Council Completes Update of Cannabis Regulations; MUSD Makes Painful Budget Cuts; 'Unannounced' Refinery Inspection Finds No Red Flags
Also, Martinez makes progress in fixing the roads; Housing Element rejected again by state; and some thoughts and views ahead of Tuesday's Primary Election
The following item was written by freelance writer Sam Richards thanks to the financial support of paid subscribers. Please consider becoming a paid subscriber if not already to fund more local coverage of Martinez.
By Sam Richards
MARTINEZ — After almost 2 1/2 hours of sometimes impassioned discussion two weeks earlier, the Martinez City Council on Feb. 21 unanimously approved a revised commercial cannabis ordinance .
The ordinance approved last month, with very little new discussion, adds flexibility to what city officials said was a "rigid" original four-year-old ordinance, allowing the police chief to sign off on the desired level of after-hours security at Martinez's two cannabis retail shops. The minimum is "roving patrols and hardening," including enhanced electronic security measures, to a maximum of two overnight on-site security personnel. As with the previous version of the ordinance, two security personnel must be on site during open hours.
Overnight security for Martinez's marijuana retailers became an issue when, last August, police officers shot and killed a man, and wounded another, outside of the Velvet Cannabis store on Sunrise Drive near Pacheco Boulevard after what police believe was an attempted early morning break-in.
The Velvet store did not have an overnight security guard on-site that night, and the Embarc shop on Alhambra Avenue also wasn't employing overnight on-premises security personnel. That was despite the city's original 2019 cannabis ordinance requiring said overnight personnel.
At the Feb. 7 meeting, City Councilman Satinder Malhi grilled Embarc officials about why they didn't have 24/7 security personnel presence as required by the city statute and as proposed in their own permit application to the city in 2020. When Dustin Moore of Embarc said he and other Embarc officials had been talking to former police Capt. Beth Johnson and other city officials about it and received permission to not have 24/7 security personnel, Malhi called that a "subsequent agreement made outside of public view," not involving the council, an action he said lacked transparency.
Embarc officers, including Moore and CEO Lauren Campbell, were adamant that their talks with city officials about roving patrols and other mandates weren't an attempt to avoid public scrutiny. Several speakers also defended Embarc, and said it wasn't worth jeopardizing a security officer's safety simply to guard product during a burglary.
"It simply puts someone in danger of harm," former councilwoman Noralea Gipner said.
Mayor Brianne Zorn said what city officials eventually allowed in terms of on-site security at Velvet and Embarc "is inconsistent with our (cannabis) ordinance," but both she and Councilman Mark Ross said the council ultimately bears much of the responsibility for how that situation has played out.
"We need to be consistent with that," Zorn said. "We haven't been following our own rules."
And ultimately, Ross said, "We stand by what our employees do."
The council on Feb. 21 also established a 900-foot buffer requirement between dispensaries and K-12 schools. Staff had originally proposed increasing the current buffer from 600 feet to 1,000 feet, believing that Embarc was over 1,000 feet from Alhambra High School. But after ascertaining that the dispensary is actually about 920 feet from the high school, they went with the 900-foot buffer to avoid penalizing Embarc, given that it complied with the former buffer distance when its permit was first approved in 2020. The new 900-foot buffer also applies to youth centers, parks, playgrounds and libraries.
The updated regulations also include the following:
Equity – Require applicants to propose specific measures to address diversity, equity and inclusion.
Signs – Prohibit advertising on any billboards installed on property within the Martinez city limits.
Events – Explicitly prohibit temporary cannabis events, such as concerts or fairs (cannabis events are prohibited by default under state law).
Health Information – Require posting on-site health information, subject to review and approval by the city manager or designee.
Consumption – Prohibit on-site consumption in all cannabis businesses.
The updated ordinance can be viewed at the following link:
The following items were written by Craig Lazzeretti
MUSD makes tough budget cuts
Facing a deteriorating budget situation, the Martinez Unified School District Board of Trustees voted to cut roughly 27 full-time-equivalent positions from next year’s budget at its Feb. 26 board meeting.
Total cuts to the budget totaled $3.36 million, but that represents a worst-case scenario, and at least some of the reductions should be avoided if voters pass a parcel tax renewal in Tuesday’s election and state revenues improve. By law, the district needs to issue layoff notices to potentially impacted employees by March 15; it’s not unusual for such notices to be rescinded if cost savings are found elsewhere, including through natural workforce attrition.
“None of us want to make any of these cuts,” school board President Courtney Masella-O’Brien said before the vote. “These cuts are going to affect every single school, every single student, unfortunately.”
MUSD budget cuts for 2024-25 school year
Of the $3.36 million in cuts, $2.28 million are slated to come out of the district’s unrestricted funds, which it can spend at its discretion on general purposes. Cuts to teaching positions total $1.875 million (that will fall to $1.2 million if the parcel tax measure passes), with an additional $905,000 in cuts planned to administrative and classified jobs.
Much of the discussion Feb. 21 around the cuts centered on the loss of a popular vice principal at Martinez Junior High School. Several parents and MJHS students spoke about the impact the vice principal, Ian Keough, has had at the school.
“If there’s a problem, you go to the vice principal,” one student said during public comment.
“I believe middle school students need more support, not less support,” another student said.
“He has had an incredible impact on my student’s personal growth as well as her academic success,” a parent said during public comment. “I can’t imagine what her journey would have looked like without his support.”
“This hits me personally,” school board member Carlos Melendez said, noting that Keough is the assigned vice principal for one of his children.
Earlier in the meeting, a parent complained about growing bullying problems at the school and expressed concerns about the impact that losing a dedicated administrator would have on the situation. The school has typically operated with two vice principals in recent years.
Saving the vice principal position, however, would have required finding roughly $184,000 to cut somewhere else in the budget. Representatives of the Martinez Education Association (teachers union), which is in the middle of a contract stalemate with the district, asked the board not to further cut teaching positions to save administrative ones, given that the majority of budget cuts (36%) are already coming from their workforce.
Some of the reduction in teaching positions is a reflection of MUSD’s declining enrollment in recent years and the fact that the district is graduating more students than it is enrolling. The number of administrators employed by MUSD is scheduled to fall from 25 last year to 22 next year, Superintendent Helen Rossi told the board.
In the end, the board voted 4-1 to make the cuts, including to the vice principal position, as proposed, with Yazmin Llamas voting no.
Rossi, a former principal and vice principal at MJHS, assured the board and audience that the district would work to find solutions to the challenges at the junior high school even with the loss of the vice principal position.
“No one is going to sit by and watch a school deteriorate on my watch,” Rossi said.
Rossi and chief business official Andy Cannon also noted the topsy-turvy, roller coaster nature of school funding. The hope is that state budget picture, and by extension, the district’s budget will rebound in the near future, but district officials said cuts are necessary now to ensure that the district can maintain its required minimum reserve levels in coming years, given that it is currently spending more than it is taking in, and maintain valuable programs as long as possible.
Contra Costa Health report on refinery inspection
Contra Costa Health last week released findings from its “unannounced inspection” in December of PBF Energy’s Martinez refinery, following a series of unplanned flaring and chemical release incidents. Health officials said their review of five safety programs at the refinery “did not identify any areas needing immediate or short-term action.”
The report on the unannounced inspection can be found at the following link: https://www.cchealth.org/home/showdocument?id=29669&t=638445522584187416
Contra Costa Health began a more comprehensive review of the refinery’s safety practices in January as part of a regularly planned audit. Once the final audit report is complete, it will be posted on www.cchealth.org/hazmat and there will be a 45-day public comment period and meeting held.
Measure D paves way to better roads
The Measure D sales tax approved by voters in 2016 has already paid big dividends in fixing Martinez’s roads, Mayor Brianne Zorn wrote in a March column in the Diablo Gazette. Each year, the tax, which has a 15-year lifespan, generates about $4.5 million toward pavement improvements. Zorn wrote:
When Measure D went into effect, our Pavement Condition Index (PCI) was in the 40s (“poor”) out of a perfect score of 100. Today, we have a PCI of 69 (“good”). When our Public Works Director reported at the recent Council Retreat that we are on track during this 5-year cycle to have a PCI of 70 or greater (“very good”), we broke into applause. Exciting, indeed.
Wondering when your street will be repaved? The city’s proposed paving schedule for the next five years can be found at the following link: https://legistarweb-production.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/attachment/pdf/2439120/Attachment_F___Proposed_Street_List_FY_2024-25_to_FY_2028-29.pdf
Housing Element rejected again by state
For the second time, the state Housing and Community Development Department (HCD) has kicked back the city’s proposed 2023-31 Housing Element for further revisions (the Housing Element, which serves as a roadmap for future housing growth in the city, is now over a year overdue). In a Feb. 16 letter to the city, HCD said several revisions are still necessary for Martinez to “substantially comply” with state laws and mandates. Of note, the state is asking for further rezoning to identify adequate sites for lower-income households.
The state had asked for several revisions to the initial draft of the Housing Element that the city had forwarded to the state for review last summer. It was expected that the revised Element adopted by the City Council in December would pass muster with the state given that the city had addressed the specific requests made by HCD, but the revisions apparently weren’t enough to satisfy state housing officials that Martinez’s Housing Element would make a sufficient dent in the affordable housing crisis.
Among other concerns raised by HCD was that the city still had failed to show that existing uses of land targeted for future housing would not impede residential development, and that it has the water and sewage capacity in place to accommodate anticipated housing growth. The state agency also found that programs proposed by the city to further fair housing opportunities “are not meaningful and significant” to “overcome the fair housing issues and trends identified in the analysis.” In particular, HCD wants the city to take “significant actions that promote housing mobility and increasing housing choices and affordability on the southern areas of the city and neighborhoods that are generally higher income and higher resourced.”
HCD’s letter to the city can be read at the following link: https://www.cityofmartinez.org/home/showpublisheddocument/3900
Tuesday election preview
Tired of all the election mailers yet? (rhetorical question)
The key local matters before Martinez voters on Wednesday are measures to extend the Martinez school district’s parcel tax and eliminate the elected city clerk position in city government, plus county supervisor and state Assembly races. There’s no organized opposition to either ballot measure, and I expect both to pass relatively easily (though the parcel tax measure requires two-thirds support).
The races for county supervisor and state Assembly appear to me largely up for grabs. In the race for the seat currently held by retiring Supervisor Federal Glover, Pittsburg City Council Member Shanelle Scales-Preston and Antioch Council Member Mike Barbanica have emerged as the clear favorites, with significant funding and backing. The only question is whether either of them can top 50% of the vote to avoid a November runoff (I’m guessing not, but it will probably come down to how big of a vote share Pittsburg Council Member Jelani Killings grabs on Tuesday).
In the state Assembly election, it’s a three-way race between Antioch Council Member Monica Wilson, Contra Costa County School Board Trustee Anamarie Avila Farias and former county Supervisor Karen Mitchoff for the two spots in the November election. I can see any one of these three finishing first in the March primary or finishing third and out of the running for November, as they all have significant backing by influential interest groups and significant organized opposition.
Keep in mind that the results posted late Tuesday night (or early Wednesday) will not reflect late mail-in ballots that are received on or after Election Day (they need to be postmarked by Tuesday). The late ballots, which often take several weeks to fully count, could be decisive in close races, so in all likelihood, voters will need to be patient before jumping to any conclusions.
Like me, many of you have likely been deluged with campaign mailers for or against the various candidates, funded by deep-pocketed special interest groups that are clearly motivated foremost by their own agendas and self-interests. Each voter must decide how much, if any, attention to pay to these advertisements in making their decisions, but I personally pay very little to them (unless I feel a candidate and campaign is acting in an unethical, underhanded manner through them). While they may be valuable in learning more about which types of politically involved groups support, or are threatened by, particular candidates (and how those groups’ values and agendas align with your own), in many cases they are purposely deceptive, misleading or flat-out inaccurate. Endorsements by various politicians also mean little to me, as I’ve found them often be more a reflection of political relationships — and ambitions — than core political values.
As a voter, I try to base my decisions foremost on three criteria:
What is their range of professional and personal/lived experiences, and how would those experiences inform their ability to succeed in the position they are seeking? By success, I mean pursuing public policies that do the most good for the most number of people.
What are their top priorities if elected and how do those priorities align with my own? Even if I agree with a given candidate on 90% of issues, it makes a big difference if their top issues of focus are different from mine, as there’s limited time and resources to get things done once in office. I’m often more inclined to vote for someone who shares maybe only 60% or 70% of my positions, but prioritizes the shared ones that we agree to be most pressing.
Is there any reason to believe they would lack the integrity or temperament to be an effective and trustworthy public official? How does the manner in which they’ve run their campaign reflect on them personally? Political campaigns by their nature can be nasty and bring out the worst in participants, but there should be certain limits and guard rails in terms of how far they will go to get an edge (the difference between running a tough campaign and a sleazy one). Have any of the candidates running in these races failed that test? I have some thoughts that I may share once the dust clears from Tuesday’s election.
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Craig, where are the cuts? In music and the arts, as usual?