BY WILLIAM HUNTER
Los Alamos
I want to personally thank the citizens of Los Alamos County, and surrounding communities for their support of our Integrated Cannabis Microbusiness Quest — Atomic City Cannabis Company! To all who publicly spoke at the County Council meeting held on December 7, 2021 — THANK YOU! Unfortunately, four County Councilors chose to ignore all the public comments, supporting our home-based cannabiz quest, made at the meeting. The four Councilors voted to adopt an extremely restrictive cannabis ordinance, especially with regard to home-based businesses/occupations.
Councilor Derkacs, in her column published December 9, 2021, says “by my count, Council heard from 30 individual residents who opposed restrictions on retail sales (some residents spoke at both public sessions and also sent emails). That’s 30 out of 15,078 registered voters or less than 0.2% of registered voters in the County.” First, she did not mention a number representing the registered voters who support the restrictions – this seems to be “cherry-picked” data to support her position on this matter. I asked, at the Council meeting, for this information. No one on the Council replied with a number. I wanted to know what was the ratio of oppose vs support for the restrictive ordinance they had just enacted. I got crickets for an answer as they chose to ignore it. To that end, the Cannabis Retail decision they made was based on “private” undocumented conversations or personal biases against cannabis in general and cannabis being a home-based business.
It’s too bad that the Council did not survey the residents prior to all of this, like they apparently feel they must do now with code enforcement in residential/commercial areas. They will be surveying the whole county about this issue beginning Dec.13, 2021. Oh, that they would have done this with cannabis beginning in April 2021 after the Cannabis Regulation Act was enacted! The County really dropped several balls with respect to transparency and acquisition of real and on-going public input into their decision. If only I could make decisions based on “phantom public input” and my personal biases – I’d be the most powerful person in Los Alamos County! I might even be king! But, then hardly anyone would trust me, or love me (Satire, ain’t it grand?)!
Soon, I will write an article for the local news media, in which I detail the consequences of the Council’s poor choices in adopting the County Cannabis Ordinances (regarding Cultivation, Manufacturing and Retail).
To the Los Alamos community – I love you!