City lifts limit on recreational cannabis businesses

After another lengthy discussion that followed comments from residents and advice from legal counsel, Mt. Pleasant city commissioners on Monday lifted the numeric cap they had instituted on recreational marijuana businesses.

The move came after another public hearing, in which residents spoke for and against amending the current adult use cannabis ordinance, and commissioners checking with one of the city’s attorneys to ensure the legal bases were covered.

Commissioner Brian Assmann, who cast the only no vote for the amendment, said he was concerned about buffer zones separating cannabis businesses from churches, child care facilities and schools.

Mt. Pleasant Planner Jacob Kain explained that the state doesn’t dictate how municipalities draw buffer zones and that Mt. Pleasant’s zoning ordinances, and that a majority of child care businesses are in civic, and public and private school zones, as well as in residences.

Commissioner Maureen Eke spoke of residents wanting amenities, and noted that she has researched and found that there has not been an explosion of criminal activity in Colorado since marijuana was legalized.

Eke also said the city needs to capture revenue, and that the commissioners must balance what is good for the city and its businesses.

Regardless of how commissioners voted on the issue, Eke said, someone will be vexed.

Assmann reminded commissioners that spending money defending lawsuits resulting from a few of the original recreational cannabis applicants not being approved for conditional licenses.

Commissioners have been discussing the issue — and at one point talked about approving a reciprocity clause that would allow current medical marijuana businesses to apply for recreational licenses — for several weeks.

Uncapping the limit of recreational licenses did not come soon enough for one business

owner in Mt. Pleasant.

Deborah Cary, who owns Consano with son Caleb Cary, told commissioners during Monday’s public hearing that she is “broken.”

Cary, who has spoken at length to commissioners about how recreational marijuana has hindered the medical marijuana market, and questioned why they abandoned the idea of giving recreational licenses to existing medical marijuana businesses.

Cary said commissioners were scared off by “3 is Enough,” a group opposed to more than three adult use cannabis businesses in the city that sued to stop the question from appearing on the November 2021 ballot.

After 3 is Enough sued, the Michigan Court of Appeals overturned an Isabella County judge’s ruling to put the matter on the ballot and ordered the proposal to be decertified.

Cary, pointing at commissioners, said they would get another lawsuit.

“I’m broken,” she said. “You guys broke me. “I just need to step away and get into my own little harmony.”

Laura Genovich, an attorney at Foster, Swift, Collins and Smith, ensured commissioners of the legality of changing the ordinance, but noted that increasing the number of licenses is easier than trying to decrease them later.

Micah Focken, Cary’s son and manager of Consano, said Tuesday that the dispensary will reopen, and that it will likely take roughly three months to get full approval.