MedicalNeed
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BOULDER – Boulder County commissioners declined Tuesday to second-guess their Land Use Department's Aug. 5 approval of a potential medical-marijuana growing operation north of Longmont.
Commissioners Cindy Domenico, Ben Pearlman and Will Toor decided not to schedule a public hearing on an application to cultivate, harvest and store marijuana inside buildings on the 67-acre Szymanski Farms property at 10437 Yellowstone Road.
The Board of County Commissioners' refusal to "call up" that application for a future hearing visibly angered many of the more than 30 neighboring property owners who showed up to watch the commissioners explain their decision on Tuesday.
"They let us down. They blew it," said Nancy Peters of 8582 Yellowstone Road, one of the area residents objecting to Boulder County allowing a medical-marijuana growing operation on the onetime organic egg farm.
Peters said after Tuesday's commissioners' decision that people should realize that "if it happened to us, it can happen anywhere" in the county or the state.
"I do not want to see marijuana fields all over the state of Colorado," she said.
The Land Use Department staff had concluded that the proposal to grow medical marijuana inside buildings already on the Szymanski Farms property qualified as a example of "intensive agricultural use" permitted by the county Land Use Code provisions that were in place when Steve and Cyd Szymanski, the farm's current owners, and its would-be buyer – Scott Mullner, a Laramie, Wyo., city council member and businessman – submitted their application in early June.
Boulder County was in the late stages of amending its Land Use Code when the application was turned in.
Under code revisions the commissioners ultimately adopted effective June 8, new "medical marijuana centers" such as dispensaries and growing operations cannot be located in unincorporated Boulder County's agricultural zoning districts.
Unless they'd already been in operation or applications were submitted before June 8, medical marijuana businesses will only be permitted in the unincorporated county's Transitional, Business, Commercial, Light Industrial and General Industrial zoning districts.
Commissioners said Tuesday that the June 8 Land Use Code change reflected their views of where medical-marijuana growing operations would or would not be appropriate in the future.
But commissioners said they and the Land Use Department had to apply the earlier code provisions and site-plan-review standards that were in place at the time the county got the Szymanski Farms application. They said Boulder County cannot legally impose its new medical-marijuana zoning restrictions retroactively.
Commissioners and county staffers have gotten dozens of telephone calls, letters, e-mails and petition signatures opposing the Yellowstone Road farm's medical-marijuana application.
More recently, though, they've also gotten a petition signed by 29 people saying that Coloradans in 2000 "voted in favor of permitting caregivers and/or the patient, right to access, produce and use or transport marijuana for medical purposes."
Those petitioners said the land-use change for the Yellowstone Road farm "would be beneficial not only for the people of Boulder County but all residents in Colorado."
Michael Nelson of Longmont, one of that petition's signers, said in an interview that he's a design engineer for specialized greenhouses.
Nelson said marijuana-growing operations inside buildings on ag land could be a showcase for a state-of-the-art passive solar greenhouse system.
NewsHawk: MedicalNeed: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Longmont Times-Call
Author: John Fryar
Contact: The Longmont Times-Call
Copyright: 2010 Longmont Times-Call
Website:The Longmont Times-Call
Commissioners Cindy Domenico, Ben Pearlman and Will Toor decided not to schedule a public hearing on an application to cultivate, harvest and store marijuana inside buildings on the 67-acre Szymanski Farms property at 10437 Yellowstone Road.
The Board of County Commissioners' refusal to "call up" that application for a future hearing visibly angered many of the more than 30 neighboring property owners who showed up to watch the commissioners explain their decision on Tuesday.
"They let us down. They blew it," said Nancy Peters of 8582 Yellowstone Road, one of the area residents objecting to Boulder County allowing a medical-marijuana growing operation on the onetime organic egg farm.
Peters said after Tuesday's commissioners' decision that people should realize that "if it happened to us, it can happen anywhere" in the county or the state.
"I do not want to see marijuana fields all over the state of Colorado," she said.
The Land Use Department staff had concluded that the proposal to grow medical marijuana inside buildings already on the Szymanski Farms property qualified as a example of "intensive agricultural use" permitted by the county Land Use Code provisions that were in place when Steve and Cyd Szymanski, the farm's current owners, and its would-be buyer – Scott Mullner, a Laramie, Wyo., city council member and businessman – submitted their application in early June.
Boulder County was in the late stages of amending its Land Use Code when the application was turned in.
Under code revisions the commissioners ultimately adopted effective June 8, new "medical marijuana centers" such as dispensaries and growing operations cannot be located in unincorporated Boulder County's agricultural zoning districts.
Unless they'd already been in operation or applications were submitted before June 8, medical marijuana businesses will only be permitted in the unincorporated county's Transitional, Business, Commercial, Light Industrial and General Industrial zoning districts.
Commissioners said Tuesday that the June 8 Land Use Code change reflected their views of where medical-marijuana growing operations would or would not be appropriate in the future.
But commissioners said they and the Land Use Department had to apply the earlier code provisions and site-plan-review standards that were in place at the time the county got the Szymanski Farms application. They said Boulder County cannot legally impose its new medical-marijuana zoning restrictions retroactively.
Commissioners and county staffers have gotten dozens of telephone calls, letters, e-mails and petition signatures opposing the Yellowstone Road farm's medical-marijuana application.
More recently, though, they've also gotten a petition signed by 29 people saying that Coloradans in 2000 "voted in favor of permitting caregivers and/or the patient, right to access, produce and use or transport marijuana for medical purposes."
Those petitioners said the land-use change for the Yellowstone Road farm "would be beneficial not only for the people of Boulder County but all residents in Colorado."
Michael Nelson of Longmont, one of that petition's signers, said in an interview that he's a design engineer for specialized greenhouses.
Nelson said marijuana-growing operations inside buildings on ag land could be a showcase for a state-of-the-art passive solar greenhouse system.
NewsHawk: MedicalNeed: 420 MAGAZINE
Source: The Longmont Times-Call
Author: John Fryar
Contact: The Longmont Times-Call
Copyright: 2010 Longmont Times-Call
Website:The Longmont Times-Call
