The Roswell City Council debated its own rules on approving zoning variances for cannabis-related businesses during its meeting Thursday night.
Albuquerque-based PurLife applied to open a retail cannabis business at 323 and 325 S. Main St. The property is just over 700 feet from a location that was approved last month for a cannabis retail store for Oso Cannabis. City code requires cannabis businesses to be located no less than one quarter-mile apart, but the city council voted 7-0 to approve a zoning variance along with the zoning change and conditional use permit.
The PurLife location is also less than 360 feet away from a Head Start daycare on property owned by Chaves County, which prompted a letter of protest from the county.
Councilor Edward Heldenbrand asked Community Development Director Kevin Maevers why PurLife’s application was being recommended if city code requires businesses be 1,320 feet apart. Heldenbrand was elected after the cannabis codes were approved.
“Give me the logic of why we passed that ordinance and why you now feel it’s OK we violate that distance,” Heldenbrand said.
Maevers said every retail project has the opportunity to request a zoning variance and his department was only presenting the facts of the zoning case.
“The applicant felt this location was appropriate. They filled out the paperwork, asked for a variance of our distance setback requirements. It is up to the city council to determine whether or not that’s appropriate,” Maevers said.
Asked why the Planning and Zoning Commission recommended its approval, Maevers said the commission, knowing the city council has final approval of zoning cases, voted to move the project forward to be heard by the council.
Councilor Jeanine Corn-Best, who was on the council and was part of a committee that formed the cannabis regulations last year, said the codes were developed so that the council could make a determination of retail cannabis projects on a case-by-case basis.
“Each case is a little different. If this one’s a little closer than the others and we feel that it’s OK because of the traffic and we understand all of that, that’s fine. If we feel we need to stick with what we put in the ordinance, it’s all case-by-case. This is a moving animal,” she said.
Corn-Best said after reviewing PurLife’s documents, she was confident that the proximity to another cannabis business would not be a problem.
“They gave us more than what we asked for. I’m sure they run their business this way so they are going to take care and not mess up,” she said. “If it was another establishment that they had to go back and forth three or four times to get all their information, they weren’t organized, they didn’t have their lawyers in line … I would have reservations about that.”
Indy White, Albuquerque, one of the owners of PurLife, said the company has been leasing the building for a year. He said he started the company seven years ago as a medical dispensary with Roswell native Jason Bowles and other partners.
“We have spent over $100,000 in rent so far and equipment at that facility. This would be a large financial hit to us if we were not able to open this facility like we originally planned on,” he said.
White said PurLife expects to hire 12 full-time employees for the Roswell store, who will receive benefits including full health, vision and dental insurance and a matched 401(k).
White also addressed the county’s protest over the proximity to the Head Start facility. In the letter, Chaves County public services director Mac Rogers wrote that because marijuana is considered a controlled substance by the federal government, having a cannabis store within the “drug-free school zone” distance of 1,000 feet specified in state law could jeopardize the daycare’s federal funding.
White said he respected the county’s concerns but he disagreed with the argument.
“If we’re speaking just of New Mexico alone, I found just by Google searching that there are four dispensaries within 1,000 feet of a Head Start program,” he said.
Those include Portales, Los Lunas, Clovis and Santa Fe, he said.
“There has not been a single school or Head Start program that I could find in the entire country that has lost any form of federal funding or grants simply because of their proximity to a dispensary,” he said.
The business’s application was approved 7-0. Councilors Jason Perry, Angela Moore and Savino Sanchez were absent from the meeting.
In other action, the council also debated the merits of the Volunteer Value Program, which would offer $25 in credit to nonprofit organizations for each hour their members volunteered at city events. The credit would be applied to rental fees for city facilities.
“The city is short-staffed. We’re all kind of stretched out and this would allow us to have a win-win solution for organizations and for the city,” Public Affairs Director Juanita Jennings said.
It would help the organizations if they have requirements for volunteer hours, as well as help their budgets with assistance in renting city facilities, she said.
Service forms would be filled out by the organizations and the hours verified by Kathy Lay, volunteer and outreach coordinator, Jennings said. Individuals could volunteer and donate their time to a group. Volunteers would have to be 18 years old or have an adult supervisor.
Youth athletic leagues that have a memorandum of understanding to use city facilities could not use the program during their seasons, but could do so out of season, City Manager Joe Neeb said.
The General Services Committee voted to recommend the program, but committee member Councilor Juan Oropesa said he voted to bring it forward for discussion rather than with a recommendation of its passage.
“The reason I’m not truly sold on this program is the value that we are putting on the volunteers, their work, we’re essentially paying them $25 an hour when we actually have 121 individuals in our staff that make less than $15 an hour. In my opinion, I think that if we’re willing to pay volunteers $25 an hour, I think it would behoove us look at raising the salaries for those that are less than $15 at least to bring them up to $15 an hour,” he said.
He also said it didn’t make sense to call them volunteers if they were being compensated. Jennings said the city’s legal department had confirmed they must be called volunteers if they are to be covered by the city’s insurance.
Corn-Best said she thought of the program as giving community groups “skin in the game.”
“We can’t hire enough volunteers to do the work that we need to do that needs to be volunteered for,” she said.
“This is giving them the opportunity to work for something for their group,” she said.
Heldenbrand said that in the interest of transparency, he would want to see a list of qualified events so groups that might be denied participation can’t accuse the city of favoritism. He made a motion to send the program back to the General Services Committee to include such a list, but was convinced to change the motion after Corn-Best and Councilor Juliana Halvorson said the plan had already been to the committee twice and further delays would cause the city and organizations to lose potential time in the program. He agreed to change the motion to approve the program with the requirement a list of events be brought to the committee.
The proposal passed 6 to 1, with Oropesa voting against it.
The council also approved a liquor license for the city for Joe Bauman Stadium, 1000 E. Poe St., by a vote of 7-0.
The council, in other business, upheld the Planning and Zoning Commission’s approval of a zone change and conditional use permit for a community solar array at 1612 E. Second St. The commission’s decision had been appealed by an adjoining landowner, Jonathan Fennig, but Maevers said the array’s developer, CVE North America, and Fennig had been able to revise the conditional use permit to the satisfaction of both parties. The council voted 6-0 to uphold the commission’s decision. Oropesa recused himself from the vote because he said his daughter and wife own property near the location.
The council also approved the following items by votes of 7 to 0:
• The ratification of change orders on several infrastructure projects totaling $214,000 and street projects for $833,000.
• A resolution authorizing the deputy city manager to represent the city in executing a 10-year lease purchase agreement for four new firetrucks and ratifying the purchase of the trucks for $2.5 million.
• Ratifying the purchase of 75 body cameras for the Roswell Police Department.
• A final plat for four residential lots at 1001 West. Jaffa St.
