Presque Isle city councilors will soon consider pausing new cannabis business applications for up to six months so they can review the city’s ordinance governing the businesses.
The council voted Wednesday to schedule a public hearing on the subject during their regular March 4 meeting. If enacted, the moratorium would mark a substantial shift in policy in the northern Maine community that has most embraced the legalization of the marijuana.
It’s a move the council has suggested it may make since November amid a discussion around the approval of a 10th marijuana business in the city.
Once that business opens, the city of 8,797 will have one cannabis business per 909 residents. It’s a per capita figure more than double that of Bangor and higher than Portland, which has one per 1,389 residents.
Eight of Presque Isle’s nine current businesses are located on Main Street, and the soon-to-be 10th — a branch of the central Maine-based chain MarijuanaVille — will also be along the city’s main throughway.
Councilors cited that fact in the November meeting, saying that the businesses have “changed the face” of the downtown.
The moratorium “is intended to pause growth while we review and assess capacity, determine unintended economic development consequences in our Downtown, and gives the city time to make sure the rules that regulate these businesses are actually working for Presque Isle and reflect local conditions,” city staff wrote in a memo to the council.
“This has been a hot-button topic recently, and I do believe that it needs the attention that it’s going to receive,” council chair Jeff Willette said.
With a moratorium in place, the ordinance would come before the city’s planning board for review.
MarijuanaVille, the medical dispensary whose license approval began the discussion, was the subject of the first-ever patient advisory issued by state cannabis regulators last month after products sold in its Waterville store tested positive for pesticides up to 190 times the acceptable amount.