Brainerd Passes Ordinances Related to Emerald Ash Borer, Cannabis Sales

The Brainerd City Council passed three ordinances at their most recent meeting on Monday. Two of the ordinances were related to cannabis, and the third was a tree ordinance that addresses the city’s plan for removing, disposing of, and injecting ash trees that have been infested with emerald ash borer.

The tree ordinance had to be moved on quickly after the discovery of the invasive species within the city.

“Emerald ash borer was recently discovered here this past spring, and the city was looking at updating their tree ordinance as it was,” explained James Kramvik, Brainerd Community Development Director. “But this kind of made things go faster – really, the need for ordinance and rules surrounding what you can and can’t do with ash trees within the city.”

According to the city’s latest tree inventory, about 20% of trees throughout Brainerd are ash trees. The city identified two parks that are affected most by emerald ash borer.

What the ordinance does is outline how the city will deal with the ash trees affected, and if removal or treatment would be the best course of action.

“One of the parks is Kiwanis Park,” Kramvik stated. “A lot of ash trees [were] in there. Staff is recommended to inject 13 of them and then removing six of them that either do not provide shade quality or are beginning to deteriorate from other conditions. The other park that we’re looking at is Bane Park. There’s a number of ash trees that are near the dugout areas and the bleacher areas for softball. So those those are the two parks that we’re really looking at for injection sites.”

As for the cannabis ordinances, the Planning Commission felt the best course of action would be to split them up, as one is for zoning and where dispensaries can operate, and the other is the registry of businesses, which is suited for city code. The Planning Commission felt that treating cannabis dispensaries as similar to off-sale liquor stores made the most sense.

“They wanted it to be consistent with both the retail dispensaries for cannabis as well as off-sale liquor, essentially allowing in the same commercial zoning districts,” Kramvik said. “The only difference would be that the cannabis has kind of those extra ordinances where they can’t be within, say, 100 feet of a school.”

Cannabis businesses that wish to open in Brainerd would first have to be licensed by the state.

“The only thing the city can do is register them,” added Kramvik. “So if the state gets an application that is consistent with their rules, then we would look at making sure that they haven’t met the cap within the city of Brainerd, and that they’ve been properly licensed by the state of Minnesota. And then they would receive a registration from the city of Brainerd.”

The tree ordinance was passed unanimously by the City Council, while both of the cannabis ordinances passed by a vote of 5-2. The registration fees for licensed adult-use cannabis businesses will have an initial fee of $500 and a $1,000 renewal fee.