Liberal Inverness council torpedoes anti-marijuana ordinance

By John Labriola - The Inverness City Council last week shamelessly backed off its plan to prohibit future marijuana treatment centers within city limits, leaving the city vulnerable to becoming a magnet for the pot industry, which is now banned from expanding in the rest of Citrus County.

In December, residents had urged the council to act shortly after the Citrus County Commission's vote to ban dispensaries in the unincorporated areas, which followed the Crystal River City Council's decision a year earlier to stop allowing them within their city limits. 

The county has eight marijuana dispensaries, with a ninth on the way, and that number doesn't even include clinics that just provide marijuana cards. Two of the dispensaries are located in the Inverness city limits, one just outside the city, four in Crystal River and one in Homosassa. The ninth, which submitted its plans just before the county banned additional clinics in unincorporated Citrus County, is looking to locate just outside the Inverness city limits.

Inverness council members directed staff in December to start working on an ordinance to prohibit future dispensaries, but it took them more than two months to bring it back although the city had adopted the same ordinance in 2017 before repealing it two years later. In those two months, they changed their minds and last week decided to let the ordinance die without a vote.

Liberal Democrat Councilwoman Crystal Lizanich asked City Manager Eric Williams if the city could just tighten regulations on dispensaries instead of banning them, because inexplicably she worried that if one closed it couldn't be replaced if they passed the ordinance.

Williams said under state law, the city would have to treat marijuana dispensaries the same as pharmacies if they do not prohibit them, as the ordinance would have done. But the city could make both marijuana dispensaries and pharmacies a special exception, subjecting them to a design review by the Planning and Zoning Commission and a quasi-judicial hearing by the Zoning Board of Adjustment, which could either approve or deny them. The City Council currently has no say in the approval of special exceptions, as the city's land development code leaves that up to the two zoning boards, which are made up of unelected appointees, but the council asked Williams to look into the special exception idea.

Just before the council's discussion, several residents had again urged the city to stop the proliferation of marijuana dispensaries. 

"Marijuana is still a gateway drug, and we've got enough dispensaries here in Citrus County," said resident April Wnuk. "We even have more than Daytona." 

Renea Teaster, director of the Anti-Drug Coalition of Citrus County, who visits schools to stress the dangers of substance abuse, said the city needed to limit dispensaries to maintain its small town, family-friendly atmosphere.

"The current dispensaries in the city along with home delivery should be able to meet the need of the residents," Teaster said. "When you get too many in a community, especially more than grocery stores, that's just not feasible. That's not what we want to show to our kids."

But Nicholas Kurz, a local marijuana doctor who gives out marijuana cards at the Grumpy Boston marijuana clinic in Inverness and Crystal River, opposed the ban, which could impact the growth of his business.  
 
"I consider this a medicine," he said. "I think it's a worthwhile drug."

Council President Gene Davis fretted that Inverness, with two marijuana dispensaries in the city's eight square miles, might lose business to the seven dispensaries in the immediate surrounding area unless more were built here, although why that would concern the city is a mystery since marijuana dispensaries are exempt from paying sales taxes. 

"We're either going to drive people outside the city and they're literally going to go to some of the other dispensaries that maybe because of competition have lower prices instead of within the city," he said.  "Crystal [Lizanich] has a good statement: We have two, and if one closes, does that mean one has all the business?"
  
Added left-leaning Councilwoman Jacquie Hepfer: "I'm kind of concerned with a total ban because we're messing with somebody's business," apparently unaware of the fact that the ban would not affect existing dispensaries.

Councilman Tom Craig also seemed uninformed. 

"Stopping people from doing business is un-American, especially if there's nothing here that says why we're doing it other than we dont want to do it," he said, adding that the dispensaries were causing "no crime," although the agenda backup included several police incidents at the marijuana dispensaries themselves, which didn't even count traffic accidents and incidents taking place elsewhere as a result of marijuana consumption.

The police reports included a recent incident at a Trulieve facility where "a male on site with an active warrant and possible firearm" was arrested, and another incident last year at The Flowery in unincorporated Inverness where the "property owner called when a customer wouldn't leave the store after threatening violence on employees."

Creating a new special exception process will take months, allowing more marijuana facilities to locate in the city, including in the historic downtown, where council members said they didn't want them. 

City resident Lala Sanders expressed frustration at the council's fickleness, dithering and apparent lack of basic comprehension. 

"You have to really examine what's going on here," she said. "A ban is strictly saying no more, and they can go build somewhere else. What you're doing is delaying a process. You're going to come back and then what? [There's] a simple solution. Youre stretching it out."

The council could be in for major changes this fall as three councilmembers are up for reelection: Crystal Lizanich, Gene Davis and Linda Bega. The mayor's position, which is being vacated by retiring Mayor Bob Plaisted, will also be up for grabs.

To express your opposition to the council's wrongful direction, email them below:

Eric Williams <ewilliams@inverness.gov>

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