Eight More Humboldt Cannabis Permits Revoked as Tax Debts Linger
Humboldt County continues to revoke cannabis permits due to non-payment of Measure S excise taxes but some debts are being addressed through payment plans and some property buyers are willing to assume the tax debts of previous cultivators.
The county’s Board of Supervisors approved eight more cannabis permit revocations at its June 17 meeting.
There were nine permits recommended to be revoked but the ninth was removed from the list because it’s in the process of being transferred to a new owner who’s agreed to pay the Measure S debt.
There have been other cases of that and planning staff described three examples of it, with properties in Bridgeville and Petrolia.
In two of the three examples, Measure S tax debts of $68,610 and $9,830 have been paid in full. The third property buyer has entered into a tax debt payment plan.
Supervisor Steve Madrone said revocations must proceed but there’s a simple way to hold them off.
“There is an out here and that is to develop a payment plan,” he said. “That’s kicking it down the road, it gives time to try and hold on to that permit, make payments and finish that off by the end of the year.”
Yet Madrone questioned the very existence of Measure S.
“Should we have ever had a Measure S? I don’t believe so. But is in place and it is there,” he said.
During a public comment period, cultivators described financial hardships that tax debts contribute to.
Southern Humboldt cannabis farmer Craig Johnson described Measure S as a dysfunctional tax.
He noted the size of one of the permits being revoked – 3,260 square feet, with a $4,000 tax debt – and described the holder as “clearly a family operation.”
It’s in Redwood Valley, which Johnson said has “suffered a degrading road” and has a school that closed, as “pretty much the entire community has moved out because of cannabis legalization and over-taxation.”
Adding that “we were coming to the board from the beginning, saying ‘this isn’t working, we need help,’” Johnson implored supervisors to “listen with both ears” when cultivators tell them Measure S is “not working.”
There was discussion about what happens when farms go out of business.
Supervisor Rex Bohn said he’s gotten calls from realtors trying to sell properties with Measure S debts and abatement issues.
Planning Director John Ford said the county regularly works with realtors and buyers to resolve those issues.
Bohn vouched for that approach, comparing cannabis farming to other financially-challenged resource industries.
“Anything we can do to help keep that segment of the business, kind of like what we tried to do with logging and with fishing,” he said. “We’re a resource-based county, no way around it so as we go forward, we should do anything we can to help.”
Supervisors voted to revoke eight debt-saddled permits due to non-response from their owners and to hold off on revoking the one in the process of being transferred.
They also directed staff to return with an agenda item on extending the county’s payment plan program.
The vote was unanimous, with Board Chair Michelle Bushnell absent due to illness.
Ford estimated that 20 to 30 more tax debt revocations will be brought to supervisors by the end of the year.
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“The vote was unanimous, with Board Chair Michelle Bushnell absent due to illness.”
If Bushnell did attend the meeting, would she have to recuse herself from that agenda item anyway?
How come Rex didn’t have to recuse himself? Isn’t his son in the business?
Big news, idiot Supervisors, Michelle is too sick to vote again, Rex says “we’re gonna help you out”…
What a shitshow.
Black Market is the only answer, but you need money to make money…
Good luck, dope farmers…
Yes, and some of their pals are also realtors.
Absent due to Illness? Give us a break!
The result of Prop. 64 is the return of Mom-and-Pop Guerrilla Gardens as legislators got too damn greedy.
It’s raining carrots! Hallelujah!
Yay for corporate ” legalization”!! We may be broke, poor and losing our land but we are “Free” and “Safe” now. Ain’t it great?!!
Measure S debt. ?
What the fuck?
This measure S is a tax lien on property? The debt should be on the permit holder.
This bullshit will tie up title transfers for years. How stupid are the tax collectors in government?
Pretty stupid.
I have never been fond of the marijuana industry and have predicted that it was just a flash-in-the pan and it would not be allowed to take over Humboldt County. I was wrong, but here we are.
Reality has arrived after fifty some-odd years. To put government in charge of industry is just plain “stupid”.
Marijuana is a basic industry. A basic industry is one that brings more money into the County than the County can piss away. Like it or not Humboldt has prospered on Marijuana.
Marijuana growing has been touted as environmentally pure and non-violent. Nice if true! It has been said that “there is a missing person for every backhoe in The Emerald Triangle”.
The people of Humboldt have protected marijuana as the Golden Goose, and systematically driven off and taxed to death any business that tried to move here. They have even fought to stop any road or transportation system improvement. They are now even trying to boycott the much needed airline industry.
Yeah “stupid” is as Humboldt does.
military industrial complex soaks a trillion every year. Humboldt is small time stupid
Being “small time” doesn’t make it any less stupid
The Golden Goose laid an egg.
And then the goose was cooked.
One, two, three, four
One, two (one, two, three, four)
Let me tell you how it will be
There’s one for you, nineteen for me
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman
Should five percent appear too small
Be thankful I don’t take it all
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman
I’ll tax the street
(If you try to sit, sit) I’ll tax your seat
(If you get too cold, cold) I’ll tax the heat
(If you take a walk, walk) I’ll tax your feet
(Taxman)
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman
Don’t ask me what I want it for
(Ah, ah, Mr. Wilson)
If you don’t want to pay some more
(Ah, ah, Mr. Heath)
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman
Now my advice for those who die (taxman)
Declare the pennies on your eyes (taxman)
‘Cause I’m the taxman
Yeah, I’m the taxman
And you’re working for no one but me (taxman)
George Harrison – Beatles
Tax your feet for taking a walk. Look at the Brits now!
not the way it works, it’s all on the property owner for anything done on the property. but don’t worry, bohn will help, like he did for logging and fishing.
Our county is in big trouble.unless you have another source of income,the cannabis is almost a complete loss to all but a small circle of growers..lake county is allowed to grow up to 37 plants without a permit,just has to be fenced.thats six summers for everyone of humboldts summers.so im still not convinced there helping all they can..just a thought make the number higher then six,that’d be a good start.wipe all abatements clean,give a tax relief on measure s.
to a small circle of growers who are connected to the B.O.S
“lake county is allowed to grow up to 37 plants without a permit”
Where are you getting this info? Still need a permit in Lake County to grow 6 plants for personal use, within a 10’X10′ enclosed fenced area.
“Silly woman, you knew I was a snake before you let me in.”
MEASURE S So you tax the farmer on SQFT not on sale profits Any farmer knows some years are better than others Is this done in any other market????. . You have killed the market. Lbs going for 250 -300$ down from 3000$ from the farm. 100 just to trim a lb. 150 for all the work growing it is criminal . Then you want a large portion of that. You the BS are killing rural Humboldt . These farmers sustain the communities they live in . From dirt to sales in local stores you are shutting down what has worked for 50 years.When the tax man comes and everything goes to shit . Now schools, stores and all business related are failing from YOUR greed. Is closing and boarding up stores and restraunts your goal ??? . It’s working, It is sad how your greed is killing our community. Why would this not work like any other tax. Based in profit not SQ ft. Get out of the farms before our community crumbles under your tax greed. I don’t think any other business gets taxed before selling any product. Leave the farmers alone to spend the money in the towns they grow in to support locals you can’t afford to help.
Then permitting all the food trucks to close the restraunts of the folks trying to raise a family here .
You should be ashamed of you actions!!!!!!!
If growing permitted weed in Humboldt is a foregone conclusion, then why are new indoor grows being approved, with new zoning and land use classification being changed to allow indoor cannabis cultivation at the Meadows Business Park for 7 different APN’s?
The direct result of government intervention with Prop. 64…
Just imagine how much you could make if you used the same tax program on logging company’s
Is there any way we can “revoke” the supervisors raises for mismanaging our tax dollars?
Old Arab proverb: If you let your camel stick its nose in your tent, soon the camel’s ass will be inside the tent with you.
Prop 64 was the camel’s nose. The Humboldt County Board of Supervisors are the camel’s ass.
👍
https://www.crfb.org/blogs/social-security-and-medicare-trustees-release-2025-reports
The taxes they can’t patient have been put in place in the first place. The county supervisors are squeezing everyone out so they’re left on top. Unfortunately that top won’t last long because they’re going to just be crushed under the corporate weed from down south. We were Humboldt strong together, no give a sh*t bout us now, especially representatives. Several of the moves the supervisors have done this year so fa, I have calculated the county will lose millions more from their decisions. With a deficit, I wonder how they expect to make up for that later? They’re literally bankrupting this county and so many people are accepting it up, you know where.
The Back-to-the-Landers plan was to save the world. Now they can’t save themselves. Arrogance at it’s finest.
Honestly, the Back-to-the-Landers were phased out in 2016 during a bait-and-switch. Very few Mom-and-Pop operations made it through compliance. When Measure S was first applied, the county threatened farmers, saying they wouldn’t be able to get permits after 2016 and that they needed to take the largest canopy possible because that would be their only chance.
Then, the county taxed people before any production had even occurred, basing the amount on the square footage they permitted. So, before you could even start growing, you were already facing $10,000 to $50,000 in taxes on top of a compliance agreement that continues to change and pile on more fees. People were starving and offing themselves.
To make matters worse, the county refuses to disclose where those fees came from or how they were spent. Madrone said it went to raises. This has been a shit show from the beginning and based on self serving greed by the people running the county rather than thinking about long term benefit of our entire community
This one from the article however: He noted the size of one of the permits being revoked – 3,260 square feet, with a $4,000 tax debt – and described the holder as “clearly a family operation.”
I’m guessing the attitude towards that one is “how hard is it to come up with $4k on 3200 square feet in an operation with multiple people working it?” Which, realistically, should be fairly easy to come up with, yet allow the issue to drag out so far and long that a license is finally pulled. A part time job will pay out that much in a couple months.
Historic parallel for the Back-to-the-Landers are The Shakers – in my view. One difference was, instead of celibacy – maybe promiscuous? They also shook to The Grateful Dead. I guess there is one small bunch of “Shakers” left but most of their meeting places are museums. Maybe a museum is in order in Garberville for the Back to the Landers/Green Rush?
Humboldt/Mendo/Trinity are no places to grow dope.
No soil, no water, no flat land, rotten weather, bad government, and no cheap labor (except for the cartels).
Only reason they grew the dope was lax LEO enforcement.
Now that it’s ‘legal’… dope farming will depart the same way as other agricultural processes (like dairy, sheep, hogs, wheat/rye), it will go to places where it’s better to grow dope.
—
Oh well.
“Only reason they grew the dope was lax LEO enforcement.”
Actually, the whole reason that they grew dope in Humboldt County was Judge Charles M. Thomas’ blatant and unabashed advocacy without recusal for his for his involvement and for protecting the “Back to Landers”.
The Old Guard knows that.
That’s a name not heard in a while.
Yeah, but he was Saint Thomas with the growers. He is the one that allowed the “Species Defence”…. Among other things.
Only they did not call them “Back to Landers” in Thomas’s day…
Right, they didn’t call it “Cannabis” either.
Meanwhile they continue to buy property. They continue to travel the world. They continue to spend money like they make money. They continue to enjoy their lifestyle. They continue to be their own boss and not work for anyone else. Yet, all of this doom and gloom talk. Are people in the industry wanting someone to feel sorry for them? I don’t get it. Go get a job, work for someone else on their schedule, making them money and report back.
Just take their farm and all the equipment away. If they try to set up shop in another area give them a trip to jail. When in jail put them on the work crews that clean up things and in a uniform that lights up the day! They can also auction of the land to a person who just wants some rural property to live in peace.
We need to revoke them. The entire corrupt pack. Straight revoke these clowns. How ironic the ones that embezzled all cash payments are telling small farmers they can’t operate when they all should have gotten arrested for not keeping any record of cash payments
Houston:
“we have an accountability problem”
the push for eradicating small and mom pop businesses in favor of mega deep pocketed mega grow corporations continues, while the supervisors suffer no consequences with their hefty payroll.