Spa City board to take up pause on licensing medical pot firms
HOT SPRINGS — The Hot Springs Board of Directors will consider an ordinance Tuesday night allowing the city to forgo permitting or licensing medical marijuana enterprises for 180 days.
City Attorney Brian Albright told directors last week that final rules have yet to be developed for the implementation of the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Amendment of 2016, now known as Amendment 98, which takes effect July 1. Until rule-making is complete, Albright said the rules for local governments are unclear.
The citizen-initiated amendment making the regulated medical use of marijuana legal in Arkansas garnered 53.1 percent of the vote in November, slightly above the Garland County vote of 52.5 percent. Proposed rules developed by the Arkansas Medical Marijuana Commission authorize it to license 32 dispensaries and five cultivation facilities. The commission is expected to begin accepting applications next month.
“Without having any guidelines for us to follow, we’re asking the board to give us enough breathing time in order to digest what the state comes to us with,” he told directors. “We don’t have any rules from them yet, so we can’t promulgate rules ourselves.”
The ordinance also states that medical marijuana facilities built or maintained during the moratorium will not be exempt from subsequent regulations the city may impose on the activity.
Planning and Development Director Kathy Sellman said the city is receiving multiple calls a day from parties interested in bringing a dispensary or cultivation facility to Hot Springs. A Little Rock group expressed its interest to the Garland County Quorum Court last month, explaining that more than a quarter of the county’s population has one of the 17 conditions qualifying for medical-marijuana use.
Local legislative bodies such as boards of directors, city councils and quorum courts are prohibited from en-
acting ordinances that would prohibit dispensaries and cultivation facilities from operating in their jurisdictions. A local prohibition would have to arise from the citizen-initiative process putting the issue on the ballot in a special election.
Amendment 98 does allow local governments to enact zoning regulations for medical marijuana concerns, provided they are the same as those for licensed retail pharmacies. The city’s zoning code lists pharmacies and drugstores as permitted enterprises in all four commercial zoning classifications and both manufacturing zoning classifications.
Pharmacies are granted conditional use in lake area residential districts and commercial transitional districts.
Under the state commission’s proposed rules, cultivation facility applicants have to prove their proposed location is at least 3,000 feet from a public or private school, church or day care. Dispensaries have to be at least 1,500 feet from those locations.
The 180-day moratorium the board will consider Tuesday night extends to the city answering requests for information on city policies concerning medical marijuana.
“We don’t have any idea what impact the rules might or might not have,” Sellman said. “Not under any circumstance is it a good thing to be answering questions when you don’t
have complete information.”
Albright told the board it could remove the moratorium before the 180-day period expires if final rules are available before then.
“If they hand down promulgated rules that we understand and we can relay those to you, then you can lift this moratorium and you can move forward with the application process,” he said.
City Manager David Frasher told the board that it made sense for local governments to wait for more direction from the state before they issue business licenses and permits. He said his experience as the city manager of Oregon City, Ore., taught him that a wait-and-see approach is the best course to take. Recreational marijuana use is legal in Oregon.
“The state took action and there wasn’t much room for the cities to maneuver, and the cities started doing things differently,” he said. “People were declaring moratoriums after it started instead of before.
“I think this is probably a smart move on the part of Hot Springs to have a moratorium, so we don’t mislead anyone on what’s possible. Those rules should give cities a lot of guidance on what we can do within the boundaries of the state statute.”
The ordinance includes an emergency clause that would make it effective subsequent to its adoption. Without the emergency clause, the ordinance wouldn’t take effect until 30 days after its publication in the newspaper.