Jane Usher, executive director of City Attorney-elect Carmen “Nuch” Trutanich’s transition team, sent out an email today updating the community about the problem of the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries all over the city.
By the time I got my sixth copy from various activists, I knew it was a hot-button issue people needed to know more about, especially since the problem was created by City Hall’s incompetence. The email includes Jane’s analysis, an excellent rundown from Councilman Herb Wesson to his Neighborhood Councils and key provisions of the proposed ordinance.
Marijuana Dispensaries, which has been allowed to escalate to a crisis. Please
circulate this to your interested neighbors. I provide excepts,
including the proposed passage that will govern MMD locations and also
some of the licensing and penalty passages, for your consideration. The full
proposed text is attached. I close with Councilman Wesson’s update, dated
today.
that the City should consider, the City should debate whether to
prohibit MMD locations within a specified distance from
single-family and other residential zones, or houses of worship. As
you know, this City has historically failed to provide appropriate buffers
between incompatible land uses. That said, MMD operators are very concerned that
the location restrictions as written are overly broad.
1000 feet
of another permitted Medical Marijuana Dispensary, smoke shops
which sell
paraphernalia for consuming drug or tobacco products, any school,
daycare,
nursery, playground, park, library, or property zoned, planned, or
otherwise
designated for such use, or any Sensitive Use.
My office has received inquiries about
my position on medical marijuana dispensaries (MMDs) so I thought I’d give you
my position directly. I am opposed to the unregulated and uncontrolled
spread of MMDs throughout the city; and I want to not only stop the spread but
also reduce the number of MMDs operating now. 
As you might
have heard or read, the City Council has recently taken several steps to address
the MMD issue. I thought I’d give you an update on some of the recent
developments on this topic.
“Hardship” Exemption Removed from the
ICO. Last week, my colleagues and I voted to remove the “hardship
exemption” from the MMD Interim Control Ordinance (ICO). While all ICOs
include a hardship exemption provision for legal reasons, the City Attorney felt
that the city can now legally defend removal of the provision from the MMD ICO
as enough time has passed since the enactment of the ICO. This would mean
that at the effective date of the new ICO, the city would no longer be accepting
“hardship” applications and no new MMD would be able to get around the ICO and
open just by virtue of the fact that it filed a hardship application. In
addition, we voted to extend the revised ICO another six months.
Council
Action on Pending MMD Applications. Also last week, we finally started to
go through the MMD hardship exemption applications submitted to the city.
There have been over 660 MMD hardship applications submitted citywide
(throughout 15 Council Districts), 31 of which are in CD 10. Attachment 1
is a list of CD 10 MMD facilities that have submitted hardship applications as
of today. Legally we have to take up – and afford a public hearing for -
each application individually either through the Planning and Land Use
Management (PLUM) Committee or the full City Council. So far, the full
Council has taken up and denied 14 MMD hardship applications.
My
office has been asking PLUM to schedule CD 10′s MMD hardship applications as
soon as possible. We have been informed that PLUM now plans to hold a
special hearing on MMD hardship applications on June 29 and, so far, CD 10 has
the most applications slated to be taken up that day. We expect the final
agenda of that hearing to be posted around June 24 or 25. In the meantime,
if you have information you’d like to share with my office about any of the
locations in the list, please send them to Susan.Yi@lacity.org or my deputy
assigned to your area.
Proposed MMD Ordinance. Finally, PLUM has
provided my office with the latest version of the proposed MMD ordinance, in the
form of two documents. I’m attaching those two documents for your
review. The first document (Attachment 2) addresses the land-use
components of the proposed ordinance and the second document (Attachment 3)
covers the remaining aspects of the proposed ordinance. We expect PLUM to
meld these two documents together to one ordinance, and amend it at least once
(maybe more) before it would move to the full Council.
As an aside, one
of the issues about the ordinance that has been raised with my office has been
the MMD fee. Some of you have recommended specific figures for the
fee. While those figures may ultimately be close to what the city would
charge, the final amount would actually be based on a fee study. That is
because the city can only charge a fee of up to the cost of operating a
program. Charging a fee beyond the cost related to the program would make
it a tax and, therefore, subject to a vote of the people. Thus, to
determine the actual MMD fee, the city would have to conduct a study to
determine the program’s cost.
My office is currently reviewing the
proposed ordinance. I encourage you to do the same. I would be
interested to hear your take on the proposal. Again, please send your
comments about the proposed ordinance to Susan Yi or your area deputy. I
would also encourage your Neighborhood Council to file your comments with the
city in the form of a Community Impact Statement, thereby making your comments
part of the official record of the ordinance. DONE or my office can assist
you in filing your statement.
Thank you for your commitment to our
community and I look forward to your
comments.
Herb
HERB J. WESSON,
JR.
Councilmember, 10th District
PLANNING AND ZONING.
1000 feet
of another permitted Medical Marijuana Dispensary, smoke shops
which sell
paraphernalia for consuming drug or tobacco products, any school,
daycare,
nursery, playground, park, library, or property zoned, planned, or
otherwise
designated for such use, or any Sensitive Use.
The ordinance codified in this Article,
in compliance with California Health and
Safety Code Sections 11362.5, et
seq., does not interfere with a patient’s right to
medical marijuana, nor
does it criminalize the possession or cultivation of medical
marijuana by
specifically defined classifications of persons, pursuant to state law.
Under
state law, only qualified patients, persons with identification cards and
primary
caregivers may cultivate medical marijuana collectively. Medical
marijuana dispensaries
shall otherwise comply with all provisions of the Los
Angeles Municipal Code, including
the zoning ordinance, and the California
Health and Safety Code. Nothing in this
ordinance purports to permit
activities that are otherwise illegal under state
law.
points,
child-oriented establishments, or establishments that (i) advertise
in a manner that
identifies the establishment as catering to or providing
services primarily intended for
minors, or (ii) the individuals who regularly
patronize, congregate or assemble at the
establishment are primarily minors.
A “Sensitive Use” shall not include a daycare facility
or preschool facility
that provides supervision of 12 or fewer minor children.
(a) Any Dispensary determined by
the Los Angeles City Attorney or hislher
designee to have violated Section
46.71 shall be subject to the penalties of this section.
The Los Angeles City
Attorney or hislher designee shall notify the Dispensary that there
has been
an initial determination of violation under the provisions of this ordinance,
and
shall specify the violation and the penalty imposed, including the
effective date of the
suspension, if any. The notice shall further state that
the Dispensary may, within 15
calendar days of receipt of the notice, submit
to the Los Angeles City Attorney any
written or documentary evidence to
contest the initial determination of violation. After
receiving and
considering the evidence that is provided, the Los Angeles City Attorney
or
hislher designee shall prepare a final written decision with findings, and shall
serve
this final determination upon the Dispensary. Upon written request, the
Dispensary
shall have the right to receive copies of any records upon which
the final determination
is based. This final determination shall be served
within 30 calendar days of the initial
determination.
(b) Administrative
penalties shall be imposed as follows:
(1 ) for the first violation in any
five-year period, the Dispensary shall
receive a letter of reprimand from the
Los Angeles City Attorney
including a requirement to pay a penalty
fee;
(2) for a second violation in any five-year period, the MMD Permit
shall
be suspended for 90 calendar days and the Permittee shall
be
required to pay a penalty fee;
(3) for a third or subsequent violation
in any five-year period, the MMD
Permit shall be revoked and the Permittee
shall be required to pay a
penalty fee.
(c) Notwithstanding any other
provision of this Article, prior violations at a
location shall continue to
be counted against a location and permit suspension periods
shall continue to
apply to a location.
Any marijuana
cultivation operation or dispensary, including any “Medical
Marijuana
Dispensary,” as that term is defined in lnterim Control Ordinance
No.
179,027, not in compliance with the requirements of this Article shall
have 1 year
from the operative date of this Article to obtain an MMD Permit,
provided the
operation, dispensary or Medical Marijuana Dispensary was
registered with the Los
Angeles City Clerk’s office in accordance with the
lnterim Control Ordinance No.
179,027 before November 12, 2007, proving it
was operating prior to September 14,
2007.
I am still not sure that the city cm’s didn’t just create their own problems in making the ICO and putting in the Hardship Exemption. That Hardship Exemptiont was supposed to allow, as I understood it, previously operating MMDs to open up in a location after leaving another site. The net change in numbers would be zero, just a continuation of the previously existing MMD.
So what happened was that the Hardship Exemption was interpretted by applicants for a license to operate an MMD as a loophole to permit them to BEGIN operating a NEW MMD site. The net change for each filing was “add another MMD” to the scene. The city then acted as if it’s hands were tied because of that exemption in the ICO.
This still did not make sense to me at all. What business can file an APPLICATION to operate during a moratorium on opening new MMDs and then start up it’s operation BEFORE obtaining approval? And then if there is no approval yet given, why was it so difficult to understand that the city should be able to shut them down as being in violation of the ICO?
The hardship exemption was just an item that should have been applicable to only a few of the MMDs in operation at the time of enactment of the ICO, not a blanket approval of any kind.
If it’s Rocky’s interpretation that barred any of the enforcement of the ICO, or even more blameworthy, his actual involvement at the drafting stage of the ordinance, then chalk up another foul-up for the good old city attorney, nearly as poorly an outcome as the billboard settlement and its consequences for the city.
Then, assuming a hands-off policy was the right action for hardship exemption filers, why was not a single application processed in PLUM at all in the intervening time, nearly two years?
Can’t anybody here do anything right?
Now, in the whole scheme of things, no one noticed that the City of L.A., unlike in Oakland and other cities, did not figure in a charge for the cost of handling the work for such MMD applications- or existing ones, for that matter. Surprising to me that such an opportunity was missed to again grab some revenue, and maybe justifiably so, for a change. Among the City Council’s quest to create or inflate any and all charges the city has been imposing/inflicting on it’s businesses and residents, this slipped through.
Now Wesson says there has to be a “study” to justify charges. What did the other cities do in imposing charges that withstands challenge? So why is L.A. City Council always tripping over it’s own untied shoe laces and always coming in last? Other cities seem to be able to avoid all the potholes in the road and L.A., meanwhile, finds and hits every single one.
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With all the restrictions in the proposed ordinance, is there any kind of map that has all the banned area mapped out to show banned areas?
I think there is very little area that escapes coverage according to the draft ordinance. It’s pretty clear the City wants to prevent new openings of MMD through this device.
The dispensaries have become a problem in LA because there were absolutely no guidelines at all when they started popping up. I heard that a good number of dispensaries didn’t even go through the proper process with the city before they opened up shop. It’s up to LA to make guidelines, but it would have been easier if there was a crack down long ago.