On July 16th, my colleagues and I directed staff to develop a number of measures to significantly restrict cannabis cultivation in Santa Barbara County, including a cap on county-wide cannabis cultivation acreage. The acreage cap is proposed to be based on the number of acres in the application pipeline as of July 9th. Such a cap will limit commercial cannabis operations to approximately 1,500 acres out of roughly 765,000 acres used for agriculture county-wide (in addition to the 186 acre cap that already exists in Carpinteria).
Along with the cap, my colleagues and I also directed staff to draft ordinance amendments related to odor control and the land use permitting & business licensing processes, including:
· Requiring business license applicants to demonstrate the effectiveness of odor control systems prior to receiving business licenses
· Implementing a system for the simultaneous processing of business license and land use entitlement applications, to expedite the installation of odor control technology for greenhouse operations
· Increasing odor nuisance enforcement by the Office of County Counsel
· Withdrawing the County’s local authorization for operators with expired state temporary permits
Furthermore, the Board also directed the Planning Commission to explore options for preventing impacts to residential communities and agricultural operations near the urban-rural boundary line county-wide.
