At 10 AM on Tuesday, the Council will address a much-maligned ordinance proposal sent to them by the City Public Commission (CPC) last week. The ordinance refers to medical marijuana dispensaries as caregiver centers, requires them to apply for city approval within 30 days, creates a host of restrictions on who, how, where and when, and has been passed by both licensing and zoning authorities over the objections of patients, citizens, attorneys and activists.
Since Council previously passed the licensing portion of the ordinance, a vote on the zoning portion of the ordinance could make this Frankenstein policy the law of the land.
Frankenstein, because it’s a cobbled-together collection of many different codes, and because it’s a monster waiting to rampage.
Even though CPC staff tried to remove a 1,000 foot buffer zones from churches because, as they said, we don’t do that for any other land use in the city (including all-nude strip clubs or casinos), the Commissioners put the church buffer zone back in and passed the proposal anyway.
Even though the CPC staff admitted that they’d been using the wrong definitions of Federal Drug-Free School Zones, and all their previous maps showing available areas for medical marijuana dispensaries were wrong, the Commissioners voted it out last week.
Even though the maps they themselves had requested the City to create, were not created, the Commissioners voted to send the Ordinance to the Council.
When the CPC staff announced that they were told by Councilman Tate to add new restrictive definitions from a Detroit law defining Drug Free Zones in the city, and that it included playgrounds, parochial and charter schools, college and University properties, and that they had no idea how much of the city would be left for the medical marijuana caregiver centers to operate, the Commissioners still voted YES on their part of the ordinance.
And finally, even though the citizens in attendance could not be shown an accurate map of the CPC proposal to cluster caregiver centers in industrial and high-traffic areas- nor could the Commissioners- they voted to approve the plan and send the ordinance on to Council anyway.
Citations from the proposal are not available, because the proposal is not available to the public in its current form. Quotes from Commissioners or the citizens that spoke are not available, because the city of Detroit does not broadcast or record their Commission meetings. Transparency and participation in government is not available, because they just don’t care.
The City Council meets at 10:00 AM Tuesday, November 10 on the 13th Floor of the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center, 2 Woodward Avenue, Detroit. This is a courthouse and security protocols are in place.
This is the last map given out to citizens, showing the colorful excluded zones and the tiny black dots of approved properties for caregiver centers.
Source: The Compassion Chronicles
