Date: October 9, 2025
To: Lake County Planning Commission
From: Mireya G. Turner, Community Development Director
Subject: Presentation of Cannabis Regulation Update
Executive Summary: Since 2014, regulations concerning cannabis-related businesses have been established. The Board of Supervisors has periodically revised these regulations to reflect updates in state law and to incorporate insights gained from existing procedures. This update reflects a considerable amount of input from the Board of Supervisors, Planning Commission, Cannabis Ordinance Task Force, relevant departments, and the public.
Staff recommends amending Article 27, Uses Generally Permitted in light of these contributions, while we concurrently work on establishing thresholds of significance through the CEQA process for issues associated with the revised Cannabis Ordinance, Article 73, which is in the Drafting process with the Planning Division.
Direction from the Board on this process has been clear; to streamline the current regulations to support legal cannabis activity, while considering the impacts of the industry on the surrounding environment and improve processes to reveal and address bad actors. The following summary identifies issues for the local regulations governing commercial cannabis-related enterprises that can be corrected by implementation of an amendment to Article 27, Uses Generally Permitted. These actions have no potential for significant effect on the environment, qualifying for the Common Sense exemption in the California Environmental Quality Act (CEQA) Section 15061(b)(3).
The following summary addresses these issues to achieve these directives, as directed by the Board of Supervisors.
* Increased setbacks from offsite residences from 200' to 500'
* A cap in the size of the commercial cannabis canopy at 20 acres or 871,200 square feet
* Incomplete, abandoned applications - establishes process for departmental denial of stagnant applications
* Application and Qualifica...
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