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Anyone looking to start selling marijuana in Hancock will have to wait until after the State of Michigan has finalized the rules and regulations of the new law.
The Hancock City Council voted 5-1 to opt-out of the law permitting recreational marijuana businesses at their regular meeting Wednesday.
A public hearing was held prior to the meeting but no residents spoke on the issue.
City officials have maintained that this ordinance does not express their long term plans regarding recreational marijuana businesses but is meant to give the state the time it needs to sort out any concerns about the new law.
Hancock Mayor John Haeussler addressed the public prior to the vote saying, “We currently receive a lot of funding for particularly water and sewer infrastructure within the city from the Rural Development water and environment programs. The Rural Development officer has supplied the city with a Marijuana Compliance Certification form that appears to indicate that any rural communities who do anything related to marijuana businesses would be ineligible for federal funding through the water and environmental programs.”
Haeussler said in the last ten years, Hancock has received a total of $17.2 million for their three main projects from those programs.
The city of Hancock currently has a recreational marijuana committee who is tasked with reviewing city ordinances that may have to be amended for allowing recreational marijuana businesses, looking at what the state has done with medical marijuana regulations, and looking at what potential business license classes are available.
Hauessler said, “So we are moving forward with the thought that at some point, the cloud of federal funding is going to move away and we can actually have a substantial discussion of the regulation of marijuana businesses within the city.”
“My personal view as a council member,” Haeussler continued, “is that we can’t risk tens of millions of dollars in funding for the city to chase tens of thousands of dollars of potential funding, which would be the level of magnitude through the excise tax for recreational marijuana at the moment.”
