! Obviously.
“You’re not the only industry that has a really difficult time and a lengthy process to get through before you’re operational in this county,” she told cannabis business operators who complained about the county’s regulations on their industry. “It isn’t just about cannabis.”
But it is, Debbie. Your beef is with cannabis and all the hippies who partake in that particular paradise. Your other beefs include regulations placed on every other industry in the county, including water restrictions on farmers using water from the quickly disappearing Paso Robles Groundwater Basin.
She’s worried about what law enforcement will do it the county allows mobile dispensaries to deliver for two more hours every day, until 10 p.m. Oh the humanity!
She’s not worried about the people who drive all the way out to her winery near the Pozo Saloon to taste their way through alcoholic beverages before getting on Highway 58 to speed back into civilization. The same goes for the 400-plus wineries in rural areas of this county. I don’t hear her concerns that law enforcement will be “spread too thin” about that, an industry that arguably has a chokehold on SLO County and a substance with arguably way more serious consequences than cannabis.
You know who else wants you to think of the children? Mike Brown from the Coalition of Labor Agriculture and Business. Bruce Jones, who lost his sure victory in the 2nd District to Bruce Gibson by 13 votes. Both mentioned “the children” in their rants against cannabis on Sept. 26.
When in doubt, obviously, lean on the children! Cough, cough, all you yay-hoos out there who can’t get past your biases about the LGBTQ-plus community and are heaping that bigotry and fear on local school districts and libraries. Get over yourselves!
Peschong is also thinking of the children. After a visit to Boulder and Denver in Colorado, and a chat with the local judge, he’s got his cards stacked against weed, man. Schizophrenia? According to the judge, it’s increased by 17 percent because of marijuana use in middle school students at one local school district. How did they figure that? He didn’t give specifics.
You know what’s weird? I couldn’t find data that specific and significant in any studies of schizophrenia and marijuana.
The two are connected. Extremely heavy marijuana use is associated with early onset of schizophrenia in high school students, but the studies are ongoing.
Unsurprisingly, the county’s cannabis ordinance has choked the industry out to the point where it can’t pay for the county department that’s in charge of it. Revenues are less than expected, and the county’s general fund is helping with the shortfall.
It costs the county $1.5 million to run that program. SLO County made a little more than $500,000 off industry taxes in the 2022-23 fiscal year.
Brick-and-mortar storefront dispensaries can help with that, The Source mobile dispensary owner Shawn Bean said in a letter he submitted to supervisors.
Grover Beach made enough off cannabis tax revenue to pay for the county’s program in both 2020-21 and 2021-22, bringing in $2.4 million and $1.5 million, respectively, from the city’s four brick-and-mortar dispensaries and other industry businesses operating in the city. It encapsulates 15 percent of the city’s revenue and is helping pay for road repairs, sidewalk improvements, and the Police Department.
I haven’t heard any groaning from the Grover Beach Police Department about being stretched too thin. Δ
The Shredder’s also on a tear. Send targets to shredder@newtimesslo.com.
This article appears in Oct 5-12, 2023.
