City's Cannabis retail plans head to the home stretch with tonight's council session

It's been a lengthy process to deliver the prospects of Cannabis retail opportunities to Prince Rupert and tonight the final steps required to put the commercial process in motion will take place.

As they settle in for their final Council session for 2018, the council members will ring out the old year with the prospect of some Cannabis regulations to be in place for the new one, that following a number of elements from the Monday night meeting.

Things will get underway at 7PM with the final opportunity for public comment on the city's cannabis plans for the retail sector, with a Public Hearing set to take place at the start of the Monday session.

Following the pubic feedback, if any, Council will move on to the Regular Council session and the final review of report from the Communications Manager, as Veronika Stewart, provides one last look at the community engagement session of November 13th.

From that meeting the City has crafted a Council policy for Consideration of Cannabis Retail applications (Policy 100-23) which you can review from the City's Agenda for Monday night from pages 20- 26.

Following the Report, it's on to the bylaw amendments, with two to reviewed.

The first the zoning amendment to create the retail zone of the downtown area and a section of Park Avenue near Five corners.

The second is to create the fees and regulations required for Cannabis retail sales in the community, towards that, Richard Pucci, the city's Director of Operations has delivered a report for Council to review (pages 30 to 34 from the Agenda) which outlines the scope of the city's overview of Cannabis regulation.

Once all of the elements have been reviewed, Prince Rupert residents may finally have a clearer image as to how the city plans to launch the prospect of cannabis sales in 2019.

To review some of the history of the cannabis conundrum, our blog item of November 26th provided a bit of a timeline towards the early days for proposed municipal legislation to the arrival of the final documents of tonight.

For more notes related to this evening's City Council session see our Council preview here.

A wider over of past council discussion topics can be reviewed here.

Cross posted from the North Coast Review