EVERETT — After a three-hour public hearing Tuesday evening, the Snohomish County Planning Commission decided to continue discussing* the input from marijuana-enterprise owners and neighbors who oppose pot operations.
The commission will meet Wednesday at 5:30 p.m. on the first floor of the Snohomish County Administration Building-East, 3000 Rockefeller Ave. in Everett.
More than 100 people turned out for Tuesday’s hearing and dozens testified about zoning for marijuana grow operations and whether a moratorium on new marijuana businesses should be made permanent. The volunteer commission has been tasked with making recommendations to the Snohomish County Council so the elected lawmakers can consider amending the rules for marijuana businesses in the spring.
Speakers weighed in on a variety of issues, including whether the plant is even an agricultural crop.
In October, the County Council imposed a temporary moratorium on new pot operations in some of the county’s rural areas after some neighbors voiced concerns. An emergency ordinance is in place until April 1. It bans state-licensed growers, processors and retailers in some rural areas that weren’t already in business as of Oct. 1.
The council also then banned new collective gardens and dispensaries for medical marijuana along a one-mile stretch of Highway 9 in Clearview.
State Initiative 502, passed in 2012, regulates Washington’s recreational marijuana system, but some local jurisdictions have been imposing limited or total bans on such businesses.
The county prohibition of pot businesses now applies to those in R-5 zones and in the Clearview rural commercial area, which covers about 116 acres along Highway 9. R-5 zones are rural areas where the county typically permits only one house per five acres, with some exceptions.
With increasing political pressure from those opposed to having marijuana businesses nearby, dozens of existing and would-be growers in the R-5 zone have formed a group known as the R5 Cooperative. The businesses fear that the county might permanently prohibit marijuana producers and retailers.
The county Department of Planning and Development Services has offered four options for commissioners to consider, including doing nothing, making pot operations a conditional use in R-5, banning them in those zones or allowing them with certain development standards.
Reid Shockey, a land-use consultant for the R5 Cooperative, said members changed their minds just a few hours before Tuesday’s meeting on which option it would urge commissioners to recommend.
Shockey said he found a chapter of existing county code that could be amended to include specific conditions under which pot operations could be allowed in some areas. He thinks changes to those rules could address neighbor concerns while permitting marijuana enterprises. That would allow the county to keep regulations the council enacted in 2013, before the temporary moratoriums were put in place, he said.
The R5 Cooperative also wants the commission to recommend including marijuana growing and processing in the definition of agriculture.
But some neighbors argue pot is not an agricultural crop and is not compatible in the R5 zone. They note that the Legislature passed a bill deeming the marijuana industry to be non-agricultural. This removed excise tax protections that apply to other farm commodities.
The cooperative contends that the state’s designation was not intended to affect county zoning regulations.
The Planning Commission is expected to take action on the marijuana recommendations Wednesday evening. The County Council will hold another public hearing on the matter before making a decision, but a date has not been set.
Correction, Dec. 17, 2014: This article originally incorrectly described the purpose of the commission meeting.
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