By Rachel Dovey.
The San Francisco City Administrator’s budget is up for review this week — and Mayor Ed Lee wants to create a new office within the department to handle the city’s freshly legal marijuana industry.
The department would cost the city around $700,000 and include three staff positions, the S.F. Examiner reports. The office would charge an application fee for a permit as well as an annual license fee, and its director would have authority to issue, deny and revoke permits. The city will reportedly be proposing rules about where pot-sellers can open shop within the next three months.
“This is a big undertaking and the centralized office will ensure we leverage and coordinate existing processes and are able to monitor and adjust to this emerging industry,” Lee’s spokesperson Ellen Canale told the paper. “At its core, this office will be a navigator for the public, businesses and city agencies in the rapidly evolving cannabis landscape.”
But not everyone is enthusiastic about the proposed regulations.
“Based upon my expertise, I believe the creation of such a department is unnecessary; it increases costs to an already costly and bureaucratic permitting process, burdens the industry, in particular, small business owners, and is poor use of city resources and taxpayer funds,” one dispensary owner said in an email to the Board of Supervisors.
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