November 23, 2022, Sarah Reith — The cannabis department is moving from the county administrative campus on Low Gap Road in Ukiah to the Justice Center in Willits. The new office will open Monday, with counter service.

But the department is still short-staffed. At last week’s cannabis department meeting, Director Kristin Nevedal said the majority of permits were issued without environmental review, which might not be completed until 2024.

“CEQA is not occurring,” she said. “And it will not occur until we have contract planning staff trained and working through permits. Depending on what that timing looks like, and how quickly we can move through applications, we may not fully review CEQA documents until 2024.”

Nevedal calculated that each application review takes 200 hours of staff time, though the hours have not been tracked by software. With the ability to track the time more precisely, fees are likely to go up.

“Two hundred hours is an estimate, largely because there have not been time studies conducted,” she conceded. “So we’re estimating it will take 200 hours to do an application review, a CEQA review, and potentially conduct any necessary inspection…we will be billing $600 and some odd change…to the permit holder.” When the department moves to another system, she added, “We will be doing time tracking. And then if time starts to run over, we will be billing applicants and permit holders directly based on the weighted hourly rate, which right now is $90 an hour, but may be more for consultants that have your application. So until we have time tracking software in place (which is not currently the case) we will not be billing extra hours, although I can say that we are hemorrhaging funds because our permit fees do not cover the extensive review that’s occurring by the department.”

The department’s plan for prioritizing review of license applications starts with provisional licenses that will be subject for renewal in July of next year, and places those that are subject to renewal later in the year further back in the line. As to whether or not CEQA review can take place concurrently with renewing the provisional licenses, Nevedal revisited the need for more help.

“Our goal is to meet the deadlines for folks who are renewing those provisional licenses on or after July first,” Nevedal said. “A lot of it really depends on if we can get a full twenty or more contract planners in place by early January and really start moving through these applications. We are not willing to jeopardize applicants’ renewals by taking on CEQA review that doesn’t need to happen. I know folks are anxious. I’m anxious to get into those CEQA document reviews as well.”

The county had a contract with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for just over $230,000 to conduct site specific habitat reviews for sensitive species. That contract expired on November second. Details about arrangements for upcoming reviews are sparse.

“The contract with CDFW and the contract I mentioned earlier,” Nevedal said before offering an update; “we have some meetings scheduled to square away all of those items including invoicing and restarting the referral process, so I cannot give you a timeline for when the new contract will come forward to the Board of Supervisors until we have been able to meet whe (C)DFW on next steps on reinstating reviews and receiving the invoice for the reviews that have already occurred.”

Long-time cannabis advocate Paul Hansbury laid out a key component of the entire situation. “I’m a little bit confused,” he began. “It seems to me that we’re looking at things to renew the provisional, instead of moving forward to an annual. So I guess what you’re doing by July first is saying that you have a complete submission but no review. But if you had a review you could submit that to them, and then we could just skip the renewal of the provisional, and go directly to the annual, if it were already reviewed. So I’m just wondering what’s holding up the review process.”

Nevedal told him it was a combination of staffing, direction from the Board of Supervisors, and state requirements. “I have limited staff,” she said. “We’re working on these contractors. And we are prioritizing keeping as many people in this program as possible. Which means we have to do our best and make sure that we have a strategy in place to ensure that folks are eligible for provisional license renewal. Folks cannot cultivate without both local authorization and a state license. So in order to meet the Board’s directive of keeping as many people in this program as possible, we must ensure folks are eligible for provisional license renewal. If folks fall out of those provisional licenses, it’s going to be really hard for them to stay in the program because they’ll lose their ability to cultivate. I know folks are anxious to transition into an annual. You have until the end of 2025 to transition from your provisional to yo...

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