Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By ZACHARY MARANO
Ironwood — In a combined work session of the Ironwood City Commission and the Ironwood Planning Commission on Monday, Director of Community Development Tom Bergman walked through five different options for regulating medical marijuana caregivers in the city and some of the pros and cons of each approach.
Bergman said that caregivers grow medical marijuana for a limit of five patients registered with the state. He said that historically, caregivers have been the biggest sources of public nuisance reports related to medical marijuana in the community. He said that when they were going through the adult-use marijuana establishment ordinance process, the topic of caregivers came up over and over again.
The first option was to only allow caregivers to be in industrial-zoned districts with similar regulations on odor control and security to the retail marijuana establishments. Bergman called this approach “very restrictive” and said the planning commission already drafted language they could use for this option as part of their zoning ordinance revisions.
Bergman said that one of the biggest disadvantages would be that the city does not have many industrial-zoned districts, so pushing all the caregivers into a small district would occupy all of their limited space and prevent other businesses from moving in and using it. However, they would receive less complaints.
The second option was to limit medical marijuana caregivers to both industrial and rural residential districts. Rural residential districts have bigger lots that are placed further apart from each other. He said this allows more opportunities for where the caregivers can be located and their impact on adjacent properties will be relatively low compared to residential districts.
Another option was to only restrict caregivers from the downtown commercial district. He said that allowing caregivers in the commercial district would lead to the most complaints because it would affect everyone, not just the adjacent property owner, because everyone uses these districts. He said this approach would leave the other districts open.
The fourth was to allow medical marijuana caregiver facilities as a special land use in all zoning districts. Bergman explained that special land use permits are going to be their new version of use permits. To receive a special land use permit, caregivers would have to come to the planning commission and go through a public process in which adjacent owners could have some input. The planning commission could also come up with their own conditions for the permit.
Bergman said this option would be very similar to their process for medical marijuana establishments. He also said that this would maintain the current status quo where the city allows caregivers in all districts.
The last option was to leave things as they stand and continue addressing complaints through the public nuisance and odor control ordinances, which Bergman said had made some impact already.
To help decide which option was best for the city, City Commissioner Rick Semo suggested they focus on their priorities and the options that help them reach those goals.
“If our goal is to curb odor, we have to best address how we’re going to do that. If it’s to get control over our business district, we have to discuss how we’re going to do that. I don’t think it can just be unfocused. You have to have specific things you want to address and try to figure out how you can do that,” Semo said. “I don’t know if we can get total control.”
Planning Commission Chair Sam Davey and City Commission member David Andresen agreed that focusing on downtown Ironwood is important, either to restrict caregivers or bring their buildings in compliance in the commercial district.
“From all the public hearings we had with commercial marijuana, the only real complaint that anybody always had was smell. It didn’t matter the neighborhood. If we deal with the smell, that’s going to take care of the residential areas,” Davey said.
The work session concluded after an hour and the committees agreed to reconvene at a later date to continue discussion on regulations and how to enforce them.
