From left are Sanford Village President Dolores Porte, Treasurer Travis Raymond, and council members Marc Thrush and Carl Hamann.
In November, when Sanford resident Sue LaBonville encouraged the Village of Sanford to opt into offering cannabis, she set her sights on opening a microbusiness.
A microbusiness would allow a person to grow up to 150 of their own plants, and to sell their own products.
Operating a dispensary, on the other hand, would allow LaBonville to sell cannabis that has been cultivated elsewhere.
She said a year after the flood, when people started coming out of the fog of chaos, she thought of ways to help improve Sanford’s economic scene.
LaBonville started researching and found that retailers in Michigan had collected over a billion dollars in cannabis sales in 2020 and returned $428,000 to local governments who hosted such businesses.
In December, when the Sanford Village Council put LaBonville’s opting-in proposal on its agenda, more than 30 people showed up supporting it, with only one person opposing it.
People can grow up to 12 plants on their own, per the state law.
Even though she has done some of the heavy lifting to bring cannabis to Sanford, the village would have to consider all applications for permits, not just hers.