When Angela Mill and her husband, Mason, built their several-thousand-square-foot dance studio in Old Town Lompoc, it was a dream come to life.
But in recent months, the owners of the Classical School of Ballet say they felt as if they’ve been living in a nightmare.
“This has been hell,” Angela said, as she weaved between a line of small orange cones, one piece of an obstacle course set up for the class of 8-and-under kids prepped to arrive in small packs over the next 30 minutes for a lesson. The radio is playing Mozart in the background at 124 South J St. today, and students clad in pink tights and black leotards are already filing into the main room.
It’s a usual sight for her dance studio, Angela said: music, fun, kids. And it’s why she’s confused that it took the Lompoc City Council so long to agree that her business was, by definition, a youth center. The designation is important because it means that prospective cannabis business owners can’t set up shop within 600 feet.
Under Proposition 64, the state statute that legalized recreational marijuana, youth centers are defined as “any public or private facility that is primarily used to host recreational or social activities for minors, including, but not limited to, private youth membership organizatons or clubs, social service teenage club facilities, video arcades, or similar amusement parks.”
Originally, the council voted to give all studios the designation, then, a month later, one council member flipped his vote, stripping the protection. An argument ensued between the Mills and the city over the next two months, culminating in the dance studio owners sending a letter to the council threatening litigation.
Pressured by their attorney’s advice, and potentially facing a lawsuit, the council finally opted to create a buffer zone specifically for the Classical School of Ballet on July 17. But it was too late for the Mills, who had already put the building up for sale and are now working through an agreement between the potential buyer and their bank.
The buyer, by the way? It’s a cannabis company from out of town. When asked by the Sun about the matter, the Mills said the fact didn’t bother them, but what did irk the two was how the council had handled their situation.
“I think they want to turn this whole area into a pot hub,” Angela said. And local institutions like hers, she added, are caught in the crossfire. “If they don’t want to take care of kids in a dance studio, who will they take care of?”
Differing definitions
On Feb. 23 of this year, almost two weeks before council members addressed the issue at their regular meeting, Angela wrote a letter, asking the council to follow the state law that already protects schools from having people selling or growing pot too close to them. “I imagine this buffer is to protect minors,” she wrote, adding that while her business may be privately owned, she’d appreciate her studio also being provided that safety net.
“We need to be proactive to keep our children safe, and the majority (90 percent) of my clientele are minors under the age of 18.”
In a split vote on March 6, the council decided to grant the status to all the city’s dance studios, with Mayor Bob Lingl and Councilmembers Jim Mosby and Jenelle Osborne in favor and Victor Vega and Dirk Starbuck dissenting. That night, City Attorney Joe Pannone presented a document showing that all five studios within Lompoc had minors making up at least 80 percent of their clientele, with four having more than 90 percent.
Based on that criteria, Pannone told the council he believed all five of the studios met the definition of “youth center.”
Then, just about a month later, Councilmember Mosby changed his vote. On April 3, he made a motion to remove the designation. It was quickly passed with the help of Vega and Starbuck. At the meeting, Mosby said he flip-flopped after he took time to research how the state defined youth centers and argued that the businesses operated for limited hours.
After the vote, Angela wrote to the parents of her students calling for them to sign a petition asking the council to change course. She said more than 1,200 people ultimately signed on to the initiative.
On April 9, her husband, Mason, sent an email to the council members asking Mosby, Vega, and Starbuck why they had gone against their attorney’s advice in removing the buffer zones. He wrote that the council’s two main arguments–that the studio’s operating hours were limited and they didn’t cater “exclusively” to minors–were inherently flawed.
Months passed and the email remained unanswered. Then the Mills’ attorney sent a letter to the city threatening legal action. That day, Councilmember Mosby emailed the couple.
“I understand your situation and if you would like to discuss the matter further, I would be more than willing to meet you,” he said in the email.
On June 1, the Mills drove to Mosby’s business in town where they allege that he falsely told them a similar lawsuit in Grover Beach had already failed.
“He suggested we do not go for litigation but try to jump through more hoops to try to become a youth center a different way,” Mason said.
But the Mills were unswayed and told the Sun it was hard to trust Mosby after he reversed his decision the first time and then didn’t respond to their letter for months.
At the council’s meeting four days later, Angela spoke during public comment and asked why a gymnastic center “with similar clientele” and hours to her school was provided youth center protections and not hers.
“There’s no rational basis for treating dance different than gymnastics” Mill said. “Yet, the city has inexplicably and arbitrarily chosen to do so.”
That night, Mayor Lingl made a council request to address the issue but only received a second from councilmember Osborne and the motion died on the floor.
Councilmembers Mosby, Vega, and Starbuck could not be reached before the Sun‘s press time after several requests for comment.
The Mills did ultimately win their fight, at least in part, when the council reached a settlement with the dance studio granting it specific designation and a buffer zone on July 17. But the process dragged on for so long that they put the building up for sale and eventually entered escrow with an unnamed business. Later they discovered the company was an out-of-town cannabis firm.
When asked if she found the situation ironic, Angela said: “Not for me so much because we’re not against pot, that’s the thing everyone seems to forget. We just wanted to protect the kids, our clients, and our business. We built this down here because the city was promoting locals to make things better in Old Town more than 20 years ago. But now,” she paused, before gazing over to a wall plastered with former students’ multi-colored paint handprints from when they were kids.
“It’s heartbreaking,” she began. “I cry every day when I think we might have to leave this place.”
Staff Writer Spencer Cole can be reached at scole@santamariasun.com.
This article appears in Aug 2-9, 2018.