This story has been updated.
Grow and behold, City of North Vancouver council endorsed a new policy allowing a maximum of six pot shops in the municipality during Monday’s meeting.
The new framework – which would be enacted following national legalization – would allow two recreational pot shops in Central Lonsdale, two more in Lower Lonsdale, and one apiece in the city’s west and east reaches.
The new policy would bar any applicant currently operating an illegal pot shop – much to the displeasure of Coun. Rod Clark.
The city “turned a blind eye” to illegally operating pot shops for three years, according to Clark.
“We’re complicit,” he said, discussing the city’s lack of enforcement.
Following a 6-1 council vote in March, the city filed petitions in B.C. Supreme Court to shut down the city’s unlicensed pot shops – one of which had been selling marijuana for at least two years. Clark cast the lone vote against the pot-gap measure.
Under the new guidelines operators of illegal pot shops would be permitted to run a legal shop if they close their store prior to Nov. 19, at which time the city would begin accepting applications.
The pot shop proprietors who wilfully ignored city bylaws have been getting an unfair advantage, Keating countered.
Rather than a lottery or evaluation criteria, applications would be advanced based on a: “first come, first serve” policy.
The policy failed to pass muster with Coun. Don Bell, as he anticipated a huge crop of applications on Nov. 19.
Clark also took aim at the policy, suggesting it would be “absolute craziness” to give priority to the applicant who “gets his finger on the button first.”
“We want the best operators,” Clark said.
Coun. Holly Back differed with Clark, assuring her colleagues the best and brightest would rise to the occasion.
“If they’re good business people they’ll be there on time,” Back said.
Keating also defended the policy, noting that the first applicants to be considered won’t necessarily be the first to be approved. “Nobody’s getting any kind of privileged position,” Keating said.
However, any entrepreneur looking to get into the green economy will likely have to risk red ink in the books. The city’s application process would include a $5,000 non- refundable application fee, a one-time $1,500 application processing fee, and a $3,691 annual business licence fee.
Coun. Pam Bookham lauded the policy for guarding against a situation where an entire half-block in the city becomes a cluster of pot shops.
Pot shops would be barred within a 100-metre radius of rec centres, public schools, the North Shore Shelter, the North Vancouver school district office, and the North Shore Neighbourhood House.
Initially, those restrictions included private schools and the Foundry youth services hub, but Keating successfully argued against including those establishments.
“If you can have the Foundry, . . . a few metres away from a pub, surely to god you can have it a few metres away from a place that dispenses cannabis,” he said.
Noting the city allowed Alcuin College and Bodwell to move into commercial zones. Keating said it would be “bizarre” to then enact restrictive zoning.
While there is “no research that correlates proximity to cannabis retail stores to increased consumption,” a city staff report advocated shielding children and youth with an “‘out of sight, out of mind’ approach.”
Council voted 6-1 to endorse the new guidelines with Clark opposed.
The first shops will likely be operational in March or April, according to city staff.
