City Council to hold public work session Tuesday on recreational marijuana

Maricopa City Council on Tuesday will host a work session to review potential changes to its recreational marijuana ordinance.

The session, to be held from 5 to 7 p.m. at city hall, is open to the public. The meeting will begin with a brief presentation and then allow for the council and community to discuss and ask questions. Limited seating will be available in council chambers for those who wish to attend in-person and ask questions.

The event will also be streamed live via YouTube and Facebook where questions may be submitted in the comments section. The city is encouraging the public to submit their questions early via this link.

In February, the council voted 6-1 to pass an ordinance that prohibits recreational marijuana dispensaries in the city unless they are part of a dual-license facility permitted to sell medical cannabis. Coupled with the city’s restrictive code governing medical marijuana facilities, the ordinance constitutes an effective ban on recreational marijuana.

Mayor Christian Price and several councilmembers have said they voted to get a city ordinance on the books before the state enacted its own policies after state voters approved Prop 207 legalizing recreational pot. Without its own ordinance in place before the state law took effect, the city would have had to follow state law. Passing the ordinance therefore preserved local control of the issue, and changes can be made to the city ordinance, they said.

Councilman Vincent Manfredi voted against the ordinance, saying that while he does not want dispensaries in the city, he didn’t feel “we should be sitting in the way of dispensaries coming to the city.”

Maricopa does not have a medical marijuana dispensary. The city code only allows medical marijuana facilities performing certain functions to operate within specific zoning areas. In areas zoned general commercial, for example, dispensaries may operate but not cultivation facilities. Areas zoned for light and general industrial uses may have only infusion or cultivation facilities.

The city ordinance for marijuana-related businesses includes many restrictions on permitted locations. Medical marijuana uses of any kind may not be located within 250 feet of a residentially zoned property, for example. They also may not be located within 500 feet of any of the following:

• • another dispensary
• • an abuse treatment facility
• • group or residential care home
• • transitional and supportive housing facility
• • alcohol rehabilitation facility
• • correctional transitional facility
• • public or private elementary or secondary school, kindergarten, or preschool
• • day care center or similar use; parks and recreational facility
• • civic facility
• • religious facility

No alcohol may be sold or distributed on the premises of a marijuana facility, and the facility may only operate from 8 a.m. to 10 p.m. The dispensary may not have a drive-through facility, and a medical marijuana dispensary cannot be larger than 2,500 square feet, with a storage area no larger than 500 square feet. A cultivation facility cannot be larger than 3,000 square feet, with no more than 1,000 square feet of storage.

A Transportation Corridor (TC) zoning overlay further restricts the areas in which a dispensary may operate, prohibiting any marijuana facility from operating within the first 150 feet of applicable parcels fronting State Routes 347 and 238, and Maricopa-Casa Grande Highway.

Full disclosure: Vince Manfredi is minority owner of InMaricopa.