GILBERT'S DEFINITION OF PARK COULD HOLD UP POT-DISPENSARY PERMITS

Plans for Gilbert's first two medical-marijuana dispensaries could be
held up as the town grapples with the definition of a park.

The Town Council discussed appeals challenging permits for the two
locations in the northwestern part of the town that were approved by
the Planning Commission in May.

Though the commission debated what constitutes a park last month, it
made no decision on how a dispensary's distance from a park should be
measured. State law requires dispensaries to be at least 1,000 feet
from public or private parks.

Council members agreed Monday the issue needs to be examined by town
staff and citizens.

"This needs to be more carefully vetted," Councilwoman Linda Abbott
said. "There does need to be clarification because that part of it was
not discussed."

Both appeals, submitted by businesses near the planned dispensaries,
questioned the distance between the marijuana stores and private
parks, among other issues.

The difficulty in determining the way to measure that distance was
underscored when planning and development services manager Kyle Mieras
discussed Sonoran Star Remedies, which he said is 1,025 feet from a
private park. Since there is no standard point in a park the town
staffers use for a beginning point for measurement, activity areas are
considered, he said.

The distance from the proposed dispensary was measured to park areas
where people are likely to congregate, including a basketball court
and green space, he said.

Abbott said water-retention basins, which are often not viewed as
activity areas, are "very active in some parts of the community." She
also said she is hesitant to set a precedent on where a park begins
without any discussion with parties involved, including HOAs that run
private parks.

"There needs to be a public process to the definition so that those
HOAs that are affected . . . have some weigh-in to this definition,"
she said.

Vice Mayor Les Presmyk agreed there should be a definition but noted
some areas clearly aren't being used as parkland.

"We're not programming retention basins that are covered with
decomposed granite," he said. "You're not going to put your kids out
there or we're not going to program soccer games or whatever on
decomposed granite."

No matter what the council decides in the short term, the applications
are on hold until a lawsuit Arizona filed over the federal
government's warning that marijuana distribution is a federal crime is
decided, Abbott noted.

That may not be a problem since it could take at least 90 days for the
town to resolve a definition of a park, staffers said.

Meanwhile, the council also discussed a block-wall replacement on
Chandler Heights Road that would divide the Greenfield Acres
subdivision from the road.

Residents have asked the town to replace the wall with an 8-foot
privacy wall, assistant town engineer Edgar Medina said. The town has
offered to reimburse some of the cost but not enough that the
residents are willing to go through with construction, he said.

An estimate from May 2010 put the replacement at $263,000.

Though the town isn't bound to reimburse residents for the wall,
Medina said the town has offered to reimburse residents for 50 percent
of the cost up to $60 per foot for an 8-foot wall. That means the town
would pay back $30 a foot, or $36,000 for 1,200-foot Chandler Heights
wall.

Before the Chandler Heights Road improvements, a 20-foot drainage
ditch separated Greenfield Acres from the road. That area has since
been turned into a paved pathway with trees for use by pedestrians and
equestrians.

In March, a truck careened through construction barricades and into
the wall, something neighbors had long warned Gilbert officials may
happen.

That change and road improvements have reduced privacy for residents,
Medina said. People driving along the road and on horseback can now
see over the existing fence into the properties.

Abbott argued the town should consider taking on the full cost of the
wall, which she said has been done in the past. Presmyk said the town
has already extended an offer it didn't have to make. If the town
agrees to pay the total cost, he said, every neighborhood bordering an
arterial road will want a privacy fence installed.