STANDARD BLADE B R I G H T O N
SERVING THE COMMUNITY SINCE 1903
75cI
VOLUME 118
Issue 7
WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 2021
Council calls to ‘repeal, replace’ marijuana sales Unemployment
benefits resume for some, but not all
City rules costing Brighton plenty, according to Councilor Johnston BY SCOTT TAYLOR STAYLOR@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
Calling previous City Council votes on marijuana sales archaic and anti-monetary Brighton Mayor Pro Tem led the charge to revamp city rules. “I think the best thing we can do is repeal, replace,” Councilor Matt Johnston said at the Feb. 2 Brighton City Council meeting. “Then, we need to let the system work as it may and get the tax dollars we can have.” Councilors agreed, voting 7-2 to have staff “speedily” bring back ordinance changes that would repeal Brighton’s current marijuana rules and replace them with something else. “What we are saying is, the council that voted to put this ban or whatever we say, really caused a headache for us now,” Councilor Tim Watts said. “Had they just done what the voters wanted, we would not be in this situation.” Community Development Director Holly Prather said it would be a fundamental change to city codes and will take time to get right. The City Planning Commission and the council would have to approve land use and development codes at public hearings as well as zoning amendments to determine where retail marijuana stores could be located. “We would also look at whether or not we would allow delivery of marijuana or related products,” Prather said. “So there is a lot of different things, just in terms of looking at uses. If we move forward with council direction to repeal and replace, we need to consider how many (dispensaries) we would allow in our community, and how do we distribute them? Do we want to do it by a quadrant system like Thornton or do we want to do it by Ward? So there is a lot involved in the research of this and how it will affect residents.” ‘Archaic, non-scientific’ rules
Contact us at 303-659-2522 INSIDE THIS ISSUE
OBITUARIES LOCAL CALENDAR SPORTS LEGALS CLASSIFIEDS
More phases remain to roll out after state, federal lawmakers blew December deadline BY TAMARA CHUANG THE COLORADO SUN
Brighton has some history with marijuana bans, voting in 2011 to not allow medical marijuana sales in the city limits when the state began to allow them. The Brighton City Council doubled-down on that after Colorado voters approved the sale of marijuana for recreational uses at the polls in 2012. The council voted six months later to ban retail sales within the city limits. The city’s bans also extend to commercial marijuana grow and manufacturing facilities. Brighton residents can currently grow up to six marijuana plants for their personal use and can buy the products elsewhere and use them at home. Johnston said he favors council action, not a voters referendum “The thought that we are going to take back a measure to the voters that they have already voted on, that an archaic, non-scientific, anti-monetary City Council voted to create codes on the past that made us miss out on a certain amount of money,” Johnston said. When asked by Johnston, Brigh-
ton Economic Development Director Michael Martinez said he estimates the city passed up roughly $4 million since 2012 by not allowing marijuana sales. “Give or take in a year, each dispensary does $150,000 in sales per year and if you take three or four of those over eight years, we are looking at between $3-$4 million when you included State taxes that get shared back,” Martinez said. Johnston said the Brighton rules have also created a black market for marijuana sales. “Do you think a kid that’s 17-yearsold can’t get marijuana easier in Brighton than they can in Denver?” Johnston said. “I guarantee it because we have a larger black market.” Johnston noted that 66 percent of Brighton voters joined the rest of Colorado voters to approve sales in 2012. “The voters already voted, and all of you that think marijuana should
Feb. 1 brought relief to more than 60,000 out-of-work Coloradans who were able to request federal benefits for the first time in five weeks — and that included a $300 weekly bonus retroactive to Dec. 27, the start of the federal COVID relief package. “I was able to request all the way back until Dec. 27,” said an overjoyed Kevin Saunders, a restaurant worker living in Parker who ended last year on Pandemic Unemployment Assistance. Saunders was one of 230,000 people allowed back into the system as part of the Colorado Department of Labor and Employment’s Phase 1 of the new federal benefits. Another group of users currently collecting regular state unemployment were automatically sent retroactive $300-per-week payments over the weekend. Labor officials said $61 million in retroactive $300 payments were paid to those on regular unemployment on Saturday for the program known as Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation. But those users didn’t need to lift another finger to get them. They were paid automatically when Phase 1 began last week. On Feb. 1, it was those with pandemic benefits leftover on Dec. 26 who could reopen their accounts. By 4 p.m., about 62,000 of them had logged into the system to request a combined total of 150,000 weeks of payments. Most of those weeks were
SEE MARIJUANA, P5
SEE BENEFITS, P5
Follow us at: facebook.com/brightonblade
LOCAL
2 • Suit against Adams 3 County Sheriff proceeding 7 in District Court 8 • Page 11 15
SPORTS
• Prairie View coach thinks team is moving in the right direction.
• Page
WWW.THEBRIGHTONSTANDARDBLADE.COM