KPMG presented a report on the cannabis permitting process to the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, along with a list of recommended actions to speed up the process.
In 2018, the supervisors adopted a series of ordinances that regulate commercial cannabis operations within the county’s unincorporated areas. The ordinances categorized cannabis operations into eight permit types.
However, people who had already been growing cannabis legally before the ordinances were adopted were allowed to keep growing while they applied for the new permits.
That upset residents who were frustrated with the odors caused by the marijuana farms, but the board and county staff said they could not enforce any operators acting out of compliance until the permits were fully in effect.
KPMG along with the County Executive Office suggested five main policy actions to help the permitting process run more smoothly. First, staff recommended utilizing Accela, government software, for the business license process. The software is used within the Planning and Development Department and would allow the information to be shared among all of the different application processes, according to staff.
Staff also recommended establishing requirements for digital submission and review of applications. The business licensing process was not utilizing the same planning and development process for digital submissions, so by establishing that it would streamline the licensing process and reduce the cycle time of reviews.
Staff suggested starting the business licensing process alongside the land use process to allow concurrent processing of both permits, having a direct impact on reducing the length of the application process, they said.
KPMG also asked the supervisors to establish requirements for resubmittals and acceptance of applications. It was a consistent concern that when applications were received and feedback was provided, the customer would only partially address the feedback and then the timer would reset.
Consequently, planners could not review the applications in a “first-in, first-out” style, and it would cause stagnation in some cases. If planners work with applicants to resubmit all their information at once, the applications can move forward more efficiently, staff said.
Staff will continue working to add as much information to the application as possible so that customers can know what to expect beforehand and will encounter fewer problems later in the process.
A cannabis-based webpage with clear instructions and expectations for customers is being developed, according to Lisa Plowman, Planning and Development director. That will lead to better-proposed projects, she said, because people will be able to address the problems with their applications in advance.
The supervisors were relatively pleased with the report and said they thought that the recommended actions would help smooth out the bumps in the application process.
“This is another great work product from KPMG, and I think it’s going to really help beyond just cannabis,” Fourth District Supervisor Peter Adam said.
“I really applaud you for bringing the business license and the land use permit together,” Third District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said. “I think that’s going to make a huge difference.”
— Noozhawk staff writer Jade Martinez-Pogue can be reached at jmartinez-pogue@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
