BOULDER APOLOGIZES FOR ID'ING SECRET MARIJUANA GROW SITES

City Attorney: One of Two Maps Violated State Disclosure Law

We're sorry.

That's the message Boulder recently sent to the owners of two Boulder
medical marijuana dispensaries after the city accidentally made public
the addresses of their secret marijuana growing warehouses.

But the owners of dozens of other dispensaries, who also had the
locations of their grow sites accidentally disclosed, won't be asked
for the same forgiveness.

Boulder officials included the addresses of two growing operations in
a public document that was provided to the City Council in advance of
its Jan. 4 meeting. The document contained a map that shows the
location and addresses of cultivation warehouses for Boulder Kind Care
and The Farm dispensaries.

State law requires local governments to keep the location of marijuana
cultivation centers a secret, out of fear that disclosure could lead
to robberies or other problems. Records that show the location of such
facilities are specifically exempt from the Colorado Open Records law.

"The inclusion of the two addresses was a mistake, not purposeful,"
city staffers wrote in a recent memo to the council.

In response, the city sent letters of apology to Jan Cole, owner of
The Farm, located at 1644 Walnut St., and to Jay and Diane Czarkowski,
owners of Boulder Kind Care, located at 2031 16th St.

The letters, signed by City Attorney Tom Carr, alerted the business
owners that their grow sites were "inadvertently" included in public
material.

"As soon as the mistake was discovered, it was removed from the
(city's) Web site," the letter reads. "I sincerely apologize for
allowing the address of the cultivation facility to be included in a
public document."

Cole said she's satisfied with the apology.

"I wasn't upset by it," she said. "We're doing business, and we're out
in the open here. I believe in transparency."

She said her warehouse has "proper security in place" and that it's
not necessarily a bad thing for the public to know about the growing
presence of cannabis.

"There are so many, really," she said of growing warehouses. "It's
becoming a part of the culture in Boulder and in Colorado in general.
It's not as mysterious as it used to be."

Diane Czarkowski said she also was happy to accept the city's
apology.

"Being in an industry where we're scrutinized beyond belief, it's nice
to know when someone else makes an 'oops' ... that they own up to it,"
she said.

Czarkowski said she supports keeping the locations of growing sites
secret, at least for now.

"We don't want to draw attention to where we're located," she said.
"We don't want the criminal element to have it easy."

The public material for the Jan. 4 council meeting also included a
second map, which detailed approximate locations of about 58 other
cultivation centers throughout the city. That map also was removed
from the city's Web site, and Kathy Haddock, Boulder's senior
assistant city attorney who advises the council on medical marijuana
issues, said the map never should have been published.

But the city attorney now says that map didn't violate the state's
non-disclosure law because -- despite showing easily identifiable
locations of grow sites -- it didn't list specific addresses.

Staffers wrote in a memo to the council that the second map "did show
the general locations of all medical marijuana business license
applications, including cultivation facilities, but not in a manner
specific enough to identify the address or particular parcel of any
cultivation facility."

Therefore, the city has concluded, that map didn't violate state law
- -- although officials don't plan on putting the map back online.

"Nobody has any experience with this law at all," said Carr, the city
attorney. "We want to be safe, rather than sorry."