MEDICAL MARIJUANA RULING WON'T AFFECT CITY

Garden City won't have legal issues regarding medical marijuana
dispensaries which have been in the news this week.

"Our ordinance bans them," said Donna Krips, the city's acting
planning and zoning administrator.

Krips was reacting to a Michigan Court of Appeals case. "We didn't
want to get involved with this type of retail operation."

The appeals court said that medical marijuana cannot be sold through
dispensaries.

The court ruled Wednesday. Aug. 24, in a case from mid-Michigan's
Isabella County where people with medical marijuana cards sold pot to
each other.

Published reports said that the three-judge panel ruled the 2008 law
and the state's public health code do not allow such sales.

It is the first time the appeals court ruled in a case involving pot
dispensaries.

The Michigan Supreme Court has agreed to hear appeals on other aspects
of the medical marijuana law.

One such dispensary is in Mount Pleasant and is called Compassionate
Apothecary. It allows people to sell marijuana to each other, with the
owners taking as much as a 20 percent cut.

A report said that in less than three months, the business earned
$21,000 before expenses after opening in 2010.

Grow centers

Garden City does allow grow centers and two are located in an
industrial area.

They received approval for a special land use request.

The most recent was in November for a special land use for a bay in an
industrial building on Parklane east of Venoy and north of Ford Road.

Business partners Ronald Harris of Westland, Donald Barlow of
Birmingham, Daniel Socha-Wozniak of Shelby Township and Nick Palombit
of Madison Heights requested the special land use so they could
convert the bay into a grow facility, which is allowed in the city's
M-1 light industrial district.

The men indicated that all medicinal deliveries and sales would occur
off the premises "until laws regarding on-site public dispensing are
clarified or defined."

Krips, in her report, recommended that the Planning Commission in its
recommendation to the council include seven conditions, including
additional cameras above the entrances, addressing how the enclosed,
locked rooms will be secured and meeting all state requirements for
qualifying caregivers and qualifying patients.

This was the second request Garden City received for a marijuana
growing facility since voters approved the use of marijuana for
medicinal purposes.

Larry Reynolds was the first to receive his business license to
operate a marijuana growing center in a warehouse on Hubbard.