Pasco Wants YOUR Opinion on the Future Of Pot Business, Retail

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The City of Pasco plans to encourage citizens to attend one of several "listening" sessions to voice their opinion about pot business within city limits.

Pasco will hold two public sessions soon

Mark these dates (from the City of Pasco via Pasco PD):

"• Tuesday, September 27, 6:30 pm, HAPO (TRAC) Center, 6600 Burden Boulevard

• Tuesday, October 4, 6:30 pm, Pasco Police Regional Training Center, 204 W. Clark Street."

For a number of months now, a group of people, led in part by Spokane businessman David Morgan (formerly of Tri-Cities) as well as Thomas Granbois and Carl Holder, have been pressuring the city to repeal Ordinance 4166 which bans any kind of marijuana-related business within city limits (growing, processing, retail selling).

The pro-marijuana group presented information in July to the Pasco City Council as well as petitions claiming the majority of the downtown businesses support the idea of putting a pot shop at the corner of 4th and Lewis.

Hispanic businesses push back

However, a large group of Hispanic business owners, led by civic Leader Leo Perales, are pushing back. Perales says 95 percent of them do not want such business. He and others argue the City has worked for a number of years to clean up the image of Pasco's Downtown, and this would only add to its current issues. It's not the kind of image they want to be associated with the area.

When I-502 passed in 2012, many cities and counties used a loophole in the Initiative to pass their own legal pot bans, because I-502 was soundly defeated in most Eastern WA counties.