The Coast New reports.
Obviously at the City of Encinitas they haven’t quite gotten around to understanding what due diligence is
ENCINITAS — A cannabis consulting firm, recently hired by the City of Encinitas to help with its retail cannabis permit process, was fired by a Bay Area city earlier this year following an audit that raised concerns about the group’s accuracy.
offers services to cities on business license and taxes, economic development, property tax, cannabis consulting and more.
The firm was hired by the City of Fairfield, located in Solana County and situated between San Francisco and Sacramento, to help with its retail cannabis permitting process after residents approved a citywide business tax (Measure C) on government-licensed marijuana shops.
At a Fairfield City Council meeting in March, the city publicly parted ways with the company following a city audit finding HdL’s scoring system for permit applicants to be substandard.
The city had previously received input through public hearings that raised concerns about the accuracy of HdL’s scoring which prompted Fairfield to ask for HdL to conduct an internal audit.
“HdL discovered that it wasn’t just one that was scored incorrectly, there were numerous applications that they misscored (sic) and that in fact did change the placing of the top five,” said Fairfield City Manager Stefan Chatwin during the meeting.
Chatwin went on to say that HdL inaccurately scored at least nine permit applications.
“Frankly there’s no excuse for their failure here,” Chatwin said. “We paid good money to have them do this and they failed in a big way on this.”
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Encinitas hires cannabis consulting firm recently fired by Bay Area city
