Auburn Cannabis Community Workshop - September 24, 2025
Auburn Cannabis Community Workshop - September 24, 2025
This virtual workshop, the second of two community meetings, was held on September 24, 2025, to gather public input on potential commercial cannabis regulations within the City of Auburn. Staff presented background information, survey results-in-progress, and proposed options regarding the number, location, and type of cannabis licenses. The feedback will be compiled and presented to the Auburn City Council in October 2025, along with results from an online survey closing on October 1, 2025.
Public Comments & Testimony
- Daniel (operator from Nevada City's Elevation dispensary): Provided insights on the industry, noting that medical sales primarily come from the 18-21 age group (approximately 5% of sales), and described the strict regulatory tracking system (metrc) that enables product tracing back to the manufacturer and batch, but not to the individual purchaser. He confirmed that drive-through operations are generally not allowed for new dispensaries in California.
- Attendee (name not given): Expressed support for allowing cannabis retail, citing a study of Denver, Colorado where two dispensaries helped the city emerge from deficit in 2021 and provided funding for schools. The speaker argued that cannabis purchases are already happening and revenues are currently leaving Auburn for other cities.
- Attendee (Jay Ross): Suggested a location near the bank next to Rowdy Randy's across from Tri-County, citing existing security vaults and potential drive-up service for older populations, and supported the High Street corridor near the freeway off-ramp.
Discussion Items
- Background & Survey: Staff (Shari Harris) reviewed California's cannabis history (1996 Compassionate Use Act, 2015 legislative overhaul, 2016 Prop 64 for adult use). The current Auburn ordinance allows only indoor cultivation of up to six plants (with police chief approval) and medical use. No permits have been requested.
- Delivery to Auburn: Staff highlighted that Sacramento-area dispensaries actively advertise delivery to Auburn, including an Express kiosk in unincorporated Placer County (Dry Creek) that appears to circumvent local rules by ordering via kiosk for immediate delivery.
- Potential Revenue: Staff presented estimated cannabis tax revenue from nearby cities: Grass Valley (~$240,000/year), Nevada City (~$240,000-$280,000), Marysville (higher rate, two dispensaries). Compared to Auburn's current top tax producers, such revenue would rank in the top 5 or top 3.
- Grant Opportunities: Staff noted eligibility for state cannabis cohort grants (e.g., Grass Valley received over $3 million) for community enhancement projects such as youth facilities, fire mitigation, and surveillance. Auburn could apply similar grants for projects like the Central Square in Old Town.
- Location Options: Staff presented three potential areas: 1) Nevada Street Corridor (north end, outside 600-foot medicinal buffer, limited opportunity), 2) Highway 49 corridor near Palm Avenue (excluding the Save Mart shopping center due to family intensity), and 3) High Street corridor (near downtown but not in the central tourist district, suitable for redevelopment). All locations considered 600-foot buffers from schools and youth facilities (required for medical, suggested for recreational).
- Number of Licenses: A poll among attendees showed most favored 1-3 licenses (4 votes total). Staff compared other cities: Grass Valley uses a per-capita formula (1 license per 12,000-15,000 residents), Nevada City allows multiple licenses but has only issued one, Colfax limits to one, and Placerville allows up to three. Staff suggested recommending one license with a delivery component to support brick-and-mortar operations.
- Medical vs. Recreational: Staff noted that a combined medical/recreational dispensary would require the 600-foot buffer, limiting location options. Medical sales are a small fraction (Daniel estimated ~5% of sales).
- Operator Selection Criteria: Staff raised potential criteria such as local ties, civic engagement, experience with philanthropic programs (youth sports, schools, tourism), and community involvement. No attendees provided input on this topic.
Key Outcomes
- No formal vote or decision was made. The workshop was purely informational and for public input.
- Staff will present findings from both workshops and the online survey (closing Wednesday, October 1 at 5 PM) to the Auburn City Council at the first meeting in October 2025.
- A follow-up online survey remains available until the deadline for those who did not attend.
Meeting Transcript
Of Auburn. Perfect. And on with us, we have Councilmember Alice Dallin Cavillo. We have Chief Brian Morrison as well as Tia Kump, who is our planning director from city staff. And Amy Lynn is the uh city clerk who's on the technical end and flipping the slides and helping me with everything that's going on here. This is going to be recorded, so we will be able to watch it at a later date. If you miss something or if you want to go back and or you want to tell friends about it. We are going to hold this as a civil uh meeting. I know this can be contentious. Some people have varying opinions, and we're going to respect everybody's opinion. If there's somebody that cannot respect other people's opinions, then they're going to be removed from this meeting. This has been a long time coming. So we've been working on this for almost two years when the city council originally gave us direction to move forward. Um and that was move forward with just putting together at least some type of uh policy to to look at for them. Uh the last meeting was in um, or the meeting prior to our August meeting was in January of 2024. So this has been ongoing for quite some time. Uh in August, we were instructed as staff to hold these two meetings. This is the second of two workshops. This is our virtual one. The first one was in person uh last Wednesday in the Rose Room. Um from here, we're going to be going to the city council in the first meeting in October and giving them our findings from both these two meetings as well as the survey that we have live online. Um, that survey will be live until next Wednesday. So you have Wednesday at five o'clock before we actually take it down and then start tabulating uh the data that was collected through that. The survey has very similar questions to what's going to be asked tonight or what's going to be discussed tonight. So if you've already done that, then you're not missing a whole lot, or if you've already seen the last Wednesday meeting, then you're really not going to be missing a lot here. Uh the city council in August directed staff to basically go to the public and ask them three pretty simple questions. Uh, one is, you know, how many uh cannabis licenses should we be looking at for the city of Auburn? Where should cannabis be located? Or the third question is should cannabis even be allowed within the city? Uh we've expanded that to be a little bit more comprehensive to look at uh different data sets and those things we'll go into this evening. So I'm gonna try to keep this thing to hopefully less than an hour, especially we don't have that many people on here, so there shouldn't be that many questions. Um I will entertain questions as we go. Feel free to uh just unmute and we can have a discussion from there. But while you're sitting here uh viewing and listening, please stay muted. Um, there is an interactive session, so there's some slides in here that are interactive. So you will be required to uh if you're near a mouse or something like that, to be able to toggle through so you can answer some of those questions. Some of them are uh word questions in which we would like to have uh word responses. So uh we're looking for, you know, not just the the thing that we're discussing, but maybe also some background on why you feel the way you do. So feel free to uh to post those things up. You can um it's it's anonymous as it goes. The only people that can see it as far as we know with the Zoom is the administrator, and so we're not going to be posting it with people's information um out there, but we will be taking the um the data and telling it and presenting just the data then to the council uh in October. So I'm gonna go ahead and get started. Does anybody have any questions at this point? All right, you should be seeing the uh the one slide cannabis and Auburn workshop. Today is September 24th. There's my name. We'll move right through it. Okay, we got carried away. All right. Uh first thing is we're just trying to gather some demographic information and figure out where people are coming from that are interested in this subject.
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