Press "Enter" to skip to content

Cannabis group: Sonoma City Council got played

It’s time for us to catch up on the current state of cannabis in Sonoma and the lower Valley. It won’t be until later in April that the one and only dispensary, sparc, owned by Erich Pearson, will finally open in Sonoma.

And it may be the only dispensary in town for oh, let’s say two, or maybe even 3 years. Why would that be, you ask? Didn’t we convince the city to revise its cannabis ordinance to permit two walk-in dispensaries one year ago this April?

Well, yes, we did. And had the new Request for Proposal (RFP) calling for new applicants been released late last summer, we’d be well on the road to having that second dispensary.

But, a funny thing happened on the way to the objective. On September 8, sparc’s owner, Erich Pearson, stood in front of the city council and lied to them about his financial situation. Is “lied” too strong a word? Perhaps “mislead” or “misrepresented” would be more diplomatic?

Mr Pearson pleaded poverty and asked the city council to delay the RFP for another *year* to allow sparc to gather 12 months’ worth of data. This would show “how viable the business is and see if the city can sustain another business.” Two months after making his plea to the city council, it agreed to table the RFP until the end of 2022.

The notion that a city must find out how profitable any business is before allowing another of the same type to open is patently ridiculous. This is done for no other business, not a liquor store, a pharmacy, a food market, certainly not for a wine tasting bar.  In a free market, it is the *market* that decides which businesses survive or fail.

And why do we say that Pearson mislead the city council back in September? Because, despite his financial woes, he just opened a brand spankin’ new dispensary/lounge on Polk Street in San Francisco. Guess he’s not doing as bad as he’d like everyone to think.

The Sonoma City Council has been played – big time. It fell for his ploy. And in doing so, it is now supporting a “de jure monopoly” that not only deprives medical patients and consumers a competitive market that could provide them with better prices and a larger variety of products, but also helps protect the black market.

It’s time for the Sonoma City Council to issue the RFP.

— Sonoma Valley Cannabis Group

 

6 Comments

  1. Jon Early Jon Early

    Perhaps the City was focusing so much on its unique, bizarre and dangerously creative Broadway striping project that it was simply unable to come to its senses and provide competitive cannabis access for its citizens, or any access yet for that matter.

  2. Gil Gil

    If it wasn’t for the years of hard work done by the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Group and other interested parties to convince the city council to permit a dispensary, Erich Pearson and sparc would not enjoy a presence in the city of Sonoma. Furthermore, by deliberately standing in the way of a second dispensary that would give consumers and patients the benefits of competitive prices, products and services, it becomes clear that profit is more important than principle. Limiting choice is not what compassionate care is about. In fact, it is coercive.

  3. Josette Brose-Eichar Josette Brose-Eichar

    The fact that our new city council make up does not have time for this, but has time for road striping as noted by Jon Early is telling. I did not support Mr. Early’s, Measure Y, as I felt if cannabis businesses did not have the same type of local control as other cities like Cotati has, we could end up with no dispensaries at all. We have a segment of the public that is in a constant state of “reefer madness” and if anything negative happened at a cannabis dispensary, we would then just have another ballot measure to repeal Y. And of course we would never get another shot at having dispensaries. But, in hindsight, I realize our new city council has turned its back on consumers and is simply been bought off by Erich Pearson and SPARC. I will not support anyone running for city council that takes contributions from SPARC or its employees and consultants. I will not support anyone that does not commit to moving forward immediately on the process to permit a second dispensary.

  4. Shivawn Shivawn

    Ken and Jewel Brown are the reason medical cannabis access opened up in the Sonoma Valley. Their efforts should have been rewarded.

  5. Gil Gil

    It’s unfortunate, Shivawn, that the Sonoma City Council couldn’t care less about Ken and Jewel’s legacy. It has so many more important items on the burner, like dogs on the Square, parklet design and the Tree Committee, embarrassing themselves with DUIs and sniping at each other over the street striping and homeless issues. An article in another publication got it right when it characterized the city council as a group of laypersons and amateurs.

  6. Connie Levy Connie Levy

    Who is a bigger manipulator? The unethical cheater Pearson or the hater self-centered Gil Latimer?

    The young family that is opening a few other Sonoma valley locations seems really professional. We always say we want mom and pops. A nice normal local family is better than corporate big business chains like sparc.

    Sonoma city won’t let chains operate but they went out of their way to allow sparc even after they were caught “buying” its selection.

    I agree ken brown would have been a good choice but do we really want to let politicly connected people have the only chance? Ken brown obviously could not run a cannabis business. He and jewel were icons but that should not be they way we chose operators.

    It seems to me from watching this for years that Gil Latimer does nothing but hate everyone. Maybe he wants to be the chosen operator? Or maybe he is connected to some other group that wants to be selected.

    A young lady who worked at my office joined Latimers cannabis enthusiast group. He left the group after it became clear Gil had self-set int interstate and wouldn’t support anything that didn’t benefit him personally.

    Go thing the county doesn’t run it’s spec too. Process in this manner. Selecting winners and losers is not the place for a government. That is chronyism.

    Try to joint Latimers group and see if he will tolerate you being an advocate for any dispensary project without his approval. He will shut you down and kick you out. It should be called:

    The Gil Latimer Cannabis Gatekeeper Commitee.

    No one cares what Gil says anymore because everyone sees that he is out for himself at the expense of the cannabis community.

    Michael coats is another self-serving narcissist cannabis power broker. He is the media relations big mouth for Pearson and many other cannabis operators. What an ego on this guy! He fashion himself a kingmaker like Latimer. No wonder these two don’t seem to get along anymore.

    Ask Rachael hundleys husband why Pearson go the section, ask the city lawyers and state ethics panel why Rachael hundleys polo cap career was cut short because of these accusations. Ask Amy Harrington what really happened and why Pearson was able to influence the counsel and achieve his goals for his big business money machine funded by big investment firms.

    If there is really a group of “cannabis enthusiasts” and supporters they should form groups without Latimer and Coats.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *