Letter Writer Cheers Mendocino County’s Phase 3 Cannabis Expansion
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To whom it may concern,
I was born in the era when Mendocino County was centralized around the booming timber industry. I witnessed this county in its glory days when Branscomb was an actual town with its own ball fields. When my small hometown of Laytonville had enough participants to support their own sports leagues without having to scour for every last able-bodied youth to field its teams. When our schools were filled with enough students to support the small class sizes and unique opportunities that allowed our youth to flourish. People were happy. Violent crime levels were low.
The community we live in today is a different picture. Our crime rates are climbing. Our school enrollments are declining. In the past, illegal cannabis money was helping to support these communities and really give them the extra push that they needed economically. But what we fail to realize was that it was the local timber industry that was really holding everything together. The logging industry provided jobs. It was our middle class. It was a way for our community members who didn’t participate in cannabis to make a decent living. Once our local timber industry crashed, we saw the effects it had on our population and felt the ripples. Our schools, police departments and hospitals suffered huge losses. It was a snowball effect that just got worse affecting each aspect of our communities. Sure, the black market saved a lot of individuals and our local economy was able to maintain as we saw new higher-end businesses coming into town being supported by a select few. But what we didn’t have any more was a working middle class or the population base to support our critical infrastructure.
I hear lots of arguments for and against Phase 3 cannabis expansion, but what I don’t think we hear enough is what is best for the people. I believe that under the current proposal set forth before you we will see the biggest improvement to our local communities that we have seen in decades. Cannabis expansion will give way to the return of the middle class. We will have the ability to provide jobs for people who otherwise may be working for minimum wage, struggling to survive and support their families. People will no longer have to make the tough to decisions to continue living minimally or relocating elsewhere to raise their families. People will have the ability to work as trimmers, farm laborers, lab technicians, agricultural specialists. They will be able to make a good living, to receive benefits and to establish Mendocino County as their homes forever. Cannabis has the ability to do what the timber industry did for our communities by way of return of the middle class.
I hear people say that cannabis is a part our heritage and the commercialization of it within Mendocino County would thus ruin what we were built on. But I disagree. Large-scale cannabis expansion would return us to our heritage. Our heritage isn’t just about our small cannabis operations. Our heritage is our people. Our heritage is our sense of community. It’s our children playing in our parks. It’s our schools having enough students to receive the funding necessary to support the special programs that once made them unique. It’s feeling safe because our crime rates are low as we have the means for everyone to make a good living. It’s knowing that when you’re in need of help your local departments can respond quickly because we have the ability to fund them. Our heritage is dependent on the middle class and without scaled cannabis expansion we don’t have an industry to support it.
I ask of you today to think about what is truly best for the people who reside in this county. Don’t just think about a few cannabis operators, but think about the future of our county. Think about the things that made us fall in love with this area. Think about what we could become again. Think about our true heritage.
Sincerely,
Malila Gordon, Mendocino County Resident and Member of the Cannabis Community
To whom it may concern,
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Not sure if your letter shows a lack of economic foresight or a lack of honest intention. The cannabis GDP of your county can be split among a number of smallish businesses (250- 1000?) or it can be siphoned off to the bank accounts of corporate investors so they can buy bigger yachts.
True that, and that’s why most people in Mendo don’t want this Phase 3 they are trying to shove through.
Also, most of the people in the logging industry were growing a little bit on the side for supplemental income (and turned to growing when the logging industry burped and walked away from the forests).
Big corporate grows are antithetical to that kind of individual financial empowerment.
What a joke. This letter has so many fallacies I don’t even know where to begin. Most cannabis companies pay around $15 an hr ( maybe $20 if your lucky) so the idea that this expansion is gonna do anything for Mendocino ‘s middle class is beyond ridiculous. Outside investors from other states will reap the benefits not Mendocino. Thanks for the snake oil Malia
This is a very weird letter. A quick internet check shows that Malila was born in 1988. Well…I was an adult in Laytonville and Branscomb at that time and her nostalgic description of how things were when she was 0 years old is not correct at all. Not sure who has been feeding her bullshit or if she made it up. Yes this was before the mill in Branscomb closed but no- logging was already close to dead. She worked for Laytonville schools so she knows some people. She works with somebody named Syracuse Goldenghost in a company named Maverick Farm Solutions. Syracuse has a property on Ridgewood Rd and that property has multiple large greenhouses. Perhaps she has put together this bizarrely very wrong letter for somebody who is looking to blow up a massive grow? That would be my guess. “Large-scale cannabis expansion would return us to our heritage”. Really?!! Are you now working for Flo Kana? As the 2 writers above state- the economic picture she paints is wrong. It’s actually the opposite. She says she’s “looking out” for “the people” and not a few large growers? Her letter supports the opposite! It seems like the kids of the og growers are the ones selling everybody out and it’s sad…I can’t tell if they really believe their own fairy tales or if they are just selfish and greedy. Yes- we would like a middle class. No-giving the industry to a few corporate entities will not help that!
What a dishonest letter! Either totally full of it, which is proven by her nostalgia for a time period she didn’t even experience, or totally ignorant of how economics works. The area had a more sustainable logging industry before that industry consolidated with big corporate logging taking over and destroying the local industry. What the writer is celebrating will lead to the death of the local economy just like what happened to her beloved logging industry.
I agree with you, and myself above but I have to throw the letter writer one bone- What we had in Branscomb was a locally-owned mill. Harwood mill was a good employer- treated people respectfully and donated to local causes. The Harwoods were good people and very community-minded so perhaps the letter writer got a tainted idea of how the industry was in 1988- when she was 0 years old. In northern Mendocino we also had LP and GP with big timber holdings and mills but those mills were in Willits and Ft Bragg. In Branscomb we were lucky to have the Harwoods. And if your world was only Branscomb and Laytonville (which is a lot when you’re only 0 years old) you might get a skewed perspective.
Syracuse is her brother, her other brother also has a permitted farm so clearly her family could benefit from easy expansion of there already existing farms. You’re definitely right about the fact that many of the og growers kids are the ones who have become good little capitalists ready to sell out their neighbors and community for big bucks
All the expansion will bring is migrant workers and lower pound prices…. look at lake county my close friend has a 25 acer canopy. He employs 100 people all season are they locals? Nope…. straight off the migrant worker bus hired from a employment agency…. phase three will siphon the county coffers dry. You sir are a idiot you probably have a 1000 acres and are hoping that it goes through so you can get that big LA money. If you want a large scale operation please move to lake Sonoma or anywhere else but here. Third generation been on the farm for 35 years here and have to say BS bud your full of shit
“Large-scale cannabis expansion would return us to our heritage.” Say what
😒
I really need people to see the water situation as an issue that we don’t currently have a solution for. The lack of precipitation has put all of us in a pickle. Expansion = more water demand. How can we excuse this. Have we looked at any of our sources, where in the water going to come from?
It’s the great Reset, Jason, people are being told 2+2=5, and quite a few are getting pretty ugly about it.
Underground, pumped from wells, appears to be the answer.
This is the same “solution” to the massive over-allocation of California water rights that industrial farmers in the valley are turning to. State law mandates local efforts to achieve groundwater sustainability, but it looks to me like the local boards are just out to keep meters off farmers’ wells.
Forcing farmers to get their water from Wells puts small farmers at a competitive disadvantage compared to large scale farmers who can amortize the cost of an expensive well over a larger operation.
Kym, please post my article.
Your letter will come out tomorrow.
I so disagree with the letter writer .. my family has been in Mendocino county for 95 years. I am almost 70 and have witnessed big changes in our landscape. Water is an extremely valuable commodity and we don’t have enough as it is .. much less adding a water intensive industry.
Please vote no on this ordinance expansion ..
With all that being said (BS), the question no one is asking, were are they getting all the water needed and during what will be another drought year!
https://www.pressdemocrat.com/article/news/lake-sonoma-and-lake-mendocino-water-levels-at-record-low-for-this-time-of/?artslide=7
I agree with Ed. This spring is turning into a slow moving natural disaster. Not just this spring, but the months and years leading up to it.
In the beginning you really loved me.
But I was blind and I could not see.
And when you left me oh how I cried.
You don’t miss your water till the well runs dry.
Wow.. this Commentary reeks of greedy delusion. Create a middle class? With jobs that pay minimum wage for extremely physical labor? And with no overtime, as AG is not required to pay overtime. This reminds me of the Article Kym Kemp just posted about the sugar beet industry being sold to Humboldt on promised riches that failed to manifest.
Mendocino gov. Is foolish to fall for this pumped up Ag schemes that will change Mendo on an a giant scale forever.