Queens community boards say pot shop approval process is hazy
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Community boards across Queens are struggling to manage expectations and guidelines when it comes to approving legal cannabis dispensaries. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
By Ryan Schwach
For the past year, community boards throughout New York City have been tasked with serving as one of the first reviewers of those attempting to sell legal marijuana in the five boroughs.
But the boards, which serve as the lowest level of local government, have been pushing back, rejecting a number of potential pot shops.
While a number of board chairs and members have cited general opposition to allowing pot – legal or not – to be sold in their neighborhoods, a number have also said that the state has not provided detailed guidance on how they are supposed to assess weed applicants. Even when guidance is provided, the boards say that they are inconsistent with what they want to see in their own neighborhoods.
When the state set out to allow legal dispensaries to start opening up in New York, they tasked the Office of Cannabis Management with overseeing the rollout, a rollout which includes would-be cannabis sellers going through the city’s Community Boards.
Community boards were made part of that rollout, and given an advisory role in reviewing applicants, similar to their advisory role in approving zoning changes and liquor license applicants.
Applicants are required to give the boards a 30 day notice, and send necessary documentation before appearing before the board to argue their case.
However, some board chairs say that the process isn’t so clear cut, and that OCM’s guidance has been hazy, leaving board members with few measures by which to judge weed shop candidates.
“There’s not a whole heck of a lot,” said Betty Braton, chair of CB10 which includes Howard Beach, Ozone Park, South Ozone Park and Richmond Hill.
Braton’s board, as well as Queens Community Boards 9 and 5, have asked for 30-day extensions from OCM to allow them to make more informed recommendations.
“We have a clock running,” said Braton. “It's a 30-day clock and then you ask for a 30-day extension, and right now they've given us the 30-day extensions, but that's not going to last.”
And when the boards complain about the lack of guidance, OCM hasn’t been responsive, board members told the Eagle.
“I expect the Office of Cannabis Management to be in communication with the community boards and their chairs,” said Sherry Algredo, chair of CB9 which includes Richmond Hill, Woodhaven, Ozone Park and Kew Gardens. “There should be some standard format they should be sending us.”
Some boards have adopted the policy of sending questionnaires to applicants to gather more information before they give their final recommendation, but even then, they are not quite sure what to ask.
Board 10 recently drafted a letter to OCM, asking them to clarify certain rules and guidelines they feel are confusing or inconsistent with a proper assessment of an applicant.
“I think the most effective thing that we're going to be able to do is to voice an opinion that the Office of Cannabis Management needs to go back to [their] rules and regulations and maybe make some changes,” said Braton.
Approving potentially controversial local business is not out of the realm of the board’s responsibilities. Recommending on the approval of state liquor licenses are second nature to the boards, and some have approached cannabis the same way, despite the physical and bureaucratic differences between the two.
One major similarity, however, is the distance the business has to be from schools or places of worship, a guidance that with cannabis is straightforward in principle, but not in practice, according to the boards.
This confusion has led to members going out themselves to figure out a potential shop’s location and proximity to schools.
“It’s their job, not our job, especially since they are the one approving the license, not us, and all we are giving as input,” said Algredo. “If we're going to give our input they have to give us something to work with.”
Legal cannabis shops, like Terp Bros in Astoria, are simultaneously dealing with illegal shops which have popped up around the city and an allegedly confusing state process for applicants. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach
The board chairs also argue that OCM doesn’t understand how communities in New York City work – even if a dispensary is the necessary distance from a school, it may be built next to a business or business corridor where school children congregate before or after class.
In CB5, which covers Ridgewood, Maspeth, Middle Village and Glendale, a potential dispensary owner wanted to open up shop next to a McDonald’s, a popular hangout for local students, board chair Vincey Arcuri said, adding that his board recently recommended against that license and two others.
Bratton said that the same is true in her neighborhood.
“Our kids in middle school and high school, they don't come out of school and get on a yellow bus and go straight home, they take public transportation,” said Braton. “You have kids walking by these places.”
“[OCM] need[s] to look at their own rules and apply them better to New York City,” she added.
Beyond OCM’s alleged lack of clarity, board members have also appeared to be confused with the general weed market in New York City, which was first flooded with thousands of illegal smoke shops.
Illegal smoke shops have created an entirely separate problem for OCM and local law enforcement. And boards have not escaped those issues, with the proliferation of illegal shops muddying the reputation of potential reputable business owners trying to open up legal shops.
Earlier this month, CB9 heard out a few applicants looking to open a shop. One of those applicants had planned to open his store on Queens Boulevard, not far from Borough Hall and Queens Criminal Court.
Members of the board were critical of the applicant, primarily because they had incorrectly confused him with the owner of an illegal shop that had opened in the same area and drawn criticism from locals and the media.
“The general consensus is that even before assessing, how did these lawmakers decide to go ahead and do this and find out there's loopholes and allow these loopholes to continue?” said Algredo. “These are loopholes that allow people to put up these illegal smoke shops.”
Some of the bids for legal locations are on blocks where there are already one or more illegal shops, which many see as crime magnets that are more likely to sell to underage children.
“What do you want – legal and illegal shops to be in the same neighborhood? Nobody wants that,” said Algredo.
At a recent CB9 meeting, the board shot down the renewal of three liquor licenses for various reasons, a process leaders say makes a lot more sense than cannabis.
“There is a portal in the Liquor Authority, when you enter the address when somebody wants to get a liquor license, it gives you proximity reports,” said Algredo. “It tells you how close it is to school, how close it is to a house of worship.”
Algredo says that OCM should have a similar system for cannabis licenses.
Those Liquor Authority reports also show an application's proximity to pre-existing businesses with liquor licenses, because the state specifies that only a certain amount of such businesses can exist in a one mile radius. With cannabis, community members say that since some legal shops want to open within the same area as already existing illegal shops, the illegal shops should be shut down before a legal shop joins the crowd.
“These rules are applied to legal cannabis shops, yet we have illegal cannabis, we don't have illegal liquor shops, because if they did they would get shut down,” said Algredo. “Illegal shops are still here…Let's get rid of the illegal shops first.”
OCM defended its system and guidance to the Eagle.
According to the agency, it pre-approves some applicants and has a review process of their own to determine that legal locations are far enough away from schools and houses of worship, and that owners won’t sell to kids and will head the regulations.
“The amount of applications we are receiving for adult-use cannabis licenses across New York State speaks not only to the excitement to enter New York’s budding cannabis market, it also affirms the importance of our regulations that prioritize competition over monopolization,” said spokesperson Aaron Ghitelman. “The Office appreciates the hard work Community Board members across New York City, and municipalities across New York State, are doing to support cannabis entrepreneurs and we will continue to work with and help them as they navigate their important role in this new and burgeoning industry.”
OCM also says that not every applicant will receive a license, so the amount of applicants the boards are getting does not reflect how many will actually open.
Although some locals are hesitant to trust easily.
“They're not reviewing the applicants,” says Arcuri. “It's out of hand.”
Even boards that say they have figured out the approval process, like Western Queens’ CB1, don’t think OCM has it entirely together.
“I think OCM has not been great,” said CB1 Chair Danielle Brecker. “But we have adapted our system for approving liquor licenses to cannabis and that has worked well for us.”
CB9 and CB10 intend to vote on their ongoing applications in their December meetings, and hope that in the meantime OCM responds to their complaint letters.
“It's a new thing for all of us,” said Braton. “We figure it out on the fly.”
