 Can you hear me all fine? All right, so we're going to get started. Welcome to the, I think it's the third or fourth cannabis, Santa Cruz County Cannabis Licensing Workshop. This is a very focused study session we have planned for you today, whether you're here in the audience or out there in TV land. Thank you so much for being here tuning in. Today we have an agenda that includes state agencies. We have updates, a little different from the last presentation with Fish and Wildlife, the regional water board and the state water board. So those officials will be speaking to you about the state permitting requirements that you need to be aware of going forward. If you haven't already made contact with them, they're gonna explain some processes to you and updates on that respect. So they're gonna start out. I think they're gonna take maybe five to 10 minutes each. There's two speakers or two talks. And then our cannabis licensing office, the local agency is gonna speak next. And we're gonna give you a little more insight into really the how to and mechanics of the permitting process, not just the process, but some more tips and tricks about how you should be thinking about developing your project going forward. We really want you to be successful in getting licensed. And I think this will be a helpful starter for you. Even the best and brightest of you still need some help, I think, with understanding what we planners are looking for when we get your project in our office. So hopefully this is instructive. And so with that, I'm gonna switch over to the state for just some of the first talk. We have Heather McIntyre with Fish and Wildlife. She's gonna provide some updates. I don't know, do you want this or? Yeah, I just stick to it. I like that. I like that. Yeah, here we go. Thank you. Good evening. Wow, that's a couple of familiar faces. Nice to see everyone. The fish, my name again is Heather McIntyre. I am the Santa Cruz County representative along with my co-worker Stephanie Holstedge. When you start coming to the department of Fish and Wildlife for your permits, or if you have any questions, there's a 99% chance you'll be talking with either Stephanie or I. We do have a table outside with four staff. We have Corey, Andy, Stephanie, and myself, and we can answer questions for you anytime this evening. The Department of Fish and Wildlife is updating their permitting website, and it will affect you when you come to us to start your permitting process. So we're gonna go over that very briefly today. These are the types of projects that need a permit from the department, and you'll note there that it's cannabis and non-cannabis. It's not anything special we're asking you to do. It's something we ask of everyone. Cannabis does have some special options that our non-cannabis permittees do not have, but these are the types of projects that we'll be looking for. So when you provide us with your project information, we'll be looking at water diversions, we'll be looking for springs, we'll be looking for stream crossings. So our online portal is being updated. It will be updated by the end of the month, probably in the next two weeks, end of July, and things will be changing quite a bit. You'll need to go in and register, and your registration will be approved, and then you'll have the opportunity to determine which agreement is best for your project. We have three options for cannabis growers. We have a self-certification, a general agreement, and a standard agreement, and I'm gonna talk a little bit in depth about each of those as much as we can within five to 10 minutes. So for self-certification, your project must not substantially modify any stream, river, or lake. And to date, so far, the types of projects we've seen coming through with self-certification are primarily industrial buildings on municipal water, that it's not the only type of project that can get a self-certification, but that's the type that we've seen so far. And we have some flyers, and you'll see, I'll show these to you now, and they look like this, and there's one for each of the project type, and it has the information I'm presenting today. So this is the type of information that you'll need when you go forward with your self-certification application online. You're gonna need to tell us about your property, a detailed project description, provide us with some maps and tell us what your water sources are. Project description is really important. I've gotten things like, this project has no impacts, and that's my entire project description. That's gonna slow the process. I can't process that. You need to tell me a little bit more about your cultivation site. Also, in the self-certification process, there's a series of questions. They ask you questions about your water source, your infrastructure, and if you're doing any construction activities. And then the department comes back and we look at the information that you've provided, and then at that point we can determine if a self-certification is appropriate for your project. And if it is, we'll send you a letter that says your project does not require an agreement from the Department of Fish and Wildlife, excuse me. This is the golden ticket, the waiver, and you can take that to the California Department of Food and Ag, and you will meet their Fish and Wildlife requirement with that self-certification letter. If your project is a little more complicated and maybe doesn't meet the certification, the self-certification criteria, your next option might be a general agreement. The general agreement is a pre-written agreement. So we've already filled out the agreement. It has terms and conditions to protect wildlife, and you go through this agreement, and if you meet the criteria, which right now is if you have a stream crossing or a diversion, the general agreement might be for you. And if you go through the eligibility criteria, this is what that looks like. Your water source can't have fish in it. You can't be taking listed species. If you meet these criteria, a general agreement might be for you. So, and then when you decide you want a general agreement, make sure you read it, because there are terms and conditions that you must comply with when you sign that agreement. And those conditions are administrative things like you have to have a copy of the agreement on your facility at all times, that kind of thing. Reporting requirements tell us about, I wanna say the reporting requirements are your water use for the month. And then there are also measures to protect fish and wildlife. And all of those conditions you must comply with if you choose to go with a general agreement. In addition, when you fill out your application, you'll need some additional information, and this is where there'll probably be some overlap with the work you're doing for the county. We will need a biological resources assessment. We will need design plans that are detailed, and we'll need a property diagram. And make sure your property diagram is also detailed. Tell us where your well is. Tell us where your cultivation site is. Make sure we know we can see it. Oh, nice, photos. Okay, the types of terms and conditions that are included in a general agreement include design criteria. So if you have a bridge that uses a culvert to cross a stream, there'll be some specific culvert design criteria that your project will need to meet. There are administrative measures, wildlife protection measures, and reporting requirements. The general agreement can only be applied for online, so you'll need to go to our online portal for that. And if your project doesn't meet either of the criteria for those, you need to come to us for a standard agreement. And the standard agreement is not a bad thing in any way. It just means we're gonna work with you one-on-one and provide you the best agreement for your specific project. So where the general agreement is all written and it's generalized, this way we work with you as individuals and come up with the appropriate agreement for your cannabis cultivation project. We'll need similar information. Tell us about your property. Tell us about your project in detail, please. Provide us with maps and water sources. And there are ways to avoid delays. Number one, do sufficient project planning. And I think as you go through your local process, you will have a very good idea of what your project's gonna look like and you'll have a lot of the information that you need. So the local process you're doing here with the planning agency is really gonna be beneficial for you. So make sure you know what you're doing. Make sure you have a detailed project description. This is really important to us because if you don't have a detailed project description, everything stops, we call you, we say, please help us out, this isn't enough, write something up. So that's important. Include all your project activities. If you have impacts, describe those. Don't let them be a surprise. And submit it to the right regional office. So these are the things you need to do to make sure you don't delay the process. It's very doable, especially with the planning stuff that you're going through here in the county. It's very common for the department to call and ask for some more information or to email and ask for some more information. This doesn't mean anything bad or good. It just means we need some additional detail. So don't be surprised if we call and say, hey, I have a question about this. It's very common for us to do site visits. We wanna come out and see your project. And so that's a very common response. That's if we ask to come do a site visit, don't be worried, it's nothing, we're not targeting you, it's just what we do. We wanna see the project and we wanna see how it works with the description that's been provided. And even though we're a state agency, we have Google Earth, I'm very excited to say. The state doesn't always get the high tech stuff, but we do use Google Earth to take a look at your facility. So if we look at Google Earth and we see three grow areas and there's one grow area described, we're gonna stop the process and ask for some additional information. So know that we go through this process most of the time. We also aim for consistency with other agencies, especially when it comes to things like forbearance periods or aquatic base flows, pesticide use. We try to stay in touch with our other partner agencies to make sure we're all going down the same path. And that makes it easier for you and it makes it easier for us as well. So get a permit, protect your investment and protect our resources. Here is our phone number. We just recently moved our office, but that is our new phone number for our main office. You can give us a call and you'll be able to talk to either Stephanie or I and we'll be able to provide you any more information that you need or if you have any questions during the process or before the process, please don't hesitate to call. Let us help you out and ease the process for you. And there are contact information and I think that's it. Yep. So we'll be outside if you have any questions. Come out to the table and there are four of us out there. We'll be happy to talk with you about your specific project. All right, thank you. That's it. Thanks. It's really quick. Thank you very much, Heather. So now we're gonna have some words from the state water board and the regional water board. They're teaming up to give this presentation again, I think five, 10 minutes or so and they have some updates for you. So first we have Lea LeMoyne, excuse me and Sean Rohr from the state board. Lea is from the regional water board and come on up and take it away. Hi everyone. I'm gonna talk about the process that you'll need to go through the water boards in order to get your CDFA license. So I will be speaking. I'm from the regional water quality control board based out of San Luis Obispo. So for your day to day implementation of the permit, you'll be dealing with me. If you have to get a water right, my colleague from state board Sean will teach me to talk about that process and you'll be working directly with the state board if you end up needing a water right. So oops, so we'll talk about who we are and what we're doing and what's the purpose of the permit, how to obtain coverage, what the general order is and who's applicable with the tiering structure looks like and then Sean will talk about water rights. So the purpose of the cannabis general order which was adopted last October in 2017 is to ensure the effects of water diversion and discharge of wastes associated with cannabis cultivation do not affect water quality, both surface and ground. So there's two pieces. There's the cannabis general order and then there's attachment A and attachment A is also called the cannabis policy and that really has the nets and bolts of requirements of what you need to do. So what I recommend is going to this website tonight and downloading both the order and attachment A and combing through the specific requirements. I'm not gonna get into them so but you'll definitely wanna be aware of them. It is, it's all on the paperwork that's out on the table so don't worry if you don't get every dot right. Oh right and they'll put it on the website. So the reason that this order was adopted is because these are just an example of a few of the environmental impacts that State Water Board was noticing directly due to cannabis cultivation activities up in the North Coast primarily. So a lot of erosion issues, streams that were getting water diverted out of them so much so that aquatic life was suffering, human waste, chemical waste from ag chemicals. So the cannabis general order is meant to mitigate some of these environmental impacts. So the first step in the process is to go to the portal and there's a fact sheet about the portal outside and I'll show you a slide, a screenshot of it in a moment but you'll enroll under the general order. If you need, everyone's gonna need to get enrollment in the WDR or waiver of WDR and that is essentially the water quality permit. If you need a water right you'll also get a small irrigation use to registration program certification. So you will have one or two things after you go through the portal either the notice of applicability which is the water quality permit. You'll definitely have that and you may also have the S I U R. Here's what the portal looks like. It's a pretty user friendly online form and you'll just tell us some basic information about your grow and your water source, how much you're cultivating, who the landowner is, those types of things. There's the website and who needs to do this. So basically the shorter answer is just about everyone. There's an exemption for personal use. So if you are just growing six plants you don't need to come to us. There's a waiver and then there's an enroll, you can be enrolled. So who needs to get a waiver? That includes indoor sites. So truly indoor sites with a concrete floor or asphalt floor, otherwise impermeable floor and permanent structure. Outdoor sites that are less than 2000 square feet that would be considered conditionally exempt and would apply for a waiver. But everyone else needs to enroll as either a tier one or tier two site grow. And here is a little bit on the definition of indoor cultivation, which is one of the things that some find a little bit confusing because a greenhouse for example, many think of as indoor, but if that greenhouse has a dirt floor for the purposes of this permit, it's considered outdoor. So greenhouses, dirt floor, outdoor, you're gonna enroll as either tier one or tier two. And this is how we determine your tier and your risk. So depending there's tier one and tier two and then there's low, high, low, medium and high risk sites. If, like I mentioned before, then there's this conditionally exempt category. So if you're less than 2000 square feet or you're truly indoor, you're conditionally exempt. You're going to apply through the portal for your notice of applicability, but we're gonna issue you a waiver. If you are an outdoor grow, you're gonna apply through the portal, tell us what your disturbed area is and what your canopy area is. And depending on those values, we're going to say your tier one or tier two. So if you're less than an acre, your tier one, if you're greater than an acre, you'll be tier two. And that's based off of disturbed area, not canopy. And next step is if you are within a riparian setback, you'll be considered high risk. If you have a slope, if your cannabis cultivation activities are taking place on a slope greater than 30%, you'll be considered moderate risk. Everyone else is considered low. So there are different, the requirements are slightly different based and your reporting requirements will be slightly different based off of your tier and your risk. So Sean's gonna talk about water quality. Do we're taking questions now? Okay, yeah. What is disturbed area? That's a great question and disturbed area. Thank you for asking that because I was hoping someone would, I was gonna talk about it anyways. It is, so the disturbed area is going to include the actual footprint of your grow. So it's gonna include the canopy area, any walkways that are between and immediately around the area. And it also includes any soil that's been disturbed, any soil storage areas, any chemical or vehicle storage areas that are associated with the cannabis cultivation grow. And that's pretty much it. So if you have other disturbed areas on site that are not really associated with cannabis activities, like there's a greenhouse growing something that's not cannabis or house that's not affiliated, that doesn't count. So does that help? Okay, let's Sean. Good evening, everybody. As I'm sure you're all aware, I'm Sean. So let's dive right in some water rights. All right, so you might need a water right, you might not. Here's a, you gotta go to this website anyways. So right up there, if you don't have time to get this, there's other ways to get it. So you need your water right or you need something from us that says you don't need a water right for your CalCanvas license. That other website right there, that's our website, our particular website for water rights. Just a plug, we're on social media, like us, follow us. We're good people. So we actually updated our portal and that's kind of the new login screen. I mean, I wanna dive right in there right now. Doesn't everybody else? Like look at that. So that's what it is. If you've registered already, there's a section you just register. If you haven't, you just log in with a new account. Here's pretty much what Lee already mentioned for your CalCanvas license. There's the two different requirements, water quality and the small irrigation use registration. I live on the water rights side. So do you need a water right? If you have rainwater catchment, if you are purchasing water, or if you have a groundwater well and this is percolating groundwater, you do not need a water right. You still go in here and you select your water source and you get something from us that says, hey, congrats, you're done. If you have a fully contained spring, a fully contained spring does not flow off your property any time during the year. You don't need a water right, but you have to prove it. You need to submit a report to us that has been completed by a qualified professional. We have a list of those individuals on our website. So you need a water right if you're on a surface water diversion. Stream Creek River or subterranean flow. So if you have a shallow well, chances are you're tapping into a surface water source, you need a water right for that. So it's pretty easy. You just go to our website and this is pretty much it. So the first box is the applicant. You log in, you enter your information. If you don't need a water right or if you don't need coverage for water quality, you're pretty much done. We need one or both. Then we go to the next box and that's pretty much our end. So you enter your information and then you pay. It seems simple. We do our technical review at the end, issue your water right and your notice of applicability. You're good to go. And then there's just a few things you might need to do like moving forward for like water use reports and stuff like that. So some of the things you need to, if you're on water, surface water, there are a few things you need to know. You're allowed up to 6.6 acre feet per year. You have to be at 10 gallons per minute or lower. And the big thing about surface water diversion is you're not allowed to divert during the summer period. So we call that our forbearance period. So the idea is you divert in the winter time when the water's there, you store it for the summer when you need it. Groundwater, rainwater and springs that do not flow off the property. They do not have a forbearance period. Anybody on surface water has this forbearance period, which is November 1st through March 31st. So that's the diversion season. Forbearance period is the exact opposite, April 1st through October 31st. Everybody got that? Makes some sense? So the important thing about that is if you're on surface water and you need a certain amount of for storage, you need to have that storage available. A few limitations. You cannot get your small irrigation use registration if you're on a fully appropriated stream system. If you're on the main stem of a wild and scenic river, if you're in a CDFW in-stream flow study area, or if you happen to fall within 600 feet of a tribal boundary and that's your point of diversion. So if you plot your point of diversion and I could go back a little bit. So in our system, it's pretty much you plot a point of diversion and if you are not allowed to do it in any of these areas, you pretty much know right away. We send you something that says, hey, you're in a fully appropriated stream system. You can't get your water right. So it's immediately for the tribal boundary, if your point of diversion falls within 600 feet, you get a notice that says you have to get permission from the tribe to move forward, but you can still move forward and complete your application. There's some contact info. The top number and email address, that's our general line. You can find me right in the middle. I have some business cards out there if you need to talk and please information right there. And that's water rights in a nutshell. You guys catch me outside? All right, thanks. Thank you. Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you to our state partners for continuing to show up and help us with stuff that I honestly don't still quite understand myself. I don't. And so we will be continuing to do outreach. I'm Robin Bolstergrant, Cannabis Licensing Manager for the county. Most of you are pretty familiar, so you probably know that already. But you probably know as well that our board adopted an ordinance. We are now in the realm of application and dealing with permits and licenses. We've been talking about this for a long time and we're here. So welcome. It's been a haul getting here and the ordinances as most of you probably know run the gamut. 7128, we've got our licensing, 1310, cover zoning, land use stuff, dealt with by planning, 1601, environmental regulations and our best management and operational practices. It's important I think to know that we're not picking on cannabis. If you were to come to the county and open up a coffee shop or bookstore, you would have to be dealing with a whole bunch of regulations and permits. So welcome to regulation, I guess. I know it's overwhelming. I know that there's a lot and that's why we're here doing this. But just so you know, this is how we treat commercial activity in Santa Cruz County. It's important as we move forward to understand the zoning and the land use restrictions. I'm still getting folks asking me what zone districts are approved for what uses. Those are fundamental questions. We can help. We have a cheat sheet and I'll get to that in a minute. But before you're putting money into a lease or you're buying property, you need to know what the restrictions are for your zone district. Some of them are planning commission and our board tacked on quite a few restrictions and you need to know. For instance, timber production. You've got limitations on tree removal. You have to establish a history of growing cannabis on that site. Then there are some really restrictive limitations on what kind of disturbance you can do. And the same for many other zone districts, the residential zone districts. Those of you that were participating or listening in to our public hearings know quite well, I think that there's a lot to get your arms around. You need to know setbacks. You need to know minimum parcel sizes and canopy limitations. Again, we're still getting quite a few questions about that. We have information to help you with that. But again, before you make any financial commitments, you need to know what the limitations are to the property that you're looking at. You also have to establish your own eligibility, right? Everybody for cultivation has to have been growing in the county since before 2013 or non-cannabis farmers for three years. So commercial ag, on commercial ag zone property, thank you. So the basic eligibility, again, I'm still having to give folks some bad news because they're not aware of some of that basic eligibility criteria. So ask and make sure that you're familiar. We have a ton of information on our website. So don't be a stranger. Let's see, oh, so that's that. We've got copies of this Loretta put together, this really helpful kind of cheat sheet that lists all of the types of licenses and the zoning and some of the restrictions. Again, minimum parcel sizes, setbacks and canopy limits that apply. So grab one of these, and this is always the place to start if you're just starting with us. So you're gonna need both a license from our office and a use permit from the planning department downstairs. There are a lot of reasons for that, but before you are thinking about your state license you need to be talking to us. There is overlap in the documentation that you need to provide for both those processes. They go in tandem, parallel. But you should also be aware that most license applications are going to require a level five. And again, I'm looking at folks that know this, but if you haven't been following along, a level five means a public hearing. And that's not a small undertaking. Again, these are things that you need to be keeping in mind. The good thing about the land use approval is that that runs with the land. So your permit that you get from planning stays with that property. You don't have to come back and renew it unless you significantly change the scope of your work. The licenses through our office do require annual renewal and inspections. So we've divided our process into different phases. Phase one is where we're at right now and this is the pre-application review. Again, because we have these two different tracks with permits and licenses, we want you to start with us. In most cases, you already have a relationship with us. In most cases, we've been to your site and know a lot about it. So pre-app is our way of sort of scoping and figuring out if there's things that we're missing. If there are elements that came up with the adopted ordinances that you need to address and most importantly, we're getting you ready for the actual application process. It is, again, there's a lot of material and I've heard back from folks that it is intimidating and daunting and I understand that that's why we're here to help you through it. The more information you give us up front, the better we can help you. What you don't tell us will cost you in the long run and in a lot of cases it's not that people are hiding things from us, it's just you don't know what we're looking for and you have to learn to speak our language or hire somebody that does just like you wouldn't work on your own car necessarily or draft legal documents. You need to understand on our side of the counter what we're looking for and that's gonna save you in the long run. So information like, well I'm growing indoor now but I think what I wanna do is expand for cultivation into this area over here. If you don't tell us that that's your goal, that's what you really want, we can't evaluate that and tell you what the limitations are and what you're gonna need to do when you get to that point. So we want you to tell us the entire project, your build out, even if you don't do it because you can get an approval without having to actually develop each phase. So again, I hear this pretty much all the time, like this is what I'm doing now and I realize that most folks are already doing stuff but you have a dream maybe or you have an idea about what you wanna do ultimately. Tell us about it now because what you don't wanna do is have to come back and repeat the process with the planning department. You don't wanna have to go to a second public hearing, I promise, you don't want that. It's pain and it's expensive. So tell us what you want and give us a lot of detail just like Heather was talking about your plans as much detail as you give us, that's what we can give you feedback on, right? So we're having to educate folks a lot and that's understandable but help us help you by giving us detail, showing us everything that's on the property and go through that list that is on our website. And when you're ready, we'll take you in. I've already had three pre-app appointments and in some cases, folks were super prepared, gave me a lot of information and in others, we're gonna have to spend a lot more time and time is money and time is not something that everybody has. There is a cost for the pre-app review. If you didn't do a pre-license inspection, then it's $1,500. If you did a pre-license inspection, there's no fee but if you come to an appointment and you're not prepared and there's stuff that you're missing, it's gonna cost you. We will continue to do outreach, we will continue to do workshops but at the end of the day, we have to move into processing applications and helping folks move along and so our time is gonna start to, it's gonna be costly, right? What does that 1,500 include? The site visit? Right, so we go to site visits which is why the pre-license inspection folks don't have to pay that because we've been to the site. We wanna go out and walk around and see that maybe there's a stream over there that we didn't know about and maybe there's a dwelling that's within the setback or something like that. So you're paying for that, you're paying for our time to talk to the planning folks and see what they're gonna be looking for. We wanna streamline your process as you get ready to make your actual application. So this is the warm-up consultation. If you're ready, I will talk to you about getting in that the problem that we're having, Oh, I'm sorry. So he's asking how long does it take to get an appointment? For folks that are ready and again, the materials on our website and the tab that says applications and you read through the pre-application questionnaire and it's thick. There's a lot of information we're looking for. We want you for you to have thought through, well, what is my odor control plan and what is my energy efficiency plan and how am I gonna deal with these, you know, the siting criteria where I put everything that is the least destructive to the environment, habitat, what have you. We want you to think about all of those things and when you're ready and you can answer, that doesn't have to be perfect. You don't have to fill out every single piece of that. But again, the things that you're leaving out are things that we can't give you feedback on. So go through and answer it. And if you think that you've answered all the questions, send me an email and we'll get you in. We're not, it's a little bit crickets right now with the pre-applications because we're asking for so much and we just started, I mean, we just sent this out a couple weeks ago saying this is the process. If you think you're ready, then talk to me. If you did a PLI, then you have priority processing but at this point, I'm willing to talk to folks that think that they have their packet together but don't waste our time. It's not that I'm so special. I just, I can't be your consultant. And so, and we'll talk a little bit later about consultants and the value and the necessity of having a team of consultants to help you get through this. Again, I wouldn't, I don't try to do my own taxes. I pay somebody to do that and this is not something that most people can get through without some help. No problem. Okay, so phase two is the actual application and this is where you're submitting however many sets of plans to the planning department for your discretionary use permit and you're submitting material and this will help you. This is what we're gonna prepare you for during the pre-app. You'll submit material to the cannabis licensing office for your license. And you may be required to submit four or five sets of plans because we're gonna take those plans. We're gonna route them to environmental health if you have septic, to the ag commission, to fire agencies. And so this all happens again. This happens with any application that comes into planning. The public hearing, well let me go back. So the routing to all the other agencies, everybody has to go through environmental review under CEQA, California Environmental Quality Act. It could be as simple as an exemption. If you're not changing the environment, if you don't have an impact on the environment, you could be exempt from further review or it could be more involved if there are habitat issues, if there are traffic issues, if there are noise issues. Anything that sort of hits that red flag then we do a little bit more investigation. You might be required to submit reports. A lot of folks will be submitting biotic reports. Other folks will have to submit a traffic study. Depends on, all of this is a function of the scope of work. This is the project that you create, right? And then again, public hearings for a lot of different projects. Not everybody, but a lot. At-cost billing, a lot of folks are asking about fees. At-cost means, just what it says, we'll ask for a deposit. Both the planning department will ask for a deposit and the licensing office will ask for a deposit. And we will bill our time. If there's a phone call, if there's an email, if we go out to the site, all that time is billed at our hourly rate and planning does the same. So again, being prepared, having all your material together and not saying, is this, I tried doing this, will answer your questions. But in my experience, and I worked for planning for a long, long time, the projects that ended up costing the most were the ones where folks were not responding to what we were asking. And it's not necessarily on purpose. It was just sometimes not understanding. Or maybe if I give them this, this would be good enough. If somebody wants a specific thing to be shown on a plan or wants a report to say a certain thing or address a certain issue, give them what they're asking for. And if you don't understand, you can call. But again, this is where consultants can help you so much. They know the questions to ask. They know what the planners are looking for and they'll know what we're looking for because it's really very much the same. But so just in terms of cost, it's very much a function of what we get from folks and how many questions we have to ask if we're looking at plans and we can't tell, is this a stream or is this an easement? What's going on here? All of those things take time and time is money. So after you get your, bad news, good news, after you get your permit and your license, there'll be ongoing compliance, really with the license, but you will be subject to conditions and every discretionary project has conditions of approval. Conditions for your use permit may be that you have to come in and get a building permit at some point or if you have some sort of screening, you have to maintain that. So there'll be conditions attached to that. So the ongoing compliance is about making sure that you're doing what you said you were gonna do, that you're maintaining the site in the way that you said you would. And yeah, that we're all on the same page and we will be inspecting for the license. And that is, again, the cost is at cost, the clearer you are about what we're looking for, the less it costs. We have different types of licenses and folks have been asking a lot about this. And if you were at any of the hearings, you know that the co-location master plan came up as a way to help folks and to limit disturbance, vertical integration. So vertical integration just means you, licensee, thank you, you have a license to distribute, to manufacture and to cultivate on one property, right? So that's not a co-location, that's one licensee with different types of licenses or one property I should say, I guess, with different. So you're one entity and you do all those things. So that's vertical integration, multiple licenses on one property. Co-location is when you have multiple different entities. So it's not just you doing cultivation and manufacturing. You're doing cultivation, your friend or a partner or somebody else that has come down maybe from a site where they didn't meet the requirements and they need a place to go. Co-location, the idea of co-location was to find a home for folks who didn't qualify or had sites that weren't compliant with the regulations, right? So a lot of folks in the mountains, folks in residential areas that for a variety of reasons can't meet those requirements. This is a way to open up some sites, particularly large parcels. And so you can mix and match a little bit with different license types. I think the example that we had was, you know, if you have like a hundred square feet of existing greenhouse space or warehouse space and you chop it up into sections and you can have, you know, five or 10 different licensees all growing, maybe somebody's making something, somebody else's acting as a distributor, that's a co-location. And what we're looking for is an agreement and the comparison is like a shopping center. So you have the, it says master occupant, I guess I would say sort of the primary person that takes the lead on this would be in charge of the use permit. So if you think of a shopping center, there's one applicant that comes into planning and they get a permit, commercial development permit for a shopping center. They don't know who all their tenants are maybe. Those tenants are each gonna have to come in and get their own, you know, like business license or something just for the sake of argument. So here, the great thing about co-location not everybody has to get a use permit in this scenario. One use permit for the whole site that takes into consideration all of the activities of the licensees. So if you have that warehouse or that greenhouse and you have 10 different licensees all growing, your permit that you're going through the planning department says, you know, maximum of five or 10 licensees, maximum canopy. But we also wanna know what that operation looks like when it's all running. How many employees are there? What's the parking situation? How many trips? How many vehicles coming in and out of that property? So all of those things are things that the primary applicant would be responsible for. And then everybody else just needs to get their license from us and they can come and go. But that use permit, the co-location use permit, that's a lot of verbiage, that stays with the property, right? So it makes it easy for folks to come in and out and I know that this is a new concept and the idea of sharing space. I get a lot of sort of looks like, oh my God, no, I just have my own little thing. This is gonna save a lot of people. This is gonna make the difference for a lot of folks between being in this industry and not. If you're on a site that doesn't work, you know, you're gonna have to think about partnering up with other folks. And it's being done, I promise, in other places and nothing horrible has happened as far as I know. But we need an agreement. And so again, whoever's taking the lead, it could be the property owner. I know at least one or two of the cut flower farmers down in South County are considering this. They might run the use permit and get that for the site where it could be one of the licensees. It doesn't really matter but the agreement has to be tight enough so that we know if there's a problem, who's responsible, right? If somebody didn't properly dispose of their waste or there's something, there's erosion or something is happening, we need to know who's responsible. So the agreement, it's sort of like CCNRs or something. So it just lays out what the basic rules of the road are for all the licensees and then who's responsible for doing what and what happens if things go wrong. So people are asking if there's a template for this. No, we're kind of making it up. I mean, the idea again was to help folks. So it's not, I can tell you what we use for shopping centers and stuff in planning but we don't have a template. That could be something that we work on. Or you can talk to an attorney about, because it's a contract basically, right? The master plan is different. The master plan was a way of consolidating infrastructure. So this is where you have different parcels and they're sharing a house or an access road, right? And so it will also require an agreement. But again, the idea was that so for SU parcels, SU zoning, RA zoning, some of the zone districts that require you to build a house, for instance, we don't want everybody to have to build a house. That's a lot of development. We don't always like that. So if you can share, if your neighbor has a house and you're adjoining and you can come up with a plan where you describe how you're sharing and it can be sharing a road. So not everybody has to grade a road through a hillside or something. And again, you can mix and match different types of licenses, but the idea is it's all gonna be about the plan and this will come from you. You have to be creative about how you're gonna structure this. We can tell you what we're looking for, but you have to sort of think it all the way through and say are they responsible, who's responsible for maintaining the road? Is that, you know, because you're both potentially gonna have licenses. So there are a lot of details to it, but this is different than the co-location. So that's been confusing. Permit bundling just means that you can go to planning and get all of the permits that you need, separate from licenses, at one time. So you can get, if you need a grading permit, if you need any other sort of discretionary permit, you can, it's kind of a one-stop shop. You don't have to go back and forth. So under your use permit, and we can talk specifics later, it's hard to think of a really good example yet because I haven't seen everybody's project. But the idea is to minimize the time in and out of their office, right? So if you think ahead and you know you're going to need to, I don't know, build a big structure and that needs its own use permit, you can take care of all of those things at one time. So really this just gets back to the idea of ask for what you want. Think ahead and be creative, but think about all the stuff. Don't be limited to what you've been doing or what you think you wanna do. You don't have to actually do it. Do you know what I mean? You can say, you can get a permit to build a house. Well, it can take you five years before you get around and get your construction loan together and actually build it, but it's better to ask and not have to come back and go through all of it to change it later. And clean up violations. Is that it again? And they can clean up their violations. And you can clean up your violations. Nobody has violations here, but if you did, then you can take care of all that. It would be a requirement anyway. We would ask, then these are conditions of approval. And so, yeah, whatever you have going on out there that you need to fix, even if it's not related to cannabis, you can rope it in to this process and save yourself some time, but you don't wanna go back and forth. You don't wanna make changes later. Super spendy. All right. I think that's you. Greta, take it away. Hello, everyone. How's everyone doing? We're just getting started. No, I'm just kidding. I shouldn't take too long. I shouldn't take too long, but I think Robin really kinda hit the nail on the head here. Ask for what you want. We're gonna talk more about that now. So, business planning and scoping your project, that's really critical for ingredients for success. You know, your application should be rooted in a solid business plan. I would hope and I imagine most of you have at least gone through basic exercises, but honestly, at the counter, we've heard people that haven't even really thought that through because they've been operating in a situation where they didn't have to, they really didn't have to defend their operations to anyone. There was no licensing. There was no permits, nothing. They were just up and doing what they do. Same with employees. Just no, really no process. So, it's new for them to put a plan together. And there are resources out there. They're very simple, just very simple thought processes you can go through to, you know, articulate. What do you plan to do? How do you plan to do it? And doing forecasting, basic forecasting of your finances. Very critical, basic thing to do before you get started. I don't recommend you try to get a license with us if you don't even try this part. If you're unwilling, unable to do that, I don't think it's, you know, it's just gonna make it so much harder for you to move forward. And you're gonna have to, we're gonna kind of force you to answer those questions in a way when you do your application anyway. But we do recommend a resource as an example, Santa Cruz Score. They're a Santa Cruz based entity that it's a nonprofit, I believe. And they actually are federally funded, so they can't exactly do cannabis per se, but they do have resources on the website that exactly help you just pencil out your business plan. And you can always try to talk to them and see what they can do to help you with designing that part. So there are a lot of resources in that respect. As far as project scoping, hang on here. So back to ask for what you want. You really need to think of a reasonably foreseeable plan for development. And what I mean by that is, as Robin already articulated, I think before you, we don't wanna just know, because a lot of people I talk to, they say, well, I have this 2000 square foot grow. Yeah, I want this. Is that all you want? I thought you're eligible for 10,000 square feet. Well, yes, I do want that actually, but maybe not today, maybe in three years. Oh, okay, good. So you actually wanna talk about that now, because this is your chance, like Robin said, you don't wanna be going to planning three, four times. Trust me, you don't. I think it's a really, they're very nice people, but you just don't wanna, you don't wanna go back and forth with them. I think you wanna give them the whole of your project, your whole idea, reasonably foreseeable in the next three, five years. Some people wanna do multi-million dollar facilities but they say, well, we don't wanna set that up yet, but it's okay to tell the planning department now, this is phase one, phase two, phase three, and you articulate that square footage or maybe in the beginning, you don't wanna do manufacturing, but in year two, you do. Talk about that. You don't have to lock in the exact date, but the development itself is very relevant and we wanna know early and upfront what that looks like. And that also helps the planner when they do environmental review to think about what are the build-out implications of this proposal? And that removes back and forth for you and helps us prevent segmenting CEQA, which we don't wanna do, because that's illegal. So project scoping, and I already talked about that, but yeah, you see there the idea of phasing your development, talking about it early. And by the way, this doesn't just include the physical development, so you may have that right now you have no employees or a couple employees, but really at build-out, you're gonna be up to 50 people on a property, maybe in CA land with big greenhouses and you might have seasonal employees, you might wanna have five trucks to distribute your goods. Those are the things to be thinking about now. And that's why the business plan's important. What can I actually afford to do? What do I wanna do when I have more money coming in? It all kind of, it's intertwined. So I hope that helps you a little bit. A lot of people we're talking to haven't been thinking that way, but this is the time to say it. So what makes a good project proposal? Very clear idea of what's out there now. We wanna see that. We asked for that on the site plan anyway, so it's not like it's a mystery. It's on the application requirements. What's out there now? What are the uses out there now, if anything? And then of course, what are your future plans? You should, a lot of people have come into us and they have not even cracked open and they may not know to, but you should crack open the planning permit files on the property. Either before you even acquire a property to make sure you don't have any crazy red tag issue before you lock in a lease or purchase. And also just to see if it's like, say a commercial building and it has been permitted for something else, you need to know what the requirements were at that time. It's very important so you don't get surprised later that they did illegal additions to the property that you didn't notice and didn't show on your site plan because the planner's gonna wanna see what was there before, what's new. So that'll help you remove the back and forth planning. You don't wanna go back and forth with them about these kind of questions when you or your consultant could just get that information up front. So another thing is, again, well thought out, clear design plans. So showing that structural development, all the buildings, whether they're cannabis related or not, we do wanna see that now. This is time to see what's on the ground proposed and existing and including your phasing and you can show that too on your site plan very easily. You just say you can either have that in a descriptor, a written description and you can have great out areas that are the future development. Site security, things that we're gonna require you to show you should show that also on your plans. Where's your fencing gonna go? This locks into the best management operational practices plan. In there, you'll notice we ask you, yes, you need to secure your site. It's up to you to decide how that needs to be done. We're not gonna dictate all terms. A lot of stuff, by the way, in the ordinance is not locked in. There's a lot of room for you to say what your operational requirements would be, including security. But remember to reference the other requirements in the ordinance, which include this best management operational practices plan because we ask you to also make sure you're not disrupting wildlife movement or inadvertently or putting in fencing that would not be authorized because deer could get caught on it or something. So there's details like that. You gotta be tracking as you describe your proposal. Not too hard to do, but just cross-check what you say you wanna do with what we say be cautious of in terms of environmental or neighborhood compatibility. So yeah, that kind of touches on that show environmental protection neighborhood compatibility piece. Talk about that as you describe your project. And I wanted to mention about that, that it's very important when you talk about your project, you're your own proponent. We don't necessarily honestly wanna hear no offense but about how organic and great you are and about your product. You can talk about that a little bit, but it's really just not relevant to the planning question at hand. What do you wanna do physically and how are you gonna make sure you protect your neighborhood and the environment? Let's tie that piece together unless focusing on, we wanna know what you're making and everything, but focus more on, hey, there's a school within X feet of my development and I'm actually too close, but this is what I'm gonna do to make sure that that's not a conflict. So defend your proposal, make sure you're thinking about this so that you tie up loose ends where we're gonna say, well, hey, what are you gonna do about that school? Or what are you gonna do about the fact that you're next to a creek? You're too close. Just yeah, be thinking of these things as you talk about what you wanna do. So at the end here, I just talked about the best management practices. That siting criteria in site design, I'm not gonna get into this too much, but it's so important before you put pen to paper that you think about these things that we're telling you you need to think about and you need to have addressed in your application. If it's not there, you don't wanna get sent home. We wanna work with you, we just don't want incomplete thinking. And so things like minimizing grading, if you show me a road that's in a bad spot where you're gonna have to cut into the hillside and cut down 40 trees when you could have gone over to another area and done much less damage, we're gonna say, why don't you go here? So let's not spend money on expensive plans that are drawn by an architect when you could have just thought about this early. Avoid cutting down trees, protect habitat, make that footprint as small as possible for your development. If you can minimize the sprawl, that's what we wanna see you try to do. We don't have a number for you. When we say minimize the footprint, we're not saying it has to be this big, but we do wanna see that you try to consolidate everything in a tight way so that the proposal is meeting the needs of the county as well as your operation. And yeah, there's other things about infrastructure and visual screening you need to blend into your description. So nothing is too hard, but you do need to think like us to be successful and to get through quicker. We'll be very happy with that. And let's see, oh, the competing, conflicting policies, just be aware, as I alluded to, there are these best management practices, they aren't the ordinance directly, but they are just as important and required as the stuff in the ordinance. And there are things like ADA compliance. Some people haven't even thought about. They're gonna have employees potentially. You actually, a commercial operation has to be ADA compliant. What's that gonna do to the, what kind of grade do you need to access your cultivation area? You might not think you're gonna have employees, but that's state law, like you can't, that's just the way it is. So you need to be thinking ADA compliance. If you have geo-hazards on your property, you need to look at, well, what does that mean for where I've cited my building, where it is or where I want it to be. These are the things I would be tracking. Now I'm gonna switch over to a very, very important piece, which is fire code. So the California fire code is implemented by our local fire agencies. And for cannabis, there is, they've already, the fire officials have already spent a lot of time thinking how they're gonna handle cannabis in terms of its commercial status. And we do have Chris Walters with CalFire who's going to talk to you a little more about this piece. The reason it's so important that you hear Chris is because a lot of people even in CA land where they think they're out in the middle of a field and it's flat and all this, CalFire, or the fire agency that will apply to you still will be looking at it and maybe differently than you expect. It's not tomatoes, it's looked at differently. There's different considerations with construction and the grow lights and all the different infrastructure you usually put in with cannabis. So that could very much change your site plan or even the scope of your project or your phase out, that you're phasing in of your development. So as you consider where you wanna be and how you wanna grow your business, I would talk to fire as early as possible. It's not that they won't have additional or new requirements later, they can't promise that. But what they can do is give you early warning and feedback about the things they'll need to see. Some people, it's a deal breaker if they have to put sprinklers in and maybe they do for a project. What you tell the fire department now and early on and as upfront as possible will really help them help you understand what to do. And then in response you'll say, perfect, I can do that or this won't work, I need to find another property or I'm out of it or I'm gonna scale back what I said I wanna do so I can stay here. Not to scare you but reality check is you want fire to check your property as early as possible before you really get those site plans put together, I would say. So with that I'd like Chris to chat with you guys. My name's Chris Walters, I'm with the Santa Cruz County Fire Marshal's Office and I represent, the County Fire Marshal's Office represents those areas outside the fire districts. So you have established fire districts like Central Fire, Scots Valley, Ben Lohman, Boulder Creek, all those fire districts. My area like Bonnie Dune, Coralitas is outside of those fire districts. And I wanna talk about some of the information that I will be interested in. All the fire districts have similar requirements so they would be also interested in this type of information. I unfortunately don't have a nice PowerPoint, I'm just gonna be reading it off to you. Some of the background information, you contact the fire district. Well first of all, you need to find out where your site is and what fire district you're in. Contacting the wrong fire district doesn't help out. You can find that on the County GIS, contact our office or any one of the Fire Marshal's offices and they'll be able to tell you what district, what fire district you're in. Now, they'll provide the phone numbers of the fire district personnel that you'll need to contact for further information. The information, the background information we're very interested in is your, we need your contact information, phone numbers and emails so that we can communicate. The address of the intended operation site, the parcel number of the intended operation site. What is the zoning? Some of the background information, a lot of the background information that Loretta was talking about. What is the zoning of the parcel? Especially if you're using buildings for growing in or operations within the building. We wanna know what were the building permits for those buildings? Are there any outstanding buildings and do the buildings even have building permits where they permitted at all in the first place? One thing aside, typically growing cannabis or any other crop on the ground without any associated buildings don't really trigger any fire requirements. Fire requirements are triggered by buildings themselves. What was the use permitting for the parcel prior to your current operation and how would that affect your use permitting forward? And then what is the occupancy class and what were the buildings that you're gonna be using? What were they, what was the occupancy class of the building prior to your use? And what was the occupancy class of the building prior to use and was it designed or built for your particular use? That's all information that can come from Planning Building Department. You'll have to do research as Loretta alluded to originally. Now, contact us, you can send that to us in email and we can review it and then we'll wanna do a site visit and we'll wanna know what the current conditions are of the site. Specifically, and this is again stuff that Loretta alluded to, but what do you intend to do and in what buildings or what is your operation? We're growing outside in this area. We intend to do manufacturing in this area in this building and those are all things that we'll need to take into account prior to giving you any information on specifics for your buildings. What buildings will be used and what the purposes will be, what those purposes will be in those buildings? What is the construction class of the buildings and square footage of the buildings? That also goes to required water storage or fire flow depending on if you're in municipal water or don't have municipal water, you're on a well. Do the buildings already have fire sprinklers? If the fire sprinklers and if they're fire sprinklers in the building and some sort of extinguishing agent or extinguishers, are they up to date and current? They need to be sprinklers, require five year inspections, extinguishers for commercial areas require recertification once a year. What is the current water source and where are the fire hydrants for this? Now we're talking specifically buildings and construction. You're doing some sort of operation growing or processing that sort of thing within buildings. Where are the current, what is the current water source and where are the fire hydrants for the buildings? Remember, these are commercial buildings, they're not residential, they don't qualify for a lot of the residential exceptions. What is the fire flow from those hydrants and how long can that be maintained? Now moving on from hydrants, where is the county maintained, where is the end of the county maintained road from your site and what is your current access to those buildings? We're concerned about road widths, surfacing, slope, turn radii on very narrow roads. That's all information that we wanna collect as we meet with you on site and you can do the homework ahead of time. So, some of the things to consider and again Loretta alluded to it, what are the intended changes to the operation? What is your goal? If this year you're not using this building, but two years from now you intend to do manufacturing and those are things that we'll wanna need and we can advise you on what the potential consequences that will be. Realize that fire code changes every three years, so as this moves forward, I'm sure there will be more different regulations within the fire code concerning cannabis. What's your operations plan for the future and where do you hope to grow? So, that's a site, visit some background information that we will be able to provide you a pretty good detail on what fire requirements will be, access road, water storage and or hydrants and fire sprinklers. There are other things within buildings if you're doing manufacturing and if you have controlled areas exiting those sort of things that goes into building construction. Some of the information that we'll need in the building permitting phase, I think that was phase three-ish. Okay, so we'll need detailed site plans, plans for the buildings that you intend to use. For manufacturing operations, we will need details and cut sheets for your listed equipment. We'll need cut sheets for booths if you intend to use those and we'll need the listings for the booths. We'll need hydrants and flow information and if the current flow from the hydrants does not meet the current requirements based on square footage and construction type of your building, what improvements do you intend to make to that storage and or hydrant system? And you have to keep in mind, aside from county planning building permits, tank and hydrant permits are deferred submittal through the fire marshal's office. There are, what's a deferred submittal is a separate permit similar to fire sprinklers and any other fire alarm system. They're a separate permit through your local fire district. We'll need details on access road again, slope, surfacing, widths and what your intended improvements and how much grading that may involve. We don't specifically need to know grading but that will go to the planning department. For buildings with cannabis operations inside, fire sprinklers more than likely would be required. Fire sprinkler permits again are deferred submittal through the fire marshal's office and lastly, or not quite lastly, but tanks, pumps, hydrants, pipe, sounding devices and all systems attached to fire suppression or fire safety devices are all required to be listed and designed for the operation they're intended to be used for. So using ag pumps for a fire sprinkler system is not allowed. That pump needs to be listed for the service that is required of it, fire sprinkler system. Appropriate building plans and construction plans would need to be routed through the building department as Robin talked about and the appropriate permits needed for construction. We would review all of that and approve those projects. Thank you. Sorry. That's a lot. It was quick. That's a lot of stuff. And so we're gonna have questions. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. No, I was just gonna remind folks lots of information. We will have links to fire requirements and all sorts of stuff but you should also know that this workshop is being taped so don't have to worry about scribbling everything and memorizing everything right this second. I wanted to ask you really quickly just a couple of things that have come up a lot lately and I'm sure you'll get other questions. Shipping containers are sort of a very popular way of housing different aspects, cultivating and manufacturing. Do you treat those differently than other types of structures? So I think if you had them wired for electricity then you're using it as essentially a building. So building standards would apply. I'm not sure. I think we'd have to talk to the building department to find out where that cutoff is. I would guess that they don't allow electrical or fans or heaters or dryers within that without proper permitting. That would be my guess. If you're using a shipping container by itself storing stuff, I think there's only requirements and I don't know the exact answer but I think there's only requirements on how many you can have at a specific site. That's true, that's true. I think that there's sort of the, at least the popular perception is that it's not somehow a real structure. It's not a real building because you can have it hauled off relatively easily or because it's metal. It doesn't burst into flames or something. So I just wanted to make sure I got your take on that that this isn't, it's not exempt just because of the type of construction of it or the fact that it can be hauled off. Right. Okay. Another question that comes up a lot. Folks that are not able to meet the rigorous 20 foot wide roads and large water storage requirements are trying to think outside the box and so there are folks that have come up with mobile processing and so it's not a structure but if you drive up in a 18 wheeler or something and you're doing it and then you go off site, what's your take on it? Right, so 18 wheelers, Department of Transportation, it's got a license plate. Not a structure. Yeah, not a structure, right. But if you site it or if it has some sort of structure-ish type thing and then you site it on site, then it becomes a structure. There are specific requirements on that structure and then it can only, if it's considered temporary, it can only be in place. I think the maximum is 180 days via permit through our office. Temporary structures require permitting. And it can depend but the maximum is 180 days. So and then like refrigeration, like an 18 wheeler refrigeration thing, that's all under Department of Transportation, it's a licensed vehicle, doesn't have any fire requirements. Cool, okay. Now it's your turn. Yeah, I will. Fire hydrants? So, yeah, repeat for them. Could you summarize that question? Okay, so she has a water storage and a water connection, but it's not shaped essentially like a fire hydrant that you'd see on the corner. Do you need a fire hydrant? Are you using buildings for your processing, growing, not specifically greenhouses without artificial light, but are you processing within a building? Are you growing outside? Are you growing outside? It's in a green house. Okay, but not with artificial light. Okay, so the water storage and fire flow requirements are gonna be minimal. You will need something that looks like a hydrant. I mean, I know I see quite a few of them out there and I went to a site the other day, it was a plastic PVC that came out of the ground and the guy said, there's our hydrant. From the fire perspective, that's not what we look at as a hydrant. So you can essentially chop that plastic off and put a standard hydrant right over the top of it and it would be sufficient. It needs to look right, right. So that's what our guys are looking for in the middle of the night is a hydrant and a piece of pipe out of the ground. They won't know what that's what it is. I'm gonna come to you so we can hear. I had to install a wharf head in the past for this. Does that qualify as the hydrant? So it depends on the flow. It doesn't look like hydrants, but it's hooked up, exactly. And it has the two inch or the three. No, no, that's considered a hydrant also, but it depends also on the flow because it's only two and a half inch discharge and if your flow is more than what a two and a half can provide, then you may need the full hydrant that's got two, two and a half and a four. Depends on the flow. That would basically be based on structures then. It'd be based on square footage and construction type, yeah. First, I was gonna ask if you could post that checklist or maybe give it to them to post online because we have some consultants and I'd love it if they could just. Yeah, I'm working. We've been working on one, I haven't quite got it yet. Okay, and then also I noticed in the county code and I'm not an expert at reading these, but there was on agricultural parcels, there's some ability to use alternative fire sprinkler systems. Maybe it's referring to the chemicals present rather than water, is there a guidance on that? Because it's basically up to the county fire marshal, which is you guys and I'm not sure what your perspective is on that. Like for instance, if you do have a storage shed that's a container out, you know, plays an agricultural parcel, would a chemical suppressant system similar to like what restaurants use be acceptable? Okay, that's possible. So there is a section in the fire code. It doesn't speak to that specifically, but there's a section in the fire code right at the beginning, under permitting and everything that's called alternate means. And you would have to provide documentation from whoever built the system that this system meets the requirements. So if fire sprinklers were required, then this system as an alternate means, meets the requirements of the sprinkler system. For like NFPA13, environmental fire protection. Right, so NFPA13 is the sprinkler system requirements. So your proposed other system meets those requirements or exceeds. Yeah, you just need to provide that documentation. Yeah. No, in the back, nope. Okay, sorry, I'll come back. Wait for the mic, wait for the mic. So about her question with the fire hydrant, does that need to be within the building, next to the building, or just for the property? So there are a couple of requirements there. A fire hydrant is required to be within 400 feet of a commercial structure. So not in the building, but within 400 feet of the commercial structure. It typically needs to be on the drive access way. You wouldn't put it behind the building or bury it somewhere where we couldn't get to it. There is a allowance if you have, or your buildings are sprinkled, then you can go up to 600 feet. So if you had a site and you put the fire hydrant up in front, you would wanna be able to get within 400 feet of the essentially the back of the structure. That answers my question. Real quick as well, if you have a greenhouse structure, permanent greenhouse, do you need a sprinkler system inside the greenhouse for your canopy space? Or say you have a drying space within that greenhouse, would it be better to just include just the dry? Right, so your tricky question. It is a tricky question because a partially sprinkled building is by code in Santa Cruz County and it's been that way for a long time, is not allowed. So it would be the whole thing, unfortunately. We've been, obviously if you're growing within greenhouses that are already in operation or intending to build a greenhouse, there are exceptions for fire sprinklers for greenhouses, but those exceptions come with restrictions, restrictions about clearance around the structure. You need to have what are called 60 foot side yards that's clear area around the structure. In the event the building unsprinkled goes up in smoke, it's not gonna burn down other property. That is what we're essentially looking at. And it needs to be on commercial ag property. So back to the question. It might be easier to move your drying or whatever you intend to do outside of the building, then you don't have to sprinkle 50,000 square feet, you only have to sprinkle, I don't know, 20 feet, or, you know, 200 feet. Hi there, is there a way to calculate how much water storage you need for an indoor sprinkler system? For the sprinkler system itself. So there is, it is a little bit complicated. It's NFPA National Fire Protection Association's, the standard is NFPA 13, and within that standard it gives you a duration and size of the sprinkler heads, and you can do the calculation on how much water you specifically need for the sprinkler system alone. Okay. Now that's just the sprinkler system. There are fire flow requirements based on building construction that comes straight out of the building code, and they are typically more onerous than specific sprinkler requirements. Right. So you can, if you meet the building code requirements, typically you've already covered the sprinkler requirements. And in what cases is a sprinkler system not required? I notice you said in most cases it would be required for an indoor structure. So we've been looking, you know, as we get new people inviting us into new places then we have to, you know, I was invited into a place that already has cut flowers and the guy's working side by side with the guy with cut flowers and so he'll be doing some processing trimming in this area. I mean, it's basically the same use. And so it buildings 50 years old. So it came in long before sprinkler requirements. So maybe we wouldn't require fire sprinklers if he can find some self to just trimming and along with the cut flowers in a building that's already intended for that use. Now the downside is he's got no water supply and essentially the access road doesn't meet the current requirements. So there could be trade-offs. Maybe he sprinkles a building and he doesn't have to worry about the road and he has to bring some sort of water supply to us. I mean, that's pretty much a given. We have to have hydrants. Okay, all right, thank you. If a fire hydrant were to be installed, is there, are there services for that or who does that and how much does it cost? Yeah, so those are general contractors or guys that do underground work. You know, I can't specify but you're looking like Granite and Dyrton and a bunch of big contractors that do underground work for hydrants. I had a question about the 20 foot road width and so the main road that accesses our property is a county road. Then we have a driveway, which is around 100 feet long that accesses our portion of the property. So does that driveway need to be 20 feet wide or? So again, back to what it's based on the building. So are you using a building for your growing or processing? It would be a greenhouse. Okay, so yes, if you're using a commercial greenhouse. Then it would have to be 20 feet wide. So with, and related to her question, if the county road is 20 feet wide and the fire hydrant is on the county road and it's within. So it's got like municipal services in the county, in the road itself. Right, and that is her driveway may be too narrow but it's still within 400 feet of that sprinkler on the county road. The hydrant, yeah. Yeah, does that work or? It doesn't change the road requirements. They're all separate requirements. Okay. So you could use the hydrant. Yeah, the hydrant is within the distance. So that would be fine, but it doesn't change the road requirements. The road requirements are essentially based on the building. Okay. Thank you, Chris. Okay. Wonderful, thank you. Thank you so much, Chris. So basically you can see that early consultation with fire may very much influence your site plans, your development plan altogether. And it's not to scare you, but it's just reality that you do need to kind of know what they're gonna be tracking and it may change, it may shift. But for this time, for this moment, as you plan your project early, you wanna have the fire agency come out. That'll really influence your road and where you wanna site your building and many other factors that you'll wanna address in your application. So I don't think Chris actually addresses, I think there's a small fee for him to come out to the property, him or whoever to come out to the property. Chris, what is the fee for your site visit? Oh, there isn't a fee, okay. Currently. Currently no fee, we'll see. Getting quick, and getting quick, there's no fee. But right now you're not. Okay. Currently not a fee that could change as things get crazy, so. So that's kind of our real, we're emphasizing that to you now. No matter where you're located, have them come by. And as Chris said, and we will put these requirements on our website, we'll make sure we post it on the resource application page. We'll provide the list that he read off to you. You can watch this back, but you can also get the list on the website so that you know what to prepare before Chris comes out. And then assess your alternatives after Chris comes out. Chris or whomever. You might want to scale back or adjust somewhat, depending on what you hear from the fire marshal. So I'm almost done. We're almost wrapping up and then we'll take some general questions after that and then let everyone enjoy their summer evening. I just want to clarify a point of confusion. One last point is environmental review. Robin talked about it a little earlier, but it's required of all projects. Some folks will be exempt. That can't, you can have an idea if you work with a consultant, if you'll be probably exempt or not, but it'll be determined by the permit planner, not you. And that also includes the environmental review. If there is environmental review that goes beyond an exemption that is not done by your consultant. We've heard people say, oh yeah, we have consultants that are gonna do our CEQA, California Environmental Equality Act Assessment. And that is not how it works. There could be a third party that does prepare a document if needed, but that is initiated by the county and determined by the county, just so you know. And there could be mitigations that are added to your project based on the findings of that environmental review. So one of the final other points to say is, as we've kind of, I think, emphasized here, you're gonna need a team. And it may include, there's a lot you can do on your own. We have a lot of self-help tools between the planning department website. If you go in there and poke around, there's a ton of helpful information. You can also approach the planning department about some things. Like, if you wanna get your permit history, you're welcome, like anyone can ask them about that. You can check on the parcel legality. Basically, what are the easements to get to the property? Do you even know about your road access? Can someone shut that door? It's really loud. You need to know about the road access to your site. You wanna be very clear, your consultants would know this, but you wanna check to make sure that that easement that gets you to the property, if it's shared, that you are gonna have collaboration with your neighbors to do a commercial cannabis use out there. It's not a given, and you're gonna need some kind of shared road agreement with them. Same with the wells. If you have a shared well, there would be a requirement that folks sign on to that well agreement. People have to be in agreement that the well use is for cannabis, and we can talk more about that on the side if you have questions, but track those things. And remember to consider these potentially competing, conflicting requirements. We want you to protect the environment. You also might need to comply with ADA or fire code that kind of mess with that issue, and that might tweak where you put your project and how you design everything. So it's a bit iterative, but if you look at it up front and are aware of it, you're gonna have less slip-ups later. This is just to help you plan better. Also don't lose your paperwork. When you give us documents in our department, this is a funny little detail, but people just give us what they have, and they have no copies. Make copies of your documents very, very important. You never know what happens in our, we're good, but things can get lost. And keep your documents. Keep a copy of what you gave us. And there'll be other departmental fees. We don't wanna make it sound like it's all about, but it is not so cheap at first to start up, so there will be fees charged by the different departments for their review, and we want you to know that's the case, and we can talk about that if you're curious about those kind of things. And so one other thing, track the state requirements. They are indeed separate and distinct from us, and so if you're not looking at that at all, and you're focusing on all that we ask for, and you don't know what the state needs, maybe they require different logistics for your grow operation or your site plan, and you think it's one and the same, it's not. Our requirements, we try to dovetail everything with each other, but it's not like, it's not always overlapping. So as Fish and Wildlife and Regional Water Board said, a lot of what you have to provide us, you'll have to provide them, that'll be nice for you, but not all the little site plan details may be the same, so do check, don't assume they're all the same. So as a final point, once you've identified your site, do read our rules, please don't email us and say, I have this property, we'll work. We're really busy and we would love, I would love to help you, but that's just not possible to look up everyone's zoning and do that. If you really don't understand something, call us of course will help you understand the rules, but do your homework and then look at the pre-application questions. It'll help you start thinking about, a lot of what we ask will feed into your business plan and so forth and back and forth. So do look at the pre-application requirements. It's on our website under application resources and then look at that build out plan you wanna have. Really think about what do you want and then invite the fire marshal out and get a hold of the permits on the property and the history. If you don't know about that, you're gonna wanna know about that so you don't show up at planning and get surprised. And then call for an appointment. Once you have all your ducks in a row and you feel like you've done your homework and you filled out that application as best as you can, call Robin and she'll suss out if you're ready and set you up for a pre-application appointment. And do build your team. Like we said, you really do need help here. Most of you will and with that, I think I didn't, oh the last slide. There's just some resources. We'll put this on the website but of course it's our website information. We also have an FAQ document frequently asked questions and a link to the tax and state information just so you can track some of that and always check our news page for updates. We're not proactively emailing people a lot now. We just want you to go to our website for information, go to Facebook. You don't have to be on it to look at it. It's a public page. But just track what's going on with us and updates and with that we're done with the workshop but we now want to take questions if people have any burning questions to ask. No, no, we need the mic. Okay, yeah, all right. Do you want to just like? I have a very loud voice I can do. No, no, don't worry. No, no, it's televised. I know. Oh, if you want it on there because it's the... I mean, I could, okay. Okay, my question has to do with the expense of everything. I know that people have probably a lot of good faith in their desire to meet all the requirements. And if people here have their temporary authorization from the county and their temporary authorizations or permits from the state to do whatever they want to do, is there a way to feel as a, you know, someone who's trying to act in good faith to go slower than one feels like the need? It seems like we want to get it all right. We want to be in compliance. But if we've done as much as we can and we're trying to then, you know, a budget for what's going to happen in the next six to nine months, does that look upon as being, you know, not compliant or not, you know, acting in good faith? I think we, you know, we want to do as much as we can. But if we don't have the money for everything, I'm afraid to start something and go down a certain road with a certain agency and then find I can't complete it at that moment. Right, just specifically the pre-app or just the whole thing, I mean the pre-app, right. So everybody has time to get their stuff together. I don't want anybody to give us something that is not ready for prime time because that doesn't help you, it doesn't help us and it will cost. You can go through, if you already did pre-license inspection and or you got your local letter, you don't have to pay for the pre-application consultation so you can get some information about the direction that you're headed. What I don't want is for folks to wait and wait and wait, you know, until sort of the last minute and then come in and be like, oh my gosh, my temporary, you know, has run out and now I have to do an annual and because we are in this process of transitioning to real applications, right. So the local letters were to keep folks afloat, keep you in business until we had an ordinance. Now we have an ordinance, so now we have applications, we have a permit process. So in general, what's in our head and we haven't necessarily landed on anything firm but for registrants specifically talking about cultivation, registrants will have a year to submit an application. Right, so hopefully that gives enough time if for whatever reason that's not enough time, talk to us, we'll see if there's, you know, some other sort of circumstances going on, we can talk to you but we do want folks to be focusing on the application process. So the pre-app piece is where we sort of help you scope and make sure you're going in the right direction but we don't want folks to disappear either and hang on to their temporary state license and then run out of time. So just keep talking to us. And I think there's a sweet spot like we talked about with the phasing where if you have kind of bigger vision but just really in the next five years, you're not going beyond some smaller activity you're doing. I mean, you could stick with that for a while and then you would have to go back to planning for some amendment, I think it would be an amendment to your use permit and you'd have to amend your, you just, you know, if there's costs involved, you have to kind of do that, you have to weigh the options and see what makes sense but you don't have to go all crazy all at once. So there is some phasing you can do to mitigate the costs you're worried about. First, I want to thank Loretta for her patience and busting her ass the last couple of years and getting us to where we are today. I don't know if you guys know, but she's leaving unfortunately, so hats off to you. The other thing is, so after like speaking with Chris, I want to keep the ball rolling, but I also think that it's prudent to have a lot of guidance from FHIR in particular and so would you advise having some guidance from them prior to setting up the pre-licensing? I would. Yeah, that's what I'm thinking too. I think everybody that has not talked to FHIR about their specific site, had them come out if you've got plans, show in plans, that has the potential to completely change everything, right, it's gonna change if you don't know that you need to do some grading on your road to accommodate 20 feet, that's gonna change environmental review, it's gonna change the entire scope of your project, so the big, and that's part of what the pre-app is for, but if you've come into the pre-app and I ask, so have you checked in with FHIR and you've said no, I'm like, well this is great, but this could all change, so absolutely, there's no reason not to check in with them, get, you know, rip the Band-Aid off, if it's gonna be bad, you need to know that now, you don't wanna wait and be surprised later, and that those big kinds of things, you know, are you sitting on a fault zone, are you gonna need a geology report or something, you don't wanna wait and find out after you've spent thousands on plans and consultants and stuff, ask the big hard questions now and figure out, is this gonna work, or do I have to move, or do I have to rescale or reshape my project? Right, yeah, some people are down, you know, a 10-foot road, it's a half mile to the county maintain road, but they want electrified hoop houses, the whole deal Chris was talking about, they have big visions in manufacturing and that's all beautiful, but if you can't widen that road to standard, whatever the standard may be, well, you better know that early, not get your plans designed and then come to us, spend 50, we don't want you to spend 1,500, if you, you know, might have to tweak things, we don't wanna take your money unnecessarily, believe us we don't, who's next? For a class two distribution license, my understanding is that one of the requirements is that the applicant provide suitable storage facilities, that's the language in the ordinance. Yes. So the criterion of suitable is determined solely at the discretion of the licensing officer, correct? Go for it, I mean. Okay, well I do have a follow up to that. All right, so that person, she can, I think actually this is good you brought this up, so it's not just that point, yeah, the discretion is true, you propose what you think makes sense for your operation, bearing in mind other constraints we talked about today, about environmental issues, neighborhood compatibility, and so there's the answer there, but that goes for other parts, like the best management and operational practices plan, you wanna really, there's some criterion and there's some guidance there, but at the same time you can also tell us what you think you can do to meet that, you know, it's up to you to kind of design the response you think is a winning answer that you can do feasibly and that you'll perform and do, and that will meet our requirements, so there is some creativity allowed here. Right, but we're looking at, everything is about impacts, right, so to the extent I don't necessarily care, I'm not a building code person, I don't know what the building codes are for everything, but we care about where it is and how it functions, so a structure that you're having deliveries coming in and out of, we wanna make sure it's not in the boonies or that it's not like right adjacent to the road where you have folks coming onto a public road, if you have employees in there, you're gonna have to provide an accessible path of travel, so that's gonna help determine, so the siting takes into consideration all of these different things, you have to be envisioning what does it look like to somebody that doesn't know your project, somebody driving by or a neighbor, what are they seeing in terms of activity, traffic, parking, noise, all of that stuff is part, and then the actual physical imprint, footprint on the ground, all of those things are factors, so it's not any one thing, it is this a better site than that site over there, I don't necessarily care about what the building looks like unless it's like nine stories tall or something hideous like that, don't do that, but if it's just like a regular, I don't know, barn shed, I don't particularly care about the structure itself, I care more about where it is and what the impact is. I was just gonna say, the state as everybody here should know has requirements for everything in terms of storage and protecting everything and testing and all of that stuff, so their stuff is gonna be more rigorous and less about land use and imprint, go ahead. Okay, so let's say the business model is someone wants to get a class two distribution license and the only activity that they would perform would be transportation of flowers from a cultivator to a licensed distributor or between two distributors. In that case that they would have no storage need, so would it be reasonable to conclude that suitable storage facilities would be no storage facilities? It could be your vehicle, I suppose, I mean, right? So, I mean, tell me where point A is and where point B, CD. In that circumstance, it's less about the impact on the ground and it's more about vehicle miles traveled, right? So, what's the impact to traffic and noise and all of that and context? Is this something, is it in a residential neighborhood where they will freak out if you have, which you can't do class two anyway? But anyway, yeah, you got it. I had a question about whether or not you know if there are going to be any changes to state requirements in 2019, is what is required in 2018? If we are trying to be compliant with what is currently and then if we get one year to apply but then you don't actually, you know, get all your paperwork in until sometime in 2019, are the then requirements for the state gonna be different than they are? If I had to bet, I would say that there's gonna be some different stuff. They're changing right now as most of you know, pretty much everything has some potential to change so I can't predict and those are the kinds of things. Again, I just wanna make sure folks aren't just hiding from us and saying, ah, this is all too crazy. I'm just gonna keep doing my thing. I mean, I want folks to come in but if you can't, if you're waiting for something or you think a regulation is gonna change, I mean, I don't have a crystal ball. I would say apply for what you want and you'll deal with, we will deal together with whatever those requirements are and we'll shape it accordingly. If it changes after the fact, I mean, that happens all the time. It won't impact your use permit but it could change, you know, your licensing. But I don't, yeah, it's changing. They're making it up too. I had one more question about because the process, this licensing process, I mean, it's gonna take a while. You know, from my experience, permitting is minimum nine months and if you're lucky, you can get it done in less than a year. And, but what do you do in the interim? I mean, in terms of legal, what is the policy or whatever it is before you get the license? You're in the process but you haven't actually gotten it. Right. And that's, the rub on that is CEQA. So if you have been doing stuff, you can keep doing that within certain parameters. I mean, unless you're doing something terrible to the environment or whatever. To the degree that you've already been operating some aspect of cannabis industry, you can keep doing that and we can talk about what that looks like in terms of an authorization letter. But if you're wanting to do something that has not been done, you can't start because that violates the Environmental Quality Act. The purpose of CEQA is to evaluate impacts and once you start something, you've started the impact before we've evaluated it and that's not allowed and we all get in trouble if we start going down that road. Yeah, some people say, oh yeah, you know, this was tomatoes, I'm just changing it to cannabis. Why do I have, what's the problem? And well, hey, you know, you've got, there's changes in employees and water demand and other things that, you know, we're gonna be tracking. So it might seem like, hey, it's just seeds, what's the problem? But it's never just that simple. I think that's in a nutshell, the answer there. But we have another question. Actually, two part question one for, I think Sean, is his name from the water? And the other one is, you mentioned about a feasibility report from a biologist. Is required, will you give us a list of certain biologists you accept or can we just pick one? We have a list that the planning department maintains lists of all, for biologists, for engineers, geologists, they have a list. If you have somebody, it depends on what the issue is. So if it's a specific, you know, red legged frog or something, it has to be somebody who specializes in that and is recognized by the state. But we do have a list, there are lots and lots of folks on it. I'm not sure if it's on the planning department website, but we'll put those kinds of contact pieces on our website as well. Yeah, what is it you wanna see from the biology? Well, that's on the resources. So don't, I mean, you are welcome to always hire a biologist and come out early just for your own reasons that you might want them to see the site early. But you'll wanna kinda wait till you get into phase two where you submit to planning. And they'll make, I mean, unless we tell you during phase one, hey, you're definitely gonna need a bio report. And then we call you, we tell you to go do that. It might be in phase two that it is called for. So we just wouldn't want you to have them scope an assessment, waste your money when it could have been done at one time upon, you know, wouldn't you agree, Robin? Yeah, I mean, it depends on the reason. If you know that you're in Sandhills, then there's no reason that you can't call the biologist that we know and work with who specialize in Sandhills to rule it out or to start to create some sort of plan. But what you don't want is to go down that path and then have the environmental planners down in the planning department say, oh wait, but you forgot to look over here. And again, so it's good to be thinking and you can make calls and you can make inquiries about your property and using Sandhills. As an example, the local biologists know all the Sandhills areas of the county and so maybe you get some good input. But I wouldn't start spending money until it's been vetted by planning. Okay. Because we have less than five minutes. Yeah, and if I'm on a well, you talked about groundwater percolation, how would that affect a well? I don't quite know the definition of groundwater percolation. Basically, if you're in a confined aquifer, so if your well is in like a hard rock layer, you're in groundwater. So it's just percolating groundwater. That's just like the term. So if you're in a shallow well, that's could be technically subterranean flow. So then that would be more like surface water. So if you're in a hard rock layer, chances are you're in an aquifer, you're in groundwater. I had a question for you as well. You said shallow well. What is your definition of a shallow well? 10 feet, 12 feet. If you drilled into the ground through a hard rock layer, you're good. If you call me, I'm gonna say, hey, I'm diverting from a well, and I dug it by hand. You're not in a well. So there's like lots of shades of gray, right? Like, what's deep, what's far, what's... But if you had like a cistern well that's 30 feet down, corrugated, blah, blah, blah, that's... It doesn't really depend on the depth. It depends on the subterranean flow. What it went through. So if you have a well log report or completion report, something that states like, I went through hard rock layer, you're good. If you don't have one and you have an idea, it gets a little murky, but I can't tell you what's deep, what's not deep. It's just, what is it in? Okay, and then I have the real concern of, it looks like so many people are gonna be at level five hearings, public hearings. Yeah, and so if there's 100 of us that have to have level five hearings, what kind of a bottleneck is that gonna create with the county of Santa Cruz? How are you gonna be able to process this? Well, we'll see if we get there. I mean, I don't anticipate 100 folks all at once having everything complete and ready to go to hearing, to be honest. And this is just based on some of the stuff that I'm seeing now. It's not a knock on anybody, but this is new for folks. These questions are new. I don't expect that everybody in this room understands all of the complexities of zoning code and our licensing and all of that stuff. So I think that it will sort of be self-metering in a way, but if it turns out that we get, everybody comes in and the plans are clean and good and you move on to submitting and it starts looking like we need bodies, then we'll hire bodies, right? I mean, at some point we start, there will be a rhythm that develops. Part of the problem is, there's not a problem yet, but I anticipate planning is still like, oh, cannabis, I've heard of that. They're not quite down with what this looks like. It's a little bit different than what they're used to with shopping centers or coastal permits or something, but they're getting there. Sorry, so we're running out of time, but I just wanted to say on that piece there that I think our department and the county in general, we're gonna be adapting, Robin alluded to that. We're gonna be working with you guys to get your license. We want you to be successful. This is the goal of the county. We want everyone to be able to get licensed if possible. So we will adapt as needed to make this work. So when we see these things happening, we'll adjust and I have one last speaker. Hi there, Trevor Luxon, born and raised Santa Cruz and also a local attorney. I just would like to highlight a couple of things. I know there's been a lot of intimidation and hesitation over the new pre-application process. It's a 39 page packet, it's pretty hefty, it's a little bit scary looking, but really it's a preview to the future and if that seems too much to you, then maybe cannabis is too much to you and that's what it's gonna be from now on. So expect that, be prepared for that. Second thing I just would quickly like to highlight our county staff. We're lucky to have a really great county staff starting here with Robin and I especially would like to highlight Mrs. Loretta Moreno who unfortunately will be leaving us soon. It's her. Like Minnie, a shooting star, she moves quickly and unfortunately the state of California snatched her off to Sacramento. So we're gonna miss her a lot. She's one of, I believe, the original members of the first hire, so it's too bad, but we'll miss her a lot. So, okay. Thanks, Trev. Still folks outside, I don't know if they're sticking around or not, but we'll be around.