The City Council will be considering a change in the city’s marijuana ordinance that could lift the cap on the number of retail marijuana establishments allowed in the city.
The motion introduced by Council President Leo Robinson to revise the marijuana ordinance was sent to the council’s subcommittee on conference for further discussion.
The city currently has three active retail marijuana sales licenses, and thanks to the latest US Census number, the city’s cap on licenses stands at six.
But there are currently four applications in the pipeline for those three available licenses, all of which could appear before the city’s License Commission as early as this month.
Councilor-at-Large Brian Hatleberg said he does have questions about the proposed ordinance change that he is looking forward to seeing addressed in subcommittee.
“The section in here we are seeking to repeal is one that puts a cap on the number of marijuana-selling establishments in the city,” he said. “I tried to do some thinking on this one and I don’t know a lot about this. I can see some impacts in both directions, where if I had put a large amount of money into one of these businesses, I might view it as taking a large part of my investment away if the cap is gone.”
Hatleberg said he would like to hear from people who have a vested interest in the licenses.
“At the same time, I am completely opposed to most of the businesses, so I really don’t have a personal interest in removing a cap at all,” said Hatleberg. “I find myself in the slightly awkward position of likely voting against this.”
District 8 Councilor Calvin Brown said he also has some questions about the ordinance change and would like input from the city’s public safety departments, as well as information about how close some of the proposed facilities would be to each other.
At last month’s License Commission meeting, Police Chief Keith Houghton said there have been no issues with the current licensed establishments in the city. He added that all the potential licensees have also gone through proper channels and there have been no problems with those license applications. Environmental Justice leader María