Calaveras County may reverse course on licensing marijuana-growing operations

Earlier in his work life, Prapanna Randall Smith earned a doctorate in educational leadership and founded a nonprofit elementary and preschool in San Diego County. Soon after retiring in 2011, he moved to forested Calaveras County to pursue another intellectual passion: growing marijuana.

The economically depressed county of 45,000 residents, a former mining and timber region, had an established pot growing tradition. And last year, after the devastating Butte Fire scorched vast areas of the county, destroying 860 houses, its Board of Supervisors plotted a comeback by seeking to monetize the thriving local marijuana culture by taxing and licensing for-profit cultivation.

Smith, who loves the science of climate-controlled indoor growing, was among the first to get a county permit. His Magic Show LLC cannabis business, located in a warehouse in a light industrial zone, has passed inspections by law enforcement and county code enforcement officials. He says he makes a good living selling to California medical marijuana dispensaries. But more importantly, Smith insists, pot production is giving his beleaguered county a chance to prosper.

“This can be one of the richest counties, per capita, in America,” he said.

Calaveras, however, is poised to become a less potfriendly place. The Board of Supervisors now is considering reversing course and banning all commercial marijuana farms, complaining that the county’s cannabis business experiment is bringing in unwanted outsiders, rogue growers and environmental degradation. But the board’s dilemma is that the county already is spending pot dollars. It has collected $3.7 million in fees from marijuana growers and hired additional police and staff while budgeting services with expectations of additional cannabis tax revenues. Layoffs loom if the supervisors approve the cultivation ban later this summer without a fiscal solution.