Bolingbrook Village Board revisits allowing recreational pot businesses

The Village Board banned recreational marijuana businesses locally in 2019

Members of the Bolingbrook Village Board began discussions during their meeting Tuesday about possibly lifting its ban on local recreational marijuana businesses.

The state Legislature passed the law legalizing recreational pot in 2019, but before it went into effect, the Bolingbrook Village Board voted to ban such businesses. Trustees at the time argued that they yet had too many questions unanswered about the new industry and the potential public safety consequences it would have.

Village attorney Burt Odelson said Tuesday that the Planning Commission and the Village Board would have to amend the village zoning code to allow for a recreational marijuana business. The village can regulate the time, place and manner of marijuana sales, as well as the number of businesses allowed.

“It’s pretty similar to the sale of alcohol, which you’re able to regulate also,” Odelson said during the meeting.

The village can also set minimum distances between a marijuana business and a local place of worship or residential area. It can allow for various types of businesses including dispensaries, cultivation centers, transporters, infusers, or craft growers.

Odelson said the village also can impose a tax of up to 3% on recreational marijuana sales in Bolingbrook, adding that the Village Board would have to approve a tax by September for it to go into effect Jan. 1.

Since 2020, dispensaries in Joliet and Romeoville have been selling the recreational product with few complaints. Both municipalities impose a tax on sales.

The Will County Board also passed a tax on recreational marijuana sales which, combined with a state allocation, has generated more than $1 million in revenue. County officials have yet to decide how to spend that money.

Romeoville Mayor John Noak said sales at the dispensary in the village are on pace to generate about $425,000 a year in tax revenue.

Joliet has not disclosed the tax revenue the two dispensaries in the city have produced, citing state law which bars disclosure on the basis it would reveal proprietary sales information.

Trustee Sheldon Watts said during Tuesday’s meeting that the board took a “wait and see approach” to allowing recreational marijuana businesses back in 2019 when it banned them.

Watts said the dispensary in Romeoville is close to the border with Bolingbrook. He said he reached out to local public safety officials who told him they have not seen an uptick in crime or traffic accidents in the area around the dispensary since it began selling the recreational product.

“I think we do now have more data, more information from communities like Romeoville (and) Naperville,” the trustee said.

Watts also said the board still had several concerns it wished to address before changing its ordinance, including how it would spend the tax revenue and where in the village it would be appropriate to allow for businesses, along with any concerns from residents.

“Those are all the things that we looked at then, that I think we should look at again now,” he said.