{"type":"rich","version":"1.0","provider_name":"Transistor","provider_url":"https://transistor.fm","author_name":"KZYX News","title":"Eating the elephant","html":"","width":"100%","height":180,"duration":389,"description":"November 23, 2022, Sarah Reith — The cannabis department is moving from the county administrative campus on Low Gap Road in Ukiah to the Justice Center in Willits. The new office will open Monday, with counter service.\r\n\r\nBut the department is still short-staffed. At last week’s cannabis department meeting, Director Kristin Nevedal said the majority of permits were issued without environmental review, which might not be completed until 2024. \r\n\r\n“CEQA is not occurring,” she said. “And it will not occur until we have contract planning staff trained and working through permits. Depending on what that timing looks like, and how quickly we can move through applications, we may not fully review CEQA documents until 2024.”\r\n\r\nNevedal calculated that each application review takes 200 hours of staff time, though the hours have not been tracked by software. With the ability to track the time more precisely, fees are likely to go up.\r\n\r\n“Two hundred hours is an estimate, largely because there have not been time studies conducted,” she conceded. “So we’re estimating it will take 200 hours to do an application review, a CEQA review, and potentially conduct any necessary inspection…we will be billing $600 and some odd change…to the permit holder.” When the department moves to another system, she added, “We will be doing time tracking. And then if time starts to run over, we will be billing applicants and permit holders directly based on the weighted hourly rate, which right now is $90 an hour, but may be more for consultants that have your application. So until we have time tracking software in place (which is not currently the case) we will not be billing extra hours, although I can say that we are hemorrhaging funds because our permit fees do not cover the extensive review that’s occurring by the department.”\r\n\r\nThe department’s plan for prioritizing review of license applications starts with provisional licenses that will be subject for renewal in July of next year, and...","thumbnail_url":"https://img.transistorcdn.com/xZpAumwbhFUpJUYcwaQ1-q6snzOyqAm13l7cW6AWPCM/rs:fill:0:0:1/w:400/h:400/q:60/mb:500000/aHR0cHM6Ly9pbWct/dXBsb2FkLXByb2R1/Y3Rpb24udHJhbnNp/c3Rvci5mbS9mMzkz/NjAwNjc2OWMyZmFk/YWY2YTdmYjI5M2Mz/YWMxNy5qcGc.webp","thumbnail_width":300,"thumbnail_height":300}