Medi-pot task force to have a visitor — SDPD…

Finally, some city leadership is poised to appear before the council-appointed Medical Marijuana Task Force, with just two meetings remaining to come up with land-use and zoning recommendations for San Diego collectives and cooperatives.

If all goes according to plan, two high-ranking San Diego Police Department honchos will offer their take on the subject at the task force’s meeting next Friday (9-11 a.m., 12th floor, City Hall, 202 C St.). Popcorn will not be provided, but it should pretty riveting stuff nonetheless. Scheduled to appear are Assistant Police Chief Cesar Solis and Paul Cooper, counsel to Chief William Lansdowne.

For weeks, CityBeat has been trying to cajole SDPD into a medi-pot conversation. Spin Cycle this week shed some light on SDPD’s thinking about how medical-marijuana outlets would be treated going forward, and it didn’t seem like much had changed — despite a new U.S. Department of Justice directive earlier this week to, in essence, lay off the legitimate medi-pot non-profits.

Spin Cycle also touched on the mixed signals going out to prospective collectives from the city’s Development Services Department (DSD), which has in the past sent out letters to business-tax-certificate applicants saying they would be approved for a “medical-marijuana dispensary” after obtaining a police permit.

But this week, SDPD told CityBeat that no such permit exists.

After deadline this week, DSD’s director, Kelly Broughton, responded to the confusion, thusly: “Making calls on whether a project meets land use regulations is technically a legal call. We make them every day.”

But, he added: “Product legality is for other agencies to make, not the Development Services Department.”

In an email provided to the task force, Ricardo Ramos, business-tax manager in the City Treasurer’s Office, said eight medi-pot dispensaries “were approved by DSD staff in error. There is no valid land use category for this type of business activity.” Ramos added that all eight business licenses had been revoked “and a denial letter was issued.”

So, we have business licenses being processed (and, of course, fees paid!) for businesses that don’t exist in the eyes of city bureaucrats, who at one point decided — but no longer — to send applicants over to SDPD anyway for a police permit that doesn’t exist. Need anyone say more about medi-pot confusion and the need for clear leadership?

Which might explain why so many medi-pot advocates at Thursday’s meeting seemed a little more on edge, feeling a little freer to utter their disdain for the few speakers who got up to call for the outright abolishment of storefront collectives.

It could have been the wonky nature of the day’s proceedings of the task force, which began assembling the pieces of a future land-use proposal for medi-pot outlets, like requirements for lighting and security. The task force voted unanimously (one member absent) to propose mimicking the lighting language from a Los Angeles County ordinance, which seems to have drawn the most attention from the panel, modelwise.

The task force also sided with the L.A. County wording on security measures, although three members dissented because they felt it too onerous a requirement for small collectives that need less security or sometimes prefer a so-called “trap-door” system, in which visitors can be buzzed through a secondary door — or not.

“For small cooperatives, it’s an unnecessary burden to have to hire security guards,” argued member Larry Sweet, the only medi-pot patient on the task force. “I don’t want to throw that kind of overhead on these people.”

A lively discussion also broke out over the preferred hours of operations for collectives. The panel bounced around a flurry of ideas, from limiting operations to daylight hours or to every day except Sunday, to basing hours on the community character (downtown, longer hours; bedroom communities, shorter). The task force finally settled on — with one in opposition — limiting hours to 7 a.m. till 9 p.m., seven days a week.

Some task force members wanted to include language about delivery services, but the chairman headed off that conversation as “not germane to the hours of operation” issue.

What will be most interesting to watch is what type of review process the task force recommends for collectives applying to establish a storefront. Last week, the task force deadlocked (with one member absent) on a proposal to give such applicants the lightest of reviews, known as a Process 1, which requires no public hearing.

That seems unlikely now, because a growing number of panelists seem to be leaning toward requiring a conditional-use permit (Process 3), which medi-pot advocates worry will be a too-costly and long-winded process. Others mentioned the ‘tweener, a Process 2, otherwise known as a neighborhood-use permit that requires an appearance before a hearing officer but can be appealed to the city’s Planning Commission for a public hearing.

The Community Planners Committee, a city panel made up of representatives from community planning groups, is scheduled to address the medi-pot issue at its meeting Tuesday. It would be surprising if that group didn’t call for the inclusion of some form of public-debate requirement in any proposed land-use regulations for collectives and cooperatives.