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Jolan Banias, owner of Sweet Grass Boutique, will address the Board of Supervisors. | Screenshot
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Garberville business owners appeared before the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday to “sound the alarm” over declining revenue, citing ongoing struggles in the region’s popular cannabis industry.
“I’ve personally seen a 40 percent drop in sales,” said Jolan Baniasz, owner of Garberville Clothing Store. “This past month, September, I saw a 60 percent drop in sales. I can’t work with these losses.
Banias recently had to let go of a seven-year employee who was unable to find another job in the area.
“Across the board, not every business is really hiring because no one is thriving,” she says. Banyaz added that she has heard from other local business owners who are hanging on by a thread, paying their bills from the savings.
Charlotte Silverstein, who has owned and operated the Garberville Bead Store for the past 38 years, followed her on stage. Silverstein said mail-order transactions are keeping her business afloat, but her revenues are still down 20 percent this year and the entire city is suffering.
“I recently moved and I’m on street level, and people ask, ‘How do you like your new place?’ Well, she said, “I like the place, but I get to see what happens in Garberville, which is a lot of empty and a lot of poor people. I feel like years since legalization, before the regulators made the price of licenses so expensive, it put a lot of people into bankruptcy. So now everyone is either going or broke.
Reached by phone Wednesday, Second District Supervisor Michelle Bushnell said she sympathized with the women as a fellow Garberville business owner.
“I have the biggest clothing store there,” she said, citing The Bootleg newspaper, “and my business has been going down for eight months.” Sales are down about 45 percent, the worst decline in the business’s 41-year history, she said.
Bushnell bought the business in 2011. In 2011, she said, the first big drop in sales was in 2016 and 2017, the period from which Prop. 64, which legalized recreational cannabis. That created a lot of anxiety among local growers, which affected the county’s economy.
“But then he came back,” Bushnell said. “[However]The last eight months have been awful. I typically employ seven full-time people. Now I had to reduce it to two… Plus [one who works] Four o’clock on Sunday.”
Both Banjaz and Silverstein cited Pacific Gas & Electric’s recently revealed limits on power transmission in southern Humboldt.
“[T]”Hat will seriously affect any development in our community, along with the ancient infrastructure in the water districts,” Baniasz said.
Silverstein echoed these concerns. “You know, you’re all excited about what’s going on up north in Arcata,” she said. “You have Cal Poly, but here in South Humboldt, we’re the first place people come and it’s like a ghost town. How are you going to help us support and fix this?
Bushnell spoke with county Economic Development Director Scott Adair and County Administrative Officer Alicia Hayes about these issues.
“We need to develop tourism,” she said. “Cannabis, it’s in the bathroom. It’s so scary. There is panic across the board. But we need curb appeal. We really have to sell [SoHum] As an introduction to Humboldt County.
On Tuesday, she stood at the podium and told the board that she grew up in the Banyasze community and wants to stay. But right now, she doesn’t know if she’ll be in business until early next year, and she fears other storefronts will be vacant as well, leaving the door to Humboldt County “barren.”
“I want to see it prosper,” she said. “I want to see members of our community able to support our businesses. I don’t see any economic opportunities with the cannabis industry collapsing.
Bushnell said she plans to bring Adair in to talk to local business owners so they at least know the county is paying attention.
Below is Tuesday’s meeting lined up on time as Banyasze speaks. She followed Silverstein.
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