[bouldercouncilhotline] Hotline: Draft Marijuana Ordinance

[cmosupport at bouldercolorado.gov]

Sender: Carr, Thomas

In response to council’s direction at the last council meeting, staff is providing an amended version of ordinance 7930 adding a new chapter 6-16 to the Boulder Revised Code.
The issues and proposed changes to address those issues are as follows:
1.            Whether the requirement for a 1000 foot separation from day cares, schools and universities should apply to existing businesses.
Council directed that businesses licensed and operating as medical marijuana businesses on October 22, 2013 should be exempted from this limitation.  Staff has made this change.
2.            Whether alcohol and drug treatment facilities should be included in the separation criteria.
Council directed that such facilities should be included for new businesses.  Staff has made this change.
3.            Whether there should be a 1,000 plant limit for new recreational marijuana cultivation facilities.
Council directed that there should not be a 1,000 plant limit, but did not reach consensus on the nature of an appropriate limitation.  Council directed staff to recommend appropriate limits that would achieve the city’s goals without limiting
 the number of plants to 1,000.  Staff proposes the following in the attached ordinance:

a.      
Cultivation facilities will be limited to 15,000 square feet.

b.     
Cultivation facilities with more than 1,000 plants will be required to pay an additional fee of $1 per plant over 1,000 plants to fund additional enforcement resources.

c.      
Cultivation facilities will be required to have aisles at least six feet wide, with no plant more than 8 feet from an aisle.  Plants will be required to be grown in orderly rows. 


d.     
Odor violations will have licensing effects.  A licensee convicted of an odor violation will be limited to 500 plants for a period of five years.  A licensee with two odor convictions will be required to surrender the license and will
 not be eligible to be relicensed for five years.  Current code requires the city to provide notice of an odor complaint and to allow the business ninety days to correct the problem.  While the city has issued several warnings, there have been no citations,
 because each business has worked or is in the process of working to resolve the issue. 

4.            Whether the city should allow co-location with physical separation of recreational and medical marijuana facilities with the same owner holding separate licenses.
Council directed that co-location should be permitted for existing medical marijuana licensees.  Staff has made this change.
5.            If so, whether the city should treat co-located marijuana businesses as one business for purposes of the density limitation of no more than 3 marijuana businesses within 500 foot.
Council directed that this interpretation should apply for existing businesses.  Staff has made this change.
6.            Whether the city should adopt the staff’s proposed schedule for processing pending medical marijuana applications, applications for conversion of all or part of an open and existing medical marijuana business for recreational
 marijuana, and acceptance of applications for new medical marijuana and recreational marijuana businesses.
Council directed that staff should develop a schedule to allow for acceptance of recreational marijuana licenses as of January 1, 2014.  Staff has proposed such a schedule.  This schedule would abate work on currently pending medical marijuana
 applications as of November 1, 2013.  This would give staff two months to prepare to accept recreational marijuana conversion applications as of January 1, 2014.  Such applications would be accepted only if there are no changes in ownership, financing or management
 from the existing business, and the applicants committed that no such changes would be made until such time as the state provides background checks to the city.
 
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