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November 23, 2022, Sarah Reith \u2014 The cannabis department is moving from the county administrative campus on Low Gap Road in Ukiah to the Justice Center in Willits. The new office will open Monday, with counter service.\n\nBut the department is still short-staffed. At last week\u2019s cannabis department meeting, Director Kristin Nevedal said the majority of permits were issued without environmental review, which might not be completed until 2024. \n\n\u201cCEQA is not occurring,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd it will not occur until we have contract planning staff trained and working through permits. Depending on what that timing looks like, and how quickly we can move through applications, we may not fully review CEQA documents until 2024.\u201d\n\nNevedal calculated that each application review takes 200 hours of staff time, though the hours have not been tracked by software. With the ability to track the time more precisely, fees are likely to go up.\n\n\u201cTwo hundred hours is an estimate, largely because there have not been time studies conducted,\u201d she conceded. \u201cSo we\u2019re estimating it will take 200 hours to do an application review, a CEQA review, and potentially conduct any necessary inspection\u2026we will be billing $600 and some odd change\u2026to the permit holder.\u201d When the department moves to another system, she added, \u201cWe will be doing time tracking. And then if time starts to run over, we will be billing applicants and permit holders directly based on the weighted hourly rate, which right now is $90 an hour, but may be more for consultants that have your application. So until we have time tracking software in place (which is not currently the case) we will not be billing extra hours, although I can say that we are hemorrhaging funds because our permit fees do not cover the extensive review that\u2019s occurring by the department.\u201d\n\nThe department\u2019s plan for prioritizing review of license applications starts with provisional licenses that will be subject for renewal in July of next year, and places those that are subject to renewal later in the year further back in the line. As to whether or not CEQA review can take place concurrently with renewing the provisional licenses, Nevedal revisited the need for more help.\n\n\u201cOur goal is to meet the deadlines for folks who are renewing those provisional licenses on or after July first,\u201d Nevedal said. \u201cA lot of it really depends on if we can get a full twenty or more contract planners in place by early January and really start moving through these applications. We are not willing to jeopardize applicants\u2019 renewals by taking on CEQA review that doesn\u2019t need to happen. I know folks are anxious. I\u2019m anxious to get into those CEQA document reviews as well.\u201d\n\nThe county had a contract with the California Department of Fish and Wildlife for just over $230,000 to conduct site specific habitat reviews for sensitive species. That contract expired on November second. Details about arrangements for upcoming reviews are sparse.\n\n\u201cThe contract with CDFW and the contract I mentioned earlier,\u201d Nevedal said before offering an update; \u201cwe have some meetings scheduled to square away all of those items including invoicing and restarting the referral process, so I cannot give you a timeline for when the new contract will come forward to the Board of Supervisors until we have been able to meet whe (C)DFW on next steps on reinstating reviews and receiving the invoice for the reviews that have already occurred.\u201d\n\nLong-time cannabis advocate Paul Hansbury laid out a key component of the entire situation. \u201cI\u2019m a little bit confused,\u201d he began. \u201cIt seems to me that we\u2019re looking at things to renew the provisional, instead of moving forward to an annual. So I guess what you\u2019re doing by July first is saying that you have a complete submission but no review. But if you had a review you could submit that to them, and then we could just skip the renewal of the provisional, and go directly to the annual, if it were already reviewed. So I\u2019m just wondering what\u2019s holding up the review process.\u201d\n\nNevedal told him it was a combination of staffing, direction from the Board of Supervisors, and state requirements. \u201cI have limited staff,\u201d she said. \u201cWe\u2019re working on these contractors. And we are prioritizing keeping as many people in this program as possible. Which means we have to do our best and make sure that we have a strategy in place to ensure that folks are eligible for provisional license renewal. Folks cannot cultivate without both local authorization and a state license. So in order to meet the Board\u2019s directive of keeping as many people in this program as possible, we must ensure folks are eligible for provisional license renewal. If folks fall out of those provisional licenses, it\u2019s going to be really hard for them to stay in the program because they\u2019ll lose their ability to cultivate. I know folks are anxious to transition into an annual. You have until the end of 2025 to transition from your provisional to yo...