CITY PLANS TO TIGHTEN REINS ON MEDICAL MARIJUANA COLLECTIVES

TRAVERSE CITY - City officials plan to ratchet up oversight and
regulation of medical marijuana outlets.

The city planning commission tonight will discuss two key changes to
rules that govern so-called medical marijuana collectives within city limits.

City Planner Russ Soyring will ask planning commissioners to approve
a rule that collectives must be separated by at least 500 feet. He
also wants to require that potential operators of such collectives
provide the owner's name at least 10 business days before the
operation is set to open.

The Michigan Medical Marijuana Act, approved in 2008, allows patients
to possess up to 2.5 ounces of marijuana and 12 plants. It also
allows designated caregivers to grow and distribute marijuana to up
to five patients.

Traverse City in August adopted an ordinance that, among other items,
permits collectives in most commercial districts of the city.
Marijuana can change hands at such locations, but can't be grown there.

The spacing rule is intended to make sure the city doesn't end up
with a cluster of collectives. At least three now operate in the city
- - one on Garfield Avenue near Agave Mexican Grill, another on State
Street downtown and one based at Crema on Front Street - and
officials expect at least three more in the coming months.

"Our intent here is so we don't have five or six collectives in a
row," Soyring said.

The latter rule is designed to give city officials time to complete
background checks on collective owners before they open their
outlets. By city law, individuals with felony records can't own collectives.

City officials weren't aware that a man who filed to open Collective
Inc., the State Street operation, recently had been convicted in a
felony drug case. That man, Damon Granger, sold the collective to
three downstate residents about the time it opened.

Angela Janovich, Granger's fiance and one of Collective Inc.'s
co-owners, said she's on board with Soyring's ideas. A 500-foot
buffer would keep the overall number of collectives at a lower level.
Only so many are needed to match the area's patient load, she said.

"I'm all about presentation, and I believe too many is tacky," she
said. "There should only be so many in town."

Janovich said about 200 area patients registered with her operation,
and about half of those also are certified as caregivers.

Joseph S. Sarafa is general manager of Crema After Hours Collective,
a group that meets multiple times per week at the coffee shop. He
said he's "100 percent in support" of the recommended rule changes.

Many so-called collectives that pop up are run by people looking to
make a quick buck off of medical marijuana, Sarafa said, and Traverse
City doesn't need to be overrun with such operations.

A 500-foot buffer would limit downtown to about seven collectives,
city officials said.