Pontiac voters are being asked to approve a slew of changes to the city’s adult-use marijuana retail business licensing process in the Feb. 27 presidential primary.
Proposal One on Pontiac’s primary ballot covers several cannabis regulation issues ranging from how the city will dole out marijuana retail licenses to application language, social equity ownership, criminal background checks, neighborhood education and communication and community improvement.
The Pontiac City Council originally passed ordinance 2406 in April 2023, authorizing adult-use marijuana retail establishments. This ordinance also outlined rules and a process for doling out licenses. However, a petition opposing the ordinance was circulated and the council passed several amendments in a new marijuana retail ordinance 2424 in October.
If the ballot proposal passes, the new amendments from the City Council’s fall ordinance will go into effect. If the proposal fails, the previous adult-use marihuana ordinance adopted last spring goes into effect.
“Last fall, the city council adopted a number of amendments to the City’s previously-approved adult-use marihuana ordinance. This referendum is on those amendments, which covered a variety of topics, including application language, direct and indirect ownership, social equity policies, criminal background checks, neighborhood outreach, community improvement, and the redevelopment of blighted buildings,” Pontiac Mayor Tim Greimel wrote in an emailed statement Thursday. “Voting yes on the referendum approves those amendments, while voting no would disallow them.”
A “yes” vote would approve ordinance 2424 from October, while a “no” vote would adopt ordinance 2406.
This is the latest of attempts by independent ballot question committees to force a vote on marijuana retail policy within a Metro Detroit community. The Michigan Regulation and Taxation of Marijuana Act, which was passed by a majority of Michigan voters in 2018, leaves it up to individual municipalities whether or not they permit adult-use or recreational retailers within their borders.
Last November ballot proposals targeted several Metro Detroit communities that had previously opted out of the 2018 law, attempting to reverse bans on marijuana retailers by putting the issue to a vote. These ballot questions included a set of criteria the communities would have to abide by when administering business licenses, although none were successful.
Why is this on the ballot?
While the original ordinance 2406 was passed by the Pontiac City Council in the spring, it never went into effect because a ballot question committee called Sensible Cannabis Reform for Pontiac challenged it. While a ballot referendum is pending, an ordinance is temporarily frozen, Greimel said at a City Council meeting earlier this month.
A special election in which residents could vote on ordinance 2406 was scheduled for Nov. 7 but city officials and the committee agreed in August to remove the proposals from the November ballot, City Clerk Garland Doyle said at a City Council meeting in September.
“They (the committee) ultimately agreed to remove that referendum from the ballot, then in the fall of 2023, there were some amendments made… by city council to the previous ordinance,” Greimel said at a City Council meeting earlier this month. “Those amendments were enacted by approving Ordinance 2424.”
A different ballot question committee called Citizens for Equitable Cannabis Reform was formed to oppose the new amendments passed last fall, according to campaign finance records and Doyle.
“Then a, it seems, different marijuana group brought a referendum on those amendments,” Greimel said at a City Council meeting earlier this month. “While the referendum is pending, the ordinance is frozen into effect.”
In response to Citizens for Equitable Cannabis Reform’s challenge of Ordinance 2424, the City Council voted in November to place it on the February ballot.
Councilman William Carrington apologized to the public at a City Council meeting earlier this month for not being more vocal and proactive.
“Right now we’re reactive — the damage has been done by these groups,” Carrington said.
Neither Citizens for Equitable Cannabis Reform nor Sensible Cannabis Reform for Pontiac immediately responded to requests for comment on Thursday.
What’s the difference between the ordinances?
Ordinance 2424 amends ordinance 2406, which allows and regulates adult use marijuana establishments within the city of Pontiac.
Under ordinance 2424, the definition of an “applicant” for an adult-use marijuana license becomes more limited to make the application process less burdensome, City Attorney Charles Murphy said at a Pontiac City Council meeting in September.
Within Pontiac’s city limits, both allow as many as 17 recreational marijuana retailers to be licensed, six social equity retailers, five Class A microbusinesses, three designated consumption establishments north of Huron Street or M-59, and three designated consumption establishments south of Huron Street.
The general application requirements are also similar. Both include things like a social equity plan that promotes participation and ownership in the marijuana industry by local residents. The state’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency lists Pontiac as a city that has been disproportionately impacted by the previous prohibition of marijuana and its enforcement.
However, ordinance 2424 requires the City Clerk to set a 21-day application window within 30 days rather than 60 of the ordinances going into effect. City Council must also approve a resolution approving a point-based scoring guide for applicants before the window opens.
Ordinance 2424 also adds a provision that if an applicant has a current and final conditional approval for a medical marijuana provisioning center permit, they can be awarded up to 30 extra points when applying for retail or social equity retail permits. This is up from the 20 potential points that could be awarded under the initial ordinance.
Another difference is ordinance 2406 limits criminal background checks to just applicants, meaning a person who applies for a permit, while ordinance 2424 also requires them for management staff in conjunction with the state law.
Six years ago Pontiac voters passed a ballot initiative authorizing medical marijuana although no medical marijuana licenses were issued for the next four years, Greimel said. The city began issuing medical marijuana licenses in the last two years, although by this time recreational marijuana had already been legalized.
“By that point in time, the market had really moved away from medical marijuana and towards recreational or adult-use marijuana,” Greimel said at a City Council meeting earlier this month.
Some of the amendments are meant to give extra points to applicants who have already invested and gone through the medical marijuana permit process successfully, Murphy said at a City Council meeting in September.
Another new provision gives a retail or social equity retail applicant up to 10 points if they were the highest scoring conditionally approved medical marijuana provisioning center applicant in the zoning district they applied in. The scoring guidelines allow for a maximum of 185 points total under amended Ordinance 2424, up from 165 allowed in Ordinance 2406.
“There was a lot of debate during the entire four or five month process about grandfathering the medical marijuana conditional approved permittees or giving them additional points,” Murphy said in September. “The two most substantive changes on points would be giving those conditionally approved permittees an additional 10 points over the 20 that were available in the original ordinance. And then if you came in first in your district, you can get an additional 10 points on top of that.”
In the application scoring guidelines under both ordinances, planned philanthropic initiatives by applicants can include donations to a fund administered by the city and used to promote social equity. The amendments in ordinance 4646 remove language suggesting these donations are capped at $1,000.
“It’s a lot of refining and clarifying. There are some changes to some scoring items and sort of how it can reconcile with the existing medical marijuana,” Councilman Michael McGuinness said of the amendments in ordinance 4646 at a meeting in September. “So the bulk of what was adopted by the city council on April April remains intact, the spirit and the intent remains intact.”
Regardless of whether people vote yes or no, recreational marijuana retailers will remain legal in Pontiac, Garland said at a City Council meeting earlier this month.
Residents have been able to vote early since Monday, and polling locations can be found here. If residents do not want to vote in the Democratic or Republican primary elections they can request a ballot just for the marijuana proposal.
hmackay@detroitnews.com