Tinley Park may tweak dispensary rules
Recreational cannabis vendors interested in village say no suitable locations are available
Tinley Park officials will review the village’s zoning regulations for allowing recreational cannabis sales after two shops that are interested in opening couldn’t find sites that fit those rules.
After adopting the zoning in August, the village put the word out to dispensaries that might be interested in setting up shop. Two businesses that operate dispensaries, Earth-Med in Addison and Midway Dispensary on Chicago’s Southwest Side, expressed interest.
Tinley Park is allowing one dispensary in the village and decided to place the shop in a commercially zoned district, such as along Harlem Avenue or 159th Street.
The shop has to operate from a freestanding business rather than an in-line space, partly for security reasons. However, according to the village, there are no available properties thatwould be suitable.
Buildings that were previously available for possible use as a dispensary have since come under contract for other purposes, and owners of other available sites have indicated they won’t sell to a dispensary, village officials said.
While there is available land, putting up a building from scratch would be challenging due to timetables assigned to licenses, according to the village.
Village trustees discussed the predicament Tuesday and directed staff to find ways to resolve the problem.
Village attorney Patrick Connelly, noting that recreational pot sales across the state have reaped millions in tax revenue, suggested officials move quickly to work out a solution.
“It’s one of the few businesses where revenue is up,” Connelly said. “There’s a lot of money to be made there.”
Last year, before thenew law allowing recreational marijuana sales took effect, suburbs such as Frankfort, Homer Glen, Mokena and Orland Park voted to bar retail sales.
Tinley Park stopped short of an outright ban and instead instituted a moratorium on potential dispensaries earlier this year while itworked on the zoning regulations.
Initially, dispensary licenses were issued to businesses that already catered to medical marijuana customers, such as EarthMed and Midway, and another 75 licenses were to have been issued by the state this past May. That process has been held up, partly due to theCOVID-19 pandemic.
There have also been issues raised about the equity of the formula being used to award licenses, with various lawsuits filed challenging the state’s scoring process.
In September, the state Department of Financial and Professional Regulation said it’s working to address the equity issues but had not yet set a new date for when a new round of licenses might be issued.
Property tax levy
Trustees indicated Tuesday they favorkeeping the coming year’s property tax levy at $21.56 million, unchanged from this year. That excludes the levy for the public library, which is $6.2 million.
In a memo to trustees, Treasurer Brad Bettenhausen said that for the coming year therewill be a significant increase inwhat the villagewill need to levy for police pensions, rising to $4.1 million compared with $3.5 million this year.
He said village staff recommended a levy of $22.2 million, due in part to the higher levy for police pensions.
The Village Board is scheduled to adopt the levy later next month.
Bettenhausen wrote keeping the levy flat, in light of the higher amount needed for police pensions, would reduce property tax revenue available for other village needs.
Trustees said that in light of the financial pain households may have suffered due to the coronavirus pandemic they did not want to add to the burden with a higher tax levy.
Trustee Michael Glotz said the village has several commercial developments underway that should be adding to the village’s sales and property tax coffers in the coming years.
Early on in the pandemic, Tinley Park officials projected that village revenues for this fiscal year, which began May 1, could fall by more than $14 million.
Anticipating the losses before approving the new budget inthe spring, village officials cut expenses by $6.7 million, including putting a freeze on new hires that would have brought three additional police officers.
Bettenhausen told trustees at the committee meeting that it is likely the revenue hit for Tinley Park will be worse than what the village experienced during the Great Recession, and cautioned against dipping too deeply into the village’s substantial fund reserves that have been built up over decades.
“Once they are gone they are gone,” he said. “They will not be replenished overnight.”