The Arizona Court of Appeals released an explanation Thursday of its decision last month confirming a voter referendum will be on Graham County ballots in November to settle a zoning dispute about the cultivation of cannabis.
The appellate court’s unanimous Opinion stems from efforts by the political action committee Respect the Will of the People to give Graham County voters the final say in November on whether to accept or reject last year’s vote by the county board to rezone some property owned by NatureSweet and pave the way for a medical marijuana cultivation facility.
In Arizona, the power of referendum permits qualified electors of a city, town, or county to circulate petitions and “refer” legislation enacted by their local elected representatives to a popular vote. That is what is happening in Graham County stemming from a rezoning request made by Bayacan, LLC, for property which encompasses two greenhouses at the NatureSweet complex in Bonita.
NatureSweet is one of the largest cultivators of tomatoes in the U.S.; the plan is to repurpose two of its many greenhouses for use by Bayacan to cultivate and harvest medical-grade cannabis which will be processed elsewhere.
The Graham County Board of Supervisors voted in June 2021 to approve the rezoning from General Land Use to Unlimited Manufacturing Land Use. The next month, Respect the Will of the People filed a referendum petition to oppose the rezoning.
The committee refers to the impact of the rezoning as a “massive marijuana expansion in our area” and encourages a “no” vote on the referendum question.
Nearly 2,300 signatures were submitted in July 2021 to the Graham County Elections Department by the committee, which is chaired by political consultant George Khalaf and backed by the Arizona Public Integrity Alliance. The next month, the referendum petition was certified as having more than the required 1,064 valid signatures to get on the ballot for the General Election in November 2022.
Soon after, Shane Jones and Victoria Cranford filed separate challenges against the referendum effort, arguing Respect the Will of the People did not obtain a sufficient number of signatures and that the referendum petition included “misleading” information.
Graham County’s judges were conflicted off the cases, leading to Judge John Hannah of the Maricopa County Superior Court being assigned. He consolidated the two cases for purposes of trial which Hannah held in April.
Hannah eventually determined Respect the Will of the People turned in 1,070 valid signatures, just six more than needed to get the referendum on the ballot. Jones and Cranford appealed, again arguing about the misleading referendum information and that Hannah erred in his calculation of the number of valid signatures.
On July 21, the Arizona Court of Appeals – Division Two unanimously affirmed Hannah’s ruling but stated a detailed explanation of their decision would be forthcoming. It is that explanation authored by Vice Chief Judge Christopher Staring which was released Aug. 25 as an Opinion of the Court.
According to the Opinion, the three-judge appellate panel disagreed with some of Hannah’s legal conclusions but found no fault with his math nor his method for determining which petition signatures to reject and which to count.
The panel also agreed the referendum petition contained much more information than required by law but found all the necessary information of what was being challenged was included, Staring noted. The Opinion further states the challenge to the petition formatting “does not justify depriving [Graham] County voters of their opportunity to be heard.”
As a result, the matter will be on the ballot for the upcoming General Election.
The debate over the plans by NatureSweet and Bayacan has continued across Graham County while the legal challenge played out for the last year. The matter has split the community into two camps, one which supports the rezoning and is led by the Graham County Chamber of Commerce, several elected officials, and Eastern Arizona College’s governing board.
They see Bayacan’s plan as a way to keep jobs in the rural area as well as sustain NatureSweet’s business and maintain tax revenue given that NatureSweet pays roughly 20 percent of all the property taxes collected in Graham County.
However, the other camp consisting of nearby residential property owners and other agricultural landowners worry about negative impacts to their property values as well as their crops and livestock from a cannabis cultivation operation.
