Pittsburg took little time on Monday to green-light what will be its first cannabis manufacturing plant in an industrial area once home to the U.S. Army’s Camp Stoneman.
The council gave the go-ahead on a 4-to-1 vote, with Vice Mayor Jelani Killings dissenting.
Stoneman Laboratories LLC plans to manufacture medical and nonmedical cannabis on the same parcel where another previously approved cannabis business, Canyon Laboratories, was to locate but that later opted out. The actual building, however, is not the same but rather located nearby at 557 Clark Ave.
“This building is much more secure,” Jordan Davis, assistant to the city manager, said, noting it was one of the original Camp Stoneman buildings of the 1940s. “The other building had aluminum walls and we were going to require quite a bit of additional infrastructure.”
Because the site was previously approved, however, it was already determined to be an appropriate location for such a business, according to the staff report.
Davis told the council the proposed plan incorporates all the previously recommended operational and security requirements, and additional measures the police department has said were needed.
The applicant has proposed that the new plant will accept raw cannabis materials, including tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), to process, package and ship products to approved retailers. However, Stoneman Laboratories has agreed to limit the raw material to “trim,” the remnant plant matter resulting from the pruning of cannabis plants, which generally does not include cannabis flower or cannabis buds.
Any byproducts will be disposed of per state law, with a licensed disposal service removing them to an approved disposal site outside the city, Davis said.
Stoneman representative Pat O’Keefe said the business would initially create about 20 jobs but could expand to up to 100 when fully operational.
Products to be manufactured include CBD topical creams and lotions, sprays, gels, medical products, and vape pen cartridges. No retail was proposed as the products will be manufactured and shipped to outside the city, Davis said.
Killings, however, still was not convinced.
“I still have reservations about manufacturing vape cartridges, the health concerns and all… and also the manufacturing of edibles, he said. “The prior council was more conservative. I see that goalpost continually moving so I continue to have reservations about it.”
The agreement calls for a 5 percent cannabis tax rate ($500,000) on the first $10 million in gross receipts. After that, there’s a sliding scale of an additional 2.5 percent for earnings between $10,000,001 and $20,000,000, 2 percent for $20,000,000 to $50,000,000, 1 percent on those from $50,000,000 to $100,000,000 and .5 percent for anything over $100,000,000.
Some council members suggested they’d like to see the additional taxes directed toward specific programs like youth services, but they decided to return with percentage proposals at a future council meeting.
In a related matter, the council also agreed to amend the city code to specify the 600-foot buffer zone from sensitive areas such as schools, city parks and libraries to be determined by the distance of a walking path to a cannabis business, and extended it to a 1,000 buffer if dispensaries are later allowed. The council approved the measure 3-to-2, with Killings and Councilman Holland Barrett White dissenting.
“I get it — we’re moving the distance to open it up and be less restrictive,” Killings said. “But the whole point of the buffer is safety, so you have a manufacturing facility and if a fire broke out, if there was a gas leak or explosions, those are not going to take a walking path.”
Jordan, however, said the buffer is more intended to keep people from walking by, possibly picking something up or rummaging through the trash, while safety measures should be instead taken care of through the planning process.
Businessman Wolfgang Croskey, meanwhile, suggested the city needs to do more for other businesses too.
“We are doing everything possible to try to make pot businesses more accessible but yet we have so many other businesses that we have hard-fast rules on…” he said. “Although there is a lot of glitz and potential money that comes from the commercial cannabis business and that’s very attractive, but there are so many other businesses we could be going after.”
