New State Law May Change Things Again
By Rob McDonald
Without regard for businesses that need to run certain ways, and people that need their medicine, Redding's City Council followed the advice of their Chief of Police and passed ridiculous ordinances on Tuesday. Those ordinances will be looked at again in six months, just in time before the election, but there are groups organizing to make sure that doesn't matter to the political careers of the three City Council members that voted these overreaching, overbearing ordinances into law. Mayor Rick Bosetti was the tie breaker and voted with Mary Stegal and Dick Dickerson, as premature, and immature laws were passed that in essence told the collectives "we don't want you here."
Unfortunately there are parts of this law that will drive people to the collectives outside the City limits, and will cost Redding hundreds of thousands of dollars in tax revenue. Two of the issues are clippings to start new plants for the people that can't afford the dry medicine that is sold at the collectives, and the fact that a patient can not be a part of more than one collective. That creates more problems about the availability of certain strains of marijuana for specific medicinal ailments. If you join a collective, and they run out of what you need, you can't just go over to another one that has it.
I feel this whole situation is pure politics, and Big Brother trying to watch over us.
My disgust with the ignorance displayed by so many in this area is only surpassed by my disgust for people that want to take other's rights away even though they did nothing wrong. I am also disgusted at the further erosion of the fourth amendment by our local authorities.
Perhaps it is the fifth amendment that we should be concerned about. The actions of our City government in putting this in the hands of our Police Chief would indicate that they are trying to make up for lost revenue that came from violating our fifth amendment rights in the name of the drug war. Hundreds of thousands a year of illegal confiscation without just compensation. Cars, houses, property, they have taken whatever they wanted and auctioned it off since Reagan said it was "ok."
What our Cities and Counties does amounts to an organized crime shakedown, the same with our child support system.
Redding Planning Commission Shows Signs Of Maturity
November 25th, 2009
By Rob McDonald
The Redding Planning Commission is showing signs of maturity, although there were still some immature moments, as they considered the zoning ordinances to present to the City Council for adoption pertaining to Medical Marijuana. Emmitt Burroughs even suggested at one point that maybe they shouldn't pass anything until everything plays out with AB 390 going through the State Assembly which would legalize marijuana completely. Bert Meyer was absent from this meeting, which later resulted in a couple of 3-3 ties on motions that were being considered.
The setbacks of a grow from a person's fence was explained to be ten feet, which I think is acceptable. I had heard some ridiculous setback limits previously to this meeting. Added in to this ordinance at the insistence of Cameron Middleton was a height limitation for outside growing. I'm not sure why it matters unless the people that are offended by marijuana's odor are also offended by the sight of marijuana.
I have a problem with any decisions that are made around visibility and odor. This will open up a huge can of worms for the City. The City is not responsible for the odor or sight of plants, period. If they wish to become responsible for it, then I'm sure they can expect calls about trees that block views, and jasmine or wisteria that is giving off a strong fragrant odor. For those of you that don't think that will happen, I would like to point out that I love the smell of marijuana. Many of my friends have said the same thing, it has a fragrance all it's own, and as many people like it as hate it.
The one moment of immaturity that stood out to me was when Michelle Goedert kept trying to bring up hours of operation. "I question whether we need to supply convenient access," she said. I immediately had visions of Michelle, who is the property manager of the Downtown Promenade, putting all the handicapped parking out in the back 40 if she could.
Cameron Middleton, and Lynne Wonacott both felt that the commercial zoning that the rest of the committee was favoring is too stringent, and will impact medicinal users convenient access to their medicine. The City Council is set to vote one last time on these ordinances on December 1st at 7:00pm in the City Council Chambers.
Emmitt Burroughs made the statement that the planning commission are a group of citizens that are "trying to take into account the feelings of an entire community." Thank god that has changed, because before the last week, I felt like they were only listening to the whiny, paranoid and ignorant.
