SOUTH LAKE TAHOE, Calif. — The South Lake Tahoe city council will be considering changes to its cannabis ordinance during its Tuesday night meeting.

The cannabis subcommittee, which included representatives from Tahoe Alliance for Safe Kids, Lake Tahoe Unified School District, South Tahoe Chamber, Live Violence Free, and Boys and Girls Club of Lake Tahoe, met in early April to review the city’s cannabis industry.

Based on the city’s generally positive experience with the cannabis industry, the subcommittee recommends making several changes to the ordinance.

The changes include allowing retailers to include on-site consumption lounges, allowing permittees to hold more than one Cannabis Use Permit, increasing the allowable canopy size for indoor cultivation and establishing a cannabis tax.

If on-site consumption is allowed, the business must have a state license as a cannabis retailer or microbusiness with retail components. Access would be restricted to customers aged 21 and up, no alcohol or tobacco may be sold or consumed on premises and the consumption of cannabis cannot be visible from a public place or non-restricted area.

If the city approved a cannabis tax, it would need to be approved by voters in the next election.

Also on the agenda, council will discuss distribution of the money collected from the cannabis community benefit fee. The fund is projected to have raised $673,888 by the end of the fiscal year.

Staff recommends granting $100,000 of that money to the Boys and Girls Club Lake Tahoe for completion of their new building. Staff also recommends allowing City Manager Joe Irvin to start a grant program for distribution of 50% of the remaining funds. Everything left over after that would be moved into the general fund.

The meeting agenda has a lengthy consent agenda which includes signing a new contract with the South Lake Tahoe Police Officers’ Association. The new contract would include a 2% salary increase on Oct. 1, and another 2% increase on Oct. 1, 2022. It also includes additional pay incentives for bilingual members of the force.

Also on the consent agenda, the council approved several applications including an application for $30 million from Related Companies of California for construction of the Sugar Pine Village Project, a Tahoe Network of FireAdapted Communities sub-recipient grant application submittal to Tahoe Resource Conservation District in the amount of $61,223 for hiring of two part-time Defensible Space Inspectors, and hazardous fuel reduction grants from the forest service and CalFire.

The meeting will begin at 5:30 p.m. on Tuesday, May 18. The meeting can be watched on the city’s website or https://zoom.us/j/93276344472. To call in to make a comment, call 530-542-6500, the meeting ID is 932 7634 4472.