Sonoma mayor predicts cannabis dispensary to open in 2020

Harrington outlines 5-step process council will take to draft new pot ordinance.|

CITY COUNCIL MEETING

Sonoma’s City Council will meet on Wednesday, Feb. 20 (delayed from Monday due to holiday) in regular session at 6 p.m. at City Council Chambers, 117 First St. West.

Sonoma Mayor Amy Harrington outlined a five-step process at a meeting of local cannabis enthusiasts Feb. 12 that she suggested could lead to the approval of one or possibly two dispensaries in Sonoma in a little over a year’s time – even as Sonoma County’s cannabis permitting process seems stuck in bureaucratic limbo.

Harrington suggested that the first step in the City of Sonoma allowing a dispensary could begin as early as this week’s City Council meeting, on Wednesday, Feb. 20.

Harrington presented a “Cannabis Policy Implementation” timeline at a recent meeting of the Sonoma Valley Cannabis Enthusiasts, a casual organization of locals interested in establishing appellation-style branding for locally-grown product. The organization has been meeting monthly for about a year at a variety of locations, discussing the group’s nonprofit status, refining their mission and planning a group party for later this year.

The February meeting took place at HopMonk Tavern Sonoma, where Harrington took the stage to distribute her five-step plan and predict the acceptance of a Sonoma dispensary as soon as the end of the year, and its opening in mid-2020.

She was met with a warm welcome – and some targeted questions – but a generally positive reaction from the group.

“It was the best meeting we ever had,” said Michael Coats, one of the founders of the Cannabis Enthusiasts group. Other officers of the organization include former city council member Ken Brown, winemaker Mike Benziger, cannabis entrepreneur Erich Pearson and dispensary applicant Jani Friedman.

Though Harrington distanced herself from cannabis usage – “It’s not my thing,” she said – she insisted that it is the role of city government to engage the issue. “My main thought about it is, it’s not the role of the government to be telling responsible adults what they can and cannot do with a legal product,” said Harrington.

The City of Sonoma currently has an ordinance banning commercial cannabis business in town. The path to a dispensary would have to pass through the step of overriding that ban, either by repealing the ordinance or replacing it.

Several other Sonoma County cities also ban cannabis businesses, including Healdsburg, Windsor, Rohnert Park and Petaluma. Dispensaries are legal and in operation in several cities, including Santa Rosa, Sebastopol and Cotati; an opening is planned soon in Cloverdale.

According to the one-sheet plan Harrington distributed, the process should begin with the hiring of a contract consultant for about $25,000 – to be considered by the council at the Feb. 20 City Council meeting – followed by a discussion on policy direction at a following council meeting in March. At that time topics such as approving a medical- or adult-use dispensary, ideas on location and other regulatory issues would be discussed. Formalizing a proposed ordinance would continue at subsequent city council and planning commission meetings into the summer.

The third step of the five-step plan would be a three-month period from April to June when the Planning Commission and City Council would prepare and evaluate a city ordinance to allow dispensaries in town, to be located outside required “setbacks” around schools and parks.

The fourth stage of the plan would be a “merit-based selection process,” a 90-day period that could last from July through September. Harrington outlined a “beauty pageant” process for this step, where applicants would present their credentials, experience and plans to the council – or, more likely, an ad hoc committee – which would then issue an RFP among several applicants who might be best suited to open a dispensary to the council’s liking.

The City Council would make its final decision on a dispensary proposal possibly as soon as the end of the year.

“I’m fairly certain we can accomplish it this year,” Harrington said. She projected one and possibly two dispensaries would be approved by the council.

However, following the selection of a preferred dispensary operator or operators, an estimated nine months would be required to go through licensing, permits and other processes before the business could open. That would bring a dispensary to Sonoma in summer 2020 at the earliest.

Harrington conceded that all these steps – the consultant, the policy discussions, the RFP process, the approval – are only now possible because the makeup of the council changed with the November election, with cannabis-supporter Logan Harvey winning the seat formerly held by Gary Edwards, who chose not to seek a second term. (Harvey was also in the room at the SVCE meeting; the third vote in the pro-cannabis majority is presumed by Harrington to be Councilmember Rachel Hundley.)

The aggressive timeline for City of Sonoma action is largely due to the Cannabis Access Petition, Sonoma dispensary hopeful Jon Early’s signature-driven initiative which qualified for the general election ballot of November 2020.

When asked if her drive to bring a dispensary to town on that timeline was related to a projected dispensary initiative on the 2020 ballot, Harrington answered, “For sure.”

“If qualifying for the ballot was a message from the voters that they want to have reasonable regulations,” said Harrington, “then hopefully when the city council has dealt with it, and we have one or two dispensaries, there won’t be a need to pass the initiative.”

The initiative, which gathered 750 signatures in 2018 to qualify for the next ballot, has been criticized by some community members and several council members for its alleged lack of details – critics of the proposal worry an overly broad cannabis ordinance would turn Sonoma into a cannabis wild west.

Harrington at the Feb. 12 meeting characterized the initiative as too permissive, in that it would allow cannabis businesses – including manufacturing, testing and commercial cultivation as well as dispensaries – to operate on a “use by right” basis, without a selection process or even a use permit.

Early, though present for much of Harrington’s presentation at the SVCE meeting, made no comment.

“It’s reasonable regulation we want to have in place before we take the dramatic step of unlimited dispensaries,” said the mayor, characterizing the more open-ended permissiveness found in Early’s petition.

That petition, circulated under the name Sonoma Citizens for Local Access, may be on the November 2020 ballot in any case, unless it’s withdrawn – as Harrington more than once suggested that it should be.

If Harrington’s timeline for a dispensary in Sonoma comes to fruition it will take the advantage away from Sonoma County, which has been moving more slowly than anticipated in approving cannabis permits, whether for growing, manufacturing, testing or sales.

The county is authorized to license nine dispensaries in unincorporated areas (not including those already opened or in process in the county’s receptive jurisdictions), and there are currently five in operation at this point. Four more applications have been deemed incomplete – a status that has remained unchanged for a year.

At this time, according to the county’s cannabis site (sonomacounty.ca.gov/Cannabis-Program), the county is not accepting any new dispensary applications. And, of three Sonoma Valley dispensaries already in the permitting process, none appears close to completing the county permitting process.

Contact Christian at christian.kallen@sonomanews.com.

CITY COUNCIL MEETING

Sonoma’s City Council will meet on Wednesday, Feb. 20 (delayed from Monday due to holiday) in regular session at 6 p.m. at City Council Chambers, 117 First St. West.

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