Valley Stream votes to opt out of retail cannabis sales

The board took the power of the people away.”

Charlene Ali Cannabis advocate

The Village of Valley Stream voted on Monday to opt out of permitting adult-use cannabis dispensaries and on-site consumption lounges within the village’s jurisdiction.

During the public hearing, trustees were faced with one of two options about the referendum process that residents could use to overturn the decision: a mandatory or a permissive referendum.   

In a mandatory referendum, the village would assume the cost of carrying out an election on whether to override the cannabis opt-out decision.

In a permissive referendum, residents would need to submit a petition signed by 20 percent of registered voters in the last village election within 30 days of passage of the local law to override the board’s opt-out decision, according to state officials.

There were 26,267 registered voters as of the last village election in 2020, according to village officials, meaning that more than 5,000 signatures would need to be collected on the petition.

In the end, the opt-out vote with the permissive referendum won out in a 5-1 vote. Trustee Vincent Grasso, the lone board member who supports cannabis sales in the village, cast the dissenting

vote.

Had trustees voted for a mandatory referendum, a special election on whether to allow dispensaries and consumption lounges would have had to be held, at a projected cost of $75,000, according to village officials.

After village board members cast their votes, a small verbal skirmish between Trustee Dermond Thomas together with Grasso and Michael Hopkins, the village legal counsel, ensued over whether trustees needed to vote on the opt-out mandatory referendum when the permissive referendum option had already passed.

Mayor Edwin Fare called for a vote on the mandatory referendum, which was struck down. Thomas and Grasso voted for it.

“As a practical proposition, it wasn’t necessary to” take a vote on the mandatory referendum, Hopkins said. “But we did it as a courtesy to the people on the board. The [permissive referendum] could have, in theory, overridden the [vote on the mandatory referendum].” 

In the unlikely but legally tangled possibility that the opt-out mandatory referendum had passed alongside the opt-out permissive referendum, the case would have gone to the Nassau County Supreme Court, according to Hopkins.

While the permissive referendum opt-out held firm, the procedural confusion did not sit well with a handful of cannabis-sale proponents.

“Them not knowing the order of operations for this hearing is just an example of the amount of disconnect between the local government and the community, and the local government and state government,” resident Brett Feaser, 25, said.

“They should have flipped the order of the items on the agenda . . . with the mandatory referendum voted on first,” resident Adam Ali said.

Despite the confusion, the onus now falls on pro-sale cannabis proponents to collect more than 5,000 signatures from residents to hold a public referendum to try and override the board’s decision, according to state law. Charlene Ali, a longtime recreational and medicinal marijuana advocate and cannabis entrepreneur, said she was “very disappointed” with the board’s decision.

“The board took the power of the people away…They’re doing the community a disservice and made the democratic process that much harder when it could have been made very easy and not exclude anyone,” Ali said.

She further cited the unprecedented logistical hurdles of gathering petition signatures in the middle of a pandemic. 

“We now have to go and physically collect signatures, verify them and present them to the board within 30 days. Meanwhile, the state issued mask mandates again, Covid numbers are going up, and people are starting to isolate themselves again,” Ali said. “Who is going to open their doors when other things take precedence right now?”