Permits for pot shops would boost city coffers
Licensing fees from 7 marijuana dispensaries could net city more than $50,000 per year
Granting temporary-use permits to seven marijuana dispensaries could net the cashstrapped City of Penticton $52,500 in licensing fees, council is expected to hear at its meeting tonight. Planning manager Blake Laven in his report recommends the city charge marijuana dispensaries a $5,000 licensing fee, in addition to other levies that go along with starting a business.
He’s also recommending council attach 10 conditions to the temporary-use permits, issuance of which would first require consultation with neighbours. Those conditions include:
no cannabis products visible from outside the store;
criminal record checks for all employees showing no drug-related offences within the past 10 years; two staff members on shift at all time; no consumption of products on site; security plan in place; no one under 21 allowed inside; The temporary-use permits are meant as a stop-gap measure while the federal government works through the process of legalizing weed. Council ordered staff to prepare recommendations after at least four dispensaries began operating without business licences.
To date, the city has collected $16,700 in fines from those shops, some of which are still doing business.
Laven notes seven proposed dispensaries in Penticton “may seem like a lot,” but it works out to one shop for every 4,800 residents, far less than one for every 3,300 in Victoria and one for every 3,400 in Vancouver.
“How many is too many? Staff, at this time, are recommending that council not set a number, but deal with each dispensary location on its own merits,” he adds.
Six of the seven prospective dispensaries are located in the downtown core: three on Westminster Avenue and two each on Main and Martin streets.
Council is also expected tonight to approve a deal with the developer of an apartment complex at 175 Kinney Ave., that guarantees all 119 units will be kept as rental housing for the first 10 years after construction is finished. The agreement is a condition of council’s rezoning of the property.
Both the Kinney Avenue and marijuana issues will be addressed during council’s evening session, which begins at 6 p.m..
The afternoon session, which starts at 1 p.m., will begin with committee of the whole, where consultants from Urban Systems are expected to recommend council spend $40,000 on another study to help usher in a new charge to fund improvements to the city’s storm water collection system.
Once into its regular meeting, council will then hear a staff recommendation to charge residents $3.50 for a tag to put out an extra bag of garbage or $62.50 for a book of 25 tags.
Elected officials will also consider a request to name a new road in a subdivision off Evergreen Drive as Hawthorn Drive, plus a suggestion to place notice on title of 144 Williamson Pl., and formalize an unofficial records-retention policy currently in use by city staff.