The City of Redding is one step closer to legalizing commercial marijuana sales.
The city’s ordinance for commercial marijuana sales goes into effect in a little less than two weeks.
And city manager Barry Tippin announced this week that the city will be releasing the fee schedule for cannabis businesses and cultivators Saturday.
Tippin said those fees will be around $28,000.
“It’s an annual license fee,” Tippin said. “And that could change over time. But right now that fee is established to hire the staff necessary to regulate the business.”
Those fees will help pay to hire three full-time staff members to regulate the businesses.
That includes a building inspector, a fire inspector, and a community service officer.
“And then the third component that we put in there was the community service officer to work with the police department,”” he said. “That CSO officer hopefully will provide some relief to RPD should they need to be called in to help with code enforcement.”
Tippin said once the ordinance goes into effect and the fee schedule is approved, he expects businesses to start putting in their applications immediately.
“We expect that people will be looking for licenses and submitting applications particularly for cultivation businesses,” he said. “The retail business is a little slower, we’re going to do a request for proposals. And those will probably do 45 days after we release the RFP.”
After the request for proposals, Tippin said the city will conduct a review process to see which retailers will be the best fit for the community.
“And I expect those will go into business shortly thereafter,” he said. “So it’s probably going to be staggered.”
He said after that, it all depends on the business owners and how long it takes them to complete the construction process.
“I think it’s very possible that if they’re in the right zoning and they don’t require a use permit and they have a facility that’s properly wired, you could see people going into business in June,” Tippin said.
The fee schedule will be made available to the public on the city’s website Saturday.
The city council will vote whether to finalize the fee schedule at their scheduled April 17 meeting.
