Sonoma County Gazette July 2018

JULY 2018
County Budget Totals $1.68 Billion ~ 14
CAR SHOWS all Summer Long:
When & Where ~ 20
Eat Dessert First:
Guide to Locally-owned Frozen Dessert Shops ~ 18
Vacation at Home
Destination Ideas ~ start on PAGE 16
Your HOME TOWN NEWS: pgs 30 - 45 EVERYTHING to DO Calendar: pgs 52 - 71
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CANNABIS
HOUSING
Who Gets What,
When & How?
How close is
too Close?
By Vesta Copestakes
Sonoma County is in the midst of
By Vesta Copestakes
The devastation of our October Fires
refining our Cannabis Ordinance, addressing where it can be grown, & defining the permitting and taxing process, etc. to bring this Black Market business into compliance with all other legal businesses. When legality becomes national, banks will get involved and one of the biggest hurdles to conducting a legitimate business will be out of the way.
But it’s a PLANT that has to be
GROWN, and one of the greatest
is having an impact on decades of land-use and transportation planning. 5,000 plus homes got destroyed in
the fire and now the county wants to build more than 30,000 new homes
The plant is amazingly flexible
in terms of its many uses. From recreational use, to fiber for ropes, paper, clothing, etc. and medical uses that span pain relief to cures. No wonder competitors want it to remain illegal. It’s easy to grow and useful
in so many ways that it competes for market share in multiple categories.
The word RENTAL is associated with AFFORDABLE HOUSING. This is where I feel it’s time to speak up and encourage people to be
challenges is WHERE?
We live where miles of hills are
There’s a push to open protected lands and community separators
to development. This goes against what our county has worked so long to achieve. The urgency people feel now could be more DE-structive
than CON-structive in the long run. Evaluating the potential consequences of decisions made today is essential
covered in vineyards, but no one has to worry about people stealing grapes because wine grapes require a complicated process to become an alcoholic beverage. Cannabis can be ripped off and with ease.
if we are meet the present - and the future - with solutions that don’t turn around and bite us in the long run.
CANNABIS cont’d on page 10
Within the last 20 years housing prices have risen and plummeted.
to replace what was lost, and ease the high price of housing by changing the supply vs. demand ratio.
less reactionary to today’s housing CRISIS (another over-used word) and consider the FUTURE while trying to solve problems in the present.
HOUSING cont’d on page 11