Albany City Hall, where another year of marijuana discussions began Monday.
The Albany City Council is trying to get prepared in case city voters decide in the November general election that Albany will allow recreational marijuana businesses. Councilors would like to adopt some restrictions ahead of time, such as time, place and manner of pot sales and processing sites. But at Monday’s work session they didn’t sound overly clear just what they wanted.
So they left it up to Sean Kidd, the assistant city attorney, to come up with various options and to illustrate them on colored maps. The maps would show where in town pot businesses would be allowed under which set of hypothetical restrictions, taking into account the zoning map and the city development code too.
The council majority voted last year to ban recreational marijuana businesses in town. A 2015 state law gave the city the right to do so but said under certain circumstances — which apply in Albany and other Linn County towns — such local bans have to be sent to the voters in the Nov. 8 general election.
Medical marijuana dispensaries are not affected by the ban, and neither is private recreational marijuana possession, use or production by private citizens as allowed by state law. But apparently the council, when drawing up restrictions, could ban any additional dispensaries. There four now, the council was told.
Mainly the council seems to be concerned about where recreational pot businesses could start if the voters overturn the council’s ban. The trick will be combining the state law on where businesses can be — not within 1,000 feet of a school, for instance — with local requirements so that the combination meets the required test of reasonableness. Councilors also said they want to give potential marijuana enterprises clear information on where they might be able to set up.
Kidd cautioned the council that whatever options he illustrates will not be the only ones. There are hundreds of possible combinations of restrictions that state law allows, and he doesn’t want to be in a position of limiting the council’s choices.
Also up for a decision: Should Albany impose a 3 percent sales tax on recreational marijuana sales? If so, that question might also appear on the city ballot in November. Kidd, though, allowed that it seems odd for the city to ask voters to continue banning recreational sales while proposing to tax sales at the same time.
Technically, the ballot question on sales will be not whether to allow marijuana stores but whether to approve the council’s ban. Marijuana sales proponents thus will want to vote no, while opponents will want to vote yes. If that is confusing, there’s plenty of time to try to explain it between now and the fall.
In 2014, Albany voters narrowly favored Measure 91, the initiative legalizing recreational marijuana. That might be reason enough for the council to expect its ban to be overturned. (hh)
The fact that the council ignored the earlier majority vote by allowing their view to supersede the will of the majority should be reason enough to vote their measure down. If nothing else, it may wake them up to the realization they are representatives of the people; not rulers.
In general reading on this topic, it seems the currently favored word to describe this product is cannabis; pot and marijuana seem to be more old school and passe.
Old school and passe, that’s me. (hh)
Ha ha.
Anyone who prefers “marijuana” to “cannabis” should listen to the hideous British pronunciation on the BBC – mariWAAAna. It has the same effect as Michael Savage’s tired, sarcastic off-pronunciation of anything he wants to ridicule.
Of course, there’s the story of how “marijuana” was created by early drug warriors – not sure of its credibility.
It is high time Albany (and Linn County for that matter) dropped their failed war on drugs.
Specifically cannabis. Come around and realize the tax revenue.
This one is extremely easy. Simply let the dispensaries begin rec sales like the rest of the state. No need to complicate things.
For many of us, it is extremely simple. Not to others. That’s the tension we have. Nov. ballot will be the deciding factor. Albany passed it once, now we simply have to do it again.
It is too bad we’ve foregone the tax revenue until after the election. However, in the mean time, we need to to have reasonable TPMs in place to allow for the eventual turning over the ban in Nov. I believe it is inevitable. And, we still have time to fine-tune it – and do it better than our neighbors in Colorado & Washington…
I don’t think banning pot sales will affect people decision to imbibe in it. The only thing banning sales will do is force some people to Corvallis. It really comes down to which city you want to see get the tax revenues.
Imbibe? Interesting word picture. (hh)
Ha! Suppose you can make a tea. It’s 5 o’clock somewhere! Commenter probably referring to consumables. You know imbibe … to absorb.