The City is obligated to state why it conflated two separate issues, growing cannabis for personal use and dispensary robberies, in order to renew the latest moratorium. The following is the city’s justification for blocking citizens’ right to grow for personal use under the guidelines established by the State of California:

WHEREAS, the cultivation of medicinal and nonmedicinal cannabis in other cities has resulted in calls for service to their police departments, including calls for robberies and thefts, and the increase in criminal activity. On August 20, 2017, an employee of a Santa Rosa dispensary was robbed at gunpoint in the dispensary’s parking lot. The suspect took the employee’s stock of cannabis. In September 2017, two men were murdered near a large cannabis grow north of Santa Rosa. It is reasonable to assume that Proposition 64’s passage, without reasonable controls imposed by the City of Sonoma, will generate similar numbers of such incidents pertaining to the cultivation of nonmedicinal cannabis in the City of Sonoma. Incidents involving complaints resulting in criminal investigations and the discovery of illegal cannabis cultivations have already occurred in the City of Sonoma. In the event that the restrictions imposed by Ordinance No. 12-2016 are not extended, there is a current and immediate threat to the public health, safety and welfare of substantial numbers of persons cultivating nonmedicinal cannabis outdoors and creating the complaints and enforcement problems already experienced in other communities and in the City of Sonoma and exposing citizens to robberies, potential violence, vandalism of property and theft of cannabis plants being openly and visibly grown in the yards and grounds of residential properties throughout the City