It was a packed house Wednesday night at a Leoni Township Planning Board meeting.
Property owners came out to raise their concerns about a medical marihuana ordinance that allows grow operations on agricultural land.
“I am not against medical marihuana”, said township resident Kimberly Dean.
“What I am against is a grow facility such as the one being proposed next to my property, my parents property.”
An operation Dean says will drain resources from the area like power and water.
Dean:
“It has applied for five licenses”, said Dean.
“They are looking at four grow Class C –Licenses which allows them to have up to 6,000 plants.”
During a phone interview, Township Supervisor Howard Linnabary told News 10 that although the township has approved 53 license applications from 26 companies the state has the final say, not the township.
“It's the state in the end that will tell you whether you can have a business to sell, or grow, or you can't, it's not us”, said Linnabary.
Linnabary says as of right now there are only five pot-based businesses approved to operate on agricultural land.
“They're kind of out in the middle of nowhere really”, said the supervisor.
The township planning board says right now they don't know how many facilities will set up shop in Leoni Township until the state gives the final approval.
In the meantime residents are asking board members to put a cap on the number of operations allowed.
We also asked the township about officials getting a percentage of application fees for processing the documents.
They said it only happened once and township officials are no longer getting any of the fees.
