City ready to ban marijuana dispensaries

CELINA - City council members are preparing to vote on whether to ban recreational marijuana dispensaries in Celina.

Councilors at Monday night's committee of a whole meeting voted 6-1 to have city administrators draw up an ordinance for their consideration, likely at the next council meeting at 7 p.m. Monday in council chambers on the second floor of the city administration building.

Councilman Eric Clausen cast the lone no vote.

"We can come up with whatever we come up with here. It's not going to stop a thing on how people have it (recreational marijuana) or don't have it in Celina," said councilman Mark Fleck. "We'd be making a statement for the city."

The ordinance as proposed would also prohibit recreational marijuana commercial operators, cultivators and processors. It would not, however, apply to medical marijuana-related facilities, which are already banned within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, public libraries, public playgrounds and public parks in Celina.

"I do think that there is value in the medicinal side of the cannabis," said mayor Jeff Hazel. "I think it's just the recreational use that becomes that whole other element."

"The council's already approved medical marijuana (in limited areas), right?" asked councilman Joe Wolfe. "So why would we not just make this recreational and leave the medical out of it?"

Councilman Eric Baltzell agreed with Wolfe's take on the proposed ordinance's scope.

It comes in response to Issue 2, a citizen-initiated statute legalizing recreational marijuana that became law on Dec. 7. It allows municipalities to restrict, limit or prohibit commercial operators, cultivators, processors and dispensaries.

As approved by voters, the law allows adults 21 and over to buy and possess up to 2.5 ounces of cannabis and to grow up to six plants per individual or 12 plants per household at home. It gave the state nine months to set up a system for legal marijuana purchases, subject to a 10% tax.

City law director George Moore stressed that Issue 2 is "voter initiative legislation," not a constitutional amendment.

"The Legislature could completely repeal it. I don't think they will, but I think there's going to be a lot of legislative changes coming up," he said. "I also think that the judicial system will have its input into it as well."

As a citizen-initiated statute, Issue 2 had to be submitted to the Legislature first. After the GOP-controlled Legislature chose to do nothing, the measure was placed on the Nov. 7 ballot and passed with 57% of the vote.  

The state has yet to set up a system for legal recreational marijuana purchases.

"We haven't had any inquiries on this at all," said city safety service director Tom Hitchcock about people looking to open a recreational marijuana dispensary in Celina.

Councilors in Oct 2021 passed legislation effectively prohibiting medical and recreational marijuana-related facilities from operating in most of downtown Celina

It created a new chapter of the city's codified ordinances and established location standards restricting medical marijuana dispensaries and recreational marijuana facilities within 1,000 feet of schools, churches, public libraries, public playgrounds or public parks.

"There's a couple spaces downtown where it could have been and then several other areas," Hazel said of medical marijuana dispensaries. "It's not like we could zone them out of the corporation limit, but there was that 1,000 foot radius that could be set into place, you know, playgrounds, schools, libraries, churches.

"There's a lot of overlapping of those circles but there's still some areas that they could have (operated)."

Multiple companies at the time were looking to rent or buy a facility in Celina in anticipation that Mercer County would be named a designated site for a medical marijuana dispensary.

That never panned out.

"We had two buildings that had contracts on them to buy if they had gotten the license here and then they didn't get the license," Hazel said.