EUREKA MEDICAL MARIJUANA ORDINANCE IN EFFECT SEPT. 3

Increase in city workload expected for enforcement

With the Eureka medical marijuana ordinance adopted last week,
residents and city staff are looking to Sept. 3, when it goes into
effect, to see exactly what it will mean for the city.

The ordinance provides guidelines for residential cultivation by
qualified patients and for commercial enterprises looking to
cultivate, process and dispense the drug, along with limiting the
number of commercial facilities in city limits. Before the ordinance
was approved, the Eureka City Council had enacted a moratorium on
dispensaries and commercial cultivation and processing, effectively
suspending the operations until the ordinance was crafted and adopted.

Eureka's medical marijuana ordinance was based on a similar one passed
in Arcata. However, Arcata already had four dispensaries in the city
limits before the ordinance was adopted, said Arcata Community
Development Deputy Director David Loya. The ordinance allowed the city
to create guidelines for current and future cooperatives and
collectives to follow.

"It gives us some standards by which to judge these operations," along
with providing standards for individual patient grows, Loya said. "I
think it's effective."

Eureka's ordinance serves a similar purpose by providing standards for
patients and collectives to follow. Since the Arcata ordinance was
adopted, Loya said he hasn't seen a significant increase in the number
of complaints about possibly illegal residential grows.

The medical marijuana ordinances in Arcata and Eureka take a land use
approach to the issue, which puts the responsibility of handling
noncompliant grows in the hands of the Community Development
Department. The workload for Eureka's Community Development Department
is anticipated to increase, and Eureka Police Chief Garr Nielsen said,
at least initially, the ordinance will also impact his department. It
will take teamwork across a number of city departments to make the
ordinance work, he said.

"It certainly will not lessen the work for law enforcement, at least
at first," Nielsen said.

Police officers are often the ones who come across marijuana grows,
and they will have to determine whether it appears to fit the
ordinance or whether they need to submit a report to Community
Development.

"But it will make it easier for us, because it gives us some tools we
didn't have before," Nielsen said.

Eureka's ordinance also anticipates future changes in the law
regarding marijuana. If legalized for personal use, such as with
Proposition 19 in November, its limits will apply to both medical and
personal grows. The ordinance in Arcata would have to be amended to
cover personal use grows, if they are legalized statewide.

One aspect of both city ordinances is that nothing is "grandfathered
in" -- current qualified patient grows in residential spaces will have
to come into compliance with Eureka's standards, Community Development
Director Sidnie Olson said.

"You may believe you have a legal 215 grow, but on Sept. 3, if you
don't meet the ordinance, it's not legal," Olson said.

Growing medical marijuana can only occur in the residence where the
patient lives, and the garden must be 50 square feet, or less.
Lighting cannot exceed 1,200 watts, and there must be no external
evidence of marijuana cultivation, according to the ordinance.

Eureka's ordinance allows for four cultivation and processing
facilities within the city, and each of those can have two
dispensaries. Additionally, two dispensaries that do not have
cultivation facilities in town can open up in Eureka.

Although Arcata's ordinance allows for four cooperatives and
collectives, that number will be knocked down to two if any of the
current facilities close, Loya said.

With the previous moratorium in Eureka, dispensaries and commercial
cultivation facilities will not have to attempt to come into
compliance after the fact, as the Arcata dispensaries did.

Humboldt Patient Resource Center Director Mariellen Jurkovich said the
ordinance has impacted her business by requiring her to apply for
conditional use permits. She said she was glad the ordinance was
adopted to provide standards and guidelines, most of which her
operation was already following, but applying for permits and then
waiting through the process has been difficult.

"I'm trying to do what they want," she said. "It's better to cooperate
with your city."

She said she has been paying rent on a new facility that would expand
the center's cultivation capabilities in the recommended light
industrial zoning, but she has not yet been able to use it. Her
conditional use permits are still pending after eight months.

"We'll all work it out, I'm sure, but I wish it would hurry,"
Jurkovich said.

For information on the city of Eureka's ordinance, visit
http://www.ci.eureka.ca.gov/ or call Community Development at
441-4160.