SQUIDFRY 03.11.21: Shades of Green

SHADES OF GREEN… Squid was cruising around town in the ol’ jalopy, when an odd billboard on Highway 1 in Moss Landing caught Squid’s eye – a black rectangle, no images and no text. Where there had just days earlier been a promotion for Grupo Flor’s dispensary East of Eden, now there was a blank space.

That’s because of new rules issued by the California Bureau of Cannabis Control, per court order, that cannabis advertising is no longer allowed on billboards on state and interstate highways. A few minutes later, Squid saw billboards for beer and for gambling; inconsistency makes Squid anxious, and Squid could’ve used a CBD-infused soda right about then.

There’s a term for this kind of relative moralizing that industry insiders use: cannabigotry. And some of those industry insiders are especially miffed given that they’re paying a lot of taxes, and those taxes are helping the community get through the pandemic. It seems to Squid like every time the County Board of Supervisors wants to fund a program these days, they dip into cannabis revenue. $878,643 in small business relief funds? Check. $125K for a library bus? Check. $1 million for Pajaro River flood risk work? Check. $75,000 for PPE? You get the idea – the list goes on, totaling more than $38.8 million since 2018.

So it made sense when Squid heard an idea circulating among some of the folks who’d been paying for the now-blank billboards: Instead of using them to advertise dispensaries, use them to show how much they pay in taxes. There’s no rule against that.

CASHING IN… After the Meghan and Harry interview, Squid needed a new high-drama show to watch. Squid had thought that the Pajaro Valley Unified School District board’s circus was over, but after seeing a $16,038 invoice from Chico-based attorney Matthew Paul Juhl-Darlington of the firm Dannis Woliver Kelley, Squid knew show 2.0 was on its way. Former board president Georgia Acosta hired Juhl-Darlington (unbeknownst to the district) to advise the board after she and other board members fired Superintendent Michelle Rodriguez back in January. (They rescinded that firing five days later, after realizing it was a bad idea.)

Juhl-Darlington charged $285 per hour of travel, plus time at the meeting, for a total of $2,565 for nine hours. Monterey County Supervisor Luis Alejo voiced his opinion on Twitter: “He could have just joined by Zoom for a meeting that was all on Zoom for the public!”

It’s now up to the board to decide if the district will pay the bill or if Acosta will be responsible for it. Either way, it probably would have been a lot more affordable if Juhl-Darlington did just appear on Zoom. Plus he could’ve done that thing that attorneys are now famous for doing on Zoom and said, “I am not a cat.”