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Council refers ordinance to guarantee at least five marijuana retail licenses after formula dropped availability to four
Summary
Councilor Clone Hayes proposed amending the city code to ensure no fewer than five marijuana retail licenses are available; discussion focused on the liquor-license formula that governs counts and on aligning the change with pending zoning work; council referred the paper to ordinance committee.
Councilor Clone Hayes presented Paper 197-26 proposing an amendment to the City Code so that no fewer than five marijuana retail licenses would be available under the licensing formula tied to liquor licenses. He said the city's previous code language tied marijuana license counts to the number of package-store (liquor) licenses and that a decline in liquor licenses had reduced the municipal cannabis allotment from five to four without council notice.
Council discussion centered on the mechanics of the formula and how the change should interact with concurrent zoning updates. Councilor O'Malley and others noted a floor-based approach (a fixed minimum or "five or 20% whichever is greater") could prevent inadvertent reductions while allowing growth if package-store counts rise. Several councilors also tied the matter to ongoing litigation or legal questions about specific licenses (references to a Drees/Benevolent case surfaced in discussion) and emphasized the need to sync any change with planning and ordinance committee work.
Outcome: on motion, the council referred Paper 197-26 to the ordinance committee for drafting and coordination with zoning amendments.
