The Juneau Assembly has decided to not revisit its Nov. 9 decision allowing limited commercial cultivation of marijuana in some residential areas.<\/p>\n
At a work session Monday night, the Assembly voted 7\u20132 to kill a motion by Mayor Mary Becker that would have reopened the zoning discussion for the purpose of prohibiting grow operations of any kind in D1 residential zones.<\/p>\n
Becker\u2019s motion, however, was more a formality than anything. Each Assembly member spoke briefly about his or her position on the matter before Becker made her motion. It was clear she didn\u2019t have the votes. <\/p>\n
\u201cEven if we do support an industry beginning, I\u2019m not sure that it can only begin if we allow growing in D1 areas,\u201d Becker said, explaining that she thought it was important that the Assembly at least discuss the zoning regulations again in light of recent public outcry. <\/p>\n
The Assembly received two petitions of 100 signatures or more before Monday\u2019s meeting. One requested the Assembly to revisit its zoning decision. The other requested the Assembly to stand its ground.<\/p>\n
Assembly member Jamie Bursell, who was appointed Feb. 11, was the only other person on the Assembly who supported Becker\u2019s motion when it came time to vote, but she hadn\u2019t been alone up until then.<\/p>\n
While discussing how she felt about the matter, Assembly member Kate Troll said she would have liked to have reopened the zoning discussion because it was decided with a 4\u20134 vote the first time around. Had a majority vote set the rules, Troll said she wouldn\u2019t have been interested in revisiting the issue.<\/p>\n
Assembly member Jerry Nankervis won Troll over with his take on the situation, which he didn\u2019t get to vote on initially in November because he was out of town and without cell service. \u00a0<\/p>\n
Though he didn\u2019t support the ballot measure that legalized marijuana, Nankervis said he would have supported allowing limited grow operations in D1 and Rural Reserve zones had he been present at the Nov. 9 meeting. He said the Assembly\u2019s decision should stand.<\/p>\n
\u201cI haven\u2019t seen anything in here that leads me to believe that decision was so fatally flawed that we need to open it up and talk about it again,\u201d Nankervis told the Assembly. \u201cIf it\u2019s going to be a business, I would prefer that it\u2019s treated much like any other … and that we don\u2019t create any additional or unnecessary obstacles for them to have to get over.\u201d<\/p>\n
Like Nankervis, Assembly member Barbara Sheinberg, who was appointed in early January, also argued that the process leading to the zoning decision was sound and deserved to be respected. Because she wasn\u2019t on the Assembly when it set the zoning rules, Sheinberg said she read all 300 pages of the Assembly meeting packet, which chronicled every step of the zoning decision.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou could almost feel the agony over each decision through the meeting minutes,\u201d Sheinberg said. \u201cWhat I ended up feeling was that there had been a really good credible process, and that\u2019s what struck me the most.\u201d<\/p>\n
Another ordinance related to marijuana establishments will be introduced at Monday\u2019s Assembly meeting. It will likely be set for public hearing in a few weeks. <\/p>\n
\u2022 Contact Sam DeGrave at 523-2279 or at sam.degrave@juneauempire.com.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Juneau Assembly has decided to not revisit its Nov. 9 decision allowing limited commercial cultivation of marijuana in some residential areas. At a work session Monday night, the Assembly voted 7\u20132 to kill a motion by Mayor Mary Becker that would have reopened the zoning discussion for the purpose of prohibiting grow operations of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":107,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_stopmodifiedupdate":false,"_modified_date":"","wds_primary_category":4,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[75],"yst_prominent_words":[],"class_list":["post-8572","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-local-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8572","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/107"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8572"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8572\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8572"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8572"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8572"},{"taxonomy":"yst_prominent_words","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.juneauempire.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/yst_prominent_words?post=8572"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}