Majority at public hearing supportive of recreational marijuana facilities in Milford

Milford City Council heard from a few community members regarding retail marijuana sales with most supporting allowing the facilities

Although there were many in the audience for a public hearing regarding a possible ordinance that could restrict placement of recreational marijuana facilities, only seven spoke out about their desires for the facilities. Of the seven only one was against recreational facilities in the town.

“I want to make a couple comments before I turn it over to Solicitor Rutt, just for some context here. Delaware state law, which will take effect, I believe, the end of March, will allow for recreational marijuana dispensaries in the city,” Mayor Todd Culotta said. “These are recreational, and they’ve also allowed municipalities to develop their own ordinances limiting or denying or handling that as well. So, if you if we don’t do anything, it will be allowed within our city based on the current retail zoning.”

Solicitor David Rutt explained that, unlike other public hearings, this one was strictly to get input from citizens about recreational facilities, pointing out that this was a land issue since the state has already passed recreational marijuana laws. According to Rutt, municipalities have the right to ban the facilities in town limits, but the counties can only restrict distances from other activities, such as schools or churches, they cannot ban them outright.

“The purpose of this input session is not to debate whether marijuana should be legalized. This was already decided, as mentioned by Solicitor Rutt by the state of Delaware under Title 4 and Title 16 of the Delaware code,” City Planner Rob Pierce said, before explaining that no municipality could severely restrict or ban medical marijuana facilities under the law. “We only have one medical marijuana dispensary in the city of Milford, is in a C3 highway zoning district, and we have two medical marijuana product manufacturing facilities that are located within I1 districts. The manufacturing facilities have been in business for several years now.”

Pierce pointed out that the purpose of the hearing was to determine if the public felt an ordinance should be enacted that limited hours of operation, the distance between centers, only allow them in commercial zones or require conditional use permits. Trish Marvel was the only person to speak out against recreational marijuana locations in Milford.

“I’ve heard various arguments on both sides of the aisle, that it will bring more business into our town, or it will deter businesses from coming into our town, that it will decrease illegal drug sales or it won’t make any difference at all and we will continue to have illegal drug sales, that Milford will receive huge revenue benefits by having this in our town to only the state receives benefits,” Marvel said. “There’s a lot of unanswered questions, and I think hopefully over the open discussions that we will get some of those things answered, because I think it’s like all over the place.”

Marvel also asked why Dover, Millsboro, Bethany Beach, Lewes and other towns had rejected the idea of recreational marijuana retail sales, questioning if the mayor and council had asked those other towns for their reasoning. She was also concerned about the security of the facilities as well as whether loitering laws would need to be enacted.

“My point is we need some moral compass in making these decisions. We need to think about our community, to think about what the long term effects are of having this in our town,” Marvel said. “I think the medical marijuana suffices the need out there, and I’m looking forward to more opportunity talk and debate it further. But I’m a no for retail marijuana.”

Lisa Parsons, a medical marijuana patient, explained that the facilities were very secure. Living with pain for over 15 years, Parsons felt that recreational options would allow those who may not qualify for a medical card or who did not have access to a doctor to prescribe it, the ability to relieve chronic pain the way she was.

“Having listened to this debate in Legislative Hall for over five years, one of the key purposes of this legislation was to offset the impact of the black market drugs and its low quality, tainted products. Retail, manufacturing and testing sites are all necessary to ensure that safe products are being delivered to the customer,” Valeria Coverdale said. “Banning the sale of marijuana in town through zoning and ordinances will not get rid of the product, it will only allow for black market and illegal sellers to continue to have a competitive edge over that product that’s been tested by the state over and over again, effectively diminishing the goal of the law at the detriment of people. Sussex County has already placed restrictions on the location of stores, but these ordinances are being reviewed by the attorney general at this moment,”

Coverdale continued, stating that 11 municipalities had already banned retail marijuana stores, pointing out this could be Milford’s gain.

“Milford could be the biggest gainer from these laws set by the aforementioned towns due to its population size. In the previous meeting, it was mentioned that Milford is the fifth largest city in the state, and I believe that shows our growth and in benefits of our central location in the state,” Coverdale said. “Zoning laws ensure that stores cannot be in certain perimeters, close to housing, schools, stores, and the zoning against retail marijuana mainly aims to completely ban the establishment of stores, pushing Sussex residents to drive to Maryland or up to New Castle County. Again, this is moving that revenue to a potential market of $251 million I believe is last I heard.”

Emily Wilkins, Vice President of Operations for First State Compassion Center, addressed safety concerns expressed by Marvel.

“We’re one of your local medical facilities here in Milford, we have a cultivation and manufacturing site. I just wanted to come up and say, we have been partnering with Milford in running our facility for multiple years now, about three or four since we’ve been up and running, and we support the use of recreational dispensaries in the state,” Wilkins said. “I can tell you, because it is my job to know the difference between the medical regulations and the recreational regulations, we’re facing tougher regulations from the state now than we ever have. Our security measures are heightened. Everything will be heightened compared to our current medical regulations that were being discussed earlier. So the security, the worrying about loitering, that stuff is all being handled through the regulations. Security is top notch.”

Wilkins also pointed out that she had worked in multiple medical production companies and the regulations on marijuana were more stringent than other drugs available for purchase, even other Class I drugs. She also explained that her children knew brands of alcohol long before they were old enough to drink because of the advertisements they saw as they entered other stores. Marijuana dispensaries cannot have outdoor advertising which makes them virtually invisible unless you are aware they are there.

“One nice thing about Milford is we already have grow facilities here and they’ve been here a while. That is a luxury. We can look back at them and see what complaints we have had on those facilities. Has anybody complained about them,” James Grant said. “The retail facility is a newer facility, but again, we do have something here that we can look at. When it comes to restricting what one can do on one’s land, I was really set back by that.”

Grant stated that as a landowner, he felt the more restrictions placed by the city, the more expensive items became.

“When we start restricting what can be done in our industrial parks, in our retail centers, and we limit it, even though we have the luxury of looking at, ‘hey, we’ve already got this here. Have we had any complaints? Do we really need to restrict it?’ Even going back to the housing, the more it is restricted, the more costly it becomes,” Grant said. “Every day I fight with DelDOT, because I got to put a million dollar entrance. I fight with DENREC, with the stormwater regulations. They get tougher and tougher, and so I kind of see the same thing going on here. The more we restrict stuff, the more it’s expensive it is to get or, like somebody was pointing out it’s going to go to the black market where we’re not controlling it. Here, we would have the ability to control it.”

David Henry, also a medical marijuana patient, felt as if he should be able to spend his money in the town where he lived and where he was raising his children. Although it was an important topic, he did not want to see retail facilities restricted significantly in the town.

“I know not living here excludes me from some of my statements here tonight, I’m almost 30 years old and I’m a medical marijuana patient. And given the history of the black market, Milford is one of the biggest places where we would be coming to purchase things on the black market, unfortunate as that is to say. With that being said, it is one of the things that has kept me from moving down to Milford, because of everything extra about it,” Kaitlyn Straub, who lives in Dover, said. “Coming down here to the dispensary itself, I’ve never felt safer. They have mirrored fronts you can’t even see in and I’ve seen people when I’m inside checking out, try to press their faces up to the glass and they can’t see anything.”

Straub felt that allowing retail marijuana facilities would eliminate the reputation Milford currently has as a place to get drugs on the black market.

No action was taken after the public hearing as it was to get input from citizens only. A City Council workshop is planned with Rob Coupe, Office of Marijuana Control on November 20 and another council discussion planned for November 25. Pierce plans to present an ordinance to the Planning Commission for a public hearing on December 17 with January 13 scheduled for a council public hearing and adoption.