To hear insiders tell it, Humboldt County’s cannabis industry can be likened to a small ship in rough seas. Battered by an onslaught of waves seemingly coming from all directions — taxes, fees, compliance costs, COVID disruptions and fierce market forces — the boat has capsized, leaving its occupants struggling to keep their chins above water as their legs grow numb and tired.
Local growers are now clamoring for the county to throw them a life vest, asking the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to temporarily repeal Measure S, the countywide cultivation tax approved by 66 percent of county voters in 2016. The hope, says Natalynne Delapp, executive director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance, is not so much that the brief tax reprieve on its own would be enough to save the county’s 1,000 or so licensed farms, but that it would keep them afloat until reinforcements — federal legalization, state tax relief or a seismic shift in market forces — rights the proverbial ship.
But the ask comes at a time when the county itself is taking on water. COVID-19 and the cratering cannabis economy have destabilized sales tax revenues, while the county’s well documented fiscal dysfunction — it has yet to close its books from the past two years due to ongoing turmoil in and around the Auditor-Controller’s Office — has cast a shroud over all…
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To hear insiders tell it, Humboldt County’s cannabis industry can be likened to a small ship in rough seas. Battered by an onslaught of waves seemingly coming from all directions — taxes, fees, compliance costs, COVID disruptions and fierce market forces — the boat has capsized, leaving its occupants struggling to keep their chins above water as their legs grow numb and tired.
Local growers are now clamoring for the county to throw them a life vest, asking the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors to temporarily repeal Measure S, the countywide cultivation tax approved by 66 percent of county voters in 2016. The hope, says Natalynne Delapp, executive director of the Humboldt County Growers Alliance, is not so much that the brief tax reprieve on its own would be enough to save the county’s 1,000 or so licensed farms, but that it would keep them afloat until reinforcements — federal legalization, state tax relief or a seismic shift in market forces — rights the proverbial ship.
But the ask comes at a time when the county itself is taking on water. COVID-19 and the cratering cannabis economy have destabilized sales tax revenues, while the county’s well documented fiscal dysfunction — it has yet to close its books from the past two years due to ongoing turmoil in and around the Auditor-Controller’s Office — has cast a shroud over all…
