Fenton Twp. — By doing nothing, the Fenton Township Board of Trustees decided not to allow residents to grow, process, transport, or distribute marijuana.
Currently, the township does not have an ordinance allowing or not allowing these marijuana facilities.
At the Monday, April 17 meeting, Operations Manager/Deputy Clerk Tom Broecker said the township needs to decide if it wants to allow medical marijuana facilities, and if so, it needs to adopt an ordinance to permit them.
The Medical Marihuana Facilities Licensing Act allows the state of Michigan to license five types of medical marijuana facilities including growers, processors, transporters, provisioning centers, and safety compliance facilities. The new law took effect December 2016, but has a built-in delay of implementation until December 2017.
Broecker said currently, when people ask about medical marijuana facilities, the township does not necessarily have an answer about whether it allows them because the township hasn’t adopted a resolution in support of or against medical marijuana facilities.
Treasurer John Tucker said, “There is a lot of discussion in the business community in a broad sense about this licensing opportunity. There’s a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes. People you’d be surprised to hear about are looking into it,” he said.
He’s gotten a lot of questions about the Act and what the township will do about it.
“I don’t think Fenton Township is really interested in any of these kinds of facilities, but there is some potential, I think, under legislation for some tax revenue and that would probably be the only reason we’d want to consider it,” he said.
He said all the potential effects are pure speculation at this point.
Tucker’s initial reaction was that Fenton Township is a different kind of township, and that they probably would forego that potential tax revenue to not allow marijuana facilities.
“It’s hard to make a judgment in this state in the game because you don’t know anything, but my gut reaction was I would probably do nothing. That’s what I think the residents would want,” he said.
Township Attorney Jack Belzer said if the Township does not act on the resolution, marijuana facilities are not allowed. He said he’s not convinced the township would make money from a potential medical marijuana facility.
credit:tctimes.com
