How to resolve AdBlock issue? The Wednesday meeting ran nearly three and a half hours as the commission reviewed a series of rules that had been created by a working group of city staff formed at the direction of the Lakeport City Council, which staff said has indicated it wants rules in place by year’s end.
City Associate Planner Dan Chance said the regulations were based on the voter-approved Proposition 64 and SB 94, the latter adopted by the State Legislature in June.
He said staff has developed marijuana, or cannabis, regulations, into two tracks – personal and commercial.
For personal, the city is amending the marijuana ordinance already in place. Those updates were reviewed in February, and Chance said staff will be bringing them back to the commission for further review.
On the separate commercial track, Chance said staff has been working on developing performance standards and doing the appropriate zoning classifications and definitions, including commercial, industrial and heavy commercial.
He said planning staff has met several times with the working group – composed of Mayor Stacey Mattina and Councilwoman Mireya Turner, Police Chief Brad Rasmussen, City Attorney David Ruderman, City Manager Margaret Silveira and a Community Development Department staffer – to go over the recommendations.
The staff report said that the working group aimed “to balance the demand for commercial cannabis operations while at the same time limiting their visibility within the community and reducing potential negative impacts.”
As part of that effort, the working group recommended prohibiting outdoor cultivation activities, including keeping nursery activities indoors; limiting commercial cannabis activities to the service commercial and industrial zoning districts; requiring review and approval of an operations plan by the Lakeport Police Department prior to issuance of a development permit; controlling for potential odor impacts; and limiting retail sales to delivery only, prohibiting storefront retail, based on the staff report and staff comments at the meeting.
Chance emphasized that the commission was just looking at recommendations – nothing was written in stone – and the commission’s input would be used to craft a final document.
“The whole purpose of this evening is an open discussion on this topic,” said Community Development Director Kevin Ingram.
He said the recommendations weren’t yet in full ordinance form, and that it was a starting point.
A joint meeting of the city council and planning commission is set for Oct. 3; afterward, the staff will produce a full ordinance for the commission’s Oct. 11 meeting, Ingram said.
He said the state wants local governments to come up with their own rules by the end of this year. Many communities are like Lakeport and trying to get the rules in place by that deadline, Ingram added.
Commissioner Michael Green said he didn’t believe that the end-of-year time frame is a hard deadline, and suggested the city could put a placeholder ordinance on the books while it works on a more long-term document.
While he said he liked a lot of what he saw in the document, Green voiced concern about the process that produced it, which relied on a working group of city officials and staff. He said the best ordinances in the state have come from a more open and inclusive process, and suggested that some of the errors in the work could have been prevented by having members of industry and the general public involved.
Silveira said the city could have more workshops if the council and commission thought it necessary, adding it would be difficult to come up with a different committee due to time constraints.
“Ordinances can be changed. It's not an easy process but they can be changed,” she said.
Commissioner Michael Froio asked why the city was looking at the topic in the first place, and questioned what the city has to gain or lose. He wanted to know if they are looking at tax revenue or to stay out of trouble with the state.
Silveira said they are looking at what’s in the best interest of the community, as well as abiding by the state’s rules. It’s not necessarily a matter of revenue generation, she added.
While Silveira indicated revenue wasn’t the chief consideration, Green said that the city needed to have a cannabis tax on the table to go with its proposed regulations.
He said he wanted to see such a tax measure on the 2018 city ballot. “I do see it as a revenue generator. Maybe not a huge one.”
During the discussion, Green acknowledged that dispensaries and outdoor cultivation can be contentious when considering such rules. He said he didn’t think cultivation would work in such a small city, but on the other hand said he believed the city is an ideal location for industrial activities.
Green said there is a fairly limited window of time for the city to attract the best of the best in the cannabis industry. Overall, he said Lake County is falling behind to some extent.
Cities are ideal places to local services, he said. “If we want the best of the best, it would behoove us to act sooner than later.”
Being able to attract top-quality companies would put Lakeport on the map, Green suggested.
In response to Green’s concern about a cannabis tax, Silveira said there is still time to put such a measure on the November 2018 ballot.
Commissioner Ken Wicks Jr. said he wanted the commission to look at the broader picture, and how the impacts could play out 10 years down the line.
He said Lakeport has been looking for opportunities to partner with businesses. “This is not likely to go away.”
While the marijuana industry now appears mostly centered in edibles and smoking, Wicks said he expected pharmaceutical uses to be involved in the future.
“You're going to have a whole different animal happening in commercial cannabis distribution,” he said, with a broader range of businesses deciding they can come and do business in Lakeport.
Green said the topic of pharmaceuticals is a whole different discussion and it’s years out. Meanwhile, he said there already is a lot of manufacturing going on.
Wicks said cannabis is going to generate taxes, and he pointed to the 39 possible licenses for the product under the new state laws. “Which means there's a whole lot of things happening,” he said, adding that he believes everything will straighten itself out.
One of the concerns for commissioners during the meeting was public outreach. Only about half a dozen community members were in the audience for the discussion, despite the city’s attempt at outreach and articles in local media ahead of the meeting.
However, compared to other meetings the city has held regarding marijuana, the turnout appeared normal. Unlike the city of Clearlake and the county of Lake, Lakeport hasn’t had large turnouts of growers and industry members for meetings on its rules.
Of the small group present for the Wednesday meeting, only one person, businessman Ron Rose, spoke during public comment.
Rose said he was there because he wanted to open a dispensary in downtown Lakeport.
However, based on the state-required buffers from parks and schools, Ingram said having a dispensary in the downtown may be difficult.
Other points made during the commission’s discussion included Green’s concerns about not having storefront dispensaries and the need to capture taxes. He said they shouldn’t exclude any license type, including the possibility of allowing for vapor lounges.
He said he also wanted to be friendly to testing labs, as landing one could be a coup for the city.
Key points of consensus the commission reached during the meeting included agreeing with the working group on not allowing any form of outdoor commercial cultivation and asking staff to investigate the timelines to put a commercial cannabis tax on the ballot next year.
The commission also voted unanimously to have the city initiate a text amendment to the zoning ordinance to develop commercial cannabis regulations.
In addition to the Oct. 3 joint meeting of the commission and council, other key dates on the ordinance implementation schedule include the Oct. 11 Lakeport Planning Commission, when the commission will review the draft ordinance staff will put together; a first reading by the city council on Nov. 7; and a potential second and final reading of the ordinance at the city council’s Nov. 21 or Dec. 5 meeting.
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092017 Lakeport Planning Commission meeting agenda packet by LakeCoNews on Scribd
