At its March 15 meeting, the San Luis Obispo City Council became the latest municipal body in SLO County to tackle what to do about Proposition 64, which legalized marijuana for adult use in the state.
Overwhelmingly approved last November by California voters, Prop. 64 legalized the use of marijuana for those 21-older, albeit while setting limits on the amount legal to possess and regulating retail sales.
The City of SLO has a ban on all cannabis-related businesses, which is enforced through zoning ordinances, and arose over concerns regarding “medical marijuana” dispensaries. Voters approved medical marijuana use back in 1996.
The City was the first in the nation to ban tobacco smoking indoors and prided itself at being among the first to ban smoking in most public outdoor spaces, although the complaint-driven provision is rarely enforced.
Prop. 64 allows adults to smoke and grow a limited number of marijuana plants in their own homes, but still allows for local authorities to impose additional regulations or outright prohibitions around cannabis.
The County of San Luis Obispo is holding a series of meetings starting in April to gather public input into the subject, while staffers with the City of Grover Beach last month went “back to the drawing board” on a City ordinance that would have confined pot cultivation to just one area of the City.
That approach drew concerns from business owners who felt they’d be pushed out of long-term rentals by the more profitable cannabis industry.
SLO City staff by contrast has recommended that the City Council adopt an ordinance that reaffirms their existing regulations, and in the words of Community Development Director, Michael Codron, “gives staff more time to engage with community members, explore different regulatory options, and monitor developments in other jurisdictions and at the federal level.”
That engagement process is now expected to take more than a year, with staff directed to come back to the City Council in 2018, though no specific date was set. By January 2018, the State is supposed to have regulations in place governing retail sales of the formerly evil weed.
To be clear Codron, summarized in an announcement ahead of the meeting, “Currently, the City prohibits all commercial and industrial recreational and medical marijuana uses, activities and operations, and limits outdoor cultivation of medical and recreational marijuana within the City.”
That would have to change, if as discussed notably by Councilwomen Andy Pease and Carlyn Christianson, the City wishes to cash in on potential tax revenue allowed by Prop. 64, as Grover Beach has voted to do. Although Christianson, a former member of the City’s planning commission, was more concerned that the City not sacrifice territory that could go to future workforce housing in the name of cultivation-tax revenues.
A local cannabis tax could be put to a public vote in the November 2018 General Election at the earliest. Under Prop. 64, special elections cannot be called to vote on ordinances related to it.
Just a reminder for readers planning to exercise their newly-obtained rights under Prop. 64, but might be unsure how it applies in public, the City’s current ordinance still prohibits smoking and controls secondhand smoke from tobacco, marijuana, e-cigarettes and vapors, in public and other places.
– By Camas Frank
