Munsey Park Board of Trustees proposed a local law at Wednesday’s meeting that would ban businesses that engage in the sale of marijuana and marijuana-related products in the village.
The ordinance would include prohibiting the sale of marijuana for medicinal use.
Trustee Lawrence Ceriello, who spearheaded the proposition and believes that state legalization of marijuana is upcoming, said that since there is some retail space in the village, the idea of a marijuana facility applying to open up in Munsey Park is not incomprehensible.
“We owe it to our residents to control the commercial space in their village and not allow the sale of marijuana or marijuana-based products,” he said.
Village Attorney Paul Pepper said that the proposal would be an amendment to the already established prohibited uses section in the current zoning code to include other prohibited uses that arise with the changing of society.
Zoning rights gives villages a say on what businesses can and cannot open up within their borders.
“The North Shore is lucky to have lots of villages that control the zoning,” Ceriello said.
Ceriello hopes that the ban can serve as a model for other villages for when they face this issue, especially those that have large amounts of retail space like Garden City.
There will be a public hearing on the amendment at the Dec. 12 board meeting.
This is not Ceriello’s only approach to combat marijuana, he also proposed newly designated parkland, which was approved by the board, to assist in the fight to keep marijuana away from their village.
He hopes that the new parkland could give them a voice on property use that is not necessarily inside Munsey Park, but close enough to have an impact.
Ceriello said: “Oftentimes parks are a category of use where you can say we won’t have bars within 500 feet of schools, churches and parks.”
The strip of land is along Northern Boulevard and Port Washington Boulevard and is already maintained by Munsey Park.
“It is a sort of a no-cost effort to control other uses around us by designating this parkland,” Ceriello said.
The new designation can only be reversed by order of the state Legislature.
