Summer, and the living it ain’t easy.
For those of us who had the bad taste to go into journalism, summer is a dreaded time. If one goes on vacation, often times stories have to be done in advance so they can run while you are gone. Upon your return, work stacks up like empty Big Mac containers in the White House trash.
And this is to say nothing of the summer news desert. This is a phenomenon that strikes reporters when key business contacts go on vacation, and local governments decide the best thing is to take it easy for a couple months while residents and employees are in and out of town. “We try to lay low in the summer,” one former city manager in Marin once remarked to me over a beer. “Residents feel like you are trying to sneak something through if you do something big in the summer.”
So, while the news often takes a break while the temps climb, some things in Marin remain the same. Let’s travel west as the crow flies and head to the hamlet known as Fairfax where process still wears a handsome crown.
Unlike the majority of places in Marin, Fairfax is actually organized as a town and it counts about 7,600 people as residents. By reputation it’s known as a place firmly anchored in love of nature, all things organic and the birthplace of mountain biking, complete with a museum honoring the fat-tired vehicles. It’s also home to the only cannabis dispensary in the county, and this is where that whole process thing raises its jewel encrusted noggin.
The town has been trying to hammer out its regulations to allow up to two more dispensaries to operate in Fairfax, but the issue has proven to be more challenging than one might imagine. The town council has held 18 meetings on cannabis regulations.
Yes, hi, that’s not a typo. The thoughtful souls sitting on the town council have met and discussed the cannabis issue on 18 occasions, which gave Fairfaxians ample opportunity to weigh in on the details. (What good is it to be a world-famous columnist if you can’t coin a word like Fairfaxians once in a while?)
It isn’t that there is much mystery about how folks in Fairfax feel about weed. The town has supported the Marin Alliance since it opened in 1996, before medical marijuana was actually legal. About 78 percent of the voters in Fairfax punched a ballot in favor of Proposition 64 in November 2016, making adult cannabis use legal.
The town council has wrestled of late over the issue of buffer zones. The current thinking is that a medical cannabis business should be 600 feet from schools and 300 feet from tutoring facilities and day-care centers. If it’s an adult-use delivery service, the buffer zone drops down to 250 feet.
Other cannabis businesses, such as testing labs, cultivation, manufacturing and distribution are still on the council’s no fly list.
As these words land on this page, its mid-July and due to the magic that is not magazine distribution, this is for the September issue you currently hold in your hands. The Fairfax Town Council may rally and make a move on cannabis in August. It technically has until the end of next month to iron out the details. Otherwise regulations that the state already has developed will apply.
Fairfax is hardly the Lone Ranger when it comes to appreciating that shaping policy in Marin often times is akin to my college education, slow going, deliberate, and full of hurdles that are unforeseen.
Your Marin moment
The more things change, the more they resemble days past. When the Marin City Flea Market closed up in 1995 to make way for the Gateway Shopping Center, a very fun and funky place went away to make way for progress. Sundays in Marin City were an adventure when folks from all over would pile into the collection of booths, stands and stalls to find treasures and bargains.
The Sunday market was closed with the hope that the center would become an economic engine for Marin City and that Food Co. would become the grocery store that the community had never had.
The center has never fully taken off. But now, an element of the old flea market is back in town as a combo of a farmers’ market and a flea market will run on Tuesdays from 1:30 to 4:30 p.m. at the Marin City Senior Center on 640 Drake Ave.
Organized by Covia, a senior organization dedicated to healthier living, the hope is that it will give seniors more access to fresh food while giving everyone more access to fresh community.
Bill Meagher is a contributing editor at NorthBay biz magazine. He keeps the lights on as a senior associate editor at The Deal where he covers alternative investments, microcap finance and securities regulation.
