Sussex County council begins review of retail marijuana rules after state veto of SB75

Sussex County officials opened a preliminary discussion Dec. 9 about whether to amend the county's 2024 ordinance that governs retail marijuana stores, saying they wanted council feedback after the state legislature's recently vetoed SB75 prompted renewed attention to local rules.

County Administrator Mister Lawson told the council that the county's ordinance (adopted in 2024 as Ordinance 3016) does not prohibit marijuana establishments outright but governs "time, place, manner, and number" and, for retail stores, requires conditional use approval in the C-3 zoning district and a 3-mile separation from municipal boundaries, other retail marijuana stores, churches, schools, colleges and substance-abuse treatment facilities. "We enacted ordinance 3016 related to marijuana establishments," Lawson said, summarizing the code and why staff placed the item on the agenda.

Mister Robertson, identified in the staff presentation as the author of the 2024 ordinance, said the 3-mile rule came partly from state liquor-store distance rules and the intent to honor municipalities that opted out of retail stores. "We looked to what was in Title 4 regarding retail liquor stores in the state of Delaware," Robertson said, and the team applied a 3-mile separation consistently to several facility types "so that it's uniformly applied." He added that the C-3 district was chosen because it offered the broadest commercial option at the time the ordinance was drafted.

Council members asked how the county's ordinance would differ from the provisions SB75 sought to impose. Robertson and Lawson told the council that SB75 (which was vetoed by the governor) would have allowed retail stores in commercially or industrially zoned areas with much shorter separation distances in many cases (for example, state language cited half-mile and 500-foot buffers for some listed facilities). "That would have only affected Sussex County because we were the only county to enact a marijuana-establishment ordinance," Lawson said, noting the bill's language called out smaller distances and specific facility types such as childcare centers.

Several council members discussed which parts of the county's rules could be amended if the council chose to do so. Options flagged by staff and members included eliminating the conditional-use requirement, expanding eligible zoning districts beyond C-3 (for example to C-2), and reconsidering the 3-mile municipal boundary or other buffer distances. "You could eliminate the conditional use requirement or we could keep that. We could expand the zoning districts beyond just C-3," Robertson said, adding that the county had discretionary choices to make. He also cautioned that, even under the liquor-code analogy, real-world locations can be hard to map and that the 3-mile rule did not automatically make retail stores impossible.

Lawson said the discussion was introductory and that staff would prepare a formal amendment package if council asked staff to do so: "We're not anywhere close to making this change," he said, outlining the next steps of ordinance drafting, introduction and public hearings.

No formal ordinance amendment was introduced or voted on at the meeting. Council members generally expressed interest in continued discussion and asked staff to return with draft language and mapped implications so members could evaluate whether to propose narrower separation distances or different zoning approaches.

What happens next: Staff will prepare proposed ordinance language and maps for council review; the council would need to introduce any amendment and schedule public hearings before adopting changes.