Durango City Council approved a new master fee schedule across city departments but will revisit marijuana business fees in the near future.
Councilor Jessika Loyer requested a staff report on how to realign marijuana business fees – which are disproportionately higher than other fees, including liquor licenses – to fit the times.
She asked staff members to align fees with state requirements and review how other Colorado communities have adjusted their marijuana business fees over time.
The city’s fee schedule for marijuana businesses has not changed since it was adopted in 2014, the same year retail marijuana businesses opened their doors in Durango after Colorado voters legalized recreational marijuana in 2012.
Durango Organics owner Jonny Radding approached City Council in July asking for marijuana business fees to be adjusted to be more equitable.
In December, City Council approved a new license for Greenhouse Durango, which had operated in Durango since 2019 but was forming a new corporation under which to operate. Because the city lacks a marijuana license transfer process, Greenhouse was required to seek a new license to the tune of $10,000.
Councilors Kip Koso and Dave Woodruff questioned that process at that time. Radding addressed marijuana business fees again at a City Council meeting last week.
“The marijuana fee schedule has not been updated since 2014, which back then, of course, the industry was totally different,” he said. “There was a lot of concern back then, and we understood that the licensing fee was high.”
But times have changed, he said.
He referenced President Donald Trump’s Dec. 18 executive order directing U.S. Attorney General Pam Bondi to complete the rulemaking process for rescheduling marijuana to Schedule III of the Controlled Substance Act.
He said the local marijuana industry has experienced about a 45% decline since the peak of the industry. Durango Organics is struggling to keep its doors open, and the city’s high licensing fees aren’t helping.
“They are very disproportionate from anything else in the fee schedule that you guys have for any other business by, like, eight times as much,” he said.
Durango Organics pays $8,000 per license for each of its two businesses in Durango city limits, totaling $16,000, he said.
“We’re charged $2,000, for example, just to modify our premises to make any changes, where the state enforcement division charges us nothing,” he said. “I don’t think (the city charges) anybody else anything to modify their premises. Two-thousand dollars seems pretty onerous.”
He said other municipalities have streamlined their application processes but Durango has not.
Carolynn Raish, Durango Organics’ vice president of business administration, said it seems like the city set its marijuana fees in 2014 and forgot about them.
Loyer apologized for the amount of time it has taken the city to address the issue of marijuana business fees. She accepted an amendment from Koso asking staff, in addition to revisiting marijuana business fee rates, to determine how it might apply a proration to businesses that have paid extensive fees like Greenhouse Durango.
cburney@durangoherald.com
