City needs to fast track medical marijuana dispensaries
One of the reasons some city officials wanted to replace former City Attorney John Clark with James Allen was his expertise in the state’s medical marijuana dispensary law.
For several years city officials have dragged their feet on creating a zoning law to allow this legal enterprise to operate here. Hamtramck is not alone. A majority of communities in the state have also decided not to touch this issue.
The current state law is complex and extremely stringent. Would-be operators have to come up with a substantial amount of financial backing to be in business.
But that’s not the city’s problem.
Hamtramck simply has to come up with a zoning plan to allow dispensaries to open up. There was some debate several years ago over how many licenses should be permitted and where dispensaries can set up business.
That doesn’t seem like a very difficult challenge. In the meantime, the city has been missing out on a valuable tax revenue stream.
Let’s get this going. It’s an issue that is long overdue to be green-lighted.
april 6, 2018
2 Responses to City needs to fast track medical marijuana dispensaries
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guest
April 7, 2018 at 3:57 pm
Putting this issue on ballot for the residents to decide is the sane thing to do.
John Dory
April 8, 2018 at 2:59 pm
There was no need to replace John Clark with James Allen to resolve a medical marijuana issue.
All the city manager had to do was to hire Allen as an outside law firm for the limited purpose of administering zoning law issues OR, in the alternative, requesting Clark to subcontract those services to Allen’s law firm or another qualified firm with the specific expertise in these areas.
The actual reasons for replacing Clark with Allen are the prior political relationships that existed between certain city officials and Allen before the Emergency Manager Cathy Square took over.
Allen played a key role in the hiring of Erik Tungate and later Kyle Tertzag as city manager and is a heavy donor to political campaigns.