The City of Salmon Arm will not be adding its voice to a call by municipal governments for 50 per cent of provincial revenue from cannabis sales.
At its Monday, March 12 meeting, city council received letters from the District of Sicamous and the City of Enderby calling on the province to agree to share at least 50 per cent of its cannabis-related revenues with municipal governments.
Coun. Alan Harrison said he liked the letters and wondered if Salmon Arm should submit one of its own to the Southern Interior Local Government Association (SILGA) for support. Harrison then deferred to Coun. Chad Eliason, who said he disagreed with the letters, doubting the government would give a 50 per cent share, let alone even knows at the moment what a 50 per cent share would be.
Instead, Eliason, the current SILGA past president, suggested a letter targeting more specific community needs would be more effective.
“So I would say… We would like to see more provincially funded members of the RCMP for our local detachment rather than municipally funded, because we haven’t seen an increase in that in 25 years,” explained Eliason.
“Specific, tangible things that we would like to see. We would like to see increased paramedic staff, we would like to see increased social services staff, we’d like more mechanisms and more programs. I think that just carte blanche, asking for 50 per cent of the money is a bit naive and it’s really easy to say no to.”
Harrison then asked Eliason to draft a letter to SILGA, which he suggested would still be premature as it’s not yet known as when revenue would be available, but agreed to so as to get that conversation going.
Regarding conversations, Coun. Ken Jamieson suggested the city host another public meeting on cannabis sales and revenue sharing, noting a report on the topic would be coming from city development services director Kevin Pearson.
“I would suggest that we have a meeting in April,” said Jamieson.
“I would prefer to have that meeting after Mr. Pearson is able to get a report to us so we can think about it. Our meeting, if we have one, would be on things like location, proximity, security, because we’re over that hump now of is it going to be legalized and when…”
Pearson said his report will outline several options for council to consider, “including banning the sale of cannabis outright across the whole municipality, to ways to zone it and also an option to not have to actually amend our zoning bylaws but allow it under certain uses in commercial zones that exist now.”
Council and staff agreed to hold an evening public open house-type meeting on April 30, with time and location still to be announced.
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