Chula Vista has 60 days to reprocess company’s cannabis application, judge says

© Provided by San Diego Union Tribune A marijuana leaf on a plant at a cannabis grow in Gardena. ((Associated Press))

A judge has given the city of Chula Vista 60 days to comply with a previous court order to reprocess cannabis business applications filed by Caligrown.

San Diego Superior Court Judge James Mangione last week ordered the South County city to rescore the company’s application for storefront retail marijuana business licenses in council districts 1, 3 and 4.

An appeals court had already determined in July that the city “acted in an arbitrary and capricious manner” when it rejected Caligrown’s applications to open the dispensaries. The court ordered the city to reprocess them, but it has not done so. That prompted CEO Laura Wilkinson Sinton to return to court to have the appeals court ruling enforced.

The city and Alena Shamos, an attorney at Colantuono, Highsmith and Whatley, PC who represented Chula Vista, declined to comment.

In 2018, the city established a rigorous two-phase permitting process with vetting and criminal background checks. Its ordinance allows up to eight dispensaries to open with a maximum of two storefronts in each of the city’s four council districts.

Chula Vista already has issued the maximum eight licenses, presenting an issue as to how it will resolve Caligrown’s case.

One option: increase the maximum number of storefront retail licenses. To do that, the City Council must consider “a report from the City Manager regarding any observed or projected adverse impacts on the community from such businesses,” according to its municipal code on cannabis.

To date, no such report or discussion has publicly come before city leaders.

The city argued that it had tried to comply with the appeals court and it expressed concern that the court might issue a writ invalidating any licenses issued to the other businesses.

Wilkinson Sinton said she is not asking the city to revoke the other licenses; she just wants a fair scoring of her applications.

“I lost a minimum of two years of revenue in those three districts and the licenses themselves,” she said.

In January 2020, Caligrown was notified that it did not qualify for the second phase in the city’s permitting process because it failed to rank high enough on the merit-based scoring. HdL Consulting Services, a third-party consultant that reviewed applications, had deducted points because of “poor formatting and disorganization,” despite the business following the city’s directions.

Caligrown appealed the rejection and former City Manager Gary Halbert sided with the business. He said scoring should not have been based on the application form but on the applicant’s qualifications and ability to operate a retail cannabis establishment.

HdL only rescored a few categories, leaving the business with insufficient points once again to advance in the permitting process. The company then sued Chula Vista in 2020 claiming that the city failed to follow its own regulations. In January 2021, the court denied the motion without explanation. Caligrown then filed an appeal and that’s when the appellate court ruled in favor of the cannabis company.

This story originally appeared in San Diego Union-Tribune.