Recommendation to declare an interim ordinance adopted as an urgency measure establishing a temporary one hundred and eighty (180) day limitation on the issuance of any permit, entitlement, license, approval, operation, or activity relating to adult use non-medical commercial cannabis activity in the City; and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately, read and adopted as read. (Ordinance No. ORD-17-0030) (Citywide)
Motion carries. Thank you. Number 20, please. Communication from City Attorney. Recommendation to declare an interim ordinance adopted as an urgency measure. Establishing a temporary 180 day limitation on the issuance of any permit relating to adult use, non-medical commercial cannabis activity in the city, and declaring that this ordinance shall take effect immediately. Read and adopted as read citywide. Thank. Thank you. And just to clarify, this is Mr. West. This is what we requested back in December to give us time to craft an ordinance. Correct. This is the past, Mr. City Attorney. That is. Correct. Thank you. Second reading. Thank you. Any public comment on this? Stephanie Dawson, Sue of Second District. Again, we had no opposition to this particular ordinance other than just as a reminder that 13 out of the 16 stores in Santa Ana were able to open their doors on January 1st and offer adult use cannabis. Additionally, Bell, Bellflower, Lynwood and Maywood are all coming online within the first quarter of this year. All of them are going to be issuing adult use commercial licenses at a lower tax rate than the city of Long Beach. Again, that if that doesn't prompt a sense of urgency within the city, within the city, as a means to be able to get us to the point where we can open these businesses and have these consumers coming to our city and spending their money inside of our city. I don't know what else could help additionally with if there are any overwhelming concerns within the city with regards to the revocation by the Justice Department for the Cole memo, I just want to again take solace in the fact that Kamala Harris, Jerry Brown, Gavin Newsom, Xavier Becerra, Kevin de Leon and Alan Lowenthal all issued statements saying that they will be they will be fighting to be able to protect us as a city from any particular federal intervention that might come from this administration. And finally, just one final reminder. This year is an election year Long Beach measure impasse with all of your districts by a pretty healthy margin, as well as Proposition 64, by an even healthier margin. So, again, respecting the this particular ordinance, but at the same time, please hurry up. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Larry King, longtime resident in the seventh District and soon to be hopefully dispensary operator in the ninth District. Happy New Year, everybody on the council. And I'd also like to everything Stephane said, but I'd also like to remind you that it was in the original ordinance that. Won an election that made provisions for. Recreational as well as tax provisions which are substantially higher than medical. And I could tell you from the. Few operators that are operating. Presently, they're turning away 80 to 100. I don't want to say patients anymore. 80 to 100 customers at the door that. Don't know that they don't have a recreational adult use. So they're lined up and then they're turning them away. They're turning away an average of 80 to 100 a day. So that's a lot of tax dollars. We've made it this far. We're this close. The city is going to do all right by taxation again. I think we need to get going on recreational. Or we're losing too much business to the other cities. Thank you. Thank you. Members, please cast your vote.