Mayor Leanne Guier cast the deciding vote Monday night to amend Pacific Municipal Code Chapter 20.09, prohibiting medical marijuana cooperatives.

The City already had a ban on processing and selling marijuana for retail or medical purposes.

But Guier said in August, when the council placed a 60-day moratorium on new, medical marijuana cooperatives, that “we had to go through the process because (the state Legislature) has now added a cooperative.”

State law says as many as four patients can grow up to 60 plants for their personal medicinal use in a medical marijuana cooperative, which must be at the residence of one of its members.

Councilmembers Katie Garberding, Kerry Garberding and Clint Steiger voted for the amendment, while Justin Newlun, Stacy Oliveira and Dave Storaasli were against it. Oliveira said that she wants residents who need medical marijuana to have access to it.

But Guier said a city the size of Pacific, which, as recently as the 2010 Census, had a population of 6,606, simply does not have the resources to regulate marijuana.

Voters in Washington approved a statewide ballot initiative on Nov. 6, 2012, to legalize marijuana for recreational use.

After hearing public comment on two other proposed ordinances – one that related to storage and design standards in the City’s office park district, and another that dealt with a new sign code – the council decided to push both measures to the Oct. 3 workshop agenda.

Pacific resident John Welch, Sr. expressed concern about a section of the ordinance relating to freeway signs.

“When I see no freeway signs, it doesn’t leave a lot of wiggle room,” he said. “You’ve got to help us out.”

The proposed ordinance says, “Freeway-oriented signs are prohibited” except when “they are installed by a business that has its primary customer entrance facing the freeway; and the wall, window or temporary sign also faces an intervening parking lot or frontage road that serves the business.”

But Welch and Katie Garberding questioned the need to restrict businesses from placing signage on the side or back of buildings if it faces the freeway. Garberding said she plans to attend the 6 p.m. Sept. 27 planning commission to learn more about the subject.

Jack Dodge, community development manager, said the City must revise its sign code based on the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision last year in Reed v. Town of Gilbert. The court ruled that First Amendment rights are violated when public officials treat signs differently based on their subject matter and messages.