Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
Serving Gogebic, Iron and Ontonagon Counties
By TOM LAVENTURE
Ironwood — The city of Ironwood’s office of Community Development is now shifting focus back to long-term projects after concentrating almost exclusively on COVID-19 relief efforts for small businesses.
In terms of city operations the office of community development role transitioned almost exclusively to business support during the past few months of the COVID-19 situation, said Tom Bergman, director of Ironwood community development in his report to the Ironwood Economic Development Corporation on Wednesday.
“Things are getting a little bit more under control and predictable right now and so we are able to kind of revert back to what were our normal priorities,” Bergman said. “We’re definitely not moving away from the business support thing and continue to do that as we start to take on our other projects as well.”
The meeting agenda included discussion of the city’s proposed adult-use medical marijuana manufacturing ordinance. Bergman said the planning commission would re-start the process of adopting changes to the ordinance with a 4:30 p.m. workshop on July 13.
The proposed ordinance failed three separate city commission votes at its March meeting and was directed back to the planning commission. The commissioners requested changes that include larger buffer zones where marijuana establishments are not allowed, micro-licenses related to edible marijuana product testing and certification as food products, and the number of retail growers and processors allowed in the ordinance.
At the same time the planning commission will discuss the city’s nuisance ordinances to address issues of odor. The purpose is to adopt new standards regarding marijuana growing to alleviate some ongoing issues in the community.
“That’s going to be discussed and implemented all at the same time as the commercial use ordinance as well,” Bergman said.
A Michigan Supreme Court ruling in April found a town did not violate marijuana caregiver protections with its zoning restrictions. The city is using that new interpretation of the state’s 2008 medical marijuana caregiver law to enforce agricultural use zoning to regulate where caregiver operations are taking place.
With the changes and a planning commission recommendation the ordinance could have its first opportunity for a public hearing and consideration from the city commission at its July 27 meeting. The second opportunity would be the Aug. 10 meeting.
“What we are also going to request from the city commission is that they give us 90 days from when they adopt the ordinance to be able to implement all of our applications and procedures associated with the ordinance,” Bergman said. “Hopefully, it won’t take that long but we would like that time period to get everything in place (when and if) the ordinance is adopted.”
The commission took no action on items during the meeting. In other business, Bergman updated the commission on COVID-19 grants and a proposed tax increment financing project for the downtown.
