Cannabis could be sold within the purple areas of this map.
Planners passed forward a map of suggested places to allow cannabis sales in town — while recommending that alders mellow out rather than rush to finalize rules, and that they redo the math calculating distances from dispensaries to public schools.
The City Plan Commission offered those recommendations after an hours-long debate Wednesday night.
Commissioners met to weigh in on a proposal that would set the rules for how local businesses may operate to sell what is now legal recreational cannabis. It’s up to the Board of Alders, which submitted the proposal, now to consider the commission’s recommendations and proceed to a vote.
The proposal would amend the city’s zoning ordinace to prohibit cannabis businesses to operate within 500 feet of a school or within 1,500 feet of one another. Cannabis enterprises would also not be allowed to operate in residential districts, parks, cemeteries, or “municipal development plan areas” (such as Long Wharf and River Street).
In the remaining locations in the city, marked in purple on the map above — including a stretch of Whalley Avenue and parts of Dwight, Downtown, Hill South, the Annex, and the Mill River, among other spots in town — the ordinance would allow cannabis manufacturers and retailers to operate after obtaining a special permit. (Businesses specializing in delivery would not need a permit.)
Marijuana businesses licenses would be tied to a particular location, meaning that pop-up events or mobile truck vendors would not yet be permitted.
The Board of Alders had submitted the draft ordinance to the City Plan Commission for input on how the ordinance would interact with the city’s big-picture planning and zoning vision.
Dijonée Talley, the city’s policy analyst, and William Long, the deputy director of zoning, shared their departments’ perspective on the ordinance with commissioners at the commission’s regular meeting on Wednesday night.
Talley noted that the city is working within definitions and parameters set by the state’s law legalizing cannabis. The state is running the licensing process, which will select applicants by lottery with some licenses reserved for “social equity applicants” from neighborhoods most devastated by the war on drugs. (Most of New Haven, except for Downtown, East Rock, Westville, and Morris Cove, qualifies under that category.)
She explained that city officials visited towns across Connecticut and Massachusetts in order to inform the regulations included in the ordinance.
Long recommended a handful of tweaks to the ordinance, most of which fixed typos in the draft.
One of Long’s proposed changes would recommend that when measuring the distance between a cannabis business and a school or similar enterprise, the city should count the number of feet between the edges of the parcels rather than the center of the parcels.
Thomas Breen Photo
Commissioner Ernest Pagan (pictured) asked whether the school distance requirement would apply to colleges, “since Yale owns so much of the city’s land.”
Talley replied that colleges are not included in those distance requirements — just primary and secondary schools.
“We’re supposed to be looking out for communities that were disenfranchised” as a result of cannabis criminalization, Pagan said. “Is that in this map?”
No, Talley responded; while the licensing process will prioritize those communities, the zoning map does not. “We are keeping that in mind in the way we imagine supporting small businesses,” she added.
“I feel like so many people are gonna be left out of this or left behind,” Pagan said. “If the state got [a social equity clause] in its ordinance, we should have it too.”
“There’s a lot of guards in place on the state level” to ensure that “social equity communities” are prioritized, Talley argued.
The part of the ordinance prohibiting the sale of cannabis within 500 feet of a school draws from part of the state law outlawing the advertisement of cannabis within that radius.
City Plan Commission Chair Leslie Radcliffe asked for clarification about that regulation.
City attorney Roderick Williams explained, “It doesn’t make sense to say you can’t advertise but you can sell” within a certain area. “We don’t want to have [cannabis businesses] closer than you can advertise.”
In blue, the areas qualifying as "social equity" communities. (Morris Cove is not one of those areas.)
Public Weighs In
Soon, members of the public had a chance to testify — and raised concerns about the complexity of the application process as well as potential vulnerable spots left out of the city ordinance.
Atwater Street resident Jimi Cooper spoke of “the tedious process of the social equity application.” He asked if anyone in the city is available to help guide applicants through the licensing process.
Economic Development Deputy Director Cathy Graves said the city is working on such an initiative, but can’t use federal funds toward helping cannabis businesses. “We are in the process of trying to identify some funding,” she said.
Former city resident and cannabis business consultant Tom Antonez virtually testified all the way from Colorado that the quick application deadlines for licenses could pose a barrier for businesses scrambling to seek financial backing. Most “social equity” applicants don’t have the capital already handy to fund their business ideas, he noted.
Urban Design League President Anstress Farwell asked if the ordinance addresses “anything about afterschool programs, youth centers … housing or programs for disabled adults.” Perhaps prison reentry and parole offices should be included in distance requirements as well, Farwell suggested. “I don’t have an opinion, but I’m just interested to hear.”
Talley noted that many of those existing social services providers are in residential areas where cannabis sale would be prohibited.
Cannabis businesses are “highly regulated,” Talley added. “Some places you can go to and you wouldn’t even know it was a cannabis dispensary. They aren’t crime magnets.” She noted that given the permitting process, “We have the checks and balances to be able to say, this isn’t the right place for this, if something comes up.”
Environmental activist Chris Ozyck argued that the commission should consider reviewing billboard regulations ahead of the ordinance. He asked that the city include greenspaces and trails like the Farmington Canal Trail as “parks” where cannabis businesses are not permitted.
After some discussion later in the meeting, city staff revealed that those greenspaces are indeed protected in the ordinance.
Ozyck added, “I’d like to see renewals, like every two years, for these permits, so the community has the ability to have a voice in the conversation.”
Commissioners agreed with this idea. On the state level, different types of cannabis licenses would need to be renewed on different timelines. The commissioners voted to recommend that the alders consider a permit renewal process, perhaps one in tune with the state’s various license renewal schedules.
Commissioners at Wednesday night's Zoom meeting.
Commissioners Ed Mattison and Carl Goldfield expressed reservations about the idea of selling cannabis in the city as a whole.
“We are acting as though everyone’s acting in good faith, and that there won’t be any hanky panky. But after prohibition, when liquor was made legal, the monsters didn’t go away — they just converted themselves to people with neckties,” said Mattison. “You have to imagine the possibility that there will be some hanky panky. When I read the ordinance, it felt a trifle naive to me.”
Mattison called for the city to move at a slower pace in adopting the ordinance. He called for more public hearings, with experts and people who have lived in cities where the sale of marijuana is legal speaking. “I don’t understand much about this at all,” he said.
Goldfield echoed this concern and asked if there is any possibility of placing a year-long moratorium on cannabis sales so that New Haven can watch what’s happening as cities like Bridgeport and Hartford legalize marijuana businesses.
His fellow commissioners decided their purview is not to decide whether or not marijuana should be sold, even for a year, but rather how the proposed requirements align with citywide zoning. So they voted not to recommend a moratorium.
Mattison moved that in addition to recommending city staff’s corrections, the commission advise the alders to initiate a “robust public process, including giving themselves and the citizens the opportunity to hear from other people who are experienced in operating these kinds of programs.” The motion was unanimously approved.