Sacramento code enforcement personnel were following up Friday to make sure four medical marijuana dispensaries have shut down.

Letters were mailed Friday to property owners and the owners of all four shops after none of them submitted applications to operate legally under the city's new rules by a Monday deadline. Two shops were located in Midtown.

Officials are asking the community to help keep an eye out for any new dispensaries that may open up during the city's first attempt to regulate the shops.

All four appear to be closed. Letters must still be sent notifying owners that they must stop operating, if they haven't already, within 15 days of the letter or the city will take action, said Bob Rose, the city's code enforcement manager.

"So they can't just pop back up," he said.

The city could issue administrative penalties and take civil action against the owners, he said.

City staff are now processing applications from 35 dispensaries that met the deadline. The Sacramento City Council passed the city's first ordinance regulating the shops in November in response to a flurry of new shops that have opened.

Under the ordinance, only 39 dispensaries that had registered with the city by August 2009 could apply to continue operating.

The four dispensaries were registered at 2001 K St., 2208 29th St., 2105 Marconi Ave. and 4690 Natomas Blvd., Suite 130. A code enforcement officer who performed site inspections this week said only one location still had a sign up, but looked as if it has stopped operating.

"Three were certainly closed, by all appearances," Rose said.

Six or seven out of the 39 dispensaries were told to move because they were operating in residential areas, rather than areas zoned for commercial or industrial use. The dispensaries had to move by Oct. 26. The four shops that didn't apply were not among those six.

The Community Development Department’s Code Compliance Division is asking people to call the city at 311 if any new shops open up or appear to move. A code enforcement officer will then go out to verify whether a new shop has opened, which is not allowed under the city ordinance.

"What we hope will happen is someone would call them in," Rose said. "Anything new that pops up out there, theoretically, we would get a phone call." 

Suzanne Hurt is a staff reporter at The Sacramento Press. Follow her on Twitter @SuzanneHurt.