Jessica Mathews / news@whmi.com


Voters defeated a marijuana ballot proposal in the City of Howell in Tuesday’s General Election.

The proposed City Charter amendment would have allowed for two retail cannabis establishments in the community. It narrowly failed to pass with 52% of the vote – 2,722 against and 2,471 in support.

The proposal was forced onto the ballot by an outside group following a state Court of Appeals ruling and was not initiated by the City or Council.

The City earlier “opted-out” of allowing marijuana-related facilities, as did other Livingston County municipalities. Sheriff Mike Murphy also came out against the proposal ahead of the election and urged voters to “keep pot shops out of the community”.

Howell Mayor Bob Ellis told WHMI the results did give them some insight into the will of the community.
Ellis said the majority of people he talked to were not in favor of the proposal, and those who did were responding to information contained in election mailings about how it would increase revenue etc. He said he felt those arguments were somewhat mis-stated, and the amount of revenue likely would not be very substantial.

Ellis said previously whenever Council discussed marijuana, they never really had any city residents come talk about it one way or another - it was always people from outside of the community – and they didn’t see a big push to open the stores.

Another issue Ellis noted was that the way the petition was worded would have given preference to those behind it. He said had the proposal passed, that would have in turn likely spurred lawsuits from others who wanted the licenses, forcing the City to spend a lot of time and money on a distraction that takes away from real issues facing the community.

The application and license process prioritized “pre-qualified applicants” and “established owners/applicants with pre-existing recorded property interests in proposed store locations”.

Ellis said it was good to have information back from the community and most people prefer not to have such facilities. He said he thinks the impression was that there is not any overwhelming degree of support and they are on the right track so at this point, they’ll continue with their current status of opting-out.