life: Okay, so maybe public speaking was a worthwhile class...
So remember how I'm always complaining about the neighbor's pot garden and it's negative health effects on me and my family? Well, I've been pointing this out the past month or so, via email tag, to members of the city council, as well as the chief of police, and pretty much whoever I can get to listen. My being noisy about it got my dad being noisy about it, so the both of us wrote letters and both of us got responses. I can't help feeling we opened a big ol' Pandora's box by doing so, but, that's the state of things.
The most recent response we got was from one of the city council members informing us that the pot issue was on the agenda for tonight's meeting, to discuss potential zoning requirements for "medical marijuana dispensaries" aka "co-op" gardens like what our neighbors run. We went to the meeting, of course, none of us expecting to speak but more to see what would become of the issue. Ultimately, nothing was settled *at* the meeting itself of course, but the discussion it sparked was actually very surprising. The council members saw our point that the location was a problem and that something DID need settled out as far as zoning rules for what are, essentially, businesses in the case of our neighbors' "co-op" gardens.
The discussion at first was leaning toward what the law allows and how much trouble the city would stir up if they got in to zoning based on "public nuisance." One of the city staff members advising on the issue mentioned that the laws allowed for "co-ops" so long as the person with the "letter of medical recommendation" (aka their "prescription") who would be benefiting from the co-op'd situation also assisted in the actual growing of the plant, basically saying that you can grow your plant on someone else's property, so long as you still physically tend to it. A gentleman in the front row - who I later looked up and realized to be the president of the Chico Cannabis Club - broke meeting protocols and started shouting that there was no such law. The council members got him calmed down, but he kept randomly speaking up against it and making it difficult for the staffer to continue. So, since I had on me a copy of the CA Attorney General's guidelines regarding the medical marijuana laws, I underlined the section the speaker was referencing and quietly took it up to the out-spoken audience member to let him see the wording. The guy took that instead as an excuse to start yelling that it wasn't the laws, it was NORML's guidelines (it wasn't NORML's guidelines, it was the Attorney General's guidelines, reposted by NORML...) and got all inflamed again. The council called a break and the skinny, skin-headed gentleman from the front row left the room cursing at the council about how he's lived here for six years and they never do anything about the marijuana laws. Dad pointed out to him that if he's waited six years he should be able to wait ten minutes until the public forum on the topic, but the guy just left, swearing more.
So that part was certainly fun. That's what I get for trying to be helpful, I guess. But apparently he was well known to the council and so I was assured by the clerk that I had done nothing wrong. Since the man was wearing a cannabis-leaf floral t shirt, and he was scrawnier than is generally healthy, it wasn't too far of a leap to guess that he would be speaking in favor of the marijuana grows. And I'll state again for the record, we're in favor of marijuana for those who need it, but we are NOT in favor of an outdoor marijuana co-op'd grow less than 2000 feet away from an elementary school, right next to a boy's ju-v hall diversion group home, and definitely have a problem with it being right next door to us causing such physical and financial problems for us.
So when the meeting was brought back to order, they had a little bit more discussion among the council members, and then it was opened up to a public forum. Dad has had a headache all day, but after speaking to one of the council members during the break, he tossed his name in the hat and stood up. Also told me that I had better sign up for time to speak, too, because it was only three minutes and he wasn't sure he would hit everything. Now, I had brought our file with us, that had all the emails and pictures and stuff, but I was NOT expecting to speak. O. M. G. So I got to sit there, shaking, listening to dad, listening to the other two speakers - both of whom were, if I had to hazard a guess, slightly high when they walked in to begin with - and trying to figure out what I was going to say. To make matters worse, there were two reporters that I could recognize as reporters, one of whom stood up at the front with a digital recorder and had each speaker mic'd the whole time. He snagged me at the back of the room later, asked me some questions right after I'd spoken, and then after the meeting was over asked my dad, mom, and I if we were satisfied with the way the meeting had gone. So KZFR radio might be running a story on our presentation to the city council, somewhere. LOL
Anyway, so Dad and I presented our situation to the council (shaking and nervous as we were) and I tried to keep it steered on the subject of zoning specifically because our situation is a PERFECT example of why zoning is necessary. There was one particular councilman, who, alas, I think I might have voted for, who kept deriding our situation as a simple "nuisance" and was very, borderline, rude about his defense of marijuana. The point was not "OMG! MARIJUANA IS BAD!!!" the point of the meeting was regarding where it is best grown to minimize detrimental effects on the surrounding community. And for some reason, this particular councilman who is also a Lawyer kept totally missing that point, despite having earlier given a very lengthy reminder to keep his fellow councilmen on course. He later came up and asked for our address so that he could "Drive by and take a wiff" to see how pervasive the smell gets. We pointed out it's only during certain times of day and offered to call him and let him know when to stop by, but he just dismissed that, literally laughed it off. Guess what; I'm not voting for him again.
The other council members were very welcoming, though, and respectful of the fact that we had just presented them with something very important to us and had remained in the room to hear their discussions on it. There were a couple of councilmen who made it a point to say "We don't want to table this issue until the Planning Commission two years from now, we want to acknowledge that this is a public problem and move on it, while we're sitting here now." So it was decided that they would look in to at the very least a temporary ordinance on the matter, get it moved to a topic on the city's General plan meetings, and would have a status report/decision made within the next sixty days. Considering we had gone in not expecting the matter to be much more than a blip on the agenda radar, I think it's pretty impressive that we got a public promise put on the record after a nearly hour-long discussion.
And by getting up and speaking, I got a lot of people's attention and one of the city council members wants me to join up with C.A.V.E. (Community Action Volunteers in Education ... she's the program administrator there) when I get to CSUC. Which, hey, that's COOL!!! Not like, a golden recommendation in to some kind of elite sorority club or anything, but still, better than a kick in the head after just giving an impromptu three minute speech to the freakin' city council. =c) Not to mention I'm on this kind of empowered buzz right now.
So, Tah-Dah! There's my adventures in local politics. Aren't you impressed? ::snerk:: Now I'm going to go make a "Marijuana Aroma Log" to keep track of when the smell kicks up outside and then comes INside, so that we can present something to the annoying lawyer-councilman when he says "well I went there and smelled nothing." ::shrug:: not much, but he was rude and I'm sure will get ruder if we ever show our faces again. Which, providing our neighbors don't have us killed once our names hit the paper tomorrow, will most likely happen often. ::sigh::
The most recent response we got was from one of the city council members informing us that the pot issue was on the agenda for tonight's meeting, to discuss potential zoning requirements for "medical marijuana dispensaries" aka "co-op" gardens like what our neighbors run. We went to the meeting, of course, none of us expecting to speak but more to see what would become of the issue. Ultimately, nothing was settled *at* the meeting itself of course, but the discussion it sparked was actually very surprising. The council members saw our point that the location was a problem and that something DID need settled out as far as zoning rules for what are, essentially, businesses in the case of our neighbors' "co-op" gardens.
The discussion at first was leaning toward what the law allows and how much trouble the city would stir up if they got in to zoning based on "public nuisance." One of the city staff members advising on the issue mentioned that the laws allowed for "co-ops" so long as the person with the "letter of medical recommendation" (aka their "prescription") who would be benefiting from the co-op'd situation also assisted in the actual growing of the plant, basically saying that you can grow your plant on someone else's property, so long as you still physically tend to it. A gentleman in the front row - who I later looked up and realized to be the president of the Chico Cannabis Club - broke meeting protocols and started shouting that there was no such law. The council members got him calmed down, but he kept randomly speaking up against it and making it difficult for the staffer to continue. So, since I had on me a copy of the CA Attorney General's guidelines regarding the medical marijuana laws, I underlined the section the speaker was referencing and quietly took it up to the out-spoken audience member to let him see the wording. The guy took that instead as an excuse to start yelling that it wasn't the laws, it was NORML's guidelines (it wasn't NORML's guidelines, it was the Attorney General's guidelines, reposted by NORML...) and got all inflamed again. The council called a break and the skinny, skin-headed gentleman from the front row left the room cursing at the council about how he's lived here for six years and they never do anything about the marijuana laws. Dad pointed out to him that if he's waited six years he should be able to wait ten minutes until the public forum on the topic, but the guy just left, swearing more.
So that part was certainly fun. That's what I get for trying to be helpful, I guess. But apparently he was well known to the council and so I was assured by the clerk that I had done nothing wrong. Since the man was wearing a cannabis-leaf floral t shirt, and he was scrawnier than is generally healthy, it wasn't too far of a leap to guess that he would be speaking in favor of the marijuana grows. And I'll state again for the record, we're in favor of marijuana for those who need it, but we are NOT in favor of an outdoor marijuana co-op'd grow less than 2000 feet away from an elementary school, right next to a boy's ju-v hall diversion group home, and definitely have a problem with it being right next door to us causing such physical and financial problems for us.
So when the meeting was brought back to order, they had a little bit more discussion among the council members, and then it was opened up to a public forum. Dad has had a headache all day, but after speaking to one of the council members during the break, he tossed his name in the hat and stood up. Also told me that I had better sign up for time to speak, too, because it was only three minutes and he wasn't sure he would hit everything. Now, I had brought our file with us, that had all the emails and pictures and stuff, but I was NOT expecting to speak. O. M. G. So I got to sit there, shaking, listening to dad, listening to the other two speakers - both of whom were, if I had to hazard a guess, slightly high when they walked in to begin with - and trying to figure out what I was going to say. To make matters worse, there were two reporters that I could recognize as reporters, one of whom stood up at the front with a digital recorder and had each speaker mic'd the whole time. He snagged me at the back of the room later, asked me some questions right after I'd spoken, and then after the meeting was over asked my dad, mom, and I if we were satisfied with the way the meeting had gone. So KZFR radio might be running a story on our presentation to the city council, somewhere. LOL
Anyway, so Dad and I presented our situation to the council (shaking and nervous as we were) and I tried to keep it steered on the subject of zoning specifically because our situation is a PERFECT example of why zoning is necessary. There was one particular councilman, who, alas, I think I might have voted for, who kept deriding our situation as a simple "nuisance" and was very, borderline, rude about his defense of marijuana. The point was not "OMG! MARIJUANA IS BAD!!!" the point of the meeting was regarding where it is best grown to minimize detrimental effects on the surrounding community. And for some reason, this particular councilman who is also a Lawyer kept totally missing that point, despite having earlier given a very lengthy reminder to keep his fellow councilmen on course. He later came up and asked for our address so that he could "Drive by and take a wiff" to see how pervasive the smell gets. We pointed out it's only during certain times of day and offered to call him and let him know when to stop by, but he just dismissed that, literally laughed it off. Guess what; I'm not voting for him again.
The other council members were very welcoming, though, and respectful of the fact that we had just presented them with something very important to us and had remained in the room to hear their discussions on it. There were a couple of councilmen who made it a point to say "We don't want to table this issue until the Planning Commission two years from now, we want to acknowledge that this is a public problem and move on it, while we're sitting here now." So it was decided that they would look in to at the very least a temporary ordinance on the matter, get it moved to a topic on the city's General plan meetings, and would have a status report/decision made within the next sixty days. Considering we had gone in not expecting the matter to be much more than a blip on the agenda radar, I think it's pretty impressive that we got a public promise put on the record after a nearly hour-long discussion.
And by getting up and speaking, I got a lot of people's attention and one of the city council members wants me to join up with C.A.V.E. (Community Action Volunteers in Education ... she's the program administrator there) when I get to CSUC. Which, hey, that's COOL!!! Not like, a golden recommendation in to some kind of elite sorority club or anything, but still, better than a kick in the head after just giving an impromptu three minute speech to the freakin' city council. =c) Not to mention I'm on this kind of empowered buzz right now.
So, Tah-Dah! There's my adventures in local politics. Aren't you impressed? ::snerk:: Now I'm going to go make a "Marijuana Aroma Log" to keep track of when the smell kicks up outside and then comes INside, so that we can present something to the annoying lawyer-councilman when he says "well I went there and smelled nothing." ::shrug:: not much, but he was rude and I'm sure will get ruder if we ever show our faces again. Which, providing our neighbors don't have us killed once our names hit the paper tomorrow, will most likely happen often. ::sigh::