At issue is a 1,000-foot ordinance from parks and schools; however, a calculated distance covers mountains and ridges, not actual accessibility to the marijuana collective by highway and roads.
By Olivia Damavandi / Staff Writer
The Planning Commission, following staff recommendation, last week voted 3-1 to deny a conditional use permit for the operation of one of two existing medical marijuana dispensaries in the City of Malibu.
However, the commission concluded that the applicant, Green Angel Collective, could only obtain rights for legal operation by a city council-approved zone text amendment.
City Associate Planner Ha Ly said in a telephone interview in April that the city received an e-mail from Green Angel stating it will be going forward with an application for a zone text amendment at an unspecified date.
“But they have not yet paid the [application] fee or submitted the [zone text amendment] application,” Ly said Tuesday in a telephone interview.
Calls to Green Angel Collective placed last week and Monday have not yet been returned.
When asked the probability that city council would approve the zoning text amendment, Ly said, “It can go either way.”
The application by Green Angel, submitted in October 2008 by Linda Parsley, requested a conditional use permit to allow its continued operation in an existing commercial building located at 21355 Pacific Coast Highway near the old Malibu courthouse. It also requested a variance to allow it to operate within a 1,000-foot radius of Las Flores Canyon Park.
Though current city law allows a maximum of three medical marijuana dispensaries, the council passed a distance ordinance a few months ago that prohibits any dispensaries from setting up shop within a 1,000-foot radius of parks, places of religious affiliation and schools, among other locations. When the city originally approved the operation of Green Angel approximately a year and a half ago, the distance ordinance did not exist.
Ambiguities in the distance ordinance have caused much contention in this particular case. If calculated using Pacific Coast Highway, Green Angel’s distance from Las Flores Canyon Park exceeds 1,000 feet. However, if calculated over the mountain ridge and houses that lie between, the dispensary’s distance from the park is less than 1,000 feet.
Steve Schectman, attorney for Green Angel Collective, at the meeting last Tuesday said city staff’s recommendation to deny the permit was based on prejudice because the commission added several documents to the application in March that Green Angel was not made aware of until a week and a half ago.
The documents included letters from a Web site written by individuals with pseudo names who speculated as to whether a smoking lounge room exists at Green Angel, and another letter from a Malibu teacher stating his opposition to the pot shop.
“There is nothing about the anonymous exchanges of e-mails and chats on this Web site that have anything to do with this hearing,” Schectman told the commission. “It leads me to believe as a reasonable person that it seems there’s an unfair bias that’s impacting how this is being presented to you.”
Several Malibu High School students in April also urged the Planning Commission to deny the permit because, they said, dispensaries encourage teens to seek ways to obtain drugs from them.
Hap Henry, one of the MHS students, in an interview on Tuesday said, “I didn’t think it [the permit] had to be denied if they [Green Angel] could comply with more regulations to make it more difficult for younger people to obtain marijuana.
“But either one [implementing regulations or the commission’s vote to deny the permit] could help.”
Attorney and Malibu resident Josh Stinn said Las Flores Canyon Park’s proximity to Green Angel would “endanger children, reduce property value and create a serious public safety concern.”
Stinn accused Green Angel of allowing and encouraging onsite use of marijuana and told the commission, “Approving the application would simply perpetuate illegal behavior and potentially risk lives.”
Another resident said she witnessed people using marijuana on the street and in their cars in the vicinity of Green Angel.
“A neighborhood that has been safe for 30 years keeps getting scarier in the last six months,” the resident said.
Supporters, among others, included resident Katherine Kennedy and Michael Lee, who have medical conditions that call for marijuana prescriptions.
Kennedy, a 49-year-old breast cancer survivor, said the issue “makes me crazy because nobody can walk [over the mountain ridge and houses that lie between the dispensary and the park, making the distance less than 1,000 feet].
“It smells like politics, and it’s upsetting to me,” she said.
Lee, a quadriplegic, called Green Angel “one of the best, well-run dispensaries” he had been to and said he had never witnessed marijuana consumption on the premises.
“I just think it’s a tragedy to pick on this specific dispensary under this ordinance,” he said.