OFFICIALS DEVELOP NEW MEDICAL MARIJUANA RESTRICTIONS

It took four lengthy hearings and plenty of public input, but members
of Santa Barbara's city ordinance committee finally have a set of
recommendations on how to address growing concerns about the
proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries.

After another round of public comment yesterday, city leaders buckled
down and hammered out a handful of recommendations ranging from a
citywide cap on the number of dispensaries to enhanced security
requirements.

"I think we're making progress," said Councilmember Das Williams, who
chairs the committee. "We're in the unique situation of having to
deal with state and federal law that is in flux. It seems where the
state and federal government is heading is to permit marijuana."

As a result, he said the city is being forced to come up with a way
to properly regulate the drug.

And ever since a particularly troublesome dispensary prompted
complaints several years ago, city leaders have been struggling with
the best way to ensure legitimate patients have access to medicinal
marijuana while protecting neighborhoods from any negative impacts.

Despite placing a set of regulations on the books last year, city
officials continued to receive waves of complaints about new
dispensaries popping up in their neighborhoods. At the prompting of
Mayor Marty Blum and Councilmember Dale Francisco, the ordinance
committee took another look at the regulations.

Roughly nine hours of discussion later, the committee has put
together 10 recommendations that officials are hopeful will address
many of the community concerns expressed by dozens, if not hundreds,
of residents who spoke during the course of the revision process.

"We're tightening it up and going to see if it works," Williams said.
"If that's not restrictive enough to essentially get rid of the bad
actors in the marketplace, then we'll look at tightening it up again."

Chief among the new restrictions is a citywide cap of seven
dispensaries with an additional limit of only one pot shop in each of
seven designated areas. Those areas are upper State Street, De la
Vina Street, Mission Street, Milpas Street, the Mesa, east downtown
and west downtown.

Committee members also agreed to recommended cutting down the
amortization period given to existing dispensaries that don't comply
with the regulations for one reason or another. Non-conforming shops
will have to meet the new laws within six months or close, instead
of the 17 months they previously had to comply.

"The real problem in my mind is you have a lot of dispensaries out
there that existed before the regulations," Williams said. "They're
not regulated in the way that we know is necessary in order to
prevent problems. We needed to reduce the amount of time they were
given to come into conformance."

Other recommended regulations include a prohibition on medical
marijuana dispensaries in current mixed-use buildings with condos, a
1,000-foot prohibition around the Casa Esperanza homeless shelter,
and the creation of an annual permit review process.

Ordinance committee members also agreed to give more discretion to
the city's staff hearing officer in considering applications for a
medical marijuana dispensary permit.

"As it's structure now, it's very difficult to turn one of these
applications down," Francisco said.

As a result, the committee recommended changing the word "would" to
"is likely to" when considering whether the dispensary would pose a
nuisance to the neighborhood.

After hearing from community members concerned about marijuana being
resold on the streets, members of the committee agreed to recommend
establishing a list of people convicted of reselling medical
marijuana. Any dispensary known to sell to those people would be
subject to having its permit revoked.

Even as the discussion of specific details in the ordinance took
place, Francisco said the city still needs to grapple with a much
larger picture -- how to deal with changing state and federal law
relating to medical marijuana.

"The dispensary model itself, in my opinion, is in conflict with
California state law," he said, explaining that the Compassionate Use
Act only provides for collectives or cooperatives that provide
marijuana for legitimate patients.

He recommended bringing up the larger issue of figuring out which
model to support -- a for-profit storefront model or a nonprofit
collective model -- with the full council.

"Until that question is resolved, I have real doubts about the
efficacy of what we're doing here," Francisco said.

Nonetheless, he largely supported the proposed changes, which will
return to the ordinance committee in draft form for a final review
before heading to the Planning Commission and on to the full City
Council for possible approval.