A small but vocal – and occasionally frustrated – group of community members, many of them medical marijuana users, spoke to the commission, asking them not to follow many of the proposed ordinance's more limiting provisions, including a three-dispensary limit for the city
With one member – Commissioners Gina Fortino-Dickson – absent, the commission took about an hour of public comment on the document, points of which it discussed with the Clearlake City Council at a meeting last month.
City Administrator Dale Neiman suggested the commission open the hearing, take comment and then continue the hearing to the next meeting, limiting comments only to new issues on the document, crafted primarily by city Police Chief Allan McClain.
Lower Lake attorney Ron Green and retired District 1 Supervisor Ed Robey submitted to the commission a 10-page memorandum that went, point by point, through the 20-page ordinance.
Green was concerned that the commission didn't have enough time to review the memo, and asked for a brief recess to allow them additional time to read it. Commission Chair Al Bernal assured Green that the commissioners would have the opportunity to fully review it before the next meeting.
“We're not going to get to the ordinance itself tonight,” he said, after which Green said he would postpone his remarks until later in the meeting.
Richard Derum told the commission that he found many of the ordinance's proposed rules – including locating dispensaries in the C-4 zoning areas, which is meant for light industrial uses, and separating them by 1,500 feet from other dispensaries – to be “very arbitrary.”
The ordinance also proposes to limit each of the dispensaries to 200 members, meaning only 600 people could legally purchase medical marijuana at the establishments.
Derum said he sees himself as patient No. 601. “What do you recommend I do?”
Bernal said the limit on the number of patients, per the ordinance, is open for review after the first year of operation if there is more demand.
Derum urged the city to be progressive in dealing with medical marijuana.
Vincent Reese of Clearlake Park, a medical marijuana activist for 15 years and host of a show on TV8 about the subject, said the limits on dispensary membership will force members into becoming drug dealers for those who can't otherwise get the drug.
If only 600 people can get it, “What's going to happen when 3000 people want it?” he asked.
Angie Decoux told the commission that some of the ordinances are impossible to comply with, from location in the industrial zoning to distance from residences and membership numbers.
She called some of the other requirements “silly,” such as the establishments being closed on holidays.
Estella Creel asked how the city could take established businesses and move them out of current zoning and into other parts of the city where the C-4 zoning exists.
Neiman said they were there to receive comments, not answer questions. “Dale, you're never here to answer questions,” Creel shot back.
Bernal reminded community members that the City Council had voted previously not to ban dispensaries, and to move forward with regulating them. “That's why we're here,” he said.
“I'm sensing you may think this commission or the city is going to come to a conclusion that there won't be any dispensaries, but that's not why we're here,” he said. “I just want to get that on the record, we're not here to establish a ban on dispensaries.”
Bernal added, “I want to make sure people understand where we're coming from and where we're headed.”
“My question deserves an answer,” said Creel, who remained standing at the podium.
She quoted comments she attributed to Neiman at a previous meeting regarding the possibility that the city would have to pick up the costs of relocating the businesses.
Neiman said some council members wanted to close down existing dispensaries, which – in his opinion and that of City Attorney Malathy Subramanian – are violating city ordinances. He said he and Subramanian recommended against shutting them down only to reopen them under new regulations, and so the three dispensaries have continued operating.
“The ones that are here are not permitted under the city code,” he said.
Creel maintained that the current dispensaries are grandfathered in. She said they should stay where they're at for the convenience of customers, and that the new rules should apply to future businesses.
Returning to the microphone, DeCoux voiced concerns that the ordinance hadn't changed since the last public hearing. Bernal reassured her that the commission would go into the “nuts and bolts” of the document at future meetings.
“I'll bet the farm there are going to be changes,” he said.
Neiman said there will be at least two commission meetings on the ordinance, and a minimum of two council meetings.
Replied Decoux, “We're kinda scared we're not being heard.” Neiman replied that the commission was meeting for the purpose of listening.
Taking his turn at the podium, Robey referred to a comment he made in the workshop last month, when he compared this time in history to 1933, when alcohol was still illegal under Prohibition.
“The thing is, we're in a transitional period right now,” he said.
The reason cities and counties all over the state are dealing with dispensaries is the state hasn't done its job and taken responsibility for how Proposition 215, the Compassionate Use Act which was passed in 1996, is supposed to work, Robey said.
Medical marijuana is legal, and it's not likely to go the other way, he said. Robey said he wanted to see an ordinance that's rational, follows state laws and the state attorney general's guidelines, and which protects the city and is enforceable.
Robey said the 20-page ordinance was only made available at 5 p.m. the day before Thanksgiving, and he spent his holiday weekend reading through it. “It concerns me because it is so long and complex.”
After going through the ordinance point by point with Green, “I've concluded that this thing needs to be sent back to the drawing board,” Robey said, noting there are simpler, easier ordinances to be found.
He also noted that he saw the word “Orange” at the bottom of the ordinance document, and asked if it came from the county or city of Orange. McClain said he didn't remember where it came from.
McClain said that, when he was directed to write the document earlier this year, he asked not to be “because I wasn't given any direction.” The only direction he had was from a small committee, that included him, Neiman and Council member Joyce Overton, among others, who had come up with suggestions that he tried to incorporate.
Robey, who noted he's read through between 25 and 30 ordinances from different areas, said he didn't think the public or the commission had enough time to go through Clearlake's proposed document.
“It needs more public input, and it needs more time for people to read it,” he said.
He said staff is suggesting they take input from people who haven't had adequate time to read it, then close public input only to new information at the next meeting. “That bothers me.” He said the process seems like it's “kind of a set up.”
Christine Dillon-Longbotham said the city doesn't have much to offer, pointing out that the city has many buildings that have sat empty since she began coming to the city seven years ago. She said she's been told there aren't enough police officers to respond when kids are fighting near the police station, so she questioned the effort to marginalize medical marijuana patients like her.
“You're ostracizing us, you're discriminating against us,” said Dillon-Longbotham, a nursing student who said she uses the drug for health issues.
Green, returning to the microphone, shook his head over the ordinance. “I've read most of the ordinances in the state. This is the worst, by far.”
He suggested McClain had found the worst language in the worst ordinances in the state and “made it more restrictive, more onerous.”
Like Robey, he suggested the ordinance “should just be tossed” and the city should start over.
“This is not an easy job that you're going to have to deal with this, but we hope that you'll take your time and do it right,” he said.
Green said the ordinance being presented was based on no real community input, and was written by McClain, who is coming from the enforcement angle. “He doesn't want any dispensaries here.”
Green called the C-4 zoning “absurd,” and said the staff packet was misleading, with 31 cities around the state having ordinances for dispensaries, not two. Another 78 cites, like Clearlake, have moratoriums in place so they can consider regulations.
The ordinance adds a chapter to the city's police regulations, which Green said he hadn't seen anywhere in the state.
Also absurd in Green's estimation was requiring the dispensaries be 1,500 feet from so many other kinds of establishments, including other dispensaries, senior centers, churches, schools and more.
Many parts of the ordinance also would violate patient confidentiality rules, Green said.
Bernal thanked Green for the work he and Robey did on the ordinance. “That's painstaking to do.”
He added, “We've got a first draft, that's a good thing.”
Bernal said that, all around the state, cities and counties are grappling with how to deal with medical marijuana because the original law isn't very good or very clear. “It's a minefield,” he said.
The Clearlake Planning Commission will continue its hearing on the proposed dispensaries ordinance at its Dec. 15 meeting.
Also on Tuesday, the Woodland City Council reportedly voted to ban medical marijuana dispensaries.
E-mail Elizabeth Larson at
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