SLO County’s unincorporated coastal towns are more likely to see retail cannabis dispensaries before its inland areas do thanks to what 4th District Supervisor Jimmy Paulding called the historical “go slow approach in SLO County.”
Currently, the county allows for cannabis cultivation and delivery. But that could change after a November Board of Supervisors meeting, where the board opted 3-2 to direct staff to develop a way to revise the coastal zone land use ordinance to allow for storefront retail dispensaries in the coastal zone.
According to 3rd District Supervisor Dawn Ortiz-Legg, the county needs to be delicate with this first step toward establishing brick-and-mortar cannabis stores.
“We don’t need to go balls-out like Santa Barbara [County] did or something, but we want to bite it piece by piece,” she said during the Nov. 12 meeting.
Allowing storefronts could potentially generate more money for existing cannabis operators in the county and for the county’s general fund, she said. However, Ortiz-Legg added, SLO County needs to be cautious about how it uses resources to develop the ordinance.
Last December, the Board of Supervisors directed staff to look at how the county could amend its land use codes to allow for storefront dispensaries. Staff looked at six local jurisdictions that already regulate and allow for brick-and-mortar cannabis shops, including Morro Bay, Grover Beach, and Santa Barbara and Monterey counties.
Both Ortiz-Legg and 2nd District Supervisor Bruce Gibson pointed to Morro Bay and Grover Beach as cities that the county should try to model its ordinance from. Gibson said Morro Bay has two dispensaries, one on Morro Bay Boulevard and one on Quintana Road, and neither has a record of complaints from residents.
“These regulations are put in place to address potential or perceived or hypothetical problems,” he said. “I have heard nothing in the community conversation about incidents or concerns regarding the operation of those storefronts, which would suggest maybe that Morro Bay is regulating them correctly, or maybe that cannabis storefront dispensaries don’t pose the kind of public safety or law enforcement threat that some think they do.”
When Paulding asked about the legality of making land use changes only in the coastal areas of the county, Brian Stack from the County Counsel’s Office said the county likes its land use ordinances to be consistent across the whole county.
“You’d have to justify why you were picking, say the coastal zone over the inland zone,” County Counsel Rita Neal added. “Certainly, you could say, ‘We’re going to try it.'”
Gibson said he was thinking the county could cast it as a pilot project in areas with visitor-serving uses.
Shawn Bean, who owns cannabis delivery dispensary The Source Central Coast, spoke during public comment and questioned whether the county could do that.
“I’d love to hear some valid reasons as to why we would go coastal and not inland,” Bean said. “It’s been my experience that that’s usually used for ecological purposes, not to keep dispensaries out of certain people’s districts that don’t want them.”
Those districts include Paulding’s.
“The inland communities and specific communities that I represent, like Nipomo, … I’ve had some folks express explicit opposition to the idea,” Paulding said.
Fifth District Supervisor Debbie Arnold said that North County communities have voiced opposition to storefront dispensaries since medical cannabis was legalized in California. Fellow North County Supervisor John Peschong said that a recent court ruling questioned whether cannabis is actually legal in California.
On Oct. 29, an appellate court issued a ruling on a case out of Santa Barbara County, saying that while it’s reasonable to assume cannabis is legal in California, federal law still says that cannabis is illegal.
“No matter how much California voters and the Legislature might try, cannabis cultivation and transportation are illegal in California as long as it remains illegal under federal law,” the ruling states.
Deputy County Counsel Stack said the county viewed the ruling as narrow, adding that the case was about an easement dispute over whether a cannabis cultivation operation could use an easement on someone else’s property for transport and access.
The ordinance would allow for the “permitting of voluntary activity in compliance with state,” he said. “You’re not requiring someone to violate federal law.” Δ
This article appears in Dec 5-15, 2024.