Ron Strider
Well-Known Member
Brad Wolfman's farm lies in the rolling green hills below Angels Camp. A series of increasingly narrow roads lead to his operation, on 20 acres amid oaks and meadows that greeted gold seekers nearly 170 years ago. But its future is in doubt.
The 47-year-old Wolfman is a marijuana farmer in Calaveras County, where in less than two years cannabis has become a volatile, divisive and very public issue.
Best known for gold, jumping frogs and, more recently, tasty Zinfandels, this rural county (population 45,000), is a battleground in California's marijuana wars.
Now, according to the county Planning Department, as many as 1,600 commercial marijuana grows – more than two-thirds of them likely illegal – may now operate in Calaveras County. That's 1 for every 26 residents.
Which has a lot of those residents angry, scared and bewildered.
Early last year, the county adopted its own rules under Proposition 215, the medical marijuana initiative approved by California voters (but not those in Calaveras) in 1996. The county's farmers sell to dispensaries, most of them in urban areas.
Battles over grows have played out in a byzantine drama here, which has included: a devastating wildfire, a land rush, a county decision to legalize, a welter of conflicting ballot measures (only one to reverse legalization, and it didn't make it to a vote) and a voter revolt in November that upended the county Board of Supervisors, whose senior member has served only half a term.
When Wolfman began growing marijuana here more than 13 years ago, enforcement of state and federal marijuana laws was sporadic. An unwritten don't-ask-don't-tell code prevailed. That has all changed.
Farming cannabis in this Mother Lode county is now legal for registered growers. But if the new antimarijuana Board of Supervisors gets its way, then commercial cultivation could be banned – shutting down hundreds of growers given the green light just a year ago.
"Sure I'm scared," said Wolfman, a Contra Costa County transplant, as farmhands carted hundreds of 3-foot-high plants outside from high-watt grow houses for watering. "It's my livelihood, and now it's in jeopardy."
His application for commercial growing has been approved, and like a Napa vintner, he is attuned to the most minute needs of his crop. "Our weed's the best," he boasts of the Calaveras County product.
At stake is not only his financial future, but that of his wife and two children. His strategy? "Pay my taxes as fast as I can."
With a half-acre of marijuana under cultivation, he will later this month get a $44,000 "canopy tax" bill. Wolfman and about 570 more registered growers hope the tax's multimillion-dollar proceeds will be used to eradicate as many as 1,100 illegal farms – which they blame for virtually all of the county's marijuana-related problems.
Many of the legal farmers are Calaveras Cannabis Alliance members – who won't be mistaken for Cheech and Chong. They join Rotary and Lions clubs, are involved in schools and community organizations, and have given tens of thousands of dollars to area charities.
Meanwhile, illegal growers – those who did not apply for $5,000 cultivation permits during last year's window to do so, or were rejected – operate in the shadows.
"These are people who drink out of the river, crap in a hole and don't care about our community or the environment," said Supervisor Jack Garamendi, whose mid-county district includes nearly 70 percent of the county's growers. "Our goal is to get rid of them."
But his colleague, Supervisor Dennis Mills, elected in November along with two more pro-ban supervisors to the five-member board, wants to get rid of all growers.
"A lot of people in this county take the libertarian view – that as long as you don't infringe on the rights of your neighbors, you can do what you want," said Mills, who represents the Angels Camp area. "Well, neighbors here are being infringed on. There's mounting crime, noise, environmental damage and more."
Mills calls legalization "a great social experiment gone wrong."
Such is life in what some now call Cannabis County.
"Here in Calaveras, it's all cannabis all the time," said Garamendi, oldest son of Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove (Sacramento County), and now the board's only legalization advocate.
The county's bewildered citizenry is by turns lured by the multimillion-dollar infusion that marijuana could bring to the area's ailing economy and repulsed by lifestyle changes and crime – from barking dogs and speeding cars to robberies and murders – that have arrived with the influx of new marijuana growers.
The "social experiment" Mills cites was a legalization ordinance passed 4-1 last year by the previous county board. It was aimed at stemming the tide of illegal growers that flooded into Calaveras after the devastating Butte Fire in 2015.
That September blaze killed two people, destroyed 549 homes in Calaveras, burned more than 70,000 acres and spurred a "green rush." Lured by reports the climate was among the nation's best for farming weed, growers paid premium prices for blackened land.
"It's like there was a line at our door and we'd be calling out, 'Next!'" said Bill Schmiett, a real estate agent in the tiny enclave of Mountain Ranch.
Alarmed at the influx, but reckoning it was too late to shut the door, supervisors in February 2016 approved an "urgency ordinance" legalizing and regulating marijuana pending environmental review. The board set a May deadline for permit applications. Nearly 750 were received, generating $3.7 million in fees for the impoverished county.
But illegal growers continued to slip in past the post-deadline moratorium, correctly assuming the county did not have the resources to evict them. And, says the Planning Department, outlaw grows continue to multiply.
The current count:
- Legal farms (approved or still under review): 570.
- Illegal grows (never applied or rejected by county): From 600 to 1,100, pending a new round of satellite photos.
Residents in neighboring Tuolumne and Amador counties, which have banned commercial cannabis pending further study, are mystified by the drama next door. Many longtime Calaveras County residents aren't happy at all.
"It's not the same," said Barbara Cain, whose Mountain Ranch home of 18 years narrowly escaped the Butte Fire. "The cops are in and out all the time; there's noise, there's traffic. Parents here are worried about their children."
Calaveras County is conservative: The median age is 50; LBJ was the last Democratic presidential candidate its voters supported. Change is viewed with skepticism, as are newcomers – particularly those who haul in irrigation lines.
Voters in November voiced their discontent by electing three anticannabis supervisors, rejecting a broader legalization measure and approving the canopy tax – likely figuring that if the county must have marijuana, then it should wring some cash out of it.
More than 5,000 voters later signed petitions that qualified for the ballot an initiative banning all commercial cultivation. "Other counties see us as the best example of what not to do," griped Bill McManus, the initiative drive leader.
A legal challenge canceled a scheduled May 2017 vote, but Mills and two board colleagues are now carrying the torch: At their behest, the county staff has prepared a ban ordinance that could become law by fall.
It's a "scorched-earth" policy, said Garamendi, as it allows only the six-plant personal-use indoor grows OKd by the state's Proposition 64.
"There's a lot of reefer madness here," said Caz Tomaszewski, a 32-year-old Mokelumne Hill-area grower and Cannabis Alliance spokesman. "Our challenge is changing that negative perception."
Catherine Lambie has an idea: "Meet and Greet Your Local Grower." She plans to convene the event at a bar in West Point, a tiny former lumber town in the heart of Garamendi's marijuana-rich district.
"The growers' kids go to our school, they work at our vegetable garden and they're very involved in our community," said Lambie, director of the town's nonprofit Blue Mountain Coalition for Youth and Families. "I want people to meet them, to show they're not the horrible bandits some say they are."
What's more, they're bringing cash to Calaveras.
"Mountain Ranch has for years been the poorest town in one of the poorest counties in the state," said real estate agent Schmiett. "Now there's money here."
What's more, a University of the Pacific study (commissioned by the pro-marijuana owners of a Calaveras County hardware store) found that legal cultivation in 2016 contributed $340 million to the local economy. That's nearly twice the take from tourism, and much more than all other agricultural pursuits – timber, cattle, wine and more – combined.
Supervisor Mills debunks the study, claiming it's based on false information.
So is cannabis cultivation a train wreck? Or a gravy train? What Calaveras County does over the next few months may provide the answer and a guide for other California counties.
A ban is simple, understandable and seems to promise a return to the good ol' days. Also, a just-released, 240-page environmental report contends it would have fewer impacts (notably odors, traffic, habitat) than legalization.
But shutting down more than 1,600 marijuana farms won't come cheap. Even ban backers are vague as to funding.
Garamendi and most legal growers instead propose using proceeds from the canopy tax, which they say will generate from $7 million to $11 million, for a summer-long campaign to eradicate illegal farms. Mills, however, counters that the tax may generate no more than $2 million.
Consensus has proved elusive, but there is common ground here: All sides favor getting rid of illegal farms, so why not do that first?
County Planning Director Peter Maurer, putting a streamlined enforcement process in place (just 17 days between violation notice and eradication), says he'll be ready to go.
This would answer two key questions: Will crime indeed drop? And will legal marijuana farming then provide a major economic boost? If neither happens – and if the canopy-tax cash materializes – the board can shut down the legal grows, too.
A return to the good old days, however, is unlikely. Attitudes toward marijuana have changed: Although a county legalization initiative was defeated in November, 46 percent of county voters were in favor. And 47.4 percent backed Prop. 64, which legalized recreational marijuana statewide.
Although at sword's points, Garamendi and Mills agree on one thing: Calaveras County's all-consuming cannabis controversy is keeping the board from the real business of government.
"I'm looking forward to the day where marijuana grows are just another part of our county and we don't give them a second thought," said Garamendi.
Which, at this point, doesn't seem at all likely.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Battle over pot intensifies in Calaveras County - San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Chris Bateman |
Contact: How to contact the SF Chronicle newsroom - San Francisco Chronicle
Photo Credit: John Carl D'Annibale
Website: San Francisco Chronicle - Bay Area news, sports, tech, food - San Francisco Chronicle
The 47-year-old Wolfman is a marijuana farmer in Calaveras County, where in less than two years cannabis has become a volatile, divisive and very public issue.
Best known for gold, jumping frogs and, more recently, tasty Zinfandels, this rural county (population 45,000), is a battleground in California's marijuana wars.
Now, according to the county Planning Department, as many as 1,600 commercial marijuana grows – more than two-thirds of them likely illegal – may now operate in Calaveras County. That's 1 for every 26 residents.
Which has a lot of those residents angry, scared and bewildered.
Early last year, the county adopted its own rules under Proposition 215, the medical marijuana initiative approved by California voters (but not those in Calaveras) in 1996. The county's farmers sell to dispensaries, most of them in urban areas.
Battles over grows have played out in a byzantine drama here, which has included: a devastating wildfire, a land rush, a county decision to legalize, a welter of conflicting ballot measures (only one to reverse legalization, and it didn't make it to a vote) and a voter revolt in November that upended the county Board of Supervisors, whose senior member has served only half a term.
When Wolfman began growing marijuana here more than 13 years ago, enforcement of state and federal marijuana laws was sporadic. An unwritten don't-ask-don't-tell code prevailed. That has all changed.
Farming cannabis in this Mother Lode county is now legal for registered growers. But if the new antimarijuana Board of Supervisors gets its way, then commercial cultivation could be banned – shutting down hundreds of growers given the green light just a year ago.
"Sure I'm scared," said Wolfman, a Contra Costa County transplant, as farmhands carted hundreds of 3-foot-high plants outside from high-watt grow houses for watering. "It's my livelihood, and now it's in jeopardy."
His application for commercial growing has been approved, and like a Napa vintner, he is attuned to the most minute needs of his crop. "Our weed's the best," he boasts of the Calaveras County product.
At stake is not only his financial future, but that of his wife and two children. His strategy? "Pay my taxes as fast as I can."
With a half-acre of marijuana under cultivation, he will later this month get a $44,000 "canopy tax" bill. Wolfman and about 570 more registered growers hope the tax's multimillion-dollar proceeds will be used to eradicate as many as 1,100 illegal farms – which they blame for virtually all of the county's marijuana-related problems.
Many of the legal farmers are Calaveras Cannabis Alliance members – who won't be mistaken for Cheech and Chong. They join Rotary and Lions clubs, are involved in schools and community organizations, and have given tens of thousands of dollars to area charities.
Meanwhile, illegal growers – those who did not apply for $5,000 cultivation permits during last year's window to do so, or were rejected – operate in the shadows.
"These are people who drink out of the river, crap in a hole and don't care about our community or the environment," said Supervisor Jack Garamendi, whose mid-county district includes nearly 70 percent of the county's growers. "Our goal is to get rid of them."
But his colleague, Supervisor Dennis Mills, elected in November along with two more pro-ban supervisors to the five-member board, wants to get rid of all growers.
"A lot of people in this county take the libertarian view – that as long as you don't infringe on the rights of your neighbors, you can do what you want," said Mills, who represents the Angels Camp area. "Well, neighbors here are being infringed on. There's mounting crime, noise, environmental damage and more."
Mills calls legalization "a great social experiment gone wrong."
Such is life in what some now call Cannabis County.
"Here in Calaveras, it's all cannabis all the time," said Garamendi, oldest son of Rep. John Garamendi, D-Walnut Grove (Sacramento County), and now the board's only legalization advocate.
The county's bewildered citizenry is by turns lured by the multimillion-dollar infusion that marijuana could bring to the area's ailing economy and repulsed by lifestyle changes and crime – from barking dogs and speeding cars to robberies and murders – that have arrived with the influx of new marijuana growers.
The "social experiment" Mills cites was a legalization ordinance passed 4-1 last year by the previous county board. It was aimed at stemming the tide of illegal growers that flooded into Calaveras after the devastating Butte Fire in 2015.
That September blaze killed two people, destroyed 549 homes in Calaveras, burned more than 70,000 acres and spurred a "green rush." Lured by reports the climate was among the nation's best for farming weed, growers paid premium prices for blackened land.
"It's like there was a line at our door and we'd be calling out, 'Next!'" said Bill Schmiett, a real estate agent in the tiny enclave of Mountain Ranch.
Alarmed at the influx, but reckoning it was too late to shut the door, supervisors in February 2016 approved an "urgency ordinance" legalizing and regulating marijuana pending environmental review. The board set a May deadline for permit applications. Nearly 750 were received, generating $3.7 million in fees for the impoverished county.
But illegal growers continued to slip in past the post-deadline moratorium, correctly assuming the county did not have the resources to evict them. And, says the Planning Department, outlaw grows continue to multiply.
The current count:
- Legal farms (approved or still under review): 570.
- Illegal grows (never applied or rejected by county): From 600 to 1,100, pending a new round of satellite photos.
Residents in neighboring Tuolumne and Amador counties, which have banned commercial cannabis pending further study, are mystified by the drama next door. Many longtime Calaveras County residents aren't happy at all.
"It's not the same," said Barbara Cain, whose Mountain Ranch home of 18 years narrowly escaped the Butte Fire. "The cops are in and out all the time; there's noise, there's traffic. Parents here are worried about their children."
Calaveras County is conservative: The median age is 50; LBJ was the last Democratic presidential candidate its voters supported. Change is viewed with skepticism, as are newcomers – particularly those who haul in irrigation lines.
Voters in November voiced their discontent by electing three anticannabis supervisors, rejecting a broader legalization measure and approving the canopy tax – likely figuring that if the county must have marijuana, then it should wring some cash out of it.
More than 5,000 voters later signed petitions that qualified for the ballot an initiative banning all commercial cultivation. "Other counties see us as the best example of what not to do," griped Bill McManus, the initiative drive leader.
A legal challenge canceled a scheduled May 2017 vote, but Mills and two board colleagues are now carrying the torch: At their behest, the county staff has prepared a ban ordinance that could become law by fall.
It's a "scorched-earth" policy, said Garamendi, as it allows only the six-plant personal-use indoor grows OKd by the state's Proposition 64.
"There's a lot of reefer madness here," said Caz Tomaszewski, a 32-year-old Mokelumne Hill-area grower and Cannabis Alliance spokesman. "Our challenge is changing that negative perception."
Catherine Lambie has an idea: "Meet and Greet Your Local Grower." She plans to convene the event at a bar in West Point, a tiny former lumber town in the heart of Garamendi's marijuana-rich district.
"The growers' kids go to our school, they work at our vegetable garden and they're very involved in our community," said Lambie, director of the town's nonprofit Blue Mountain Coalition for Youth and Families. "I want people to meet them, to show they're not the horrible bandits some say they are."
What's more, they're bringing cash to Calaveras.
"Mountain Ranch has for years been the poorest town in one of the poorest counties in the state," said real estate agent Schmiett. "Now there's money here."
What's more, a University of the Pacific study (commissioned by the pro-marijuana owners of a Calaveras County hardware store) found that legal cultivation in 2016 contributed $340 million to the local economy. That's nearly twice the take from tourism, and much more than all other agricultural pursuits – timber, cattle, wine and more – combined.
Supervisor Mills debunks the study, claiming it's based on false information.
So is cannabis cultivation a train wreck? Or a gravy train? What Calaveras County does over the next few months may provide the answer and a guide for other California counties.
A ban is simple, understandable and seems to promise a return to the good ol' days. Also, a just-released, 240-page environmental report contends it would have fewer impacts (notably odors, traffic, habitat) than legalization.
But shutting down more than 1,600 marijuana farms won't come cheap. Even ban backers are vague as to funding.
Garamendi and most legal growers instead propose using proceeds from the canopy tax, which they say will generate from $7 million to $11 million, for a summer-long campaign to eradicate illegal farms. Mills, however, counters that the tax may generate no more than $2 million.
Consensus has proved elusive, but there is common ground here: All sides favor getting rid of illegal farms, so why not do that first?
County Planning Director Peter Maurer, putting a streamlined enforcement process in place (just 17 days between violation notice and eradication), says he'll be ready to go.
This would answer two key questions: Will crime indeed drop? And will legal marijuana farming then provide a major economic boost? If neither happens – and if the canopy-tax cash materializes – the board can shut down the legal grows, too.
A return to the good old days, however, is unlikely. Attitudes toward marijuana have changed: Although a county legalization initiative was defeated in November, 46 percent of county voters were in favor. And 47.4 percent backed Prop. 64, which legalized recreational marijuana statewide.
Although at sword's points, Garamendi and Mills agree on one thing: Calaveras County's all-consuming cannabis controversy is keeping the board from the real business of government.
"I'm looking forward to the day where marijuana grows are just another part of our county and we don't give them a second thought," said Garamendi.
Which, at this point, doesn't seem at all likely.
News Moderator: Ron Strider 420 MAGAZINE ®
Full Article: Battle over pot intensifies in Calaveras County - San Francisco Chronicle
Author: Chris Bateman |
Contact: How to contact the SF Chronicle newsroom - San Francisco Chronicle
Photo Credit: John Carl D'Annibale
Website: San Francisco Chronicle - Bay Area news, sports, tech, food - San Francisco Chronicle
