While it’s difficult to pin down exactly how many dispensaries are operating in Santa Barbara, city staffers have placed the number in the mid-teens at recent hearings. Only a handful of those have permits and are considered to be in conformance with current city regulations.
Yesterday, Aloha Spirit Organic Consumables, a dispensary proposed for 302 E. Haley St., joined the list of approved pot shops.
“This is a hard situation in that I’m reviewing this application under the existing ordinance and also with knowledge of proposed amendments by the ordinance committee,” said Susan Reardon, the city’s staff hearing officer who authorized the permit.
She eventually found no fault with the application and set out a few conditions of approval before issuing a permit, a decision that likely will be appealed to the city’s Planning Commission.
Senior Planner Danny Kato acknowledged that the dispensary probably wouldn’t be approved under the amendments being proposed by the city’s ordinance committee. While those proposed changes are still far from concrete, they would establish seven zones across the city with a limit of one dispensary in each zone.
Kato said Aloha Spirit would fall in the east downtown area, which already has an approved dispensary located on Olive Street.
“These are actually about 1,200 feet apart as the crow flies,” he said. “More like 1,900 feet apart if you actually had to go by streets. … They would be in the same area under that proposed ordinance.”
City officials have grappled with ways to tighten up the regulations to address an explosion of medicinal marijuana shops in the city in recent years, holding a series of lengthy ordinance committee hearings and eventually coming up with a handful of regulations.
And while the proposed changes will return to the ordinance committee on November 24 for tinkering, that hearing might be superseded by a discussion with the full City Council a week earlier.
Councilmembers Dale Francisco and Iya Falcone are asking their colleagues to take a look at the larger issues relating to medicinal marijuana — specifically whether the city even wants to embrace a dispensary model or move toward a nonprofit patient collective model that appears to be more in line with state laws.
“That is the fundamental question out there that hasn’t been answered yet,” Falcone said. “They are very different animals, they are very different operations.”
Sharon Byrne, a downtown resident who has helped galvanize neighborhood opposition to dispensaries, feels there is a growing movement toward a complete ban on the for-profit storefront model.
She said state guidelines established by Proposition 215 were intended to allow nonprofit cooperatives for legitimate patients.
“That’s what the voters of California approved,” Byrne said. “I think that’s legal, that’s above board, and that’s the right direction to go.”
She questioned why city leaders haven’t established a temporary moratorium on new dispensary applications as they mull over potential changes to city laws.
“That’s been the stunner for me,” she said. “They’re trying to work out the model and it would make sense to stop the floodgates until they figure that out.”
Along with plenty of outspoken residents who have attended city hearings on marijuana dispensaries, city staffers have also asked the council whether it wants to consider a temporary stay on new pot shops.
“We’ve thrown that out since August, but council hasn’t told us to do that,” said Paul Casey, the city’s community development director.?Falcone said she has been in favor of such a moratorium from early in the revision process, as has Francisco, but said there haven’t been enough votes on the council to move in that direction.
Several other councilmembers didn’t return phone calls yesterday afternoon, but Mayor Marty Blum said she feels support appears to be growing for a moratorium on new dispensaries, particularly after other cities have banned dispensaries and defeated challenges in court.
“Now we’re hearing maybe we can just outright ban them,” she said, adding later, “I haven’t talked to other councilmembers, but a couple of us feel emboldened after some of the decisions in the appeals courts.”
Nonetheless, the mayor said she is still struggling with the question of whether the city wants to simply cap the number of dispensaries and ensure they are adequately regulated, or change the model to allow only nonprofit collectives.
Another option is to outlaw both models, Blum noted, at least until federal and state officials reach consensus on how to treat marijuana in terms of both medicinal and recreational uses. But she said several medicinal marijuana patients have contacted her in the past few days, asking her how they will get their medication if dispensaries or collectives are banned.
If one thing is clear, it’s that all signs are pointing toward a lengthy and contentious hearing on November 17, when the council will take up those questions during an evening session at City Hall.