The Dolores Town Board of Trustees met Monday and took care of business in 50 minutes flat during a heavy summer rainstorm.
The ordinance to ban medical and retail marijuana stores passed 5-1 after a public hearing. There was no public comment, and Trustee Colette Heeney was the dissenting vote. The ban goes until December 2016.
Attorney Mike Green said that if Colorado decides to go to a wholesale type system, it may eliminate the requirement that retail stores grow 70 percent of their product.
“That would change their impact (on towns), so the board could choose revisit the issue then,” he said.
The additional costs to regulate the growing facilities of medical and retail marijuana shops was one reason for the ban.
The board also came up with a way to possibly delay cleaning out the first sewer pond to allow time for figuring out financing for a larger cleanup.
Decomposed sludge at the pond must be removed after 20 years, and the 20 years is up, officials said. The removal costs are expected to be $104,000.
The board agreed to try a bacteria product from BioLynceus, of Estes Park. One hundred gallons of a pro-biotic scrubber solution will be added to the pond over the next year. The cost is $4,088. The bacteria has worked to reduce sludge loads, but is not guaranteed to work. If it does it is only a temporary solution, said interim manager Lana Hancock.
“It will buy us some time to get grants or loans for the sludge-removal project,” she said.