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HomeMy WebLinkAboutEXHIBIT_038E7 3E Hello, My name is Jessie Williamson, I am Luke's business partner and sister. Today we have already talked about who we are and how we got into the marijuana industry. I would like to take a few minutes and talk about this application process with the county and how we came to purchase this land at 9790 Coyle Road. Let me first start by saying that finding land that is zoned correctly in an industrial area that meets the State and County requirements is very hard and incredibly expensive. Being a small family business, we would never be able to afford a piece of property in an industrial area without large investors. I also don't believe that an agricultural crop belongs in an industrial area. I did some research and found that Jefferson County zoning code pertaining to the production and processing of marijuana allows it in rural residential areas. I found that other nursery's that produced and processed marijuana had been permitted and approved in rural residential areas within Jefferson County. There are currently two other applicants who have gone through this process and been approved. With this in mind, I started searching for a piece of property that would meet our two biggest needs. The first being that Luke needed a house. The second being that we needed a place to grow and process marijuana. We have been completely transparent from the beginning about our intentions. We new that we would be able to build a house on the land. The next step we took before we purchased the land was to see if we could produce and process marijuana there. We went to the county to confirm that the zoning was correct for a conditional use permit and a cottage industry permit. We have worked closely with the county and community to ensure that we will not be a nuisance and will have no impact on the community. We attended several community lunches, maintained an open dialogue with members of the Tornados community through their Google Groups chat page, email, and by hosting a Q&A session at the community center with a power point. We compiled all their concerns and went about addressing them. We heard concerns about our use of the aquifer, traffic, light pollution, ect. We then took steps to address these. We implemented a water catchment system in our plans with the county. The water catchment system would capture the rain that hits the roof of the buildings, funnel it down into a storage tank where we would be then able to use it on our plants inside of the building. This will offset our user of the aquifer. We explained that there wouldn't be any surge in the amount of traffic generated by us. We are limited to 4 employees by the cottage industry. We also only receive shipments of supplies once every quarter. We are not a retail store; customers don't come to us. Light pollution does not occur because we are in a building. The list goes on. We even worked with ORCAA to lock down an odor mitigation plan that was practical and effective Revising it several times to ensure that all areas were being adequately addressed and specific equipment (the makes and models) recommended by ORCAA were going to be used in our plan. We received approval from Mark Goodwin of ORCAA on our odor mitigation plan that was submitted. We have worked closely with the county to ensure that we will not be a nuisance or disruptive to our neighbors. We have gone above and beyond what the previous applicants who received approval have done. We are looking forward to being apart of the community and working cohesively within it. Thank you for your time, Jessie Williamson