(NBBJ) - Acknowledging public sentiment to tighten up enforcement of permits for wine production in Napa County, the Board of Supervisors on Aug. 11 got their first look at new tools for doing so, including reviewing compliance annually, attaching violation notices to property records and making those operating flagrantly outside their limits have a one year or longer “timeout” in seeking permission for permit changes.

This discussion on major changes to the way the county keeps tabs on what wineries are doing comes amid growing public concern about wine production and hospitality operations in rural areas of Napa and Sonoma counties. And some involved in planning policy in Sonoma County have been looking at the current Napa County winery audit as a potential model for measuring and regulating wine-related visitation and facility scaling in rural areas.

Full public hearings on such measures are set to come in September and November, so the board was giving staff direction on get-tougher recommendations coming from planning and building staff as well as an advisory committee of agriculture and environmental protection representatives and the most recent Napa County Grand Jury.

A public perception about widespread problems with winery permit compliance isn’t borne out in county code enforcement officer caseload, Napa County Planning Director David Morrison told the supervisors.

“Winery compliance major topic at the Planning Commission and in the media, but at the March workshop I said only 6 percent of code enforcement is winery-related, and most of the backlog is building-code violations,” he said. “The reality is not in media atmosphere but what is the majority of what code enforcement is doing day by day.”

Napa County started the winery audit program in 2006 with a review of production data for a small number of wineries. That has expanded to an annual review of 20 wineries randomly selected from 450-plus with approved county use permits in unincorporated areas. The reviews cover compliance with limits on production, out-of-county grape sourcing, visitation and conditions of approval. Wines with “Napa County” as the appellation of origin must have three-fourths of the grapes coming from the county, a requirement known as the “75 percent rule.”

Last year’s review found eight wineries with compliance problems, but 12 with no issues, Morrison said.

Critics of Napa County’s current winery audit, including the 19-member county civil grand jury in its May 20 report, have said it would take more than 22 years for staff to review all the wineries in county jurisdiction. The grand jury recommended the review expand to 90 per year, to audit each winery at least once every five years. And one of the tentative recommendations from the Board of Supervisors’ 17-member Agricultural Protection Advisory Committee, or APAC, on July 27, was for annual review of all wineries.

The county Planning Commission is set to take up the APAC recommendations Sept. 2, and the Board of Supervisors on Nov. 24.

Doing the reviews the way they are done now would take more staff time than is available, even with a new full-time position dedicated to the role next year, Morrison told the supervisors. So the county is considering having wineries submit their state and federal grape crushing and wine production report data into a computer system tied to the existing county database that includes permitted production volume. The system would flag wineries out of compliance, and enforcement staff could focus reviews on them, Morrison said.