By Ken Sain
Managing Editor
City Council will soon consider relaxing some of its regulations that have made Chandler the most restrictive city when it comes to medical marijuana.
“Chandler has been the most restrictive and will continue to be one of the most restrictive in the state,” said Lindsay Schube, an attorney at Gammage & Burnham, which represented the clients requesting the change.
The change is being asked for by citizen initiative, meaning it is not being requested by city officials. That’s rare. Kevin Mayo, the city’s planning administrator, said it’s only the second time a citizen initiative has come through in the past decade.
The other case was in 2013 to change the city’s ordinances on backyard chickens, which ultimately failed back then by one council vote.
Council ended up changing those ordinances to allow backyard chickens earlier this month.
“It was a citizen initiative because staff was just slammed,” Schube said. “We get to take the legwork away from them and help with the drafting and putting everything in legislative edits and all that. It was a very close working [relationship] with the Planning Department for a great application.”
In the medical marijuana case, Planning & Zoning commissioners unanimously agreed with the requests being made to slightly increase the square footage of facilities and to allow for some mixing of the types of businesses.
For example, one facility would be allowed to grow medical marijuana, sell…
