Voters approved ballot measures to allow and tax cannabis in every Inland Empire city where it was on the ballot Tuesday, Nov. 6, except one.

In San Bernardino County, voters approved measures to allow cannabis, tax it or both in Adelanto, Colton, Hesperia and San Bernardino. In western Riverside County, voters favored such measures in Banning, Jurupa Valley, Moreno Valley and Perris. But Hemet bucked the trend by voting to continue a council-backed ban and against allowing and taxing non-retail cannabis.

And in Pomona, voters gave more than 70 percent of the vote to a measure allowing the city to tax future legal cannabis businesses, according to Los Angeles County registrar results posted just before 5 a.m. Wednesday, Nov. 7.

The San Bernardino County numbers are final but unofficial. Riverside County’s numbers, posted at 7:30 a.m., don’t yet include some vote-by-mail, provisional or damaged ballots.

Prop. 64, which legalized recreational marijuana statewide, also gave cities and counties the power to regulate commercial cannabis within their borders.

Each measure needs a majority to pass. In cities with competing proposals, if both receive more than 50 percent, whichever measure receives more “yes” votes will become law Jan. 1.

San Bernardino County

Adelanto: Measure S took more than 71 percent of more than 2,500 votes cast. It will tax cannabis businesses up to $5 per square foot of space used for cannabis cultivation and nurseries, and up to 5 percent of the gross receipts from the retail sale, delivery, manufacturing, processing, testing and distribution of cannabis and related products.

Colton: Measure U won 69 percent of nearly 6,000 votes cast in Colton. It will put a tax on cannabis businesses of up to $25 per square foot of space utilized for cannabis cultivation/processing, and up to 10 percent of gross receipts from the sale of cannabis and related products.

Hesperia: With more than 60 percent of the vote, Measure T is set to add a tax of between 1 percent and 6 percent on all commercial cannabis businesses except cultivation. Every square foot of space used for commercial cannabis cultivation would be taxed up to $15 per year. Both taxes could increase annually based on the consumer price index.

San Bernardino: The city’s two marijuana measures, both put on the ballot by the City Council, won by commanding margins as the Fourth District Court of Appeal decides whether to uphold or overturn a judge’s invalidation of Measure O, which voters approved in 2016.

Measure W, with nearly 64 percent of the vote, will impose a Cannabis Business Tax of up to $10 per square foot for cultivators and up to 6 percent of gross receipts on other businesses operating in the city.

Measure X had nearly 60 percent and will authorize council members to approve one commercial cannabis business permit per 12,500 residents of the city. With the current population of the city, the council could approve up to 17 permits.

Riverside County

Banning: Two measures, both put on the ballot by the Banning City Council to allow cannabis in the Industrial Zoning District and tax it, both had between 60 and 62 percent of the vote.

Measure N will authorize the city to enact an annual tax of between $15 and $25 per square foot for marijuana cultivation businesses and up to 10 percent of yearly receipts for manufacturing and testing businesses.

Measure O will add a 10 percent yearly tax on the gross receipts of cannabis retail businesses in the city, which the council could raise as high as 15 percent in the future.

Jurupa Valley: Six months after voters shot down their proposal to allow marijuana businesses in parts of Jurupa Valley, the same advocates are narrowly winning in their attempt to pass another ballot measure. This time, there’s one key difference: It would mean tax money the city could spend on other city services.

Measure L took nearly 52 percent of the vote, leading by 345 votes out of 8,903 cast. It would allow up to seven dispensaries and tax them $25 per square foot of space used for retail marijuana sales and $3 per square foot on other commercial cannabis activity.

Moreno Valley: The City Council voted in March to allow dispensaries and other marijuana businesses.

Measure M had more than 72 percent of more than 16,00 votes cast. It will allow a tax on those sales of up to 8 percent per year, along with a maximum of $15 a year per square foot of growing space for commercial growers.

Perris: Measure G, which had 71 percent of more than 4,000 votes, would impose a tax of up to 10 percent on cannabis distribution and manufacturing businesses that the City Council voted in January to allow.

Those operations are in two industrial zones: one in north Perris, and one in the southern part of the city.

Hemet: Nearly two out of every three voters — 65 percent — rejected Measure Y, which sought to allow an unlimited number of non-retail cannabis businesses in manufacturing zones as long as they’re not in residential zones, within 600 feet of schools or within 1,000 feet of three or more cannabis businesses. They would be taxed $10 per square foot.

To counter that measure, the City Council put Measure Z on the ballot, which bans marijuana businesses for at least two years. The continued ban was ahead much more narrowly, with nearly 53 percent of almost 11,000 votes counted.

Dispensaries and other marijuana-related businesses will be allowed in unincorporated Riverside County after the Board of Supervisors on Tuesday, Oct. 23 approved a long-awaited regulatory framework for cannabis commerce.

The 3-2 vote came after a three-hour public hearing in which more than 30 speakers shared their views on whether and how the county should allow the marijuana industry to operate in areas of the county not controlled by a city.

Though Proposition 64’s passage in 2016 made it legal in California for adults to use cannabis recreationally, the law also gives cities and counties the authority to regulate or ban most other marijuana activities within their borders.

The county has long banned cannabis cultivation in unincorporated communities such as Anza and Idyllwild, with a narrow exemption for medical marijuana users. That said, illegal grows are common and disrupt some residents’ peace of mind with lingering odors, glaring overhead lights and heavily armed guards.

While residents are looking for relief, cannabis entrepreneurs want a clear and consistent regulatory framework. Allowing marijuana, they said, would boost the local economy and help mom-and-pop ventures, like “bud and breakfast” inns, that want to make an honest living.

County officials, who got Planning Commission input on the ordinance, sought a balance between economic and quality-of-life concerns. The ordinance bans outdoor grows and requires strict security, odor control and property setbacks, among other rules, with Temecula Valley Wine Country off-limits to commercial marijuana.

Money raised from development agreements with licensed businesses would pay for enforcement efforts against illegal operators.

Speakers at the public hearing included residents of unincorporated areas who favored the current ban. Other speakers were marijuana entrepreneurs who criticized the proposed rules as too restrictive or too complex.

Supervisors Marion Ashley and John Tavaglione voted against the ordinance, with supervisors Kevin Jeffries, Chuck Washington, and V. Manuel Perez voting yes.

Colorado, Ashley said, has seen a host of problems stemming from legal marijuana. “I don’t want Riverside County to be like Colorado,” he said.

Tavaglione said he speaks regularly with friends from Colorado and Oregon – another state where recreational marijuana is legal – who “share with me the nightmare that is taking place in those states.”

“I don’t think by approving something like this, we’re going to take Riverside County in the direction that I personally would like to see it go,” Tavaglione said.

Those who think the ordinance rules are heavy-handed have a point, Jeffries said.

“It’s our first time at it,” he said. “Government is very good at taxes and regulations and we will be back … we’ve got to start someplace.”

A new marijuana task force created by the Riverside County District Attorney’s Office served its first search warrant Wednesday, Aug. 22, shutting down what it said was an unlicensed dispensary in Jurupa Valley.

Several pounds of cannabis, THC pods, edibles, paraphernalia, wax and vape cartridges were seized, according to a DA’s news release. Several people were detained but not arrested as the investigation continues.

The dispensary was operating out of a modular trailer on a dirt lot that had been advertising on marijuana-related websites as The Mission and 35 CAP. An online search shows a location for 35 CAP in the 5500 block of Mission Boulevard.

The partners in the Cannabis Regulation Task Force include the Hemet Police Department.

The task force’s goal is to ensure fair business practices and keep crime out of the legal cannabis industry in the county and its communities, the release said.

Riverside Superior Court Judge Sunshine Sykes granted the lock-out order Wednesday, Aug. 15, allowing the city to close it at any time.

“We’ll execute the order based on the timing of other things we have going on — we’re working on several other dispensaries at the same time,” City Manager Gary Thompson said Tuesday, Aug. 21.

Officials with The Vault say they’re practicing religious beliefs — beliefs they say are consistent with thousands of years of religious practice.

“(The judge) didn’t understand why we had to have cannabis,” lead minister Gilbert Aguirre said Tuesday. “It’s like asking Catholics to worship without bread and wine.”

Aguirre believes cannabis has been part of religious practices for centuries, including Christians, based in part on translating the ingredients of anointing oil differently from how religious scholars have traditionally translated the list of ingredients in the Bible.

The Vault might try to appeal the judge’s decision, but first members plan to continue protesting Friday at 1 p.m. outside the Riverside County Historic Courthouse, as they did Monday, Aug. 20.

They’re also looking for a new location.

Aguirre, who doesn’t have formal religious training, said the church is Christ-based but has members who are Muslims, Buddhists and atheists. Services typically include a message from him — the Sunday before, he expanded on a verse about respecting young people — greetings between the roughly 50 people who gather weekly, and testimony from members about how cannabis has helped them. It also often includes smoking or eating marijuana products.

Thompson said The Vault, which lists prices for different types of marijuana on Weedmaps.com, doesn’t look like a church to him.

“I’ve never heard of a church selling their sacrament,” he said.

The Vault is part of the Association of Sacramental Ministries, a group of cannabis-based churches that also includes a Hemet location.

In a post criticizing Judge Skye’s decision, the group’s spokesman, Brent Fraser, quoted U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch’s opinion in the case of a Colorado baker who refused to make a custom cake for a same-sex couple because he believed that doing so would violate his religious beliefs.

“The place of secular officials isn’t to sit in judgment of religious beliefs, but only to protect their free exercise,” Fraser quoted Gorsuch as saying. “Just as it is the ‘proudest boast of our free speech jurisprudence’ that we protect speech that we hate, it must be the proudest boast of our free exercise jurisprudence that we protect religious beliefs that we find offensive.”

While Californians voted in 2016 to allow the possession of up to an ounce of marijuana, the law leaves other regulations up to cities. Jurupa Valley bans marijuana businesses of all types.

City voters rejected a measure in June that would have allowed marijuana businesses to operate in the city’s manufacturing-service commercial zone. In November, another measure will again ask city residents if they want to legalize and tax cannabis sales.

“The bottom line is we’re just acting on what the voters decided in June,” Thompson said. “The voters decided they don’t want them (dispensaries), and we’ve accelerated our efforts to close them.”

The city had eight active dispensaries as of Tuesday, including The Vault and a dispensary that said it would close Wednesday, according to Thompson.

Hemet City Council members are now unsure if they will put an initiative on the November ballot that would allow some cannabis businesses.

They are pondering asking voters if they want to lift the ban on such businesses in an effort to counteract a citizen-created initiative that has already qualified for the ballot, but expressed concerns Tuesday night, July 24, about whether the city could handle the consequences that come with pot-related businesses.

“From a public safety standpoint, we are ill-equipped with the passage of any ordinance,” City Manager Allen Parker said.

The city lacks enough police or code enforcement officers to patrol and inspect pot businesses, Parker said.

A final decision will be made during a special meeting Tuesday, Aug. 7 — three days before initiatives must go to the county’s registrar of voters to be placed on the November ballot.

“I’m not quite sure we have enough information on the impact (the initiative) will have on the city,” Councilwoman Bonnie Wright said. “It’s really critical that we tread lightly so we don’t get stuck in a hole we can’t get out of.”

The measure the council was expected to consider Tuesday would have asked voters to allow medical cannabis dispensaries, cannabis cultivation, manufacturing, distribution and testing.

The citizen measure would allow non-retail cannabis businesses in manufacturing zones without a city-issued license.

The city initiative was left a bit vague because of a compressed timeframe to create it.

“I look at this proposed ballot measure and I don’t like it,” Councilwoman Linda Krupa said. “It needs to be something that’s controllable, that’s enforceable.”

Parker said if the city does not put an ordinance on the ballot and the citizen initiative passes, it’s likely the city would sue, alleging that the proposition would create a monopoly.

The council was told it would have few options to campaign against the citizen’s inititive.

Assistant City Attorney Erica Vega said the council could pass a resolution against the proposal and that council members could speak against it on their own time, but no taxpayer money can be used to campaign.

“You can educate but not advocate,” Vega said.

While the wine and marijuana industries are similar in some ways, blending those worlds isn’t always easy. Winegrowers and cannabis cultivators increasingly square off over customers, land and workers. And lingering stigmas have kept some of the state’s wine-growing regions from being open to the newly legalized marijuana market.

Now it seems Temecula Valley Wine Country is on track to shut out the cannabis industry. Opposition from local winegrowers and government officials is making it unlikely that marijuana businesses will be allowed to operate in one of the most important agricultural and tourism regions in Riverside County.

“My fear is that you would see vineyards pushed out and there would be outdoor cultivation with chain-linked, barbed-wire fences,” said Danny Martin, board president for the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association.

“We want to be the Temecula Valley Wine Country. We don’t want to become the Temecula Valley Weed Country.”

The message is clear, according to Micah Anderson, president of the cannabis cultivation trade group Southern California Responsible Growers Council.

“Wine is socially acceptable here,” Anderson said. “Cannabis isn’t.”

Ordinance carves out Temecula Valley

Though passage of Proposition 64 in 2016 made it legal in California for adults to consume cannabis, the law also gives cities and counties the authority to regulate most other marijuana activities within their borders.

All marijuana businesses are currently banned in unincorporated Riverside County. However, county leaders are considering an ordinance that would be among the most permissive in California, allowing businesses to grow, manufacture, test, distribute and sell marijuana products in most of the county’s unincorporated areas.

But, as proposed, the Riverside County ordinance would block marijuana businesses from two key areas — residential areas and the Temecula Valley Wine Country. The popular wine-tasting destination has a few dozen wineries spread over more than 17,000 acres of county-controlled land, just east of Temecula’s city limits.

Riverside County Planning Department staff said via email that cannabis cultivation is “not compatible” with the long-term planning for that area, which they said provides a “significant tourist attraction” and “economic benefit” to the region.

Supervisor Chuck Washington — whose district includes Temecula Valley and who once invested in an area winery — also opposes cannabis cultivation in the area because he doesn’t believe it would “further the goals” of the region, according to his chief of staff, Jeff Comerchero.

In a June 20 letter, Martin told Washington that the Temecula Valley Winegrowers Association board supported a ban on all commercial cannabis activities in wine country and asked the Board of Supervisors to “continue to deny all inconsistent land uses within this special agricultural area in our county.”

County staff said the first listed goal for the wine region is to “encourage agricultural cultivation.” Cannabis cultivation is an agricultural activity, Anderson said, with growers licensed by the California Department of Food and Agriculture. And cannabis, he added, should be treated as an agricultural product by local regulators.

But Martin insists that adding cannabis-related businesses in Temecula Valley Wine Country would be inconsistent with the existing zoning plan for the area.

Lessons learned

The wine and cannabis industries have coexisted for decades in places such as Mendocino and Sonoma counties, pointed out Josh Drayton, spokesman for the California Cannabis Industry Association.

But now that the state is licensing cannabis businesses for the first time, he said marijuana farmers can come out of the shadows to fight for the same rights and business opportunities wine growers have worked to secure.

“I think the cannabis industry has learned a lot from the wine industry,” Drayton said. “A lot of the challenges they have faced, and found solutions for, are guiding forces for our industry.”

That includes trying to brand cannabis products with appellations of origin. Meaning only marijuana grown in Humboldt County can have that label, just like only wines grown in Napa Valley can boast that origin.

Mom-and-pop wineries have also found creative ways to compete with bigger, corporate vineyards, Drayton said — a struggle that’s just starting for smaller and medium-sized marijuana growers. Transferable strategies might include tax incentives for small operators, boutique tours, paired dinners directed by sommeliers and direct-to-consumer sales that give owners a chance to sell the stories behind their products.

In Temecula Valley, Anderson said cannabis farmers would love to have tasting rooms just like the vineyards do. The county could permit such spaces, known generally as cannabis lounges, but hasn’t chosen to include that option in the proposed ordinance.

Competition is fierce

The industry overlap does pose some common challenges.

Labor costs are going up for growers of wine and cannabis, even as the size of the labor pool is shrinking, Drayton said, with the Trump administration’s immigration policies squeezing things even more.

“The wine industry has struggled with labor for a while,” said George Christie, president of the Wine Industry Network trade group. And with the growing cannabis industry able to offer some workers more money and better working conditions, he said, wineries are feeling the pinch.

Also, in many parts of the state, agricultural land is limited. And once a city or county votes to allow marijuana businesses, land values typically skyrocket, a phenomenon that has already forced out some wine growers.

In early 2017, San Francisco-based cannabis distributor Flow Kana announced it had purchased 80 acres in Redwood Valley that were once home to the Fetzer family winery. The company is transforming the property into Flow Cannabis Institute, which is being billed as a “one-stop facility” for marijuana processing, storage and distribution.

Ampelos Vineyard and Cellars in Lompoc said in its June 24 newsletter that they were moving after their landlord of 12 years got a “high offer” for their property from cannabis producers.

“Sad to see how this new business is rolling into the valley and taking over land and buildings,” wrote Ampelos’ owner Peter Work.

Those threats have come up during the Wine & Weed Symposium, a conference Christie’s group will host set for its second year in Santa Rosa on Aug. 2. But Christie said a “much larger percentage” of the conference’s roughly 500 attendees — including a number of “older, conservative wine industry people” — is interested in hearing about opportunities available in cannabis.

Christie sees overlap not just with business models between the industries, but also with the type of people they attract. Wine growers, he said, are typically hard-working, passionate, strategic entrepreneurs who aren’t afraid of a challenge. He sees many of the same qualities in cannabis entrepreneurs, he added, and nothing of the stoner stereotype he once expected.

“As that stigma sort of erodes,” he said, “there are more and more people in the wine industry that are kind of open to what opportunities this may bring.”

There are already wine growers in the Temecula area who are experimenting with small marijuana grows, according to Anderson. And he said there are many more entrepreneurs waiting on the sidelines, hoping the county will open the region to licensed marijuana businesses.

Laws limit overlap

The trend of literally mixing these two worlds by infusing wine with cannabis was becoming fashionable a couple years ago, with singer/cannabis entrepreneur Melissa Etheridge touting a “wine tincture” in her line of Etheridge Farms products.

Then California issued the first draft of its still-evolving rules for the marijuana industry. Those regulations included a strict ban on products that mix alcohol and cannabis and severely limited public events where marijuana is consumed, such as the wine and weed pairing dinners that had begun popping up everywhere.

Since cannabis remains illegal under federal law, wineries could also be jeopardizing their federal licenses if they start making or selling cannabis products on the same property.

“There are a bunch of people that thought they were going to go that road,” Anderson said. “That left a lot of broken dreams.”

Some companies, such as Hermosa Beach-based Rebel Coast Winery, are navigating the regulations by making cannabis-infused wine that’s alcohol-free. And event companies are trading infused dinners for tours that stop at both wineries and cannabis businesses.

Such ventures show that it doesn’t have to be a “zero sum game,” Christie said, where either the wine or the cannabis industry wins. And in Anderson’s view, they also show that marijuana entrepreneurs will work with any reasonable regulations that are thrown their way, including rules that he says could mitigate whatever safety, aesthetic or odor concerns neighbors might have.

That’s something he hopes Riverside County will take into consideration as officials write the playbook for how wine and weed will mix in Temecula Valley.

“We all want to be good neighbors,” he said. “Give us options, don’t just shut us out.”

The issue will be decided when the Riverside County Board of Supervisors takes up the proposed cannabis ordinance sometime later this year.

On Tuesday, the Riverside City Council voted 4 to 3 to prohibit marijuana businesses in the city.

In doing so, the Riverside City Council made clear that it is incapable of properly representing the will of the public on marijuana policy. Most Riverside voters supported Proposition 64 in 2016, including majorities of voters in six of the city’s seven city council wards.

Councilmen Steve Adams and Chuck Conder in particular indulged in plenty of reefer madness. Channeling the comical fearmongering of the 1930s over marijuana, they whipped up concerns about crime, about the children, about murder. It’s a worldview that puts them not only in the minority in Riverside, but in the country.

There’s a reason increasing numbers of states have pursued and implemented marijuana legalization. There’s a reason Democrats and Republicans in Congress have repeatedly united to introduce federal marijuana decriminalization bills. And there’s a reason President Trump has indicated his support for ending federal marijuana prohibition and leaving it to the states.

Most people understand that prohibition is a failure, that prohibition doesn’t mean that marijuana just goes away and that prohibition ultimately does more harm than good. But Chuck Conder, Steve Adams, Jim Perry and Chris MacArthur aren’t among them, and see it as their responsibility to perpetuate the folly of prohibition.

In contrast, other members of the council seemed to at least understand that rushing to prohibition does the public a disservice.

Councilman Mike Soubirous, for example, noted that the city could just as easily prohibit liquor stores on the same grounds the marijuana prohibitionists wanted to prohibit marijuana. What an absurdity that would be — right? Now carry that recognition of absurdity to the proposed marijuana prohibition. Same issues at hand.

Neither prohibition nor legalization are a panacea, but legalization offers more control and revenue to address the negative consequences of marijuana or alcohol use, while mitigating the black market and all that comes with it.

Councilman Andy Melendrez, meanwhile, rightly called out the “scare tactics” and incomplete information gathering to justify prohibition. While the prohibitionists cited everything negative about marijuana legalization in Colorado, they didn’t offer the other side of things. Nor did the council adequately consider the experiences of the other states that have legalized marijuana — or even their own neighbors.

Last I checked, the sky hasn’t fallen in Palm Springs after several years of permitting medical marijuana dispensaries to operate.

Alas, there’s no good in looking to the Riverside City Council for leadership on this issue in keeping with the views of the majority of Riverside voters. It’s apparent a ballot initiative will be needed to do the work the council is unwilling and incapable of doing.

Sal Rodriguez is an editorial writer and columnist for the Southern California News Group. He may be reached at salrodriguez@scng.com

Hemet voters could face three cannabis-related initiatives on the November ballot after the City Council on Tuesday, July 10, decided to create its own measure to combat two other proposed measures.

One measure to legalize marijuana-related businesses has already qualified for the ballot and a second has been proposed. Both are citizen-driven and would end the city’s ban of all marijuana-related businesses.

“Philosophically, I’m opposed to someone coming in and riding roughshod on our city and putting an initiative that shoves their business down our throat,” Councilman Russ Brown said. “It’s coming, we can either control it or have it jammed down our throat.”d

Both measures are more lenient about security and where the businesses could be than the city would like. One would allow retail sales.

After hearing reports about a community survey on marijuana-based business and projected revenues, council members said they were more comfortable with only allowing medical marijuana-related businesses and no retail sales.

“We need to take this opportunity to put it on the ballot and make our own rules,” Councilwoman Karlee Meyer said.

If more than one initiative is approved by voters, the one receiving the most votes would win. If none pass, the city’s ban on all marijuana-related businesses would stay in place.

The decision came on the same day that the city of Riverside permanently banned marijuana dispensaries and outdoor growing.

An initiative will be crafted for the council’s Tuesday, July 24, meeting.

The city has to work fast, as the deadline to get items on the Nov. 6 ballot is Aug. 10. The cost of putting the initiative on the ballot is not known.

No marijuana dispensaries, no commercial marijuana cultivation and no outdoor growing of marijuana will be allowed in Riverside, the City Council decided Tuesday, July 10.

The permanent ban is set to go into effect Aug. 24, about two weeks before the city’s temporary moratorium with similar prohibitions expires.

The 4-3 vote still allows people to use marijuana and to grow up to six plants indoors. California voters decided through Proposition 64, which went into effect in January, that those uses couldn’t be banned. Voters in six of Riverside’s seven wards voted in favor of the state law.

Riverside, though, now bans almost everything marijuana-related that state law allows it to ban. One exception is that cannabis testing will continue to be permitted.

Previously, the city allowed four marijuana plants outside and four more inside, if they were for personal use.

The council’s two-hour debate came after several workshops beginning more than a year ago. Most recently, in March, the council heard a report from Denver police officers and a delegation of Riverside officials who traveled to the Colorado capital to study the effects of marijuana legalization there.

Councilmen Mike Gardner, Andy Melendrez and Mike Soubirous voted against the ban Tuesday. They voted instead for a motion that would have allowed the city to create a new moratorium while it studied the effects of legalization in nearby cities such as Moreno Valley as well as Oregon and Washington. In March, the Moreno Valley City Council voted to approve 27 commercial pot enterprises — eight of them dispensaries.

Riverside City Councilman Chuck Conder, whose ward voted against Proposition 64, said the ban would allow residents who need medical marijuana to get it from other cities, while limiting the crime he associated with marijuana.

“The cost of doing this is not worth the soul of Riverside,” he said. “If they want to go somewhere else to do it, then go.”

In March, officials presented a grim picture of Denver’s legalization, with dramatically increased police staffing struggling to keep up with marijuana-related crime.

Several council members said Tuesday that the presentation seemed one-sided, with Melendrez calling it “scare tactics” and “reefer madness.”

Alex Chrystall, a resident of Conder’s ward, said the meeting left many unanswered questions.

“As an educator, I’m a fierce advocate of critical thinking, and I was alarmed in March by the lack of clear answers and questions,” she told the council Tuesday.

For instance, she said, if allowing marijuana caused such a disaster in Denver, why do voters there continue to support it?

“Why has the City continued its legalization for the past four years?” she said. “If it is such a bad deal, why aren’t the citizens calling for it to be undone?”

Perhaps, she said, it was because the $2.1 million spent on enforcement is dwarfed by the $22.7 million the city collects in marijuana taxes, on top of the state’s marijuana revenues.

Other residents, including Cindy Roth, president and CEO of the Greater Riverside Chambers of Commerce, said they supported the ban.

“We heard from many of our businesses about the problems they had in the strip centers next to them (when dispensaries opened),” she said. “Fights breaking out, paraphernalia left out, places where people thought there was a dispensary broken into.”

The city’s Planning Commission voted in May against the change. Planning commissioners said they were frustrated they were asked to vote without receiving the information given to the City Council, according to a summary by David Murray, the city’s principal planner.

Coachella Valley Green Dragon doesn’t have an estimated opening date yet, and the owners still have a couple regulatory hurdles to clear before they can welcome marijuana consumers. But they’re positioned to open the only public space within 400 miles where adults 21 and older will be able to legally consume cannabis in a social setting.

If that happens, Casey Bahr — who for 20-plus years has leased space for his Revive Wellness Center and Revive Salon & Spa in a portion of the same building coveted by Green Dragon — said he’ll be forced to relocate.

“We can’t subject our clients and patients to that kind of indoor pollution,” Bahr said, adding that he believes the city’s strict odor control requirements won’t be enough to prevent an offensive smell from reaching his customers.

It’s illegal to consume cannabis in public, a restriction included in the 2016 ballot measure that legalized recreational marijuana in California. That measure, Proposition 64, also gave landlords the right to regulate marijuana use on private property.

So, while a small number of hotels are permitting consumption and a few marijuana-themed festivals are held throughout the state, those two provisions can severely limit legal cannabis use for certain groups, including tourists and many renters.

One potential solution are cannabis lounges, which California cities can choose to permit. Though state law offers only a few hurdles to lounges — they can’t operate within 600 feet of schools, they can’t let people consume alcohol or tobacco in the same venue, and they have to keep all cannabis consumption out of public view — only San Francisco and Oakland have issued permits. West Hollywood and Cathedral City have said they plan to allow lounges, but they have yet to give the green light.

In December, Palm Springs voted to welcome standalone cannabis lounges. And on June 14, the city gave Coachella Valley Green Dragon a permit to open a lounge inside a portion of a building on Palm Canyon Drive, in a spot that used to be occupied by a hearing aid center, according to records from Veronica Goedhart, a paralegal with the city attorney’s office.

The plan, Goedhart said, is for the operators to have a dispensary on the first floor and a lounge on the second floor.

Neighbor opposes lounge

The space leased to Coachella Valley Green Dragon takes up about 25 percent of the building at 353 S. Palm Canyon Drive. The rest is occupied by Bahr’s medical spa and salon businesses.

A property manager for the building emailed Bahr in February to tell him that cannabis clients were interested in leasing the vacant space that shares a wall with his business, and she wanted to first know his thoughts. He wrote back that a marijuana business would have “a negative effect on any adjacent business and property values,” insisting they “should always be housed in a stand-alone building.” But Bahr says that was the last he heard of it until he was called for comment on this story.

Bahr personally supports medical marijuana rights. But he does not support recreational cannabis, saying he believes it will “degrade” society.

When it comes to the lounge, Bahr said smell is his main concern. A computer repair shop he frequents in town recently had a cannabis business move in next-door, and Bahr said the entire store “reeked” of marijuana.

“I think it ruins the building for occupancy for anybody else but a pot-based business.”

Palm Springs officials are “aware of the odor associated with cannabis lounges,” Goedhart said, and the city requires business owners to “include adequate measures that minimize nuisances to the immediate neighborhoods and community the detection of odor.” Detectable odors, she said, will be handled as a public nuisance, and that the city has the right to “pursue all administrative, civil and criminal remedies” if it becomes a problem.

Final approval still needed

The Coachella Valley Green Dragon project still needs city approval for “minor modifications” planned for the property, according to owner Manuel Semerdjian, who also owns the Green Dragon Caregivers dispensary in North Hollywood.

The project also needs a waiver from the city council, Goedhart said, since the dispensary and lounge won’t have a 500-foot buffer between them as required by city law. She couldn’t say when that hearing would take place.

With approval still pending, Semerdjian didn’t respond to further questions about the project, including queries about the possible conflict with the neighboring spa

Palm Springs has received five more applications from would-be cannabis lounge operators, Goedhart said. They’re all in various stages of the approval process.

The city didn’t place a cap on the number of lounges they might permit. But they did include a rule that says there can’t be more than three facilities within 3,000 feet of each other, a buffer they hope will prevent oversaturation.

Since four of the six lounge applications they’ve received are for properties along Palm Canyon Drive, Goedhart said that saturation rule may come into play.

Lounges coming to two more cities

Nearby Cathedral City approved lounges in February, allowing licensed shop owners to apply for permits to add social-use spaces. But four months later, the city still hasn’t made those applications available.

Nicholas Hughes, owner of Cathedral City Care Collective North, said he’s anxious to get a permit to convert a portion of his shop on Cathedral Canyon Drive into a lounge.

Hughes hopes to use the lounge as a way for staff to educate people about how to safely use the wide range of cannabis products now legal in California. He hopes to help guests have some fun in the space, too, using it to host events such as bachelor parties.

West Hollywood heard from a flood of aspiring lounge owners when the city opened its application period, with roughly 100 applications submitted before the window closed May 31, according to Jackie Rocco, who oversees the program as West Hollywood’s manager of business development.

Those applicants are competing for 16 standalone lounge licenses. That includes eight permits for lounges that will let people smoke, vape or eat marijuana products, and eight others for lounges that will only let people eat cannabis-infused edibles. Eighty percent of applications were for smoking lounges, Rocco said.

Given the number applications they received, Rocco said she expects the screening process to continue through September. Aspiring lounge owners then will be asked to go through the planning application process, plus get a business license from the city and a cannabis license from the state.

Depending on the complexity of the proposed projects, Rocco said the first cannabis lounge in West Hollywood could open in spring of 2019.