California, Arcata

[palmspringsbum]

Arrests follow Arcata home invasion

The Eureka Valley Reporter
by Christine Bensen-Messinger, 6/10/2006

A man and woman were arrested Thursday night after an alleged home invasion robbery in Arcata occurred at approximately 10 p.m.

According to an Arcata Police Department news release, an officer responded to a call of a verbal argument at a residence on the 900 block of Bayside Road and upon arrival encountered four subjects leaving the residence.

One of the men was bleeding from a wound to his leg.

The officer detained all four subjects at gunpoint until backup officers arrived. Upon arrival, officers discovered that two of the subjects, Richmond resident Vincent Mitchell, 22, and Pittsburg resident Tina Adams, 22, had allegedly entered the residence and held two males at gunpoint while robbing them of money and marijuana.

While being robbed, one of the alleged victims attempted to disarm the suspect who was holding the gun and was shot once in the leg during the struggle, the news release stated.

When the officer arrived, the suspects were allegedly attempting to abduct the victims to take them to another location to obtain more money.

Mitchell was arrested on suspicion of assault with a deadly weapon, kidnapping, burglary of an inhabited dwelling, possession of a concealed firearm, possession of a prohibited weapon and possession of marijuana for sale.

Adams was arrested on suspicion of home invasion robbery and possession of marijuana for sale.

The 25-year-old gunshot victim was treated at Mad River Hospital and released. The alleged victim was hit in the face with a gun and sustained minor facial damage.

While he would not specify whether the marijuana Adams and Mitchell attempted to steal was medical, Arcata Police Sgt. Martin Bence said the two men who resided at the house that was robbed were not arrested.

“At this time we’re not anticipating any criminal charges against the residents,” Bence said.

He said home invasion robberies, especially those related to theft of marijuana, are not uncommon in Arcata.

In the past three years, Bence said there have been five home invasion robberies in Arcata, most marijuana-related.

Many of the marijuana-related home invasions have targeted people growing marijuana for medical purposes, he said.

“If people want to grow marijuana in their house, that’s their right as long as they’re legal under Proposition 215, (but) you need to use basic crime prevention techniques,” Bence said.

He said people growing legally should be careful to be discrete, but if they are robbed, he said it is important that they report it to police.

“What we don’t want is for them to not report an incident because they are afraid we’ll take their dope,” Bence said.

If the grow is a legitimate medical operation, he said, they will not get in trouble with the law and it is important that dangerous situations do not occur.

“The majority of our major crimes involve some sort of … drugs and guns and that’s a bad combination; when you invade someone’s home with a gun or guns, that’s pretty serious,” Bence said.






<center>Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved. </center>

[Midnight toker]

Eight file for two City Council seats – Aug. 15, 2006

Kevin L. Hoover
Eye Editor
The Arcata Eye

ARCATA – There’s no butcher, baker or candlestick maker, but Arcatans will be able to choose two City Councilmembers this fall from a field that could include a medical marijuana activist, a builder, a social worker, an astrologer, an attorney, a former mayor, an environmental planner and an engineer.

By Friday’s deadline, eight individuals had filed nomination papers for the two open seats on the council.

Whether they become candidates depends on verification of the signatures on their nominating petitions, a task that will be undertaken by Administrative Assistant Alma McCall in days to come.

For now, the eight potential candidates are Bobby Harris, Dave Meserve, Nick Page, Dana Quillman, Jeff Schwartz, Alex Stillman, Mark Wheetley and Michael Winkler.

Brief sketches of Quillman, Stillman and Winkler have been featured in previous editions of the Eye. Detailed profiles of all the candidates, plus opinion columns, a questionnaire and other information will appear in issues to come.

<hr class=postrule>
<span class=postbold><b>Bobby Harris</b></span>

Bobby Harris, 54, is in his 10th year as an Arcatan. A Democrat and member of the Humboldt County Democratic Central Committee, he describes himself as a legislative advocate and farmer, and has long advocated revision and reform of medical marijuana laws.

As “priority issues,” Harris lists: “housing (create Housing Committee and Rental Housing Regulation Program), economic development (light manufacturing, tourism, evolution of strategies), transportation (traffic calming, non-motor vehicle oriented housing, traffic enforcement officer), plaza enhancement (ordinance establishing upgraded tavern staff training and collaborations, and significant monetary penalties for disorders related to violations, return of the original gazebo and ensconcement of McKinley near deep right-field in the Arcata Ball Park).”

“If elected, I will strive to evolve and advance our local political consensus and cooperation by helping to improve key qualities of civic dialogue, vision, focus and understanding among city officials, employees and the public,” said Harris.

He’s already found two other worthy co-candidates among the field of eight hopefuls. “I’m excited about Nick [Page] and Jeff Schwartz being in the election,” Harris said.

<hr class=postrule>
<span class=postbold><b>Dave Meserve</b></span>

Standing before a few dozen supporters on City Hall’s front lawn last Wednesday, building contractor, Green party member and incumbent Councilmember Dave Meserve said he wanted another term to carry out his mission. “All the great plans that we made, many of them are just beginning,” he said.

Among the initiatives Meserve wishes to pursue is increased public safety downtown. During recent council goal-setting sessions, he championed creation of a dedicated, eight-hour-per-day Plaza foot patrol. “I had to lead the charge on that,” Meserve said. “I’m going to make that motion again.”

He also wants increase police presence in Valley West, though he later expressed doubt as to whether a police substation was necessary. The increased law enforcement would be paid for in part by a “tippler’s tax,” which he defined as a tax on all establishments which serve liquor after 10 p.m.” (The City Council will this week discuss legalities surrounding this issue.)

Meserve also expressed support for a pattern retail cap now being discussed by the Committee on Democracy and Corporations, for membership of the Hupa Tribe in the Humboldt County Association of Governments, for aggressive greenhouse gas reduction, for increased solar panel installation and for a rail-trail conversion along the U.S. Highway 101 corridor to Eureka, with the last two items getting enthusiastic applause from those assembled.

Meserve was unsparing in his characterization of the nation’s leadership. “The government is still stark raving mad,” he said, urging a strong focus on local democracy with registration of a thousand new Arcata voters by November. “We should have a high voter turnout in every election,” Meserve said. He further called for energy independence and political independence.

Meserve capped his kickoff statement by calling on Arcatans to put their their idealism into practice. “We need to make a City that lives up to those ideals,” he said.

<hr class=postrule>
<span class=postbold><b>Nick Page</b></span>

Nick “Eeyore” Page has lived in Arcata since the summer of 1999. “I really love the town and the community, and wanted to get more involved and give something back,” he said.

Page, 25, said he isn’t affilated with any political party. His nickname, Eeyore, is “an alias I’ve been using for a long time.”

A certified community health outreach worker, Page said he’s also trained in drug overdose treatment. He’s on a hiatus from social work to attend school, but said he’s “taking a break from studies.”

Two neglected areas Page said could use some immediate attention are the City’s waning nightlife and drug-ridden underclass.

“There’s not a lot to do after 10 p.m.,” he said, citing a lack of late-night restaurants, music venues and dancing. “Over the years I’ve noticed the number of places slowly dwindling,” he said. “Places that have stepped up have been blocked.”

Page said he’d “work with the Chamber of Commerce and councilmembers to expedite the process for young businessmen trying to start businesses in the City and create nightlife.”

Drawing on his social work background, Page observed that “transiency and homelessness is a really major issue in the City. One thing that never gets brought up is drugs.” Methamphetamine and cocaine use is “dramatically going up,” he said.

Anther matter of concern is housing costs, which Page said might be addressed via rent control.

<hr class=postrule>
<span class=postbold><b>Jeff Schwartz</b></span>

Jeff Schwartz is a Sunny Brae resident and Humboldt County deputy district attorney.

Schwartz, 55, is a Green Party member and has some specific ideas as to how to improve Arcata.

For starters, he’d like better roads. He’d also like to establish free curbside recycling. “We shouldn’t be paying for it,” he said. “They make money on that.”

Another big concern is the lack of affordable child care. It’s hard to get even if you have money,” he said. He’d set up a sliding-scale program for Arcata residents.

To pay for some of the new initiatives, Schwartz has a novel plan for boosting City income. “I want to look at increasing revenues,” he said. “We could set up a program like Working Assets so that businesses can round up,” he proposed. “When you go to a restaurant, there’ll be a spot on the ticket to add a buck. It’s a voluntary tax.”

Beyond that, Schwartz would capitalize on what he sees as Arcata’s underdeveloped arts, culture and eco-tourism assets. Shakespeare in the Park, for example, could be a “regional, if not national attraction, he said.

“I want to make Arcata a much better place than it is,” Schwartz said.

<hr class=postrule>
<span class=postbold><b>Mark Wheetley</b></span>

Incumbent Councilmember Mark Wheetley, elected just last March to the seat vacated by former Councilmember Elizabeth Conner, feels like he’s just hitting his stride – and so is the City.

The advent of City Manager Michael Hackett, Wheetley said, has proven a positive pivot point for City personnel.

“Change is in the air,” he said. “I’m excited about the new city manager and the atmosphere at City Hall. It’s reinvigorated, and the staff seems inspired.”

Along with the issues he’s worked on during his brief council tenure, Wheetley would like to put emphasis on improving conditions for Arcata’s young people. “I want to bring renewed focus to youth issues,” he said.

In the offing is a youth master plan, Wheetley said, implemented by a “youth commission.”

Overall, he’d like to bring the City Council home. “My focus is really around Arcata first,” Wheetley said.

[palmspringsbum]

Council candidate Schwartz seeks a truly progressive future

by Rebecca S. Bender, 10/11/2006
The Eureka Reporter

<table class=posttable align=right width=300><tr><td class=postcell><img class=postimg width=300 src=bin/schwartz_jeffrey.png></td></tr></table>Jeffrey Schwartz has some big ideas for making Arcata what he considers to be a truly progressive town.

When he moved full-time to the area a year ago, he said he was surprised to find a number of areas — solar energy, green building projects, zero emissions vehicles, mass transit, homelessness and affordable housing, he suggested, just off the top of his head — in which “there’s a lot of thinking progressively, but there’s not a lot of acting progressively.”

“No one’s getting anything done here,” he said. “Arcata just wasn’t what I wanted it to be as a progressive community.”

At the heart of his answer to some of those questions is a program he calls “round-up for Arcata,” a system by which businesses could ask customers to round up their bills, donating the extra change to a city fund for improvement and beautification projects.

The program wouldn’t be a means of creating more bureaucracy, Schwartz emphasized, but a pragmatic way of raising money for specific projects — and an economically viable one, he added, that could realistically become one of the city’s largest funding sources.

Environmental issues are “where the winds of change are coming from,” both locally and nationally, Schwartz predicted.

“The environment is everything: we could become a model city,” he said. “It could absolutely be done with a city this size.”

If Arcata leads the way, he added, other communities will likely follow.

“Arcata should be the hub of environmental technologies,” he said. “We should really be a think tank as well as innovators.”

Using the resources from Humboldt State University to advance the city’s reputation for environmental technologies and, concurrently, its ecological tourism, is imperative, he said. In return, enhancing HSU’s reputation for being at the forefront of environmental programs and research could help attract more students to the school. Above all, students should be integrated into the community, he said.

The proposed round-up fund could provide some finances for incubator programs and business start-up assistance, Schwartz suggested.

He encouraged HSU to get its proposed energy independence fund back on track, work with the city in expanding bus service and do away with its punishments for medical marijuana use.

The City Council needs to be able to say, “Hey, you’re in our city; we’re doing environmental things — sort of — and so should you,” Schwartz urged. “We can give them a lot, and they can give us a lot.”

Another thing Schwartz would like to see addressed is community housing, promoting the idea of small townhouses similar to the flats in San Francisco, perhaps with owners living on the second floor and renting out the first.

With the city acting as the developer, he said, the sale price could be maintained within a truly affordable range.

Such a development could even be largely carless, he suggested, encouraging residents to take advantage of mass transit and alternative transportation methods.

He’d like to see the city expand its shuttle service and use zero emissions and experimental vehicles. Another possibility, he said, is forming a car lending library similar to the Arcata Bike Library, using alternative energy vehicles and operating on a sliding scale to appeal to students as well as long-term residents.

“Scrap the buses,” he said.

Arcata needs what Schwartz deemed a “one-stop integrated service center” to address its homeless issues, creating a campus incorporating offices for state and federal assistance services, vocational and drug counseling, child welfare services, transitional housing and a Greyhound bus stop.

But while working to serve the needs of the transient and homeless population, he said, the city needs to be careful not to overreact.

“You don’t want a Stepford Plaza,” he cautioned.

For Schwartz, first and foremost, Arcata needs to emphasize self-control.

“We need to do it ourselves, then get the money,” he said. “Arcata can’t wait for federal, state, county money.”

To that end, he said, the city attorney should be capable of taking the city’s legal standing to that of a “first-class law office,” prepared to do battle against the county, state and federal government as well as local businesses and agencies as needed.

“The city attorney should go out and get money for us,” he said.

He supports adding fluoride to the city’s drinking water, and believes the City Council should minimize its attention to resolutions on national issues.

“It diverts too much energy,” he said. “I don’t think we should spend too much time on it. I want to spend time on things that work.”

A registered Green, Schwartz has been working as a deputy district attorney in the Humboldt County District Attorney’s Office for the past year, though he traveled back and forth between San Francisco and Arcata for about two years before that, he said.

As to his vision for a progressive Arcata, he promised, “This is all very doable. I really don’t see this as pie in the sky. ...You need someone to spur it, and I think I can do that.”

More information is available at www.jeff4citycouncil.blogspot.com.

[palmspringsbum]

A Growing Problem

The Arcata Eye
Tue, 02 Oct 2007


We won't lack public involvement in this week's long-overdue consideration of Arcata's marijuana grow house situation. Rather, the problem will be sorting through the noise and chaff to find the helpful comment.

On the few previous occasions when the council and Planning Commission have even touched on the issue, they've been preemptively castigated as heartless oppressors. The reason for this is that the Compassionate Use Act is being abused by some to grow marijuana for profit.

There's big money involved -- very big. So expect distracting arguments of every sort, engineered to preserve the dangerously dysfunctional but for some, profitable status quo.

First, California's progressive Compassionate Use Act must be protected. Our federal government's insane refusal to properly manage the medical use of cannabis is but one of the ongoing obscenities its now conducting against its citizens and humanity in general.

Irrational, pernicious superstitions about marijuana have set up a legal situation ideal for black market profiteers. Over the years, they've figured out all the angles, from street-level resale of prescribed cannabis to use of surrogates to obtain licenses to legitimize industrial grows.

The related phenomenon of suburban grow houses is consuming housing built for human beings while burning some of the houses down. There's got to be a more sensible way for people to get medication that they need.

Preserving compassion, protecting human rights, property rights and neighborhood safety with no help at all from the federal government is a huge but necessary challenge for our City Council. It will require ideas and cooperation, plus more than a little good will. Those things exist, and hopefully will amount to more than just a few needles in a haystack of distraction.

[palmspringsbum]

Council To Take Next Step Toward Regulating Grow Houses

The Eureka Times-Standard
Tue, 16 Oct 2007
by Thadeus Greenson, The Times-Standard


ARCATA -- The City Council is expected to take the next step Wednesday toward reining in the city's marijuana grow houses under some kind of oversight and regulation.

The council took the first steps at its Oct. 3 meeting, when it decided to form a task force to make recommendations on how to use land use standards to control the locations, sizes and operations of the city's grow houses.

The grow operations, which are generally under the auspice of Proposition 215, have drawn the ire of the local community in recent weeks, after a grow-gone-awry led to a structure fire causing thousands of dollars of damage to an Arcata home and Arcata Fire Chief John McFarland estimated that grows are to blame for more than half the city's house fires.

Councilman Michael Machi said he recognized the need for a task force at the Oct. 3 meeting when the owner of an Arcata medical marijuana dispensary addressed the council and said his dispensary served 5,000 patients.

"That's a lot of people," Machi said. "Whatever regulation we are proposing is going to affect a lot of people, and you can't just go and say, 'this is what we're doing,' and not consider the input of a large part of the community."

Machi said he hopes to see a six to eight member task force comprising spokespeople for local dispensaries, growers, patients and law enforcement and community members.

Community Development Director Tom Conlon said Monday that he doesn't necessarily see the need for a task force, which would have to meet six to eight times, with each meeting requiring between 10 and 13 hours of staff time. Conlon said he feels city staff can answer the council's questions, and feels the task force would be an unnecessary expenditure of staff time.

Machi, however, said the task force is about more than simply finding answers, as the council's action could potentially affect one-third of all Arcatans.

"We need to have community buy-in for whatever we propose and, as far as I'm concerned, the only way for us to do that is to have a task force," Machi said.

In other matters, the council is expected to adopt a resolution to place the Utility Users Tax Measure on the February ballot.

First adopted in 1993, the measure imposes a 3 percent tax on telephone, gas, water, wastewater and cable television services, which then goes to the city's general fund, according to the staff report. The measure was continued by voters in 1996, 2000 and 2004, and raised approximately $715,000 in 2006-2007, or approximately 10 percent of the city's general fund.

The new measure would keep the tax at 3 percent, but would raise the cap from $1,000 to $1,500 for the city's biggest users, which would also be adjusted by the consumer price index starting in 2010. The new measure would also be in place for eight years, rather than four, and would expire in 2016.

The current tax expires automatically Nov. 30, 2008, and if a new one isn't in place by then, the city stands to lose out on its general fund contributions.

Machi said the council is trying to get the measure on the February ballot so if it is turned down by voters, it would have another shot on the November ballot before the current tax expires. But Machi said he thinks voters recognize the tax's importance.

"It's something that people are used to and they know it's a good use of their money, so they have been supportive of it the last couple times," he said, adding that the city will probably launch an advertising campaign to boost public support.

In other matters, a development project more than five years in the making will look to the council for approval of its next step.

The project aims to turn the old Twin Harbors Mill site at the corner of 10th and Q streets into a mixed use space with a 3.1 acre, 10-lot subdivision, the development of eight new lots for single-family use and a light industrial building.

Conlon said the single-family homes were worked into plans after the developer met with neighbors and heard their concerns over having their homes look out onto light industrial buildings.

"I think this is a particularly good example of a developer working with the neighborhood, meeting their needs and giving them a face to the project that will really fit in with the neighborhood," Conlon said.

If You Go:

What: Arcata City Council

When: 6 p.m. Wednesday

Where: City Council Chambers, 736 F St.

[palmspringsbum]

Council fine-tunes role of marijuana task force

by Cerena Johnson, Eureka Reporter
October 18th, 2007


The Arcata City Council approved the creation of a working group Tuesday to identify guidelines for land-use regulations of marijuana grow houses and clinics.

The council initially voted to create a marijuana task force at its Oct. 3 meeting.

Tuesday, city staff requested the council consider categories of participants, initiate recruiting and prepare a timeline and scope of work to be undertaken by the task force.

Residents and council members reiterated previous concerns about regulation, including public safety and infringement on patients’ rights.

Ultimately, the council unanimously agreed to direct city staff to put together a working group in a manner similar to the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors’ 215 task force, comprising representatives of different interested parties.

The group will define issues based on the city’s staff report and points agreed on by the council.

The council previously agreed on a need to regulate medical marijuana clinics and grow houses through land-use regulations or the upcoming land-use code, and confirmed that personal medical marijuana grows in residential zones would only be allowed as “accessory use,” subject to specific standards.

Additionally, the council came to a consensus that commercial and central business district zones are appropriate locations for clinics, and also that citing criteria should be required to buffer schools and playgrounds from marijuana clinics.

In order to enable a more thorough review of community concerns, the working group will be given a broader timeline, corresponding with the city’s budget and goal-setting processes.

A number of issues remained that the council did not come to a consensus on, including what constitutes “accessory use” of marijuana, as well as what acceptable buffers around clinics and grow houses should be, and whether additional regulation of medical marijuana clinics will be necessary.

Staff expressed concern at the amount of time and city resources a potential task force would utilize, and at lack of clear direction provided by the council to the proposed task force.

Community Development Director Tom Conlon said if the city adopts regulations, it would ultimately be the city’s responsibility to enforce them.

The city does not have a separate budget for enforcement of the regulations.

Mayor Harmony Groves and Councilmember Paul Pitino agreed that however the task force or group is tailored, clear direction needs to be provided. They drew comparison to the city’s Homeless Task Force, which failed without clear direction and leadership.

“We may have subtle differences, but I think we are all trying to head in the same direction,” Councilmember Mark Wheetley said. He proposed a technical group spearheaded by the city manager to develop a framework for the regulations.

Wheetley’s proposal was not adopted. Council members expressed concern at the amount of staff time and finances that would be required.

“I think we need balance on this issue,” Groves said, and advocated that scoping of the issue correspond with the city’s future goals.

“What really has to be done is some very strong, specific policy decisions,” said City Manager Michael Hackett.

“We don’t need to reinvent the wheel here again,” said Councilmember Michael Machi, who introduced the motion to create a group based on the county’s.

[palmspringsbum]

Gold From Green In A Gray Area

<span class=postbigbold>You might be surprised who profits from the semi-legal marijuana trade</span>

by Bob Doran, North Coast Journal
November 8th, 2007


A gentleman with a neatly trimmed beard stands at the counter of an Arcata business on a weekday morning and asks the clerk for an eighth of an ounce of Trainwreck, a popular strain of sinsemilla marijuana. The young woman on the other side of a glass partition, who looks to be a typical Arcata college student, reaches under the counter and produces a bag of fresh green buds. She pours a portion into a paper cup set on an electronic scale, then carefully transfers it to a plastic bag.As she does so, the customer asks questions about other strains available. He’s looking for some variety. He ends up buying small bags of several different kinds, paying the going rate — $40 per eighth of an ounce — with a handful of $20 bills.

Variety is definitely something the Humboldt Cooperative (popularly known as THC) has in spades. A display behind the glass shows an array of 20 varieties of sinsemilla buds available to those with the proper doctor’s recommendation. A dry-erase board above them tells whether the individual variety is a sativa strain, an indica strain or a cross.

The counter also holds a row of small, colorful, hand-blown glass jars for sale, along with copies of an autobiography by Grateful Dead bassist Phil Lesh. A bulletin board on one side of the entrance is crowded with fliers for rock and reggae concerts. A framed poster on the other side of the door shows a Native America smoking a peace pipe. The overall feel of the place is more akin to a crowded little head shop than a doctor’s office or pharmacy. But this is a head shop hippies in the ’60s only dreamed about, one where the sale of pot is legal — at least under state, county and city law. This is an officially sanctioned medical marijuana dispensary.

A billowing cloud of controversy surrounding medical marijuana has made it the hot topic du jour in Arcata. Last month, after an indoor medical marijuana growing operation burned in a rental house, the subject jumped from the front pages of local newspapers to the City Council chambers. City staff from the planning, fire and police departments had been chewing on the perceived problem at weekly confabs for over a year, but the house fire moved the issue to the forefront of public debate.

Worried homeowners, pot activists and representatives from the business community all took their turn at the microphone at the Oct. 17 City Council meeting, as did Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond. Dressed in his usual dark suit and tie, Richmond weighed in on the negative impacts of the marijuana business, touching on housing issues, fire safety and danger from “the criminal element associated with marijuana growth.”

“This community has waited too long to deal with this issue,” he said. “It’s now in your laps because you’ve let it lapse before.”

Richmond then turned the mic over to his colleague Vincent Feliz, a pony-tailed drug and alcohol counselor from the university who said he finds it “scary” that Humboldt regards marijuana culture in such a “complacent” manner.

“It’s in the mall — we have a Trainwreck sweatshirt,” Feliz said. “Humboldt County is known [for] marijuana. It’s affecting recruiting at Humboldt State and anyone who wants to come into the county.”

After challenging the older generation to smoke the stronger pot grown today and see how different it is, Feliz stated what may seem an obvious fact: “It is a money-making business.”

It’s true, there’s gold in those green buds. How much is anybody’s guess. Since 1996, when California voters passed Proposition 215 and legalized marijuana for medical use, the drug has slowly been working its way out of the shadows. There’s still not much data on the marijuana trade — almost none on the black market side and precious little on the medical marijuana gray market. That said, according to a report in The Economist magazine last month, pot is California’s biggest cash crop, surpassing grapes. Everyone agrees, it’s a lucrative business.

And that fact might make things difficult for those who, like Richmond, oppose the ever-expanding marijuana trade in Humboldt County. In Arcata, at least, some high-powered members of the business establishment are getting their taste of the proceeds. So is the public. It’s not just the problems of the marijuana trade in the City Council’s lap — it’s the profits, too.

It’s not news to anyone that plenty of legitimate businesses are thriving off the marijuana gray market. Examples? Take a look in the new phonebook and you’ll find a dozen or more hydroponic supply businesses. Know anybody who grows hydroponic tomatoes or lettuce?

But with medical marijuana becoming more and more mainstream, even straight businesses are getting their cut. One such business is the Danco Group, Arcata’s largest contractor and real estate company. The Humboldt Cooperative is only one of four medical marijuana dispensaries in Arcata. Danco is currently landlord to two of those dispensaries, and it’s building a brand-spanking-new facility right off the Arcata Plaza for another of them.

Danco manages the large building that once housed Arcata’s Isaacson Ford auto dealership, at the corner of Sixth and I streets. The building complex is currently home to two medical marijuana dispensaries — the Humboldt Cooperative and the Humboldt Patient Resource Center — as well as a hydroponics store. Both dispensaries grow marijuana on site. (Danco manages the property through one of its arms, Danco Property Management. It’s owned by a land partnership called RUI Partners, whose ownership is not clear.)

You’ll also see the Danco name in the window of the former P.C. Sacchi Chevy dealership next door to the Arcata Post Office, immediately off the Arcata Plaza, which is currently being remodeled. Soon the Sacchi building will be home to Humboldt Medical Supply (HMS), a medical marijuana clinic currently located in a hole in the wall office on Eleventh Street. HMS’s plans will feature an “intake area,” where patients will be able to purchase their marijuana, as well as a large growing operation. The Sacchi property belongs to JBL Plaza Associates, a partnership between three prominent local businessmen — “J” for Dan Johnson of Danco, “B” for local realtor Mark Burtchett and “L” for Paul Lubitz of Holly Yashi Jewelry.

In an e-mailed statement, Danco spokesperson Lindsey Myers emphasized that all the facilities strictly comply with the law.

“In the case of the Sacchi building, Danco Builders has been hired to build a new space for HMS,” she wrote. “All construction is specific to the intended use and according to Uniform Building Code.” As for the businesses in the Isaacson lot, Myers said that the marijuana operations there carry insurance policies and have promised not to engage in “illegal” activities.

“They are commercial tenants and we manage their leases just like any other commercial tenant,” Myers wrote. Myers declined to give exact figures, but she said that Danco’s rental rates for the three dispensaries are comparable to other commercial properties in the city.

The city of Arcata has been intimately involved in the project underway in Danco’s revamped Sacchi building, which will also host a new Rita’s Mexican Restaurant, next door to HMS. The restaurant side will have to undergo a long series of inspections with everyone from the building and health departments to the fire marshal making sure all systems meet strict institutional standards.

There will be far fewer hoops for the dispensary, as there aren’t established standards specific to facilities for growing, processing and distributing marijuana. As Arcata Community Development Director Tom Conlon explained, all that’s required at this point is a business license and a building plan that meets building code regulations.

“All we care about is that it’s located in the appropriate zoning area and that the building is safe, as far as the electrical systems,” he said. “The wiring and breakers have to be the right size.”

There was one element of the HMS building design that Conlon’s department weighed in on. According to Conlon, an early draft of the layout for the business indicated that the majority of the space would be used for a growing operation. That goes against a provision of the code for businesses in the downtown commercial district, since the grow is considered a manufacturing use. Regulations call for less than 50 percent of a building’s floor space be used for manufacturing operations. The designs were revised accordingly.

Perhaps it’s appropriate that the majority of medical marijuana dispensaries in Arcata will soon be located in the town’s old auto dealerships. Once upon a time, those businesses were among the biggest contributors to the city of Arcata’s budget. They took in plenty of cash, and so passed on a great deal of sales tax revenue to the city. Now, reinvigorated with marijuana dispensaries, those old buildings have the potential to once again make a substantial contribution to the city’s bottom line.

There’s a common misconception when it comes to the medical marijuana trade. Probably because the business has its roots in the black market, most assume that no one involved pays taxes.

The question came up in passing when the Arcata council was deliberating on medical pot issues. When discussion turned to a proposal to cap the number of dispensaries, Councilman Paul Pitino brought up a salient point: He’d noticed that one of the dispensaries, the Humboldt Cooperative, was listed as “one of the largest sales tax payers in Arcata,” in a recent city report on tax contributions.

“Are we going to arbitrarily limit something that’s funding the city?” he wondered aloud.

Dennis Turner of the Humboldt Cooperative is proud of the fact that his business pays its taxes. He’s owner of what he claims is the largest dispensary in Arcata — and by extension, in Humboldt County, since there are currently no dispensaries outside the Arcata city limits. Turner told the City Council that the Cooperative serves 5,200 patients and buys from “over 80 growers.” That’s on top of the product that the Cooperative grows at its Isaacson’s facility.

“We got a state of California sales permit the day we opened,” he noted in a recent interview. He claimed that his was one of the first dispensaries to do so, and that his letters to the state Board of Equalization helped inspire that agency’s decision to establish an official system for collecting taxes on medical pot.

“We’re extremely interactive with government,” he said. “We don’t have any issues with that. We know what to do and we do it. So we pay our taxes. We got our federal tax ID number and started 1099-ing the growers.”

That’s right — it’s not just sales tax that’s paid by those associated with the dispensary. The growers pay income tax too, at least some of them.

“I don’t want to give exact numbers, but we have a lot of growers,” said Turner. “They’re all on 1099s. So we have a bunch of taxpayers on our hands — good people, decent people.”

As Turner spoke with a reporter at the co-op, a dispensary employee interrupted to say that a grower has come in who needed to fill out his 1099. The young man, clean-shaven with close-cropped hair, stood on the other side of the glass. A digital photo identifying him was displayed on a computer screen on the counter. An office worker in the back produced a form, the grower filled it out, the transaction went through and was duly recorded. At some point a quarterly report will be sent to the IRS regarding the sale.

What happens if the grower subsequently fails to report his income when (and if) he files his taxes? “The IRS sends us a list of those who don’t pay their taxes,” Turner explained. “They told us, ‘For now on you will withhold 25 percent or 28 percent [from that client] and send it in quarterly.’”

He admits that some growers balk at the prospect of reporting pot income to the IRS or having income tax withheld — they take their business elsewhere and don’t return.

For his part, Turner says he’s been waiting for the city to get around to addressing the issues surrounding dispensaries and grow houses. “It’s been a long time coming,” he said. “You need rules. You need standards. You need parameters for these places.

“This is what I call ‘gray zone programming,’” he said, echoing a recurring theme regarding regulation of medical marijuana. With 215 and 420, much is left to interpretation. There’s not much black and white.

“If we don’t regulate we’re going to lose out. When I started this, I wanted to bring accountability to medical cannabis. Remember there were no rules and regulations for any of this at all,” which meant the operators have had to make up their own rules.

At its Oct. 17 meeting, the Arcata City Council set up a “medical marijuana working group” to study the medical marijuana industry in Arcata, and to devise policies to limit its negative impact. And though the working group has yet to meet, city officials are already thinking about how to tackle the problem.

Where will the council and its working group take the issue? It’s hard to say, but everyone agrees that Proposition 215 is here to say. And there seems to be a consensus that the city should get more involved in the marijuana trade by encouraging growers to limit operations to the city’s commercial and perhaps industrial areas.

Community Development Directory Tom Conlon won’t be around to see the fallout — not as a city employee, anyway. He’s set to retire before the end of the year. But he still has some ideas on potential parameters.

“The clinics and co-ops should go in some specific zone so we know where they are,” he said. “We should look at standards about relationship to sensitive neighbors like schools and parks. If people are growing for other than their own personal use, we think they would have to be in the commercial or industrial zone.”

As far as other standards regulating grows, Conlon would just as soon see Arcata set them far stricter than the county guidelines, which allow for 100 square feet of growing space and three pounds processed marijuana. He’d rather see the city use the state’s minimum: six mature plants and eight ounces of processed pot.

“That would be for residential zones,” Conlon said. “We’re saying you could go crazy in the commercial areas ... Nobody’s going to be building a new sawmill, and the Hershey Bar and Toyota factories never appeared, so we’re looking at other uses. Why not a medical office?”

It may be worth noting that Conlon’s interest in this issue may extend beyond his employment by the city. As he intimated during a break at one of the council meetings last month, his home in the Arcata hills is between two grow houses.

For the most part, Arcata Police Chief Randy Mendoza has been quiet when it comes to medical marijuana. But he does have his own opinions on where he’d like to see things go.

“I hope the city will come up with an equitable plan that will restrict the location of large grows to specific areas, that they are limited to the central business district where they belong,” he said.

Having lived in Arcata for almost 30 years, Mendoza says he knows people from “all over the political spectrum. Friends who describe themselves as progressive used to tell me ‘Marijuana is a victimless crime, leave it alone.’ Now they’re saying, ‘You’ve gotta do something.’ I see the political consensus changing here.”

Vice Mayor Mark Wheetley has been studying the issue, looking primarily at the public safety angles. As to residential grows, he definitely favors standards that discourage conversion of entire houses for production.

“We should begin looking at smart ways to create environmentally-friendly energy-efficient operations,” he said. “I wouldn’t be opposed to taking a look at doing some pilot projects, seeing if we could use warehouses or some of the storage facilities, retrofit them with solar and smart irrigation systems, high level of security, energy efficient lighting.”

There wasn’t much talk of the financial impact of the business of producing and selling marijuana at the city’s Oct. 17 council meeting. An exception was a somewhat disjointed speech by Steve Gasparas, owner of the city’s fourth marijuana dispensary, the Arcata iCenter.

Clad casually in a hooded jacket and ball cap, he addressed the council after President Richmond and Vincent Feliz and disputed their suggestion that Humboldt County’s association with marijuana is a negative thing. On the contrary, he sees weed as a boon to the local economy, something that should be encouraged.

The dispensary operator figures without it, “this town would be half of what it is. Eureka wouldn’t be what it is. It just brings in so much money.” In his mind the pot trade is what “makes this area survive. It would just be another community along the coast if we didn’t have it going as well as we do. Arcata embraces it and that’s why it’s doing so well.”

It’s not likely you’ll find everyone in the business community signing on to that way of thinking, but there’s no denying that there’s a seed of truth in what he says. Like it or not 215 is here to stay, and so is the money that comes with it.

[palmspringsbum]

City Council to revisit pot grow houses and clinics issue

The Eureka Reporter
12/18/2007


The issue of regulating marijuana grow houses and clinics returns to the Arcata City Council tonight.

City staff is requesting the council provide direction in preparing draft standards for personal marijuana growing in residential zones based on Senate Bill 420 guidelines and one Proposition 215 recommendation per residence, according to a staff report.

Once standards are established, staff is recommending they be incorporated into the draft land-use code through a public hearing process before the Planning Commission and then taken to the City Council for adoption.

Additionally, the council will consider establishing a medical marijuana working group or task force for regulating medical marijuana clinics.

At its Oct. 17 meeting, the council directed city staff to establish a working group to make recommendations to the Planning Commission and City Council on land-use standards necessary to regulate the location, scale and operations of medical marijuana grows as accessory use in residential zones and clinics in the general commercial and central business district, according to the staff report.

Council members suggested the process be approached much like Humboldt County’s medical marijuana task force.

Staff found that this would require an ordinance, though the City Council has not prepared a draft ordinance for review.

Additionally, funding will be required for a working group or task force, which will involve additional budgeting and long hours on behalf of the committee.

The topic of regulating grow houses and clinics received extensive public comment in previous City Council meetings.

During those meetings, the council reached a consensus on a number of issues, including a need for regulation through the land-use development guide or land-use code and agreement that personal medical marijuana grows in residential zones be allowed only as an accessory use — limited to one grow in any residence and with specific standards.

Additionally, the council confirmed that the commercial and central business district zones are the appropriate land-use designations for medical marijuana clinics, without specifying a cap on the number of clinics allowed per district.

The council also decided it would like to establish citing criteria for clinics to buffer schools and playgrounds.

What the council has not decided, however, is what should constitute accessory residential use for personal marijuana grows.

Other issues the council will be focusing on include determining if any additional regulation of clinics and cooperatives will be needed and what adequate buffers should be in place.

In other business, the council will hold a public hearing to consider adopting a resolution authorizing the submittal of up to a $500,000 CDBG economic enterprise grant to capitalize the city’s business loan fund to create jobs.

The council will also be appointing a member to the Open Space and Agriculture Committee for a term expiring in April 2009, as well as hear an update on Humboldt State University easements, or jurisdiction of property, and an update on a State Transportation Improvement Plan project application.

The Arcata City Council will meet at 6 p.m. in the Council Chamber at City Hall.


<hr class=postrule>

<center><small>Copyright (C) 2005, The Eureka Reporter. All rights reserved </small></center>

[palmspringsbum]

Top Ten Stories of 2007

<span class=postbigbold>Year of the Shuffle</span>

The North Coast Journal
By Hank Sims

December 20, 2007


<span class=postbigbold>No. 3
Arcata Grows</span>

Humboldt County has freaked out about the marijuana trade plenty of times in the past. But not in the last 10 years or so, and certainly not in the city of Arcata, whose nonsmoking populace generally takes a live-and-let-live view of the demon weed. But when a fire sparked by an indoor grow nearly burned down a rental home in September, the city suddenly awoke, as if from a stupor, and found that the green stuff had just about taken over the town.

It turns out that Proposition 215, the measure that legalized marijuana for medical use that California voters passed in 1996, had some unintended consequences. Now it’s estimated that there are literally hundreds of homes in the Arcata city limits that are given over to the semi-legal production of marijuana. No one lives in many of them. There are four medical cannabis clinics in town, where anyone with a doctor’s recommendation — in practice, anyone who wants one — can walk in off the street and purchase bud. Three of those four clinics lease their space from some subsidiary of Danco, the town’s most prominent developer. And there have since been more fires.

Humboldt State University President Rollin Richmond has long been the lone dissenting voice in city policy concerning tolerance of the herb; he feels that it gives the city a bad image and thinks that it dissuades new students from attending his school. But now there are whole slews of concerned citizens, and if they’re not yet ready to adopt a no-tolerance policy they’re at least wringing their hands.

The situation is complicated by the fact that marijuana is undeniably big business, and everyone is getting at least a slice of the pie by one means or another. Still, there is broad consensus that things need to be reined in somehow. Some have proposed shooing growers off into industrial areas. On Wednesday, Dec. 19, the City Council was considering a measure that would limit indoor medical marijuana grows to one patient per house. Arcata being Arcata, some have proposed that the city should build its own massive indoor weed facility, powered by environmentally friendly electricity, which it could then sharecrop out to its citizens at ultra-low rates.

All told, it’s a fine line the city has to walk if it hopes to simultaneously crack down and maintain its image of itself. And the feds are waiting in the wings, eager for their cue. Given the pace of city government, it will be a miracle if it has time to accomplish anything.

[palmspringsbum]

Planco bans downtown grows – March 4, 2008

The Arcata Eye


ARCATA – The burgeoning legal marijuana trade downtown took a hit last week as the Planning Commission denied a building permit for a cultivation facility to The Humboldt Cooperative (THC), one of three medical cannabis dispensaries located in the Central Business District.

The denial, which may be appealed to the City Council, renders moot a similar building permit application by the just-opened Humboldt Medical Supply (HMS) dispensary.

In a sequence of itemized findings, the Planco decided that cannabis dispensaries are medical offices; that medical marijuana growing is neither an allowed use or “accessory” use; and that such growing is agriculture, which is not allowed downtown.

Medical marijuana cultivation will still be allowed in industrial zones away from the Central Business District. Processing – that is, drying, weighing and packaging – the marijuana will be allowed in those zones, but not dispensing.

If the decisions stand, THC, which already maintains a large-scale marijuana grow in the former Isackson Ford body shop, may have to dismantle it. HMS, which just opened the front office portion of its operation at the former P.C. Sacchi Chevrolet garage, currently cultivates its medicine elsewhere but had prepared three large rooms there for cultivation.

The third business district cannabis dispensary, Humboldt Patient Resource Center (HPRC), also grows marijuana on site. While HPRC’s grow wasn’t the subject of the Planco hearing, the decisions could eventually affect its grow as well, Community Development Director Larry Oetker acknowledged Friday.

In the wake of the decisions, managers of the three downtown clinics met at HMS Thursday afternoon to evaluate the situation and plan their response. There are mixed reports as to whether the clinicians found anything useful in the current Land Use Development Guide (LUDG) on which to hang their hat in terms of an appeal.

Still, the council does have the power to override the Planco on other grounds apart from the LUDG. It could also counter the commission’s land use decision regarding agriculture downtown in formulating the new Land Use Code, which will replace the LUDG.

Carla Ritter, who manages the dispensary whose building permit was denied, called the whole matter a “big silliness.” She said that the real problem facing Arcata insofar as medical cannabis is unregulated grow houses and their impacts rather than the professionally managed grows at the dispensaries.

“The dialogue didn’t seem to be on point,” Ritter said. “We should separate the dispensaries’ grows from the grow houses, because that’s the issue.”

She and others pointed out that the effect of the decision could be to increase clinic purchases from unlicensed and unregulated grow houses. Clinicians have said that they acquire cannabis from grow house merchants reluctantly, because they don’t know what conditions the cannabis medicine has been grown under – for example, what types of mold-suppressing fumigants might be used, and the cleanliness of the processing facilities, which often include bathrooms.

<span class=postbigbold>Meeting machinations</span>

The Planning Commission meeting which threw the existing co-located grow-process-dispense paradigm for a loop was as festooned with cannabis news nuggets as a bud-bedecked, mature marijuana plant.

Despite the strongly-held opinions and big money involved in the contemporary cannabis scene, and unlike typically emotion-laden City Council meetings on the matter, the commission’s discussion remained mostly on track as it burned through the sequence of issues and possible findings set forth by Oetker.

Senior Planner Mike Mullen noted that medical marijuana dispensaries weren’t anticipated in the 1970s, when the current LUDG was developed. However, the current set of questions are useful in formulating language for the coming LUC.

Oetker described HMC as eager to cooperate in obtaining a building permit after being notified of the need for one by City building officials. He again stressed that although the City Council had previously expressed eagerness to review the issue of downtown cannabis cultivation, agriculture is not an allowed use in the LUDG, so the building permit became Planco business.

“We have to follow the procedures outlined in the LUDG,” Oetker said. “Those procedures say that those determinations should be forwarded on to the Planning Commission to review.”

Oetker also sought to keep the discussion on topic by enumerating the marijuana-related matters not being presented for review, including Prop 215, personal medical or recreational marijuana cultivation and use, grow houses or existing and unpermitted dispensaries that grow, process and dispense.

“We’re discussing a single building permit application that’s before us,” Oetker said. He stated his opinion that THC’s 3,650 square foot cultivation operation was not a subordinate use to its 477 square foot front-office dispensary business, which is in a separate building.

He said the commission was the most appropriate forum to determine land use designations for the cultivation, processing and dispensing of medical cannabis.

As to whether cannabis dispensaries are equivalent to medical offices or pharmacies, commissioners wondered whether they had medically trained personnel on staff.

“I was surprised to learn that [at] some of the dispensaries in town, it’s just a matter of, any Joe off the street can go and pay 50 bucks for a business license, rent commercial space and start selling pot,” said Chair Robert Flint. He said a medical office would be more like the licensed caregiver who was recently granted a Conditional Use Permit to dispense – but not grow – cannabis at the Cooper Building on Samoa Boulevard.

Commissioner Paul Hagen called the cultivation-processing-dispensing model “a whole new animal” that requires a complete redefinition.

Ritter said that while THC doesn’t have an in-house pharmacist, potential customers must undergo “very, very regulated process that potential patients must undergo to gain access to cannabis there." She offered to move the dispensary office into the grow room area if that would help meet legal requirements. She said THC grows its crops organically and with little to no environmental impact.

HMS Director Eric Heimstadt said the now-defunct Humboldt Medical Cannabis Center had a permit for a grow dating back to the 1990s, and that HPRC also had a permit. Heimstadt cited provisions of the Arcata Municipal Code and LUDG that he said seem to permit current clinic practices.

By way of encouraging the commission to allow ag use, he said on-site growing gives clinicians more control and confidence in the purity of the marijuana. He also noted that the clinics provide jobs and bring considerable tax revenue to the City.

Flint asked if patients’ pot purchases were limited in terms of quantity at HMS, and Heimstadt said they were. Flint further asked if HMS cross-checks with other clinics to ensure that patients aren’t shopping at multiple sources, and Heimstadt said no. HMS Nurse Pam Sistrom said the clinic grows help suppress grow house proliferation.

Commissioners then discussed the multifold issues, debating whether or not cannabis cultivation is agriculture. It ultimately agreed with Oetker that it is by a 6–1 vote, and also voted that processing isn’t allowed at medical office-type dispensaries. Those determinations essentially killed the THC building permit.

<span class=postbigbold>DEA on the way?</span>

Hagen said he and most others have no wish to counter the Compassionate Use Act. Flint agreed, and further asserted that “pot is going to be a problem in society until it’s legal everywhere, because that would devalue it.”

He said the present legal climate encourages illegal and indoor grows with innumerable thousand-watt lamps consuming vast amounts of energy, some powered by polluting diesel generators. “There’s your environmental damage,” he said.

Flint also said that Arcata’s explosive dispensary and cannabis grow scene is “so over the top... that at any moment the DEA could come in and crack down and shut it all down.” Said Flint, “They’ve done that in Oakland, and don’t think we’re hiding behind the Redwood Curtain. The DEA knows where Humboldt County is... and I think they know what’s going on here.”

That, he said, would end access to medical cannabis for “people who really need it... I think that’s a legitimate concern.”

Oetker said that in almost any other community, the Planco’s decisons would be considered extremely tolerant. “You can still sell medical marijuana in downtown Arcata, and you can still grow medical marijuana in the industrial areas without a land use permit,” Oetker said.

[palmspringsbum]

Flower shop protests pot farm ban – March 11, 2008

The Arcata Eye
Kevin L. Hoover
Eye Editor


SIXTH & I STREETS – It turns out that The Humboldt Cooperative (THC) isn’t a medical marijuana dispensary after all.

It’s a flower shop.

That’s the basis of an appeal filed last Friday, March 7 by the booming cannabis vendor at Sixth and I streets.

At its Feb. 26 meeting, the Planning Commission determined that commercial marijuana cultivation is agriculture, and that agriculture is not allowed in the Central Businesses District (CBD). Cannabis vendors THC and the Humboldt Patient Resource Center both maintain massive marijuana grows and are both located in the CBD. So is the new Humboldt Medical Supply cannabis clinic, which had prepared grow rooms but not yet begun cultivation.

The Planco ruling effectively killed building permits counted on by THC and Humboldt Medical Supply, and management of those dispensaries and HPRC subsequently met to consider grounds for a response.

Friday, Dennis Turner, who lists himself as CEO of THC, filed an appeal stating that the Planco “was given inadequate and inaccurate information regarding our formal designation, which is floricultural, not medical. We are a retail floricultural outlet, and as such are allowed to grow in container plants on location [sic], as referenced in the Arcata Land Use Guide. The State of California has not yet designated cannabis as a ‘medicine’ per say [sic]. It is unlawful to claim medical status at this time.”

The appeal further states that “The chronological record demonstrates the ‘Central Business District’ as the location for all Prop 215 activities... denying our existing nursery operation would create a fundamental un-fairness and hardship due to loss of jobs and revenue, and inability to provide for the poor.”

The online encyclopedia Wikipedia defines floriculture as “a discipline of horticulture concerned with the cultivation of flowering and ornamental plants for gardens and for floristry... Floriculture crops include bedding plants, flowering plants, foliage plants or houseplants, cut cultivated greens and cut flowers... The major flowering plants are poinsettias, orchids, florist chrysanthemums and finished florist azaleas.”

Varieties of cannabis “flowers” sold at THC (as seen on page A1 of last week’s Eye) include Dynamite, Trainwreck and Brainwreck. The flowers are delivered to customers through a security window in the form of dessicated lumps in a plastic baggie.

Turner’s appeal seems to contradict a letter he sent the City Council last November, in which he asked the City to implement price controls on medical marijuana. In the letter, written on behalf of “The Humboldt California Association,” located at the same address as THC, Turner advocates for maintaining higher prices for “medical cannabis” on behalf of his and other cannabis dispensaries so as to prevent low-priced cannabis from reaching the street.

That letter also warns the City of a drop-off in tax revenue if medical cannabis is sold at low cost, and lists his facility’s sales tax payout as $120,000 per year.

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[palmspringsbum]

Eureka considers pot dispensaries as possible funding source

Donna Tam/The Times-Standard
Posted: 04/02/2009 01:32:26 AM PDT


As Eureka talks about establishing some regulated medical marijuana dispensaries as a way to increase the city's tax revenue, Arcata said it's still working on collecting years' worth of sales tax from its dispensaries.

At a Eureka City Council budget goal-setting session Tuesday night, Councilwoman Linda Atkins suggested that the city pursue a way to establish regulated medical marijuana dispensaries as a way to increase revenue and tackle problems associated with grow houses in the community.

”It's already there, it's happening in our community and if we continue to let it happen ... underground, it's going to be detrimental to our community,” Atkins said.

At the next City Council meeting, she said she will formally ask staff to look into the possibility of forming some dispensary regulations. Atkins said she thinks that if the city keeps the dispensaries tightly regulated, the city will benefit.

Other cities, she said, are estimating that they've been able to raise between $500,000 and $1.5 million through medical marijuana dispensary taxes.

But officials in Arcata, which currently has four dispensaries operating, said the city has encountered some difficulties in benefiting from those taxes.

Arcata's Finance Director Janet Luzzi said her records show one of the four paid all of its sales tax. Arcata is supposed to receive 1 percent of the sales tax businesses report to the state Board of Equalization, she said. In the last few years, the state has reported sales tax from two of the dispensaries, and one of those paid only a small amount, she said.

Luzzi said state confidentiality laws preclude her from revealing which dispensaries are not paying.

When contacted by the Times-Standard, representatives from three of the dispensaries said they have been paying taxes to the state.

Stephen Gasparas of the Arcata iCenter, attorney Greg Allen of Humboldt Medical Supply and Carla Ritter of The Humboldt Cooperative said their respective organizations have been dutifully paying taxes.

Attempts to contact the Humboldt Patient Resource Center were unsuccessful.

Allen said dispensaries welcome being a part of the taxation process, since it validates them as a part of the business community.

”This industry historically has been one created by outlaws. Historically, because it's been done by outlaws, it has not been taxed,” he said. “The fact that we're even having this discussion now is a big example of how far it has come.”

The board amended its sales tax policy in 2005 to allow vendors of medical marijuana to apply for a seller's permit, and report and pay the taxes due on sales.

Sales tax amounts are reported to the state, which then reallocates the money to local agencies based on the total of the return, according to Anita Gore, spokeswoman for the state Board of Equalization.

Gore said the state is not allowed to comment on the revenue of specific businesses, due to taxpayer confidentiality rules, and the board's database does not provide a breakdown of which permitted businesses are medical marijuana dispensaries since the information is self-reported.

But the state does have methods in place for ensuring that businesses are reporting sales tax amounts accurately, she said.

”We are responsible for the auditing of companies to make sure they pay the appropriate amount of tax,” Gore said, adding that a statewide compliance and outreach program was initiated in September. The program will have specialists systemically visiting individual businesses -- ZIP code by ZIP code -- to observe their transactions.

For the city of Arcata's purposes, Luzzi said she will need to see some proof that sales tax is being reported from the dispensaries. She said there may be some reporting issues that she is not aware of, and she has tried to take that into consideration.

Luzzi added that she sent out a letter in March 2008 in hopes it would change the situation. She said she is waiting to see if the sales tax revenue will come through by December, when all the dispensaries need to be in compliance with the city's new land use codes.

If there is no change, she said she will vigorously pursue the issue.

Arcata Mayor Mark Wheetely said the probelms surrounding the collection of sales tax from dispensaries illustrates how medical marijuana is uncharted territory for most agencies.

”There's been this rather blurry process,” he said, adding that it seems the policies of state and local agencies may now finally be converging. Arcata may need to revisit its policies on medical marijuana taxes if things continue to clash, he said.

Donna Tam can be reached at 441-0532 or dtam@times-standard.com.