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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.