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| Photo: Boulder, CO |
That’s the message Boulder recently sent to the owners of two Boulder medical marijuana dispensaries after the city accidentally made public the addresses of their secret marijuana growing warehouses.
But the owners of dozens of other dispensaries, who also had the locations of their grow sites accidentally disclosed, won’t be asked for the same forgiveness.
Boulder officials included the addresses of two growing operations in a public document that was provided to the City Council in advance of its Jan. 4 meeting. The document contained a map that shows the location and addresses of cultivation warehouses for Boulder Kind Care and The Farm dispensaries.
State law requires local governments to keep the location of marijuana cultivation centers a secret, out of fear that disclosure could lead to robberies or other problems. Records that show the location of such facilities are specifically exempt from the Colorado Open Records law.
“The inclusion of the two addresses was a mistake, not purposeful,” city staffers wrote in a recent memo to the council.
In response, the city sent letters of apology to Jan Cole, owner of The Farm, located at 1644 Walnut St., and to Jay and Diane Czarkowski, owners of Boulder Kind Care, located at 2031 16th St.
The letters, signed by City Attorney Tom Carr, alerted the business owners that their grow sites were “inadvertently” included in public material.
“As soon as the mistake was discovered, it was removed from the (city’s) Web site,” the letter reads. “I sincerely apologize for allowing the address of the cultivation facility to be included in a public document.”
Cole said she’s satisfied with the apology.
“I wasn’t upset by it,” she said. “We’re doing business, and we’re out in the open here. I believe in transparency.”
She said her warehouse has “proper security in place” and that it’s not necessarily a bad thing for the public to know about the growing presence of cannabis.
Diane Czarkowski said she also was happy to accept the city’s apology.
“Being in an industry where we’re scrutinized beyond belief, it’s nice to know when someone else makes an ‘oops’ … that they own up to it,” she said.
Czarkowski said she supports keeping the locations of growing sites secret, at least for now.
“We don’t want to draw attention to where we’re located,” she said. “We don’t want the criminal element to have it easy.”
The public material for the Jan. 4 council meeting also included a second map, which detailed approximate locations of about 58 other cultivation centers throughout the city. That map also was removed from the city’s Web site, and Kathy Haddock, Boulder’s senior assistant city attorney who advises the council on medical marijuana issues, said the map never should have been published.
But the city attorney now says that map didn’t violate the state’s non-disclosure law because — despite showing easily identifiable locations of grow sites — it didn’t list specific addresses.
Staffers wrote in a memo to the council that the second map “did show the general locations of all medical marijuana business license applications, including cultivation facilities, but not in a manner specific enough to identify the address or particular parcel of any cultivation facility.”
Therefore, the city has concluded, that map didn’t violate state law — although officials don’t plan on putting the map back online.
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