The State of Alaska will begin accepting commercial marijuana license applications on Wednesday, but some areas of the Kenai Peninsula are still finalizing their regulations.
The Kenai Peninsula Borough Assembly will discuss an ordinance on Tuesday, some of which the Borough’s Marijuana Task Force member Dollynda Phelps says she doesn’t agree with.
Phelps: “It’s requesting that an applicant submit their application to the Borough within five days of submitting to the state. And I’m going to try to shed a little light on that because if the state’s just receiving the application, you still have three weeks to do your posting, it’s going to be a month before you even know if your application is complete and if it’s not complete and the state says you missed this part, or please elaborate here, then you have to submit a new portion of that to the state and to the borough.”
That Assembly meeting will begin at 6:00 pm Tuesday, February 23 in the Borough Assembly Chambers in Soldotna.
Tonight Homer City Council will consider an ordinance to ban marijuana establishments, one to create zoning for those facilities, and the introduction of an ordinance to ask voters in October to weigh-in on the issue. Their regular meeting will begin at 6 pm in the Homer Cowles Council Chambers.
The City of Kenai has already approved the zoning for where marijuana facilities can be established and City Attorney Scott Bloom detailed how interested parties can begin their process to apply.
Bloom: “The first thing that they need to do is come in and talk to our city planner and make sure that where they want to open their business is in the proper zone and then they would apply for a conditional use permit and then we would have a public hearing on that conditional use permit.”
On December 9th last year, Soldotna banned commercial marijuana establishments inside city limits for two years.