The Albert Lea City Council on Monday approved the first reading of an amendment to the city\u2019s ordinance surrounding cannabis and tobacco, including a change that would increase the number of cannabis retail registrations in the city from two to four. <\/p>\n
Albert Lea Mayor Rich Murray and Third Ward Councilor Ted Herman voted against the amendment, while all others voted in favor. <\/p>\n
Murray said he voted against the change because he is not in favor of cannabis. <\/p>\n
\u201cI still believe it leads to other things, and I represent that part of the community that believes the same thing, so I will stand strong with them,\u201d the mayor said. <\/p>\n
Sixth Ward Councilor Brian Anderson said increasing the number of registrations is something he has long supported. <\/p>\n
The council in August approved registrations for two companies, Matchbox Farms, at 2316 Hendrickson Road, and Black Husky, at 2706 Ekko Ave., but neither has opened so far. <\/p>\n
Chris Gracia of Matchbox Farms said since his registration was approved in August, his whole family has relocated to Minnesota and his store was ready to open in October, but there have been concerns about supply. <\/p>\n
He said he was the fifth license approved by the Office of Cannabis Management, but by that time, there was only one cultivator that had been approved for a license. He talked about the amount of time it takes to grow the plants and harvest the product, put it through testing and prepare the final product to put on shelves. <\/p>\n
With that in mind, the company\u2019s new target date is June. <\/p>\n
He said as of Friday, there are 12 licensed cultivators that could potentially have product throughout the state, along with 109 retailers, and so far, he\u2019s aware of only five nontribal dispensaries that have opened. <\/p>\n
There has not been enough product, and there is an inconsistent supply, which has put operators in a position they don\u2019t want to be in. <\/p>\n
He said when he opens his store, the company will hire 15 to 20 people to work there, and he can\u2019t in good conscience hire with the potential of running out of product in a few weeks. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe are not going anywhere,\u201d Gracia said. \u201cWe are not sitting on our licenses. We\u2019re not planning to sell our license. We want nothing more than to get this business going and have a successful, long-term business.\u201d <\/p>\n
He encouraged the council to hold off on expanding the licenses yet, as they still don\u2019t know what the cannabis market in Albert Lea will be like. He asked them to instead reconsider the issue in January 2027. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Albert Lea City Council on Monday approved the first reading of an amendment to the city\u2019s ordinance…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":109830,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[564,128,130,129],"class_list":{"0":"post-110303","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-reading","8":"tag-featured","9":"tag-reading-city","10":"tag-reading-city-headlines","11":"tag-reading-city-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=110303"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/110303\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/109830"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=110303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=110303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-pa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=110303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}