Valley Springs, CA…For a year and a half, the Commission has been doing its job to produce the elements of the General Plan to pass along to the board. Collectively, we have put in countless hours editing the General Plan in a way that we believe preserves the culture of the County while striving to improve it as a desirable place to live and raise a family. For my part, I know that I did this work for far less than minimum wage. I did it because I wanted to make a contribution to the County.

I don’t know what happened to this Commission when we had a chance to send a clear message to the Board at our last meeting, and urge them to ban pot cultivation, or at least severely restrict it. I was the most surprised person in the room that my proposals went nowhere.

Based on the decision by the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, it may not have made a difference, but at least we would have known we were doing the right thing.

In my opinion, the Board’s vote negated all of the effort we have put into the General Plan, because the impact of their vote was more important to the goals of livability in this County than the General Plan could ever be. How our elected officials could cave in to the pot growers after hearing so much testimony from long-time residences whose homes and lives have been devastated by these people, and chose instead to completely change the nature of the County is beyond me. They and all of the staff who supported this change brought shame on themselves.
I encourage all good County citizens to get behind the citizens’ initiative to ban commercial marijuana cultivation and to make this issue of primary concern when deciding who to vote into office at the Supervisor level, so that this bad decision can be reversed.

Seeing that all the work of this Commission on the General Plan, including the hundreds of hours I put into it, have been trumped by the Board’s decision to turn Calaveras County into a pot growing region, I am resigning my post as District 5 Planning Commissioner effective immediately.