GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Grand Rapids is looking for a “cannabis manager.”
The position, recently created through a budget amendment, is tasked with administering and enforcing the city’s codes and policies around recreational and medical marijuana.
The cannabis manager would largely serve as the city’s chief point person for all things marijuana, both medical and recreational, for city departments, businesses and the community.
Additional tasks include tracking and enforcing social equity commitments of businesses and coordinating across departments on marijuana-related activities, such as facility inspections.
The salary for the position in the Planning Department is listed between $76,649 and $97,749 a year. The application window closes just before midnight on Sunday, Sept. 13.
“The Cities of Denver, Aurora, Sacramento, Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland and the State of Washington have created similar positions and there is agreement that the position facilitates a positive and collaborative relationship with the cannabis industry and protects the general health, safety and welfare of the community,” city staff wrote in their recommendation for the position.
While the city has a few medical marijuana provisioning centers currently operating, there are no recreational marijuana dispensaries at this time.
The city is currently considering recreational licenses and, soon, special land use permissions for some existing medical marijuana provisioning centers that have requested transitioning to selling recreational marijuana.
A public hearing is scheduled for the city commission’s Sept. 15 meeting on whether the city should require marijuana businesses to seek a sensitive-use waiver if they are located within 1,000 feet of a youth center.
The hearing will also cover proposed changes that would allow provisioning centers with other sensitive-use waivers the ability to request a transfer of those waivers to a recreational marijuana operation.
The change would allow seven approved provisioning centers to pursue selling recreational marijuana, should they choose.
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