Pot club proposed for former Nicholas Turkey building
The owner of North Bay Wellness, a medical-marijuana club on Santa Rosa Avenue in Santa Rosa, is proposing to open a Sonoma Valley outlet in the former Nicholas Turkey headquarters on Riverside Drive.
The proposed business would be called “Creekside Medicinal Organics” and would be located in a one-story building behind the two-story former Nicholas offices, said attorney Lisa Gygax, who outlined the proposal at the June 6 Sonoma City Council meeting and in a subsequent interview with the Sun.
“It will be the most innocuous location you can imagine,” said Gygax, who said that security measures would include a locked gate.
Gygax said that her clients were the first, and so far the only, medical-marijuana dispensary owners to apply for use permits from the Sonoma County Permit and Resource Department “ironically, on four, 20,” or April 20. “Four-twenty” is slang for marijuana.
The application alone costs $8,000, she said. The county permit process could take six months, she added.
Mower starts
1/4-acre grass fire
At 1:38 p.m. Monday, Sonoma Valley FireMed, the city’s fire-fighting service, was dispatched to a 1/4-acre brush and grass fire in the 400 block of Brazil St. A dozen firefighters reported to the scene and put out the blaze that, ironically, was started by a person mowing a field to try to reduce the fire hazard. The fire was contained by 1:50 p.m. and the last firefighters departed at 3:11 p.m.
FireMed Division Chief Bob Norrbom recommends mowing lawns and fields in the early morning hours, as the temperatures are cooler and the grass is less susceptible to fire.
Council hears value of water conservation
Residents in the city of Sonoma have conserved 726 acre-feet of water since the city applied in 2001 for money from the Sonoma County Water Agency (SCWA) to fund a water conservation program, said Carrie Pollard, a water agency conservation specialist, during an update on effective water conservation programs that she gave to city council at its June 6 meeting.
Pollard presented the council with a few examples of “best management practices” for water conservation: residential water audits; turf and toilet replacement; city park irrigation improvements; residential washing-machine rebates; school education programs.
“Getting to the people and actually making them aware of water conservation practices are our greatest challenge to date,” said Pollard.
The educational program has subject-specific lessons for every grade level, supporting the California state science standards. Participating schools are Prestwood and Sassarini elementary schools, the K-8 Presentation School and Sonoma Valley High School.
“All programs and materials are free to teachers in the service area,” Pollard said.
The programs stress the value of water as a precious, primary natural resource and encourage water conservation and watershed stewardship. There is $156,083 to spend in the eighth year of the program, leaving a balance of $117,000 for the final two years.
“We’ve got to sell conservation,” concluded mayor pro tem Joanne Sanders.
– Stories by Sun special writers Beau Glover and Marie Hargitt and Sun staffer Tim Omarzu
