The Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors is planning to impose a June 30 deadline for existing cannabis growers to get their business licenses or shut down operations.
The county cannabis ordinances have been amended several times over the years to respond to the impacts of the new industry.
The June 30 deadline is one of the amendments that will be decided by the supervisors at Tuesday’s meeting.
The county has about 222 acres of cannabis being grown by legal non-conforming operators, which are growers who claimed they were farming marijuana prior to 2016 for medical purposes, and were allowed to keep growing while the county developed and implemented its commercial cannabis ordinances.
The supervisors already set a June deadline for operators without permits to shut down, and this deadline will now apply to operators with permits, but without business licenses.
This won’t apply to legal non-conforming growers in the Carpinteria Valley, where the majority of odor complaints and nuisance issues are concentrated, since that area has not hit its acreage cap yet.
As of November, there was about twice as much cannabis being grown by operators who don’t have a county-issued permit and license than by those who do.
There were about 250 acres of active grows from licensed cultivators, and the legal non-conforming operators with and without permits added up to 515 acres of cultivation countywide.
Another proposed ordinance change on Tuesday’s agenda is to stop counting processing facilities as cultivation acreage for the county’s caps of 186 acres for the Carpinteria Valley and 1,575 acres for the rest of the county.
About 9 acres of processing area is included in permitted projects so far, and the county wants more of it so processing tax dollars stay local.
“Over the past year, staff has received feedback from business license applicants that they did not include processing activities in their projects because it would increase the time to obtain permit approval and the ability to make it into the acreage cap,” according to a staff report from the County Executive Office.
The county reported multiple financial quarters of increasing, higher-than-expected tax revenues until mid-2021, when it reported a 45% decrease compared to the previous year.
In January, the supervisors increased business license fees for cannabis operations.
The Chapter 50 cannabis licensing ordinance also has rules for approved projects to change ownership, and the proposed language says new owners “must be properly vetted and reviewed before approval is given for the transfer.”
Land-use entitlement permits are tied to the project properties, while business licenses are tied to project operators, according to the county.
Tuesday’s Board of Supervisors meeting starts at 9 a.m. at the County Administration Building at 105 E. Anapamu St. in Santa Barbara.
Members of the public can attend in person at the fourth floor board hearing room or watch remotely on Channel 20, through the county website or the county’s YouTube page.
— Noozhawk managing editor Giana Magnoli can be reached at gmagnoli@noozhawk.com. Follow Noozhawk on Twitter: @noozhawk, @NoozhawkNews and @NoozhawkBiz. Connect with Noozhawk on Facebook.
