Pubdate: Thu, 25 Feb 2016
Source: Chico Enterprise-Record (CA)
Copyright: 2016 Chico Enterprise-Record
Contact:  http://www.chicoer.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/861
Note: Letters from newspaper's circulation area receive publishing priority
Author: Ryan Olson

LOCAL GROUP CHALLENGES RECENT BUTTE COUNTY DECISIONS ON MEDICAL 
MARIJUANA, RIGHT TO FARM

Oroville - A local group is seeking a vote on recent changes to Butte 
County's medical marijuana cultivation rules and right to farm ordinance.

The Inland Cannabis Farmers Association submitted about twice as many 
signatures as needed to challenge the Board of Supervisors' Jan. 26 
votes on the ordinances.

As a result of the petition, the ordinance changes will not go into 
effect as scheduled today until the matter is resolved.

County public information officer Casey Hatcher said the old rules 
remain in place and will be enforced.

"Stay in the box. Stay in your square footage," Hatcher said.

The group had 30 days to gather at least 6,177 valid signatures for 
each petition - equal to 10 percent of the votes cast for governor in 
the 2014 gubernatorial election.

About 13,000 signatures were gathered in 18 days, according to 
Jessica MacKenzie, the group's director. She said the petition 
signers were a diverse crowd, including those concerned about 
government overreach.

"If they want to make a significant change to it, they've got to take 
it to voters," MacKenzie said.

MacKenzie and six supporters went to the County Administration 
Building in Oroville to turn in the petitions Wednesday afternoon. 
After the board clerk counted the petition pages, county employees 
loaded the seven boxes into a vehicle to drive over to the Hall of Records.

The Clerk-Recorder's Office now has 30 business days to verify the 
signatures and provide the results to the Board of Supervisors at 
their next regular meeting.

If the petitions are deemed insufficient, the board doesn't need to 
take action and the ordinances go into effect. If the petitions are 
sufficient, the board may either repeal the ordinances in their 
entirety or submit the ordinances to voters.

Supervisors may either call for a special election or schedule it for 
the next available general election.

Items must be scheduled at least 88 days before a general election. 
To qualify for the June 7 election, the board would have to act at 
its March 8 meeting.

Given the time constraints, it appears the matters would be placed on 
the Nov. 8 general election ballot, should the board choose to submit 
the ordinances to voters.

Hatcher said the county was committed to following the petition process.

"The county certainly wants to make sure we follow the process the 
public has a right to," she said.

The county board had sought to make changes to the marijuana 
cultivation ordinance, approved as Measure A by 60 percent of voters 
in 2014. At its core, the ordinance sets growing area dimensions 
based on lot size. Outdoor grow sizes range from 50 square feet for 
lots between a half-acre and 5 acres to 150 square feet for 
properties larger than 10 acres.

At dispute are changes unanimously approved by supervisors after the 
first year of enforcement. Changes included clarifying allowable 
garden sizes, particularly for indoor gardens, and specifying that 
people may have smaller grow areas on larger properties if they don't 
have the sufficient number of doctor's recommendations for larger gardens.

Many of the changes were geared to combine the citation and nuisance 
abatement process into one. It also changed what code enforcement 
needed to prove at a nuisance abatement hearing and allowed 
administrative penalties to be recovered through a lien.

County staff issued 894 citations in 2015. There were $2.93 million 
in fines, but less than 6 percent had been collected as of January.

The $171,175 in collected fines was used to help offset enforcement 
costs totalling $375,996. The enforcement cost was 57 percent of what 
county officials budgeted.

The group's petition also changes the supervisors' unanimous vote to 
amend the county's right to farm ordinance to add that marijuana 
cultivation wasn't an agricultural operation. The ordinance limits 
when proper ag operations may be deemed a nuisance under local rules.

Following the passage of three laws last year, the state deems 
medical cannabis as an agricultural commodity.

County Counsel Bruce Alpert has said the county made the change out 
of an abundance of caution. If marijuana is determined to fall under 
the right to farm ordinance, it could come in conflict with the 
cultivation ordinance - which treats violations as public nuisances.

MacKenzie reiterated the group's position that marijuana wasn't 
protected in the earlier right to farm rules because the rules 
respect federal laws, including those that prohibit cannabis.

"There's no reason for them to add an exclusion to the right to farm 
ordinance, other than to judge us," she said.

While the group is seeking a referendum on the two ordinance changes, 
MacKenzie said they were also considering a local initiative to 
utilize the new state laws that enact a framework regulating 
cultivation, processing and distribution of medical marijuana. At the 
same time, local jurisdictions still have the ability to add stricter 
rules, taxes and fees.

She said the group has offered to work with supervisors on a 
committee on changing county rules, but no supervisor has responded.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom