The Ellensburg City Council passed an emergency six-month moratorium on the establishment of recreational marijuana retail businesses, one week after the state Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) started accepting more applications.

The moratorium, a temporary prohibition of an activity, was passed at a council meeting on Monday, Oct. 19 in a 6-0 vote.

The LCB started accepting more applications for marijuana retail business licenses on Oct. 12, after the passing of the Cannabis Patient Protection Act (CPPA), which created a three-tier priority based application process.

Unlike the prior lottery system, which was based on population and expected usage rates, the LCB will not be putting a limit on the amount of application approvals for retail shops.

Although it will likely take 90 or more days for the LCB to inspect and approve new shops, the city believes additional guidelines may need to be put in place because of issues additional retail stores could create.

The moratorium is meant to give Ellensburg time to review the town’s current laws and regulations on retail marijuana stores.

The moratorium was proposed after what the city council called a “surprising” decision by the LCB to start accepting more applications, with less than a month’s notice to local governments.

“We’re going from two to a potentially unlimited number, so we felt there was a need to put a moratorium in place to get some additional regulations in place before that happened,” Ellensburg City Attorney Terry Weiner said.

The city decided to instate an emergency moratorium because if they went through the normal process of putting this moratorium in place, it would take two council meetings, putting three weeks between the LCB openly accepting applications and the moratorium’s enactment.

The city wanted to get the moratorium passed as soon as possible to avoid applicants filing with before the moratorium could go into effect, allowing the new shops to argue that the new laws shouldn’t apply to them.

This will not affect the two current retail operators in town: Cannabis Central and The Green Shelf. In fact, both businesses will be able to apply for medical endorsements, which retail stores are now allowed to do.

The main reason for the moratorium will be to figure out if there should be a required distance between stores.

City Council Member Steve Dupont said that council would like to keep multiple shops from ending up right next to each other. The city needed extra time because they have a relatively small staff.                                                                                  

Weiner said that odor control and signage are possible discussion points for new regulations, but feels the regulations will be more of a fine-tuning of current regulations.

He also expressed that this was not an intent to stall new licensees.

“It’s a little bit of a dance to get all this coordinated,” Weiner said. “I think the plan is to get it done as quick as possible.”

Weiner assured that once the city has had time to get regulations in place, that applicants that are meeting all the proper requirements and regulations of the city and state should be allowed to set up shop.

The moratorium requires a public hearing on the matter to occur within 60 days of its passing, which will be held Monday, Dec. 7.