This morning, a group called Re-Start Vallejo submitted more than 9,000 signatures to Vallejo City Hall to stop the closure of Vallejo’s fourteen or so dispensaries and regulate the businesses once and for all.
The petition is a response to a May 26 ordinance in Vallejo, closing all dispensaries and rejecting millions of dollars in voter-approved medical cannabis taxes. Vallejo Mayor Osby Davis’ religious crusade against clubs appears to have finally galvanized and activated the city’s rather passive dispensary scene. They’ve formed the Vallejo Patients Alliance, and Re-Start Vallejo rallied and spoke with the press this morning, decrying the once-bankrupt city’s rejection of the popular businesses.
A new dawn in Vallejo?
Credits: City of Vallejo
The group wants to grandfather in the city’s existing, tax-paying clubs, which would receive licenses after inspection.
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“RSV supports strict regulations and operating standards, including prohibited activities, and locational controls, such as those that the City has proposed,” the group said in a statement. “But RSV does not support a system that closes all the tax-paying dispensaries who have not violated any city law—and then allows the City to hand out permits to a select few applicants. Such a system is inherently unfair: it punishes those who have played by the rules and paid by them too. Those dispensaries should receive permits if they are willing to abide by reasonable regulations, standards, prohibitions, and locational controls.”
“It could be quite smooth and straightforward: the City of Sacramento just finished licensing 30 dispensaries without a single lawsuit or petition campaign and with a steady annual tax revenue that now exceeds $2.8 million. By the City’s own estimates, there are no more than 14 tax-paying dispensaries currently operating in Vallejo.”
Re-Start Vallejo’s petition amounts to 16 percent of all registered voters, and could force the council to repeal its ban.
