I almost felt bad for the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on Dec. 14 when they had to decide on yet another appeal of an approved cannabis cultivation project.
Only this time, the decision before them felt like it had higher stakes. Former Lt. Gov. Abel Maldonado was on one side, and the Millers who own Bien Nacido Vineyards were on the other.
“It’s a clash of the titans,” 3rd District Supervisor Joan Hartmann said. “Yes, two of our counties’ most illustrious families are at odds over what else? Cannabis.”
With the legacy of Helios Dayspring dangling over their heads, and his permitted cannabis cultivation operation on which he did unpermitted things, and the reality that the county’s cannabis cultivation permitting process is a clunky and long event—according to 5th District County Supervisor Steve Lavagnino the county loses $1 million in revenue annually because of its slow-ass process—supervisors had the choice of pissing off one big name with lots of influence or another.
Maldonado is all in on cannabis. He’s grown hemp over the last few years as well as medical marijuana on the property in question, and he’s ready to jump into the recreational cannabis industry with two feet and 48 acres of cultivation. But his neighbors at Bien Nacido aren’t so keen on his scheme.
The Millers’ list of grievances with the project is long: It doesn’t agree with this county plan or that code. It violates the Williamson Act. The county’s programmatic environmental impact report for cannabis cultivation isn’t good enough. Maldonado is stealing water from the Millers and the Cuyama River, is polluting the air with cannabis smell and taint, and he illegally created an illegal river crossing. Whoa. Anything else, guys?
Well, county staff went through that little list of “issues” and answered with a long document, which, simply put, says, “Not even!”
Maldonado accused Marshall Miller of saying that the only things CannaRios (the cannabis project) could do to make him happy with the project would be to move the mountain behind Maldonado’s house and the Pacific Ocean. Inconceivable!
Lavagnino tried to do a little compliment sandwich for the Millers.
“Bien Nacido wines are awesome,” he said.
But … ?
“The strategy seems to be: Keep asking for stuff, for concessions, and then when those get made, say there wasn’t enough time to review it and then ask for more,” Lavagnino said.
At least Maldonado did change some of the project components in what he called an attempt to be neighborly, but a certain Starbucks in Santa Maria is choosing not to change anything about its project in response to the Santa Maria Planning Commission’s requests.
This Starbucks on Main Street wants to put in a drive-through, but its neighbors don’t want it, citing traffic issues—like accidents and illegal U-turns—and commissioners agreed that traffic is a major problem. Project representative Greg Fick was apoplectic at the Dec. 15 commission meeting.
“I’m not sure how we can arbitrarily make a finding that more traffic is generated because of this project,” he said. “At the end of the day, there’s not much we can do” to change the project.
Welp. Then, I guess you don’t get to have a project.
The canary is clunky and long. Send thoughts to canary@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Dec 23-30, 2021.