At this evening’s 7 o’clock meeting, the City Council will begin still another long policy journey.
Fumes still are fresh in their lungs from the latest months’-long search — to establish guidelines regarding a restaurant ban on polystyrene containers.
Councilman Goren Eriksson estimates summer will be history before Culver Coty regulations are in place governing recreational marijuana, approved in November by California voters.
It was he who made a crucial motion that the Council plum the depths in exploring the dark, unknown angles of growing and selling pot.
For example, Mr. Eriksson said, as many six different businesses can by licensed, according to new state law – including growing, distribution, transport, testing, manufacturing and retail.
City Hall is about to become much busier.
He said that the Police Dept., Fire Dept., Public Works and Planning all need to know how those six strands of the pot business “will affect their purview.
“There are a lot of moving parts” \for various departments at City Hall “to figure out how this new law will affect them.”
Mr. Eriksson’s voice was grave, and he spoke like the father he is.
“It’s easy to go very, very wrong in this,” he said. “We need to carefully figure it out so we do the right thing for our community.”
The Council’s charge is to approve of a task force that will star one or more outside consultants plus two persons from the Council to develop regulations over what looks like the messiest experiment in hometown government this year.