Santa Barbara County Caps Cannabis Acreage; Responds to Grand Jury

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August 20 2025

Board of Supervisors Discusses Two Cannabis-Related Items During August 19 Hearing

Two separate cannabis-related items came before the Santa Barbara County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, as the board went forward with a proposed acreage cap on cannabis cultivation and heard the county’s official response to a grand jury report issued earlier this summer on cannabis taxes and expenditures.

There was little discussion before the board unanimously approved the plan to reduce the acreage cap of both the “Carpinteria Agricultural Overlay” district and the unincorporated areas of the county that lie outside the Carpinteria overlay. The county has been working on reducing the acreage cap from the current total of 1,761 combined acres to a maximum of 1,551 acres — a 12 percent reduction that would essentially cut off any additional cannabis cultivation projects that haven’t yet begun the approval process.

The previous Carpinteria Agricultural Overlay district was capped at 186 acres. There are currently 132 acres of permitted cannabis cultivation operating with another two acres that have already been submitted for approval. The new district maximum for Carpinteria, effective in late September, would cap production at 134 acres.

The acreage cap in the unincorporated areas of the county outside the Carpinteria district was previously set at 1,575 acres. The board approved a reduced cap of 1,417 in those areas, which allows for the 1,314 acres already in use and 103 acres that have already been approved or submitted for approval. The board approved the new acreage caps in a 4-0 vote.

In the second cannabis-related item of the hearing, County of Santa Barbara Cannabis Program Manager Carmela Beck presented the county’s official response to the grand jury report “Cannabis Taxation and Expenditures,” which called to attention five different findings regarding the county’s handling of its cannabis program budget.

Beck emphasized that the county was, for the most part, aligned with all of the findings included in the grand jury’s report, though the county executive office did “partially disagree” with some of the details in the report.

“The county is aligned with the grand jury’s desire to maintain the efficiency and solvency of the cannabis program,” Beck said. She added that the county was committed to having a “well-regulated cannabis industry,” including the management of its licensing and taxation programs to achieve “full-cost recovery” and ensure a balanced budget.

The county agreed with the finding that declining revenues — mostly due to market oversupply and price collapse — were causing added stress to the cannabis program budget. However, Beck said that the county addressed these concerns during this year’s budget planning cycle, with the board making more than $1.2 million in cuts to cover the expected shortfall of revenues.

Similarly, Beck said the county disagreed with the grand jury’s finding that budget allocations for deferred maintenance and capital projects were not properly adjusted in response to the decline in revenue. Beck said the county made several budget changes, including a 35 percent reduction in the amount of cannabis tax revenue being used to fund deferred maintenance or other projects. Many of these budget changes, she pointed out, were approved just weeks before the grand jury report was released on June 20.

Beck also noted that the changes made during the budget planning cycle addressed the grand jury’s other two findings regarding impacts on the cannabis budget. The expenditures, she explained, “could have exceeded revenues” if the board did not act in June, and additional changes were approved to use the county’s cannabis enforcement budget more cautiously.

Finally, the county disagreed with the grand jury’s finding that the tracking, reporting, and budgeting of the cannabis program needed to be more centralized. While the county currently has two separate systems for its licensing and payment, Beck said “there would be a significant cost to integrating” both systems in one place. price collaps