6A • August 11, 2017 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Homeowner association opposes
location of marijuana dispensary
Weed from Page 1A
Ennis and the other two
tenants weren’t able to be
reached for comment.
“This was a case of unin-
tended consequences,” coun-
cilor Mike Benefield, who
voted in favor of keeping the
ordinance, said after the meet-
ing.
‘Unintended
consequences’
If the OLCC and business
licenses are approved, Five
Zero Trees would be one of
three marijuana dispensaries
which have applied to oper-
ate in Cannon Beach since the
community narrowly defeated
a retail cannabis prohibition at
the polls in November.
City Planner Mark Barnes
said the ordinance was based
on one crafted by the Oregon
League of Cities last year.
Barnes said when he ap-
proved the land use compati-
bility statement in November
he wasn’t aware the owner
of the property, Max Ritchie,
also had tenants.
“When I found out a res-
ident was living there, I no-
tified the owner and said I
couldn’t approve the marijua-
na shop business license with
residents,” Barnes said. After
this, Ritchie asked if evicting
his tenants would make his
property compliant, to which
Barnes said it would.
Ritchie declined to com-
ment on anything related to
this ordinance or the eviction
of his tenants.
Jason Cain, co-partner of
Five Zero Trees, said their
company also had no com-
ment because they have not
been involved in communica-
tion between Ritchie and the
city.
The idea to change the or-
dinance came from the fear
that landlords with mixed
use facilities would contin-
ue to evict tenants to allow
COLIN MURPHEY/EO MEDIA GROUP
In a 3-2 vote, the Cannon Beach City Council decided re-
tailers that sell marijuana cannot occupy buildings that
house both businesses and residences.
marijuana retailers to rent
their commercial spaces for a
higher price than tenants can
pay.
Losing rentable apartment
space would contribute to
an only growing affordable
housing crisis, councilor
George Vetter said.
“If we had considered this
when we were passing the
ordinance, we wouldn’t have
put this rule in there because
it would exclude so many
housing options,” Vetter said,
who voted for changing the
ordinance.
But Benefield and council-
or Nancy McCarthy, who vot-
ed to keep it, disagreed with
this logic.
“If you deny applications
from dispensaries in the first
place for mixed use facilities,
then you can’t have a dis-
pensary,” McCarthy said. “If
we changed the ordinance, it
would open up a huge can of
worms for marijuana stores to
open everywhere.”
Benefield said changing
the ordinance would be con-
tradictory to keeping resi-
dential areas marijuana-free,
which was a priority to voters
when councilors passed the
ordinance originally.
“It’s always a fight be-
tween free enterprise and reg-
ulation,” Benefield said. “But
I’m not sure how amending
this ordinance would keep
with the character of Cannon
Beach.”
What “the character of
Cannon Beach” looks like,
however is subjective.
“I’ve talked to business
owners from other commu-
nities, and I still haven’t spo-
ken with anyone who said
these stores bring a negative
impact,” Vetter said. “This is
fear of the unknown as much
as anything.”
Community backlash
For Cannon Beach resi-
dent David Frei, it is not about
challenging the introduction
of marijuana into town.
“That’s already been vot-
ed in. The only thing we can
challenge now is where it is
located,” Frei said.
Frei is spearheading an
effort on behalf of 12 condo
owners and four business-
es apart of the Ecola Square
Homeowners Association to
challenge the location of Five
Zero Trees.
Ecola Square is directly
across the street from where
Five Zero Trees plans to oc-
cupy. Frei and other resi-
dents came out against the
ordinance change Tuesday,
arguing the best way to keep
tenants in their apartments is
by denying cannabis applica-
tions in the first place.
While the vote ended in
the homeowner association’s
favor, Frei said they will fight
having Five Zero Trees there
at all — mixed use or not. He
argues that even though this
building is zoned for commer-
cial, the area around it is res-
idential, containing 37 homes
in comparison to the eight
businesses.
Having a business per-
mitted to stay open until 10
p.m. when most close around
5 p.m., the effect on prop-
erty values and the increase
in parking issues this store
would bring are other factors
Frei argues would disrupt an
otherwise quiet neighbor-
hood.
But the main point of con-
tention, Frei said, is the feel-
ing that homeowners in the
area never got a chance for
public comment to commu-
nicate these issues in the first
place.
“Overall, locations for
these businesses need to be
sensitive to the area around
them, and this block really is
a residential area,” Frei said.
Because issuing land use
compatibility statements and
building permits are admin-
istrative decisions, legally
there is nothing requiring the
city to seek public comment.
But Frei argues you even if
it isn’t required, it is in the
city’s comprehensive plan to
include citizens on decisions
like these.
“Hopefully from us chal-
lenging this we can help de-
velop reasonable limits and
have our voices heard earlier
in the process,” Frei said.
If Five Zero Trees passes
city building inspections, ob-
tains a license from OLCC
and a business license from
the city, the dispensary still
plans on opening this year.
“We are very excited to
come into the community. We
are really looking forward to
getting involved and bringing
jobs to the area,” Cain said.
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Puffin numbers at Haystack Rock on decline
Puffins from Page 1A
Identifying the
problem
There are about 2.4 million
puffins who breed in North
America. While the Haystack
Rock colony has stabilized
the past few years in the low
100s, the population has been
steadily declining for the past
20 years, said Shawn Ste-
phensen, a wildlife biologist
with the Oregon Coast Na-
tional Wildlife Refuge Com-
plex.
Twenty years ago, 5,000 of
the birds were nesting on the
Oregon Coast. Now it is just a
few hundred, he said.
Stephensen has been mon-
itoring puffins at Haystack
Rock for the past six years.
The way he does this is by
observing the number of bur-
rows puffins use to nest in,
which between 2010 to 2016
dropped from 368 to 99, ac-
cording to his study — a sig-
nificant drop from the 612
counted in 1988.
It’s still too early to esti-
mate this year’s population,
Stephensen said, but the ini-
tial counts have not be high.
While he said formal re-
search has yet to be conducted
as to why the population is de-
clining, he and other research-
ers believe it is due to a food
shortage.
Because of various factors
such as rising ocean tempera-
ture and acidification, small-
er fish like herring are either
becoming less plentiful or
SUBMITTED PHOTO
John Underwood, the re-
tired CEO of Darigold, is
selling sweatshirts to help
raise money for research to
protect puffins.
swimming deeper in the water
to where puffins can no longer
dive to retrieve them, he said.
Even if there are other fish
available, puffins could still
be malnourished from eating
less nutritious fish.
“They are a great indica-
tor species of climate change.
If they can’t find food, what
else is changing?” Stephensen
said.
‘A warning’
Roy Lowe is a retired
project leader for the Oregon
Coast National Wildlife Ref-
uge Complex, which is part
of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife
Service, and spent much of
his career conducting coastal
surveys of seabirds like puf-
fins.
He said while the decline
is most notable in easily ac-
cessible places like Haystack
Rock, there are nesting sites
that have been hit even hard-
er. Finley Rock by Oceanside
in 1979 recorded almost 4,000
puffins. Today, he said, there
are fewer nested there than at
Haystack Rock.
“If puffins aren’t able to
live in natural environment, it
should be a warning,” Lowe
said. “Birds evolve over mil-
lions of years, and if they
can’t make a go of it in their
environment something is se-
riously wrong.”
For years, seabird biolo-
gists have had the goal to add
the tufted puffin to the federal
endangered species list. Two
years ago, the Washington
Department of Fish and Wild-
life voted to put the puffin on
the endangered species list,
and Oregon has it listed as a
sensitive species.
This led Stephensen and
other scientists from across
the region to form the Pacific
Seabird Group, which is ded-
icated to devoting time and
dollars to researching why
these birds are disappearing.
The team hopes to research
population trends, genetic
studies, wintering patterns
and detailed food analysis
— all types of data not being
collected about puffins in the
region.
There is a list of criteria a
species must meet before be-
ing considered endangered.
He said doing more expansive
research will hopefully help
qualify the puffin as a candi-
date.
They will seek funding
through the U.S. Fish and
Wildlife Service, but might
have to look at grants to con-
tinue the expanded projects,
he said.
“We’ll probably find
it’s not just one issue,” Ste-
phensen said. “It will be many
issues, whether it be ocean
acidity, human disturbance,
lack of fish, what have you.”
But a place to start is by
funding volunteer groups like
the Haystack Rock Aware-
ness Project, Stephensen said,
which state and national en-
tities rely on heavily to help
preserve and record local sea-
bird populations.
For Underwood, he hopes
to work with Keyser to fund
research projects like the ones
proposed in the Pacific Sea-
bird Group through the sale of
his sweatshirts.
“Hopefully we’ll have to
order some more sweatshirts,”
Underwood said.
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