MARIJUANA AT TOWN MEETING GETS ATTENTION

ELKTON - Eyebrows were raised at the town meeting Wednesday night when one
of the commissioners showed up with a bag of marijuana.

The unusual show-and-tell visibly disturbed the mayor and town police chief.

Commissioner Joe Fisona shocked town officials and audience members at the
meeting when he displayed a bag of marijuana in his possession.

Fisona said he had been handed the plastic baggie containing a small amount
of what he identified as marijuana by an Elkton resident who found it on
the ground near his Leeward Court home Tuesday evening. Fisona said he
brought the marijuana to the meeting with the intention of turning it in to
police.

Fisona kept the bag of pot overnight and brought it to the public meeting
where he displayed it in the presence of the other commissioners, Mayor
Robert Alt and Police Chief Daniel "Skip" Mahan during the public comment
portion of the proceedings. "I suggest you take that to an officer right
now," Mahan told Fisona at the meeting.

Mayor Alt questioned Fisona's decision to bring the illegal drug into the
town hall and display it during the meeting.

"What are you doing bringing that into the meeting?" Alt asked Fisona.

"It's evidence," Fisona responded.

On Thursday, Fisona said the resident who found the pot called 911 on
Tuesday to ask what he should do with the illegal substance. According to
the resident, the dispatcher at the emergency management center suggested
the pot be flushed down a toilet.

"He (the resident) did not want to flush it down the toilet so he brought
it to me to decide what to do with it," Fisona said. "It was a small
amount, and I don't know anything about the stuff, so I brought it to the
meeting to turn it in to the police."

Alt and others who commented on the incident said Fisona was taking a risk
by being in possession of the marijuana. Mahan said that the proper thing
to do if illegal drugs are found is to turn them in to the police.

"He was just trying to do the right thing," Mahan said. "But if you find
drugs turn them in right away."

Commissioner Ed McKeown defended Fisona, saying, "I give Joe a lot of
credit for what he did. Our interest is in the safety of the town and it
always has been."

Fisona has been an Elkton commissioner for six years and is considering a
run for mayor.