The Colusa City Council on Jan. 17 opened the public hearing to consider whether to grant a developer agreement and conditional use permit that will allow construction of the Colusa Triple Crown Cannabis Business Park on East Clay Street to move forward.
The Colusa Planning Commission previously approved a 40-year developer agreement with Courtney Dubar and Mike Olivas, who originally proposed Colusa Riverbend Estates at that location, which sets the financial terms for the 84-acre Business Park. A motion to approve the conditional use permit that would pave the way for construction of the facility failed on a 2-2 vote, largely following complaints by citizens that, since the beginning, the city’s general disclosures to the public about the project have been misleading.
The Triple Crown Cannabis Business Park has been in the works for a number of years, after Olivas dropped his plans to build the much hated Riverbend Estates to go into the marijuana business, at the request of City Manager Jesse Cain.
The proposed project would involve the construction of approximately 1.5 million sq.ft. of developed facilities, including energy-efficient greenhouses for marijuana cultivation, warehouse, multi-story office and research buildings, storage areas, and paved parking lots.
While the developers were not present for the opening of the City Council’s hearing, Mayor Greg Ponciano allowed members of the community to speak, including those who have repeatedly spoken out against a project that has significantly changed since environmental assessments and modeling were prepared for the housing project.
“There is a limitation period on the use of CEQA documents,” said East Clay Street resident Nancy Garr, reading a detailed analysis from her daughter Mariah Brumbaugh, an environmental expert with the Army Corps of Engineers. “(They must be) supplemented, updated, include an addendum, or redone if the approval of the project was not as described in the master environmental impact report.”
Janice Bell, who has represented The Partnership to Preserve Community Integrity (Goad’s Extension) at nearly every meeting related to the Triple Crown project since it was first proposed in 2014, agreed with Brumbaugh’s concerns that the outdated CEQA documents should not be used for a separate project and that adopted mitigation measures do not address a number of the public’s concerns for the project.
“I have been at the table,” Bell said. “I have been expressing that this is wrong, this is wrong, and this is wrong; nobody cares. Nobody cares! I’m not threatening to sue the city, therefore my rights can be violated…There are so many issues that the public is standing up and speaking – and nobody is listening.”
Ben King, who has repeatedly expressed grave concerns about the project that borders his land to the west because he believes it is the wrong fit for the city, also expressed concern over his interest in the irrigation ditch, for which he has contracted water rights.
Kings said the CEQA documents are not complete and there is no mention of the 1907 Colusa Irrigation Ditch, of which King is one of the two remaining shareholders.
“There is no mention of how the drainage actually works in the area and there was no mention about where the city ended and where the county begins,” King said. “They reached out to some people in the community but they did not reach out to me as the next door neighbor of the whole project. I thought it missed a lot of points about how it will fit into the entire area. My concern is the drainage of the whole area and does the city actually have jurisdiction. The old Colusa Irrigation is in the county and I don’t know who the city can make determination of that.” The public hearing has been continued to Feb. 7.
Ponciano said he would relax the “3-minute rule” to allow the public to speak, as long as arguments for or against are not repetitive.
Ponciano said he, too, has many concerns about the project, particularly the developer agreement because, unlike all previous agreements with the local cannabis businesses, it allows for the principals to sell their interest in the project to another party, even before the project is constructed.
“With developer agreements, the way they are structured was for us to understand exactly who we are working with,” Ponciano said. “If it is written that it could transfer even before permitting happens, we are left again with not knowing who we are dealing with. To me, that should prompt us to come back with a new DA.”
Councilman Daniel Vaca, who has been speaking with the project principals, said he was also not in favor of any transfer rights written into the developer agreement.
“I thought we were getting out of bad deals for the city and it was almost like they went back to their original DA,” Vaca said. “I think we have more work to do with them on the DA.” ■