Is Medical Marijuana

in Raytown’s Future?

In August of 2018, 65% of the voters casting ballots in that election approved a constitutional amendment legalizing the growing and selling of Medical Marijuana in Missouri.

Last Thursday night, the Lyndall Fraker, Director of Medical Marijuana for the State of Missouri, held an informational meeting at Raytown City Hall explaining the rules governing the growing, sale and use of Medical Marijuana in the State of Missouri. Also in attendance was Raytown’s legal counsel, Nathan Nickolaus and Jennifer Baird of Lauber Municipal Law, LLC.

Both speakers spoke of changes that can be expected in Missouri’s laws regarding the use Medical Marijuana.

About 30 people were in attendance at the meeting. Most appeared to be vendors interested in the process of how the State will determine who will be licensed to grow and sell medical marijuana to the public.

Also in attendance were Aldermen Greg Walters, Derek Ward and Janet Emerson.

Two of the Aldermen, Ward and Walters, have begun discussing the implications of retail outlets in Missouri. A topic of high interest for the two Aldermen is if the City has the ability to enforce special licensing fees of Medical Marijuana manufacturing and sales outlets.

According to the city’s legal counsel, the city does have the latitude to enforce license fees in regards to the commercial zoning, provided those fees are in line with customary fees for other regulated businesses.

Other businesses already affected by such special fees include retail liquor licenses, tobacco outlets, gasoline stations, pay day loan facilities and pawn shops.

BY GREG WALTERS

Memo to the City

INFORMATIONAL MEETINGS SHOULD

BE OPEN TO PUBLIC DIALOGUE

Thursday night’s meeting on the sale, and growing of Medical Marijuana in Missouri was informative. It would have been more informative if the public had been allowed to participate in the discussion.

At the beginning of the meeting the Chairman of the Planning and Zoning Commission announced communication or questions between the audience and the speakers would not be allowed.

The first speaker, Lyndall Fraker, sounded apologetic at the beginning of his presentation, when he told the audience “we normally take questions at these events”.

It was clear the prohibition on not taking questions was not his idea.

It was also clear by the number of people crowded around the guest speakers after their presentation that there were many questions to be asked. To their credit, the two speakers stayed afterward to satisfy all the comments and questions asked of them.

Which bring rise to another question. Why on earth was the Planning and Zoning Commission running the meeting?

Only three of the seven members of the Zoning Commission were in attendance at the meeting. Technically speaking, a quorum was not on hand so it was not an official meeting. Most of the questions asked after the meeting had very little to do with zoning issues.

Another question that should be answered is why was the meeting not televised? When the Governor of your state sends his Director to conduct a public forum, it makes a lot of sense to broadcast the meeting to the public.

Last time I checked the calendar we were 19 years into the 21^st Century. Exchange of ideas knowledge is always a good plan. The city spent a good amount of the taxpayer’s dollars when it upgraded its broadcast system.

Why not use it?

Whoever engineered the public hearing Thursday night needs to take a hard look at their playbook and revamp it.

Competing Park Tax Proposals on the Table

At the last meeting of the Board of Alderman meeting Ward 3 Alderman Ryan Myers proposed the City place a renewal of the City Park Tax / Storm Sewer Tax on a future ballot.

At Tuesday night’s meeting the Park Board will make another pitch for doubling the sales tax.

I just finished a very tough race for Alderman in Ward 1. I visited a lot of people at their homes, some of them more than once.

In all of those visits the topic of increasing or even continuing the Park Sales Tax came up.

What did come up was a ton of requests that the street in front of their home be properly repaired. I might add, many told me that patching a pothole is not anyone’s idea of “properly repaired”.

Something else that was very clear to me was the message that many taxpayers are at the limit of what they can pay.

The Board needs to sit down and set some priorities. This shotgun approach of throwing tax increase after tax increase on the ballot is getting very old.

It is my sincere hope the Board has the sense to table both of these tax increase plans until after their goal setting session. Anything less would be a disservice to the people they represent.

To leave a comment use this link

POST A COMMENT