Medical marijuana might not cause headaches for its users, but it’s continuing to cause headaches for municipal councillors. Ever since the federal government changed the laws to switch medical-marijuana production from home-based grow-ops to large industrial ones, municipal governments have been dealing with the fallout.
The latest example of collateral damage from the federal decision could be on local tax bills. Although they don’t look any more agricultural than a typical warehouse, industrial marijuana buildings are classified as agriculture, according to the Agricultural Land Commission.
That means they might have to pay only agricultural tax rates, which are usually much lower than industrial rates. It could be a hefty hit for already strained municipal coffers. To say nothing of the obvious unfairness of taxing similar buildings at such vastly different rates.
Mike Hicks, Juan de Fuca electoral director, is facing the numbers in his area, where a warehouse in Otter Point is being rezoned for a grow-op. Under the current zoning, the tax bill would be $7,300 a year. If it were zoned agricultural, that figure would drop to $172.
It’s called the “llama loophole,” thanks to a business owner in Chilliwack, who put some llamas on his land during the assessment period in 2012 and successfully argued that that made it agricultural rather than commercial use.
Chilliwack council has been trying to close the llama loophole. It wants the Union of B.C. Municipalities to ask the province to fix the problem by preventing reclassification of land that is zoned for commercial or industrial use. Under the Chilliwack proposal, owners couldn’t argue that industrial land deserves agricultural classification unless the farm use “pre-dates the zoning, is the principal use and the lands are continuously used for farm purposes.”
The resolution was passed unanimously by the Lower Mainland Local Government Association, and councillors hope the UBCM will ask the provincial government to change the law.
The province should make the change before more business owners make a mockery of municipal zoning with transparent attempts to sidestep the zoning rules.
The medical-marijuana issue, however, is more complex. It’s not a question of a canny owner plopping a few potted pot plants in his warehouse and calling it agriculture.
Growing plants for sale certainly falls under most people’s definition of agriculture. If the marijuana stalks were standing in neat rows in a field, there would be no argument.
Unfortunately, if they were growing in fields, they wouldn’t last very long, which is why the federal government insists on stringent security. Security means buildings surrounded by surveillance cameras and barbed wire.
Such a building needn’t be built on good arable land — and, indeed, it shouldn’t be. Covering good earth in concrete, even to grow plants, is no way to preserve scarce farmland.
As with so many aspects of the new marijuana laws, the federal government seems to have paid little heed to the effects on hard-pressed local governments. They, and the provincial governments, are left to put Band-Aids on the resulting wounds.
Putting the grow-ops in industrial areas creates potential llama-loophole problems, but putting them on agricultural land is something municipal councillors agree is a travesty.
Industrial areas are clearly the better choice. Many likely buildings already exist, and security is easier to maintain in an industrial area.
Municipalities should be able to prohibit grow-ops on agricultural land, forcing them into industrial areas.
But to avoid penalizing the municipalities, the province must close the llama loophole so industrial-scale grow-ops are taxed as their neighbours are.
