Norwalk marijuana ordinance passes

After a town hall-styled meeting on Sept. 19 and a meeting of the Ordinance Committee on Sept. 20, Norwalk’s ordinances on marijuana passed 6-1.

The one dissenting vote was cast by Bryan Meek, the sole Republican on the city’s Common Council. He voiced concerns about the possible failure to offset costs associated with marijuana usage and sales with the taxes collected. Meek cited how previous efforts to capitalize on vices such as settlements with cigarette companies and funding education through the Connecticut Lottery did not produce the transformational sums boosters had promised.

“I just can’t vote for this,”Meek said. “I think this whole thing is just a solution looking for problems. I don’t understand why Norwalk needs to be on the bleeding edge of things.”

The ordinance will go into effect in December, at the end of the nine-month moratorium on adult use cannabis sales locations originally put in use by the city. The moratorium was designed to buy Norwalk time to develop policy after the state legalized recreational use of cannabis, but delays in the state’s permitting process have prevented the opening of any recreational use retailers anywhere in Connecticut.

The town hall meeting and the public comment period prior to the Ordinance Committee’s vote both featured citizens raising concerns about the impacts of marijuana sales on the community.

An emailed public comment from Norwalk resident Catherine Folick observed how “people do not seem to be remaining at home to smoke cannabis nor in their own driveways, streets, or neighborhoods, rather they are driving to other locations where it blows right into our windows, filling up our apartments as if we were smoking it ourselves.”

Folick claimed that people congregating near her condominium had in fact driven up her air conditioning bill as the smell drove her to close her windows. Blasting radios were also cited as a concern.

The Norwalk Partnership, a nonprofit dedicated to the prevention of substance abuse by youth, organized a number of callers who had personal connections with drug abuse-related deaths. These individuals called for the maximum amount of caution moving forward and avoiding the normalization of marijuana usage.

Margaret Watt, the manager of the Federal Drug Free Communities grant program, which provides the Norwalk Partnership with much of its funding, also brought up concerns about the ordinance granting the mayor the power to designate outdoor usage spaces. Watt said that such a politicized decision should go through a process involving more than one elected official.

Majorie, a Norwalk resident who did not give her last name, wanted the ordinance to ensure that funds from parks would not be used for creating outdoor spaces for marijuana usage, and questioned the need for providing any space for recreational use.

Ordinance Committee member and Common Councilor Josh Goldstein explained that state law necessitated the prompt designation of outdoor use areas.

“Very simply,”he said, “if we don’t regulate public consumption, you can technically smoke anywhere. So, it’s important that we pass these restrictions so that we can try to alleviate the issue and make it possible for police to issue tickets if people are flagrantly violating the ordinance by smoking on sidewalks or on the street or in parks or at beaches.”

“However,”Goldstein noted, “the state law requires that if we regulate the use of public consumption we must put in at least one designated spot, and state law requires us to have such a place in our ordinance.”

In the end the ordinance passed with no substantial changes. The city plans to provide three permits for adult-use cannabis sales, with regulations designed to encourage locations in existing commercial corridors so that they are less likely to have noticeable traffic impacts. But those permits still cannot be issued until Connecticut grants its first licenses, a process with no clear end date.