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The proposal involved an initial plan for a minimum of a 50,000 square foot facility that would employ 20 workers with an annual payroll of $710,000, West Carrollton City Manager Brad Townsend said.
The operation would have increased in size by half — and expanded to 30 workers and a $1.1 million annual payroll — within three years, under the plan presented to the city, documents show.
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But the city council interest wasn’t there “in terms of the jobs that it would create or the economic incentive to the city,” Townsend said.
The Ohio General Assembly voted to legalize medical marijuana last year. Since then, several area communities – including West Carrollton – have approved bans on issuing and processing permits for “retail dispensaries, cultivators, or processors of marijuana.”
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West Carrollton is among those jurisdictions which have extended the bans until state legislators decide what the rules are for distributing marijuana in Ohio.
Townsend said a “third party consultant” for an unidentified group contacted him this spring about a possible production site in West Carrollton, prompting the city manager to seek economic impact data, which he presented to city council last month.
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With the West Carrollton’s 2.25 percent income tax rate, a $1.1 million payroll would mean slightly less than $25,000 a year for the city.
“I think the majority of council thought it really wasn’t that lucrative of an opportunity to pursue, so we just kind of let it go,” Townsend said.
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If the city fields future proposals for a medical marijuana production site, Sanner said officials will certainly listen but “we’ve got to look at all sides of it.”
“It’s not the distribution, it’s the growing of it,” that is significant concern, he said. “It has to meet certain perimeters. It can’t be close to the schools.”
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