The smoke has cleared on Chula Vista’s proposed marijuana dispensary ordinance.
After two public meetings and hours of public testimony and deliberations, the Chula Vista City Council voted to allow tight regulations and an extensive permitting process for sales of recreational and medical cannabis within the city.
The ordinance is a highly modified one compared to an original ordinance that city staff presented at the Feb. 6 meeting.
One of the changes made was lowering the number of commercial licenses available from 12 to 10, a move approved unanimously by the City Council.
Changes were also made to amend language on the ordinance related to a “lottery system” that determines which applicants are invited to submit a phase two application.
The earlier version of the ordinance had stated: “Applicants who are approved by the finance director and police chief under the phase one application process, or by the city manager upon appeal, shall be deemed to submit a phase two application. If the number of deemed ‘qualified’ phase one applicants for storefront retail or non-storefront retail licenses exceeds the number of available city licenses for those license types, a lottery system established by the city shall be used to determine which of the qualified applicants is invited to submit a phase two application.”
District 2 Councilwoman Pat Aguilar expressed concern over the lottery-based system and said a merit-based system was one she supported.
“I’m not convinced that a lottery system is the best way to go,” Aguilar said. “I understand that it certainly is the most legally safe way to go, leaving us the least exposed. But on the other hand, it is important to me as a council member to have businesses in the city who are good corporate citizens.
“I think it would be the right thing to do to at least look further into some kind of merit-based system … but to me it’s important enough to reconsider the lottery.”
The amendment to a merit-based system and to place the ordinance on first reading was approved by a 4-1 vote with Councilman John McCann against.
Currently, Chula Vista prohibits the operation of marijuana dispensaries and commercial cultivation in the city
In 2016, Californians approved Prop. 64 to legalize the sale of recreational use marijuana. Individual cities, however, can set their own laws permitting recreational marijuana sales or banning them all together.
An item for the City Council to vote to place a tax measure for sale of recreational marijuana will take place at a future date.
The new marijuana ordinance would not go into effect if voters do not vote to tax marijuana sales in the city.
