Council approves cap on pot shops

Apr 23, 2019 | 11:09 PM

Vernon City Council has a voted to place a limit on the number of pot shops in the city’s downtown core.

Under the motion approved on Tuesday, only 6 provincially approved pot shops would be permitted to operate in the city’s two downtown business improvement districts.

A moratorium or stoppage of applications will take place for 12 months once the limit of six shops is reached so that the city can study the impact of the cannabis shops in the community.

So far the city has approved four pot shops in the downtown business improvement areas and have two more coming before council in the future.

Council has voted to approve a limit of 6 pot shops in the two Business improvement areas in the city . A moratorium will also be placed for one year once the limit has been reached so the city can study the impact #vernonbc #cannabis pic.twitter.com/xNvqdOk0jf

— Tiffany Goodwein (@CityNewsTiffany) April 24, 2019

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But it remains up to the provincial Liquor and Cannabis Regulation Branch to give the stores the final go-ahead to operate.

The motion to restrict the number of pot shops was brought forward by Councillor Akbal Mund after stating that he did not see an end to the city receiving cannabis applications.

He also said that many residents and the business community have expressed concerns about the number of pot shops concentrated in the downtown core.

“I just think that Councillor Mund’s suggestion is a good one. I think we have heard very clearly from the community, don’t load up the downtown with pot shops, and that’s because people are not clear what the impact will be,” said Mayor Victor Cumming.

While the idea was relatively well received, some members of council said that the city should of thought about placing restrictions on pot shops before approving applications.

“I think we did this wrong. I think we should have made limits before we started accepting applications in the first place,” said Councillor Scott Anderson,

“And now we are in the position of saying no arbitrarily to applications, or to say yes to all of them, and I don’t like it,” he added.

Councillor Dalvir Nahal echoed similar statements, arguing that a limit on pot shops now is not fair to the people who are in the process of applying.

“You can’t restrict without knowing how many people have applied. We screwed up we should have done this before,” said Councillor Dalvir Nahal.

Chief administrative officer Will Pearce advised council not to be so hard on themselves for not acting as proactively as they would have liked.

“You did not make a mistake out of the gate. Just as an example, if out of the gates you said 10, we would of had a mad rush to the province for the first 10, and you would of got the first 10 in the first week and then what do you do? You wouldn’t know where the locations are of that first 10,” said Pearce.

The motion was ultimately approved with Councillor Nahal voting in opposition.