At the council meeting on Monday, July 23, Jon Early’s petition to place a cannabis ballot measure petition on the November was postponed to November of 2020. The council decided to order a 30-day, $25,000 study on the proposed ordinance. The delivery of this study wouldn’t be until after the Aug. 10 deadline for placing the measure on the November 2018 general election ballot. Once again, the city council has moved to thwart the will of the people. The following is a comment I made to the Comments section of the IT article mentioned in out previous post.

“That the city council would choose option 3 was a very easy call. Jon Early has no sense of this town and who the city council really is. Nor did the attorney who represented him, nor those who supported that measure. Why in heaven’s name did they think that the city council would swallow an ordinance that opened Sonoma up to all manner of cannabis businesses without allowing it any real control? And the irony is, Mr. Early’s measure never included a clause for personal outdoor cultivation because he thought *that* might be a deal-breaker. Let us remind that the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Group (not to be confused with the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Enthusiasts) played an instrumental role in the city’s decision to permit personal outdoor growing.

Councilwoman Rachel Hundley made great effort to fashion a competing ordinance that would have been a much better fit for the city of Sonoma. The majority of the council should have taken her up on it, but instead continued to cling to each other in their backward-thinking certainties. Let’s be clear. The three council members can’t keep running for cover because there is very little of it left. The more they dig in their heels, the shakier the ground becomes.

The Sonoma Valley Cannabis Group has worked tirelessly over the past year to convince the city council of the need for a local medicinal dispensary, to no avail. We will now turn our focus to helping elect new council members who will actually understand the issue and enact Councilwoman Hundley’s ordinance.

Gil Latimer

Sonoma Valley Cannabis Group