Othello develops marijuana garden regulations
Ehman Sheldon Othello city administrator
OTHELLO - Othello plans to delay creating codes for medical marijuana community gardens, while it continues to investigate.
City Administrator Ehman Sheldon presented the planning commission's plan for investigating the gardens to the city council during a recent meeting. The council recommended the commission examine possible approaches to establishing the gardens following advice from City Attorney Katherine Kenison.
A state law, passed in 2011, allows up to 10 qualifying patients to grow as many as 45 marijuana plants in a shared garden. Each patient is allowed to grow as many as 15 plants each.
Kenison offered three possible options for the council. Either it could continue to extend the moratoriums, create rules for where the gardens can be or create a section in the city's code stating it follows both federal and state law.
The council decided to send the issue to the planning commission to investigate possible codes for the gardens.
The planning commission created an outline for how it wants to investigate the issue, starting with extending the present six-month moratorium another six months, Sheldon said.
"During this additional six-month period, the planning commission will gather information regarding the issue, including seeking information ... from published experts, seek comment and testimony from the public," Sheldon said.
The commission plans to get information from medical marijuana users on how much the gardens are needed in Othello, he said. The members want information from law enforcement as well.
"(They will) review regulations and approaches that have been adopted by other jurisdictions, and, of course, run this all by our legal counsel for comment as needed," Sheldon said. "They would also ... like to develop regulations to present to council for your consideration."
Councilmember Ken Johnson was happy about how quickly the commission started working on the issue.
"The planning commission is actually excited to work with this issue," Sheldon said. "They were willing to tackle this."