Mayor Conley answers question on marijuana industry in the city

“How is the marijuana district going to affect us?” asked Jennifer Winter at the regular Feb. 17 meeting of the Belleville Downtown Development Authority via Zoom. “I’m a little skeptical and a lot worried.”
“You’re not alone,” said Mayor Kerreen Conley. She said the city at first thought there would be construction, but the businesses are occupying existing buildings. A positive impact to the DDA would have been improving the buildings, she said.
Mayor Conley said there will be additional people in the community that they wouldn’t otherwise have and there will be an impact. The police are studying how to monitor the businesses.
“It’s a new industry for us,” Conley said.
She said those coming in know what they are doing and it’s a wait-and-see proposition. She said the city will somewhat partner with the businesses. She said they know how many licenses are authorized and a portion of the income will be for taxes.
Conley said the city is 2.2 square miles in size and it approved 22 licenses, eight in a single location. There are seven differen types of licenses and there might be several licenses in one building.
DDA member Winter said grow operations are very smelly. She said there had been a problem on Harris Road where people were “majorly growing.” She said she was worried.
Conley said the people who came in are well-organzied and knew what they were doing. The voters approved it and the city did what it was required to do.
Winter said if they had a city manager who was part of this community, who cared about it, it might have been different.
Conley said the petitioners came in with a petition, enough to put on the ballot plus an ordinance written by the petitioner. The voters voted to have those facilities and an ordinance amendment.
“We could have promoted it differently,” Winter said.
“It was submitted on the very last day and the only thing we got to regulate is where?” Conley said, adding the city located them to avoid a negative impact to the community.
“I think we did what we could,” Conley said. “… and now we wait and see … we’ve got professionals involved … At the end of the day the vote was pretty big.”
“Just knowing would have been good for me,” Winter said.
Police Chief Dave Robinson, who is also the interim city manager, said the mayor did an excellent job of explaining the situation.
“The only thing we had control over was zoning,” he said. “Licenses are provisional. Now they go to the state and then come back and get the licenses from us.” He said the businesses have to mitigate the smell.
“The companies really thought this through. They’ve done it before,” Chief Robsinson said.
“I’m concerned on how busy our streets are going to be … with anyone who wants to get marijuana coming in,” Robinson said. “The state passed it and people can grow their own … We want to make this more partnership-oriented … with what they can do for our city.”