Soda Canyon Road | Small Winery Ordinance

Small Winery Ordinance

on the web at: https://sodacanyonroad.org/forum.php?p=1536

Bill Hocker | Nov 10, 2023

Update11/10/23

WIN Advisor 11/8/23: Three Wineries Seek Federal & State Civil Rights Investigations
The Tentative Court decision
If the tentative decision become final, there will probably be further lawsuits challenging the County's long and torturous effort to insure that wineries are more about wine making than wine tourism. (Follow the Hoopes Saga here)

Update 4/4/20

Final Streamlining Ordinance
DP&F summary of ordinance
Administrative Use Permit modifications in Code
Administrative Permits for Wineries in Code

Update 2/8/20

Mike Hackett LTE 2/8/20: Small Winery ordinance only helps the big ones

Update 1/30/20

NVR 1/30/20: Napa County's winery streamlining plan faces legal threat
1/21/20: Water Audit Notice of Intended Litigation
1/28/20 BOS meeting video
1/28/20 BOS meeting agenda and docs
NVR 1/15/20: Napa County favors streamlining for some winery expansion requests

Update 12/23/19

NVR 12/23/19: Napa County Planning Commission favors winery streamlining
Video of the 12/19/19 Planning Commission meeting
Agenda and Documents

Update 10/18/19

NVR 10/18/19: Napa County works on permit streamlining for small wineries

Update 9/13/19

Dir. Morrison has released an update to the fast track ordinance for small wineries intended to enable small wineries to participate in the wine tourism economy without the enormous cost and time needed for the current use permit modification process. He is asking for public comments to be submitted by Oct. 4, 2019 (to David.Morrison@countyofnapa.org) and will present the ordinance and comments to the Supervisors on Oct 15, 2019.

Dir. Morrison's email and request for comments
Revised Outline of Ordinance

Update 7/18/19

NV2050 Letter to Dir. Morrison concerning the proposed ordinance

Update 6/24/19

NBBJ 6/24/19: Napa County creating special blend of regulations for small wineries

The note has been sent from Planning Director David Morrison to various stakeholder groups in the county to elicit comments on a proposed small winery definition ordinance:

From: Morrison, David
Sent: Thursday, June 20, 2019 5:05 PM
Subject: Small Winery Protection and Use Permit Streamlining Ordinance

On May 21, 2019, the Board of Supervisors directed staff to prepare an outline for discussion of a future ordinance focused on four areas:

Protect small wineries by allowing them to reasonably expand their business through the use permit process, in a way that isn’t cost and time prohibitive;
Create a path that allows facilities operating under a Small Winery Exemption to transition so that they can fairly compete in the modern economy;
Streamline the use permit modification process, so that County resources can be focused on more complex projects and policy issues; and
Provide incentives for wineries to expand operations in the Airport Industrial Area Specific Plan (AIASP), to relieve traffic up valley and create shorter commutes for out-of-county employees.

A draft outline of an ordinance to accomplish these goals is attached here.

You are being provided this outline as one of our key stakeholder groups. Your comments on this draft proposal would be greatly appreciated.

The draft outline, as modified by any public feedback, is tentatively scheduled to go back to the Board of Supervisors in late July for additional direction.

Please provide your organization's comments to me by July 11, so that they can be incorporated into the staff report when this item goes back to the Board.

I am also available to meet with your group and discuss the outline anytime within the next three weeks and welcome the opportunity to discuss with you.

A draft ordinance is expected to go to the Planning Commission for recommendation in October, and to the Board for adoption in November.

I know that we all have busy schedules and vacations this time of year. Thank you for your time and consideration in this matter.

Respectfully,
David

Update 5/23/19

NVR 5/23/19: Small wineries plead for regulatory relief from Napa County

Good luck coming up with an ordinance based on the free-for-all of ideas thrown out at the meeting, many requiring changes to the WDO, the General Plan EIR and the entire winery regulatory regimen of the last 50 years.

Update 5/16/19

In the glow of positive public reaction to the Matthiasson Family Winery at the 5/15/19 Planning Commission, the BOS is going to take up the issue of the small winery ordinance again at their 5/21/19 meeting. The Staff letter is here.

While the emphasis seems to be on simplifying the process for the approval of small wineries, there is still the unresolved question of what the definition of a small winery is. In Napa county 30,000 gal/yr is a medium-sized winery. 60% of the wineries in Napa county are 30,000gal or smaller. The proposed 9800 visitors/yr to be allowed for small wineries (an approximation assuming half of the proposed 40 vehicle trips/day are visitor's cars+events) would be many times the median visitation of existing wineries that are 30,000 gal or smaller. Meaning that the impact of fast-tracking is not to encourage more wine making (it would just redistribute the existing Napa wine output to a greater number of makers), but to encourage more wine tourism venues and more urbanization to accommodate a larger tourist population.

Actually, the Matthiasson approval shows that the current review process can be expeditious for small wineries - as long as the proposals are appropriate for the communities in which they are located. The multi-year battles that some wineries are experiencing in obtaining approval are a direct result of the scale of the disruptive industrial and commercial impacts that they will bring to bucolic rural farming neighborhoods. A fast track process is a developers' (or realtors') solution to put small winery development beyond the reach of community participation; a willingness and mechanism to achieve community consensus about appropriate scale, beyond just telling residents and developers to work it out between themselves, is needed instead.

NV2050 Newsletter on the proposal

Update 11/5/17

Eve Kahn sent along this update on the decision to table the ordinance:

"David Morrison was reviewing staff priorities with the board in late Sept and when Limited Winery Ordinance was discussed the board opted to table it to an unknown date. Diane felt that this was a solution looking for a problem - and was definitely not what she expected or wanted to see.

SO - bottom line, between given a low priority prior to the firestorm and more pressing issues at hand - this one is off the radar for now."

Update 8/14/17

NVR 8/14/17: Obscure Napa County position may play a bigger winery growth role

Update 8/11/17
[In response to questions from Chris Malan, Planning Dir. David Morrison elaborated on the process that the Limited Winery Ordinance will endure through the county meat grinder]

6:14 AM!

8/4/17
NVR 7/8/17: Napa County eyes streamlining approval process for smaller wineries

Proposed Limited Winery Ordinance
Dir. Morrison's request for comments.
Local Procedures for Implementing CEQA (CEQA sm. winery def. see appendix B, #10)

What can one say? The County is issuing use permits for new wineries at the rate of one a month (and increases to existing wineries at two per month) even with Planning Commission review. Apparently that is still not fast enough to keep up with developer's desire to profit from an expanding tourism economy and booming real estate market. The County wants to streamline the process, providing an easier avenue for speculators to increase resale value with "winery-ready" properties. Not one more gallon of Napa wine will be added to the county's "wine industry" (producing acreage hasn't budged in the last 10 years despite some 100 new winery approvals), just more luxury estates and tourism venues. This is not about affordable small "family" wineries. It's about expediting a real estate strategy targeting wealthy vanity investors.

One can see the problem from the County's standpoint: The amount of pushback from citizens who will be negatively impacted by all of the proposed development is bogging down a process whose purpose is to allow public participation. The solution proposed is to reduce the visibility and amount of public input in the process.

The Planning Commission is a public event. Its meetings are predictable and previewed on the county's website and in the Register. Its proceedings are broadcast and a video archive is retained. The county claims that the public will have a similar opportunity to vet projects being presented to the Zoning Administrator. But notification will only go to residents within 1000' of the project. No previews in a public calendar. And likely no mention in the Register. It will then be up to a neighbor to make the project known to a wider audience, a daunting task for some. Once the hearing is done, no record beyond brief meeting minutes will be available for review. But the collective changes that these projects bring, with increased tourism throughout the remote areas of the county and the expansion of taxpayer-funded infrastructure to accommodate an ever increasing number of tourists and employees, will affect the county as a whole, not just the immediate neighbors.

As a recent article on Visit Napa Valley highlights, county and municipal governments seem to see a "growth" economy based on tourism as the prime objective of planning decisions. As we have seen in all meetings throughout the last few years, the county is unwilling to seriously consider the increasing cumulative impacts of growth that have led to so much citizent opposition. In this proposal, conceding to the demands of the development industries, they wish to make the opposition more difficult.

The County's continued promotion of building projects and the resulting impacts on traffic, affordable housing, community character, infrastructure and service demands, the physical landscape and resource sustainability, run counter to the County's stated image of itself in the first paragraph of its Vision Statement in the Napa County General Plan:

"While other Bay Area counties have experienced unprecedented development and urban infrastructure expansion over the last four decades, Napa County's citizens have conscientiously preserved the agricultural lands and rural character that we treasure."
Many county residents, seeing the urbanization taking place before their eyes, no longer feel that vision is being supported by their government, and they should be allowed to conscientiously make their voices heard. In a public forum.

The question the County should be addressing is not how the approval of building projects can be streamlined to increase the pace of urban development. The question should be how to scale back the amount of development being proposed, as previous governments and citizens have done with the Ag Preserve, zoning ordinances and initiatives, to insure that Napa remains a rural, agricultural place to be treasured in the future. Fast-tracking building projects (much like pretending that building projects are "agriculture") is not the answer.

7/29/17 LTE version: Fast tracking Napa County wineries isn't the answer

NVR 10/2/15: Planners look at fast-tracking small wineries

Note the difference between the 2015 and the current proposal: the requirement that grapes must come from the property has been eliminated. Wineries can be approved under the new proposal on properties having no vineyard potential (like The Caves); a lease on grapes (currently leased by someone else, no doubt) suffices. There is no mention of use-permit revocation in the ordinance, so presumably the lease may be sold as soon as the winery is approved.