MONTEREY COUNTY — Monterey County Board of Supervisors narrowly voted Jan. 9 to make adjustments to its outside hashish cultivation pilot program, permitting growers to double their cover measurement and do away with a demand that made allow candidates turn out hashish was once cultivated at the assets previous to legalization in 2016.
The board has been looking to breathe existence into the sputtering native trade, which has observed a contraction amid falling costs that peaked in 2021 and festival from unregulated gross sales, which the closely regulated felony trade has failed to switch.
In the second one quarter of 2021, Monterey County recorded $20.4 million in taxable hashish gross sales. By way of the 3rd quarter of 2023, the remaining duration reported via the state, the quantity had fallen to about $16.5 million.
The state eradicated a cultivation tax in 2022 and the county lowered its personal cultivation tax in 2023 because the trade struggled. The county additionally slashed its hashish program price range remaining yr via 30% after its prices started to outpace its income, which was once about $3 million in 2023.
The overall ordinance will nonetheless wish to be crafted via county personnel after supervisors made adjustments to the unique advice introduced remaining Tuesday via hashish program supervisor Joann Iwamoto. It proposed permitting an mixture of 300,000 sq. ft of outside hashish cover in unincorporated spaces of the county and would come with a prohibit of 20,000 sq. ft in keeping with allow.
The present prohibit is 10,000 sq. ft of outside cover, a bunch that was once already larger two times as supervisors attempted to prop up the receding native trade. Whilst there is not any present mixture cap, there’s a requirement that out of doors growers supply evidence that that they had been approved to develop beneath the Compassionate Use Act of 1996, which arrange a felony framework for clinical marijuana.
Supervisors Chris Lopez and Luis Alejo, who adversarial the movement, mentioned that requirement made an mixture cap useless, because the choice of homes was once restricted.
Each supervisors expressed considerations concerning the have an effect on new outside cultivation places would have on neighbors of the homes. Alejo mentioned getting rid of the requirement to turn out prior cultivation took place at the assets would create a “unfastened for all.”
Manager Mary Adams, who, along side Lopez is a member of the county’s hashish committee, was once the one manager to fortify the adjustments proposed via county personnel. She mentioned the county’s present zoning procedure was once enough to stop the ungoverned rush on new allows that Alejo predicted.
“Our out of doors program in point of fact stays so difficult on account of the limitation and the crimson tape that we put folks via with a view to turn out to be approved within the county,” Adams mentioned.
However after Manager Glenn Church expressed reluctance, Adams amended the proposal to permit an mixture of 140,000 sq. ft of cover within the county, with a person cap of 20,000 sq. ft. She introduced every other modification to incorporate apartments within the record of homes that can not be inside of 1,000 ft of an out of doors cultivation operation.
The proposal was once authorized 3-2, with Lopez and Alejo balloting no.
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