Buellton adopted an emergency ordinance on Jan. 12 that placed a 45-day moratorium on recreational marijuana businesses.
All five City Council members voted for the ordinance, which was proposed by City Attorney Steve McEwen as a measure to protect the city and avoid potential legal issues that may arise before proper business regulations are in place.
Buellton is the latest city on the Central Coast to pass a moratorium since the passage of voter-approved Proposition 64 in November. The proposition allows individuals to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and grow as many as six plants for recreational use.
The proposition sets up a framework of government regulation, but allows for local autonomy. Local city politicians have had different reactions to legalized recreational marijuana and varying proposals for handling it locally.
Last September, Solvang enacted a pre-emptive 45-day ban on marijuana (both recreational and medical) and renewed the ban for up to a year from its original passage.
Then at the behest of Lompoc City Attorney Joseph Pannone and with the backing of Lompoc Police Chief Pat Walsh and Fire Department Chief Kurt Latipow, the Lompoc City Council tried and failed to pass an ordinance regulating cultivation at its Dec. 20 meeting.
Pannone told the Sun that he drafted the new law to fall in line with Proposition 64, but city residents in the audience didn’t buy it.
During his speech to the council, Pannone said one of the concerns around personal cultivation is that it could incite other criminal activity and cause people to get into gun battles to defend their product, which elicited murmurs and laughter from some of the crowd.
At one point, Mayor Bob Lingl threatened to clear the council chambers.
The Buellton City Council’s discussion on the subject, however, was much more low-key. There was only one public speaker who spoke in favor of a “wait-and-see” approach.
Buellton Councilmember Ed Andrisek was all but resigned to the fact that a final decision couldn’t be made right away.
“Accept the fact that we’re in between a rock and a hard spot,” Andrisek said. “We need to do this. We need to revisit what we’ve done.”
While Buellton’s ban is only 45 days long, McEwen said the City Council would likely come back with an extension.
Following their vote, council members began discussion on three topics relating to marijuana: how to regulate personal cultivation, deliveries, and businesses.
“It’s still a very new type of business model we’re dealing with,” McEwen said.
This article appears in Jan 19-26, 2017.