Petaluma City Council rejects ban on outdoor pot gardens

Petaluma City Council members backed away Monday night from a proposed ban on outdoor cultivation of medicinal marijuana and what would have been the most restrictive pot growing regulations in Sonoma County.

Officials still plan to rein in widespread cannabis cultivation throughout the city, limiting indoor as well as outdoor cultivation.

But in their bid to balance the needs of those who use marijuana for medical reasons against public safety and nuisance concerns, a council majority was convinced that prohibiting outdoor planting entirely would deprive users of the easiest, cheapest and most reliable way of to grow their medicine: under the sun in the yard.

“If we’re going to go down this path, we need to have some permissible outdoor growth,” Councilman Dave King said during Monday’s meeting. “It’s just a question of size.”

The proposed ban on outdoor planting was part of a larger overhaul of city regulations that would have required all marijuana to be grown inside secure, fully-enclosed, code-compliant structures that were not “living areas.”

The proposal came after years of citizen complaints over residential pot gardens, including concerns about odor and potential crime.

Police Chief Patrick Williams reminded city council members of more than two dozens meetings at which they had been barraged by residents complaining about rampant cultivation in neighborhoods.

A resident at Monday’s meeting said he and his neighbors had lived through five years of hell due to a large-scale operation nearby involving at least two dozen plants that created such a noxious smell that some neighbors with health issues had to leave home much of the time.

Williams said the move to rein in pot cultivation would create “a system that allows for this city to respond to the concerns of our neighbors but also provides access to those who are truly in need, undisturbed by us.”

Vice Mayor Kathy Miller, who conceded her own home environment had been negatively affected by the skunk-like odor of six plants a neighbor once grew, said she supported the outdoor growing ban.

“I don’t have any interest in preventing people from having access to medicinal marijuana, if they need it,” Miller said. But “I don’t think their right to medicinal marijuana is any greater than their neighbors’ right to be free from the nuisance of smell or the fear that there’s going to be somebody coming into their yard” to jump the neighbor’s fence.

Advocates like Kumari Sivadas, with the Sonoma Alliance for Medical Marijuana, however, argued that setting up an indoor growing operation - with lights, fans, thermostats, electrical rewiring, even building a structure, perhaps - would be cost prohibitive for many people.

Indoor growing also raises the risk of spider mites and other pests that could ruin a crop and challenge those who wish to operate organically to make due without pesticides, she and others said.?One woman, Linda Stokely, said marijuana enabled her to wean herself off three prescription medications, so she invested $2,000 to set up an indoor garden, then gave up after mold and mites ruined her first two harvests.

“I’m here to ask you to protect the right of people who grow outdoors,” Stokely said.

Another resident, Alex Bone, also criticized the proposed restrictions as contrary to significant community support for full legalization of marijuana. “This is a terrible short-sighted policy that will divide the community and put a lot of peaceful people in an adverse position with police,” he said.

Except for Miller, council members were persuaded that allowing some small number of outdoor plants made sense. Several elected officials suggested following the leads cities including Healdsburg and Sebastopol, both of which permit limited outdoor planting within secured fencing that screens plants from view.

Healdsburg has an outdoor limit of three plants that was adopted in 2014. A Sebastopol ordinance approved in 2010 caps the growing area to 100 square feet but includes a provision designed to prevent impacts on neighbors. State law approved in 2003 permits patients or their caregivers to possess six mature plants at any given time.

“Maybe three plants is the right number,” Mayor David Glass said Monday. But “I think zero is the wrong number.”

Police chiefs in Healdsburg and Sebastopol said Tuesday that their cities seem to have struck the right balance, reducing neighborhood complaints to almost none. Cloverdale is the only city in Sonoma County that bans outdoor pot cultivation altogether, though Police Chief Stephen Cramer suggested the city may revise that rule before new state medical marijuana laws take effect next year.

Petaluma City Manager John Brown said he hoped to return to the council with a revised ordinance in early January in order for it to take effect in advance of March 1, the deadline for California cities to adopt regulation before new state rules on medical marijuana take effect.

You can reach Staff Writer Mary Callahan at 521-5249 or mary.callahan@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @MaryCallahanB.