Council nearing decision on who can sell marijuana
Nov 29, 2009 Online Issue
Palm Springs city officials are close to choosing the two medical marijuana collectives that will be allowed to operate under an ordinance passed
last spring.
The City Council will review at its meeting Wednesday a list that narrows the field of 11 applicants hoping to operate as collectives in the city, according to City Manager David Ready.
“There’s a lot of criteria, and nobody meets all of the criteria exactly,” Ready said Tuesday.
Some applicants are located within the ordinance’s minimum distance allowed from a church or a school. Others face smaller issues like insufficient parking — items that could be resolved more easily, Ready said.The council will discuss the narrowed list and give direction Wednesday, Ready said. The final two collective applicants selected to operate will be presented by staff members at the council’s next meeting, he said.
Palm Springs is the only city in Riverside County to pass a law allowing medical marijuana facilities.
There were at least five such facilities operating in Palm Springs prior to the law’s passage in April. Today, there are at least three, according to Deputy City Attorney Ben Ammerman.
One of those still operating in Palm Springs, The Holistic Collective, mounted a legal challenge against the city’s ordinance — after the city had filed a complaint against the collective in April. The city alleged Holistic violated Palm Springs’ earlier moratorium on pot dispensaries.
Holistic maintained the city’s two-collective limit was invalid on the basis of state law trumping local laws, according to J. David Nick, attorney for Holistic Collective.
Holistic last August considered filing a writ with the 4th District Court of Appeals following a Riverside Superior Court Judge’s ruling that upheld Palm Springs’ ordinance.
Nick could not be reached Tuesday, and Ammerman said Tuesday that no such writ was filed as far as he knew.
Meanwhile, officials in nearby Los Angeles County continue to grapple with that region’s growing number of medical marijuana dispensaries — ballooning from fewer than 200 to as many as 1,000 in the past two years, according to recent media reports.
SOURCE: MYDESERT
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