During the January 20th Borough Assembly meeting members heard an hour of public testimony from residents expressing their concerns about an ordinance which would put the option for marijuana cultivating facilities up to the voters.
Gabriel Vanzee of Homer played a part in collecting signatures for initiative to legalize marijuana in Alaska.
Vanzee: “Everybody had their reasons for voting for it everybody had their reasons against it, and now we’ve come to a point where its kind of come through for our side we can build on that. Unfortunately this kind of creates that same mentality where it puts us in the defense and we are trying now through organizations wether through Kenai or the CRCL soon to be in Homer. We’re reaching out to community members right now and community leaders to find out exactly what they want in their community and this somewhat supersedes that because we haven’t defined it for ourselves yet, and that’s why I’m against it.
At one point Assemblyman Kelly Wolf proposed extending this discussion until after the legislative session had let out, however a majority of Assembly Members voted no to that amendment.
Assembly President Dale Bagley stated he was surprised to see such a large turnout as they were not making a decision last night, he also revealed that, much like most of the residents that came to speak, he would much prefer to wait to see a statewide decision before putting in any regulations.
Bagley: “Most of them want to just wait and see what the state is going to do and I imagine most of them are pro-cannabis, pro-marijuana, and that’s fine and we’ll see how this all shakes out. Personally I think I would like to wait and see what the state does before we deal with this issue and whatever issue we’ve got before us on this.”
The Assembly plans to address this ordinance during their February 24th meeting, if the ordinance is eventually approved the decision would be opened to voters on October 2.