Will Nipomo be the home of SLO County’s only brick-and-mortar medical marijuana dispensary? Looks like that decision will be up to the five members of the SLO County Board of Supervisors.
Nipomo residents filed an appeal to the county Planning Commission’s July 9 vote to approve a minor use permit for mobile medical marijuana company Ethnobotanica to set up a retail location at a 2,600 square-foot location at 2122 Hutton Road. The appeal included letters from Nipomo residents and Santa Maria Mayor Alice Patino asking the supervisors to deny the permit. Many of them raised concerns that the business would cause an increase in crime and be dangerous for the small, unincorporated town in the county’s southern region.
“We don’t need this,” James Bigelow, the Nipomo resident who filed the appeal, said. “Federally, [marijuana] is illegal and I don’t want any illegal business in my neighborhood.”
In her letter, Patino said the dispensary would be an unfair strain on Santa Maria law enforcement due to Nipomo’s location near the Santa Barbara County line.
“Allowing a target for violent crime to be built so far from SLO County’s current patrols but so close to Santa Maria would be irresponsible as it would likely place a burden upon Santa Maria police and the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Department.”
Many of those same arguments were made to the planning commissioners but weren’t enough to sway them against the permit approval. Only one of the four commissioners who were present at the meeting, Jim Harrison—the planning commissioner for the 4th District, which includes Nipomo—voted against it. As part of the permitting process, Ethnobotanica provided a detailed security plan for the location, which will include indoor and outdoor cameras, as well as an on-site security guard who will be posted at the store for 10 hours a day, seven days a week.
Those opposing Ethnobotanica may have better luck making their case to the county supervisors, who have historically sided with keeping such businesses from opening brick-and-mortar locations in the past. The board voted to deny minor use permits for dispensaries on appeal in 2008 and 2012 and upheld denial of a permit for another in 2010.
Bigelow said he wasn’t sure how the supervisors would vote this time, but he remained firm in his opposition to the project.
“This is not right for us,” he said. “This is not what we want.”
As of July 28, the appeal had not been set for a hearing before the supervisors.
This article appears in Jul 30 – Aug 6, 2015.