By Marcia Johnson,
Good news for Mayfair composters! With the overwhelming feedback of residents like you, the City’s composting program will be able to continue.
In 2008, the City received a grant from the State and donations from Rehrig Pacific and A1 Organics to begin a pilot compost program. The composting pilot program was tested at 3,300 Denver homes, including many in the Mayfair area. Each household that participated received a green, 65-gallon composting cart, serviced weekly during the growing season and every-other-week during the winter.
The pilot program indeed proved successful, and Denver will be looking at ways to incorporate composting city-wide, in the future. In the short term, however, the grants funding the compost program will run out by March 2010. Unfortunately, due to severe budget cuts, the City was not able to continue to fund the compost program with General Fund dollars and it was scheduled to end this spring.
However, as a result of countless encouraging calls from composters who participated in the pilot and offered to pay for continued composting collection, the City has determined that it will indeed be able to continue the compost program! The City Council will be reviewing this proposal in late January, while this issue of the Mayfair Mirror goes to print.
First, the 3,300 households that have been participating in the compost pilot program will be offered the opportunity to continue the service - for a fee of $9.75/month, paid out in three yearly installments for a total of $88/household/year. Then, households in the pilot neighborhoods who did not participate in the pilot will also be offered this service option. At this time, however, we only have the trucks and bins available to serve a maximum of 3,300 households.
Public Works Solid Waste will be contacting you in the near future if you are eligible for continued or new composting services. For more information, please visit www.denvergov.org and type “compost” in the search box.
Please feel free to contact my office with your thoughts, questions or concerns any time at 303.355.4615 or email me.
By Doug Linkhart,
As the global economy continues to suffer, what can you do to ensure your own economic well-being? The first step is to recognize that the economy is not just falling, it’s changing.
The types of jobs and kinds of skills required to make a living in today’s economy are constantly evolving. While the past two years have seen record job losses, even in the best of times, many jobs are being abolished as others are created. Columnist George Will recently wrote that in 1997, a year of robust economic growth, 3.3 million jobs were abolished.
The dynamic nature of the economy makes it important for people to keep their skills updated and be on the constant look-out for new opportunities. So, with this thought in mind, I decided to visit one of the best sources I know for this kind of information, www.collegeincolorado.org to look for a new opportunity.
College In Colorado, by the way, is a great web site for job information and career planning. It’s name is a bit of a misnomer, because it has much more than just college information.
Okay, so what kind of job opportunity do I want to pursue? Being in politics, I’ve often heard quotes about rocket scientists, so I look up aerospace engineer on the College In Colorado site. Unfortunately, I don’t even understand much of the language used to describe what they do. Here’s one sentence: “Plans and conducts experimental, operational, and stress tests on models and prototypes.” The web site also says that these jobs pay twice my salary and are forecast to grow by 9%, so it might be worth going back to school.
Sticking to my current job, I look up politician in the web site and find the sentence: “If you enjoy meetings, policy and political problems, politics is for you!” Hmm…maybe doing stress tests on models would be more fun.
There are a variety of other resources for job information. Many of these resources also include information on starting your own business, which is a particularly good strategy in these days, since there are an estimated six people for every one job opening.
To see a listing of some of these resources visit the Creating Opportunities page on our web site, www.douglinkhart.org. For those who are not connected to the Internet, Denver Public Library has a wealth of written information, as well as computers for visiting the Internet.
By Carol Boigon,
Denver City Councilwoman At-large
More than 400 medical marijuana dispensaries have applied for use permits in Denver, most of them in the last two and a half months. Constituents on all sides of the issue have contacted me: patients depending on marijuana to ease their illnesses, caregivers seeking to provide a service, and deeply concerned residents trying to protect their neighborhoods from crime and their children from harm.
How Did Denver Get Here?
In 2000, Colorado voters authorized the use of medical marijuana for adults suffering from certain illnesses, including cancer, and for pain. In 2007, 57% of Denver voters said that enforcement of less than 1 oz. of marijuana was a low priority. (Possession is a federal felony). That same year, Denver District Judge Larry Naves ruled that the state had violated state laws in setting the rules regulating medical marijuana.
In 2009 when the State Board of Health (the property authority for rule making in this case) refused to adopt new rules to regulate the industry, the U.S. Department of Justice stepped in and said they wouldn’t prosecute marijuana users who were “in clear and unambiguous compliance” with existing state law. In November, the City announced it would regulate by licensing, zoning, and taxing the sale of medical marijuana within the City and County of Denver.
From Legislation to Law
In December 2009, Denver began taxing medical marijuana sales, and in January of this year, we voted to license medical marijuana dispensaries and set standards for operation. The new law limits hours from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m., spaces them 1,000 feet from each other and from schools and licensed child care centers that existed before the medical marijuana licenses were issued. It does NOT allow using marijuana on site. Dispensaries that applied for a City business license after December 15, 2009, are subject to the new spacing requirements. Approximately 230 dispensaries hold business licenses issued on or before December 15, 2009. By contrast, 128 actively registered pharmacies operate in Denver, according to state pharmacy regulators.
This year, the state legislature will attempt to close the regulatory gaps including grow sites and requirements, patient eligibility, caregiver responsibilities and definition, patient-caregiver ratios, doctor qualifications standards of care, and more.
Setting Limits
I believe Denver voters said clearly that sick adults whose health would benefit from marijuana should have it. They did NOT authorize creating a new industry in medical marijuana for economic development. They did NOT authorize a delivery system through freestanding medical marijuana dispensaries. They did NOT authorize agricultural and manufacturing facilities for marijuana in every neighborhood in the City. They did NOT guarantee a profit to everyone who chooses to be a medical marijuana grower or seller.
As a Denver policy maker, I believe our challenge is to help the City find a good fit between voter direction and the needs of children and families.
For the most part, I support the City ordinance, and believe it is an attempt to bring some order to the wild growth of the medical marijuana industry. We have little precedent to rely upon, but have done the best we can based on emerging trends from other states and the industry here in Denver. As this industry develops we need to make sure that we are meeting the needs of patients in need and protecting the children and families of Denver.
Download the Spring issue! (4.5 MB PDF file).