CLEARLAKE, Calif. – The city of Clearlake is retooling a draft medical marijuana cultivation that failed to pass the city council in late spring, with a view to bringing the revised document back to the council for consideration.

At its meeting last Thursday, the Clearlake City Council gave administrative staff direction to make several changes to the draft ordinance, which is modeled on the cultivation ordinance adopted by the Lake County Board of Supervisors last summer.

“The council wanted to put something in place so there is a tool for both law enforcement and code enforcement to use on these grows,” City Manager Joan Phillipe told Lake County News.

Like the county ordinance, Clearlake's draft cultivation ordinance connects plant numbers to parcel size, allowing six plants on the smallest parcels of less than a half acre and as many as 48 plants on properties 40 acres or larger.

Processing of marijuana would be limited to the amount of plants that can be grown on a given parcel.

Grows on vacant parcels are prohibited. There also are screening and setback requirements, and prohibitions against growing in mobile home parks – unless the management has designated a specific garden area – and on multifamily or apartment properties.

Those key aspects largely will remain the same, according to the direction the council gave Phillipe last Thursday.

The city's marijuana cultivation document, produced by city staff and recommended to the council for passage by the Clearlake Planning Commission, received unanimous council approval of its first reading on May 23 but stalled during its second reading on June 13.

The document languished due to disagreements amongst council members over a proposal to include daycares in the public and private schools definition. The ordinance requires a distance of 600 feet from schools.

Planning commissioners had recommended adding daycares to the schools definition, which the council initially rejected at the urging of Mayor Jeri Spittler on May 23.

However, at the June 13 meeting the majority of council members wanted to add daycares back to the schools definition, leading to sharp disagreements between Spittler and her council colleagues that continued at last week's meeting.

The council majority ultimately decided to create a separate definition category for daycares rather than include them in the schools definition, Phillipe said.

As with schools, a 600-foot distance between grows and established daycares would be required, with a grandfathering clause to be added, she said.

Phillipe said the council last Thursday also directed staff to work in some minor language changes regarding parcel sizes suggested by Lower Lake attorney Ron Green.

She said the council ultimately decided against a suggestion by Council member Gina Fortino Dickson to increase the fines for noncompliant grows to a per-plant basis, ranging from $100 per plant on the first offense up to $1,000 per plant for repeat offenses.

The city already has established precedent for such higher fees in its tree ordinance, which allows for much higher fine amounts for removing protected trees, Phillipe explained.

However, Phillipe said the majority of the council wanted to stay for the first year with the county-based fine amounts of $100 for the first offense, $300 for the second and $500 or up to six months in jail – or both – for the third offense.

After the first year, the council would then review the ordinance to see if those fine amounts are sufficient, Phillipe said.

Phillipe said the council wants to keep its ordinance close to the county's in order to minimize the potential for litigation, noting that the county's ordinance already has had judicial review.

The county was sued over its ordinance last year. Judge David Herrick granted a stay of enforcement through the end of 2012 on qualified growers who were in compliance with state law and who had planted their crops before the supervisors' initial July 9 vote on the document.

However, the county's plant limits were upheld, and the suit was dropped earlier this year before it moved to a trial for a permanent injunction.

Phillipe said she and City Attorney Malathy Subramanian are going over the council's directions and the proposed amendments to the draft ordinance in order to bring it back for consideration.

She did not have an estimate on Monday of when the ordinance might return to the council for its next review.

Clearlake is the only remaining jurisdiction in the county that does not have a medical marijuana cultivation ordinance in place.

Last summer, the county approved the second reading of its ordinance, which is temporary and remains in effect until July 2014.

The Lakeport City Council in June gave final approval to its own cultivation ordinance, which prohibits outdoor grows – requiring that they be conducted in accessory outdoor structures – and handles noncompliance through an administrative citation process.

Email Elizabeth Larson at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . Follow her on Twitter, @ERLarson, or Lake County News, @LakeCoNews.