Loveland says petition for marijuana ballot issue had too few signatures – Loveland Reporter-Herald

A citizen petition to bring the issue of retail marijuana back before Loveland voters this fall has been rejected after city staffers found that it included too few valid signatures.

While supporters of the effort gathered 3,589 signatures by the time their petition was submitted in May, City Clerk Patti Garcia said only 2,142 of those signatures were found to be valid when the associated names and addresses were checked against registered voter lists maintained by the county and state.

Loveland’s City Charter requires that petitioners gather signatures from at least 5% of registered voters, this year equaling 2,888 people, before a proposed law may be added to the ballot.

Garcia said the leaders of the effort will have to start from scratch if they want to try bring the issue before voters again.

“It’s not like someone gathering signatures to run for City Council where there’s a cure period,” she said. “That’s not allowed by statute. Once they submitted the petition for counting, that was it.”

Business services professional Heather Lowe, who works in the city clerk’s office, said most of the invalid signatures were rejected because they were illegible, associated with individuals living in other communities or lacked dates.

Tom Wilczynski of Loveland and Autumn Todd of Fort Collins organized the push to gather signatures and spoke previously about the benefits of allowing retail marijuana businesses in Loveland, including potential tax revenues that could be applied toward parks or other city services.

Both Wilczynski and Todd owned medical marijuana dispensaries in Loveland before voters opted to ban the establishments in 2010. One part of the proposed legislation that drew criticism from supporters of past efforts would also effectively waive setbacks from schools, churches and other facilities for some former licenseholders.

Neither Wilczynski nor Todd could be reached for comment on Tuesday.

Garcia said the window for the two to start another petition with the chance of the item appearing on the ballot in November is closing rapidly, as her office could take up to five days to process the initial form of petition and 30 days to verify signatures. Loveland’s City Council would also have to vote twice to approve adding the item to the ballot.

The county requires that ballot content be certified by Sept. 4.

“If they worked really quickly, I think they could do it,” Garcia said. “It’s cutting it close.”

Wilczynski and Todd announced the effort in late April and submitted their petition on May 28.

Garcia also noted that the council could vote independently to add the item to the ballot, though no discussion was scheduled as of Tuesday afternoon, and if a valid petition were to be submitted too late for consideration in November, it could also become the matter for a special election.