As you all know, the Supes recently voted to illegally expand weed cultivation sites beyond the Ordinance’ s 10,000 square-foot cap. The effect of this new “re-interpretation” is that it would double the existing cultivation area, bumping the area up to 20,000 square feet. Such changes can only be accomplished by the Supes taking formal action at a public meeting.
Supervisors John Haschak and Madeline Cline opposed this action that was whole-heartedly supported by colleagues Ted Williams, Mo Mulheren, and Bernie Norvell.
At that meeting, I urged the Board to reject this “backdoor” attempt to circumvent an unambiguous provision in the Ordinance. There is absolutely no authority under existing law or the Mendocino County Cannabis Ordinance for anyone, including County staff, administrators, or the Supervisors to “reinterpret”, in whole or in part, provisions of the Cannabis Ordinance. It’s widely accepted by constituents that such action gives the appearance of Cannabis Ordinance administration being an insider’s game played by staff and a self-selected few in the local cannabis industry.
The good news is Ellen Drell, of the Willits Environmental Center (WEC),informed me that her organization has filed suit against the County for their illegal action.
On Friday, April 18, 2025, the Willits Environmental Center (WEC) filed a Petition with the County Superior Court challenging the action taken by the Board of Supervisors at their regular meeting on April 8th, 2025. In a 3 to 2 vote (Supervisors Haschak and Cline dissenting) the Board of Supervisors approved a reinterpretation of the County’s cannabis cultivation ordinance, brought to the Board by the Cannabis Department staff, that would result in doubling the area of cannabis cultivation allowed on most cultivation-eligible parcels in the County, including up to 20,000 square feet of mature cannabis for sale. WEC alleges, “the Board’s April 8th, 2025 vote to accept staff’s reinterpretation unlawfully turns seven years of understanding and implementation of the cannabis ordinance on its head.”
WEC urges the Board of Supervisors to direct the Cannabis Department to abandon the Department’s unsolicited, and what WEC believes to be an unsubstantiated, reinterpretation of County law. WEC is joined by several community groups including the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Committee (LAMAC) and the Redwood Valley Municipal Advisory Committee (RVMAC), concerned individuals, and newspaper editors in denouncing this reinterpretation and the unlawful means by which county law has been changed.
WEC believes this reinterpretation is wrong and is directly contradicted by the County’s own prior interpretation of the ordinance since its enactment in 2017.
Drell alleges that allowing the area of cannabis cultivation to double on eligible parcels throughout the County has the potential to impact neighborhoods, and cause harm to natural resources such as surface and ground water, sensitive species habitat, and aesthetics. But of equal importance to the WEC, according to Drell, is that this significant change to an existing law is being implemented without public engagement or environmental review. “This is an extremely dangerous precedent and must not be allowed to go forward. Otherwise, the rule of law becomes arbitrary, is taken away from the citizenry, and is placed in the hands of back-room dealers”, said Drell.
I’ll keep you apprised of any developments in this matter.
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Roosevelt vs. Trump:
No Contest
This week on his 100th day in office, DJ Trump bloviated about how history-making his first one-hundred days have been.
“We’re here tonight in the heartland of our nation to celebrate the most successful first 100 days of any administration in the history of our country, and that’s according to many, many people,” Trump said to kick off his speech at Macomb Community College in Warren, Michigan. “This is the best, they say, 100-day start of any president in history, and everyone is saying it. We’ve just gotten started. You haven’t even seen anything yet.”
Trump is so full of it.
He even had the gall to invoke the name of Franklin Delano Roosevelt (“FDR”) by way of comparison.
FDR pulled our country out of a depression; Trump seems intent to put us in one.
As I wrote recently, “FDR saved capitalism from self-destruction. He glued back together the shattered pieces of a country depressed in spirit and economy, and later would lead the nation to victory in a world war. It’s been said that FDR lifted himself from a wheelchair to lift a nation from its knees.”
What the hell has Trump accomplished so far?
Granted he’s cleaning up the immigration mess, but as the Washington Post pointed out, “It is no accident that Trump has repeatedly cited Roosevelt as a model when it comes to his impact and place in history. But Trump’s 100-day mark [shows] the differences are at least as stark as the similarities. Roosevelt’s onslaught, in the depths of the Great Depression, was aimed at expanding the federal government’s presence in Americans’ lives. Trump’s crusade is aimed largely at dismantling it. Perhaps more crucially, Congress came together to pass more than a dozen major laws in Roosevelt’s first 100 days, reflecting the wide national eagerness for his revolution. Trump, in contrast, has governed largely by unilateral executive action, which enables to him to ignore his opponents but avoids a broad political consensus — and leaves his actions more vulnerable to reversal.”
Here’s some more history — actual facts — regarding FDR’s first 100 days.
During Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office in 1933, he introduced what historians refer to as the “New Deal”, which focused on the “3 R’s”: relief for the unemployed and for the poor, recovery of the economy back to normal levels, and reforms of the financial system to prevent a repeat depression.
The nation’s plight on March 4, 1933, the day Franklin Roosevelt assumed the presidency, was desperate. A quarter of the nation’s workforce was jobless. A quarter million families had defaulted on their mortgages the previous year. During the winter of 1932 and 1933, some 1.2 million Americans were homeless. Scores of shantytowns (called Hoovervilles) sprouted up.
In his inaugural address, Roosevelt expressed confidence that his administration could end the Depression. “The only thing we have to fear,” he declared, “is fear itself.”
In Roosevelt’s first hundred days in office, he pushed 15 major bills through Congress. The bills would reshape every aspect of the economy, from banking and industry to agriculture and social welfare. The president promised decisive action. He called Congress into special session and demanded “broad executive power to wage a war against the emergency, as great as the power that would be given me if we were in fact invaded by a foreign foe.”
Roosevelt appealed directly to the people to generate support for his New Deal program. On March 12, he conducted the first of many radio “fireside chats.” Using the radio in the way later presidents exploited television, he explained what he had done in plain, simple terms and told the public to have “confidence and courage.” When the banks reopened the following day, people demonstrated their faith by making more deposits than withdrawals. One of Roosevelt’s key advisors did not exaggerate when he later boasted, “Capitalism was saved in eight days.”
Roosevelt also literally saved and preserved our founding principle that we are a nation bound by the supremacy of constitutional rule, not by the whims and dictates of a supreme ruler.
Jim Shields is the Mendocino County Observer’s editor and publisher, observer@pacific.net, the long-time district manager of the Laytonville County Water District, and is also chairman of the Laytonville Area Municipal Advisory Council. Listen to his radio program “This and That” every Saturday at noon on KPFN 105.1 FM, also streamed live: www.kpfn.org
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