Norwalk Council tackles challenging need for a cannabis ordinance

NORWALK, Conn. — Connecticut has legalized cannabis. Now Norwalk Common Council members are wrestling with the details.

For one thing, if Norwalk allows retail cannabis establishments, as Council members desire, then it must designate areas where people can consume cannabis in public.

“Where do we pick? You know, do we find an island in the middle of the Sound? Where do we go, that’s not going to be a political football?” Common Council member Thomas Keegan (R-District D) said Tuesday.

Council members enacted a temporary prohibition on cannabis establishments in March. Last month, the Ordinance Committee began working on an ordinance to define the ins and outs of cannabis sale and growth; members had expected to move it to a public hearing in July, but but the draft is “not quite ready for that moment yet,” said Council member Josh Goldstein (D-At Large), who has worked with Keegan to develop it.

The draft would lift the prohibition when it is passed and corresponding zoning regulations are in place.

While there’s no “designated” place for citizens to smoke cigarettes or drink alcohol, the State law “quite literally” specifies a “place,” Goldstein said.

The drafted ordinance allows the Mayor to designate “a place and/or places as the only public location wherein public consumption of cannabis and cannabis products is permitted only through smoking, vaping, or the consumption of edibles.” The Mayor would also have the discretion to amend the locations.

Goldstein said that allows “flexibility,” but Council member David Heuvelman (D-District A) argued that the Council would be “pushing off a responsibility” and “stigmatizing cannabis by limiting it” to specific locations instead of naming the entire city as the “place,” with the same prohibitions that apply to tobacco.

Plus, whatever location is named would be “destroyed” and “stigmatized with this idea,” Heuvelman said.

“I can understand why it may feel like we’re passing the buck,” Goldstein said. “… I do think that this path does give us a level of flexibility, and gives us the ability to make decisions in a quicker timeline.”

If a specific place were named in the ordinance, then it would take months to make a change, he said.

He didn’t think it would be viable to make the entire city the “place,” for a “a number of public health, public safety and enforcement reasons.”

“We are also trying to sort of get a handle on how other municipalities are handling this. And trying to figure out from a best practices standpoint, how best to do that,” Goldstein said.

Keegan said Massachusetts has found “their biggest problem has been with DUI. And not necessarily simply smoking.”

As a retired police officer, he “tried to make things pretty simple” but, “We did have a lot of trouble with trying to come up with a place where we thought we could have the smoking of cannabis be, quote unquote, legal.”

“Scores of places” were discussed, including islands, but “every single place that was recommended it be the place designated by the city where it’s permitted, somebody had a problem with it.”

It’s not like smoking cigarettes, he said to Heuvelman.

“Smoking cigarettes has been for years and years and years legal,” Keegan said. “… It’s frowned upon because of the health issues, but it’s still legal. And cannabis has been illegal since the beginning of time…. I arrested people for possessing marijuana. I arrested people for smoking pot.”

While Norwalk must name locations, he “doubts” people will “flock there,” but “at least we’ve satisfied the statute.”

Given that Norwalk would like to “build this as an industry …we’re actually trying to do the opposite of stigmatizing it,” Goldstein said.

“The difference between cigarettes and cannabis is that cigarettes …  are a health risk if you are getting secondhand smoke. So I would personally prefer for instance, that cigarettes were entirely banned on our sidewalks as well,” Council member Nora Niedzielski-Eichner (D-At Large) said. “Cigarettes while they pose a health risk for long term exposure to secondhand smoke are not intoxicants, when you are walking by getting a secondhand smoke.  Cannabis is different…. I do not want my child walking on a sidewalk behind someone who is smoking cannabis, that is not a stigmatization.”

The draft also calls for $50 fines for violating the restrictions and a $250 fine for someone who permits the outdoor consumption of cannabis.

Goldstein said it had been a $1,000 fine for the latter, but if it’s more than $250 then violators could appeal to a hearing officer and “that can be quite onerous for the City, and can provide a significant delay.”

“The goal of legalizing cannabis is to decrease arrests and related to it. You know, we certainly don’t want to create a cottage industry of violations or tickets,” Niedzielski-Eichner said.

The draft establishes a Norwalk Cannabis Account, a bucket for revenue from the 3% sales tax on cannabis mandated in the State law.

“The State gives us a report of how much the retailers owe the City, of municipal sales tax. The City is then responsible for the invoicing and collection of those monies,” Goldstein said.

The money would go toward:

• Streetscape improvements and other neighborhood developments in communities where cannabis retailers, hybrid retailers or micro-cultivators are located.
• Education programs or youth employment and training programs in the municipality.
• Services for individuals living in the municipality who were released from department of corrections custody, probation, or parole.
• Mental health or addiction services; youth service bureaus and municipal juvenile review boards.
• Community civic engagement efforts.

 

Heuvelman asked if the Council might attempt to direct the funds by assigning percentages for the beneficiaries.

“One possibility is the Council each year picks a priority, and they pick the 50% of the funds go to ‘x,’” Council President Tom Livingston (D-District E) said.

Applicants would go through the Community Services Department, which would deliver regular reports to the Council.

Council member Dominique Johnson (D-At Large) focused on equity, saying that the draft’s definition of “discrimination” isn’t as “up to date” as other sections of the City code.

“We want to be sure that in particular, Black and brown residents in Norwalk, will be treated just as everyone else, even though that’s not what’s happened with cannabis up to this point,” she said.

“The definition of equity is from the state statute,” Goldstein said. It’s not there to create protected classes.

The fund is designed to “try and promote programs and resources that try and remedy a lot of the issues that came to light as a result of the war on drugs,” he said. “So we’re on the same page. I think thematically and goal wise.”

Furthering the point, Johnson said “we also know that when cannabis becomes legalized recreationally, certain groups of people actually use it more.” She worried that they may not know the specific legalities and inadvertently violate the law.

Goldstein spoke of a “big public communication effort.”

Heuvelman said micro cultivation is a “huge opportunity” for Norwalk.

“One of the things that makes it challenging is, I believe is a minimum of 15,000 square feet that you have to have, because there needs to be a sufficient grow space,” Goldstein said. “There are several sites in Norwalk that could probably fit that bill. I’m sure there are people who are interested in doing that kind of business in Norwalk.  That application, were it to go through the zoning permitting process, would not be like retail, it would be like industrial. It’d be like if someone was building a plant, you know, like, like a factory.”