The previous moratorium expired on Tuesday.
Planning Commission is expected to meet Oct. 15 and approve code requirements for marijuana businesses wanting to open in the city that has four marijuana dispensaries. Once that plan is recommended to City Council, a public hearing will be held Nov. 12, and the plan could take affect Dec. 26, city officials said.
Vice Mayor Christina McElfresh, filing in for Mayor Keith Funk who was excused from the meeting, said this will be Monroe’s last marijuana moratorium. She hopes the code recommendations from Planning Commissions are approved because “a lot of time was spent on it.”
McElfresh said she’s satisfied with the four dispensaries located in the city, two in Butler and two in Warren county. The four Monroe dispensaries: Columbia Care Monroe, two Shangri-La Dispensary Ohio locations and The Landing Dispensary.
“You can be one extreme or the other,” she told the Journal-News after the meeting. “From zero to 20 on every corner. I don’t want either one of those. I want that happy middle ground where you have some representation, but our city isn’t overwhelmed with it and you become known for it.”
Council member Michael Graves, who has voiced his concerns about the number of marijuana businesses in the city, said he doesn’t want Monroe to be “the headquarters of marijuana in the state.”
Monroe, with an estimated population of 15,500, doesn’t need more than four cannabis businesses, he said.
The No. 1 complaint from residents is the redundancy of businesses in the city, according to Graves. There are already too many warehouses, car washes, pizza and Mexican restaurants in the city, residents have told Graves.
The four marijuana businesses are located near Interstate 75, are 2.5 miles apart and report “very healthy” sales, Tom Smith, the city’s development director, has said.
About the Author
