The Whitefish City Council met for a work session on Feb. 6 to discuss whether changes need to be made to the marijuana facilities ordinance and last week, they passed an interim zoning ordinance to give them time to consider the issue.

The ordinance prohibits the approval of new applications for administrative conditional use permits for marijuana dispensaries within Whitefish city limits. It went into effect immediately and will remain in effect for six months.

The goal of the ordinance is to give the council time to consider if changes need to be made to the marijuana dispensary ordinance. Potential changes to the ordinance include increasing setbacks from churches, schools and other dispensaries and changing the permitting procedures for dispensaries.

“We should arrange a work session fairly quickly, just because interim zoning ordinances expire after six months,” Whitefish City Attorney Angela Jacobs said as she addressed the council. “You do have the ability to extend that but it’s not really the purpose of the statute, so I would say if you are looking at it, let's move quick and decide what we want to do.”

If the council decides to amend the current marijuana facilities ordinance, the changes would go to the Whitefish Planning Board for a public hearing, then to the city council for a public hearing.

After making a motion to approve the interim zoning ordinance, Councilor Frank Sweeney spoke to his motion.

“I think it’s pretty clear from our work session that the public and I, quite frankly, am very concerned about the proliferation and the number of marijuana dispensaries that have already been approved. I think we certainly have enough,” Sweeney said. “I think their concerns regarding proximity to other businesses and to schools and to churches, for that matter, raises some good concerns that I think we need to evaluate a little bit better.”

Currently, in Whitefish, there are 11 active permits within city limits with only five dispensaries now operating. Each conditionally permitted location has 18 months from the date their permit was approved to open or show they are making progress or their permit expires.

Regarding buffering from schools and churches, the current regulations in Whitefish defer to the state regulations. When the regulations were adopted, those regulations required a 500-foot distance from the nearest entrance of a school or church to the nearest entrance of the dispensary, if both buildings were addressed on the same street.

State law allows cities to be more restrictive with regard to where marijuana facilities can operate, but they cannot be less restrictive.

According to Jacobs, interim zoning allows cities to pass ordinances, without following procedures normally required for ordinances, to protect public safety, health and welfare.

The council voted unanimously in favor of the interim ordinance. Staff will schedule a work session in April for the council to further study and discuss the matter.