Sorry.

Okay, thank you, sir.

Is there anyone else to comment?

My name is Lonnie Stanford.

My resident is 2396 Zerk Road.

I'm the very last house prior to getting to the uh the lot there.

This came up for a discussion as my neighbor stated about a couple months ago to remain as a residential.

Uh voted that it will remain as a residential.

Uh like my neighbor, I am surprised that uh that this was come up again.

I always thought that you vote on something, you're worried that's your bum.

That's what I've always lived by those principles.

However, I'm gonna add a little sh uh couple of little nuggets.

Now I was approached by three individuals that said that basically told me that this was gonna come up again.

Sure enough, we're here today.

Now, what that tells me, what that tells me that uh that they're looking for a favorable outcome.

So those saying that the grease the skid skid must be in Greece uh to get uh a different results.

And I'm not gonna regress based on what we discussed uh a couple months ago.

I'm not going in social intelligence.

However, uh that does you know, when that was that property was acquired, they knew that was a residential.

They knew that.

And instead of reaching out to the neighbors in the area, uh to kind of like get our feeling to see if we had anything to input on changing it.

We're not anti-business.

Uh we just uh you know that's our home, and it's been mine for the last 18 years.

Uh you know, if you talk about progress, I I've been there like as I stated for 18 years.

I still don't have sewer.

Sewage system.

I'm on septic.

I've reached out many and uh multiple times to try to uh see what can be done to uh mediate that.

Now I'm paying welcome.

It is three o'clock on Tuesday, July twenty-fifth, twenty twenty-three, and we are meeting in the city council chambers in Huntsville, Alabama.

Um this uh work session of the city council will be called to order, and all members are in attendance.

Uh today our focus will be on an effort to enable Huntsville police to issue a citation for misdemeanor possession of marijuana as opposed to taking the individual into custody.

Mr.

Keith, would you like to kick us off?

Yes, and as I understand the um discussion one, I want to say hello to everybody.

Thank you for the time.

Um this has been a long road.

It feels like many moons ago.

Um back when Trey had black hair.

We started this conversation about what misdemeanor um arrests would look like.

Citations, how these are handled, uh many of the conversations around this.

I've had conversations with our uh current president about the uh more efficient ways to encourage use of force in our police department and some of the successful ways we've seen around in other cities as well as we've seen around the state.

This is born out of conversation during the pandemic times of the use of citations and its effectiveness for the police department.

So as it is stated today, it does not this does not directly correlate, and I think what we will hear from our two great lawyers is an update of what the effects of the decision that was made down in Montgomery and where that leaves the city of Huntsville.

So if possible, uh Mr.

President, I'd like to hand the floor over to our attorney.

Absolutely, Mr.

Riley.

I want to relieve everybody because you get to hear from me every two weeks and for a long time every time anybody gives me the microphone.

So the good news is you won't have to listen to me talk today.

I've asked David Canut, who has uh spoken on this subject uh a number of times here before the council uh to come and share his uh unique ability to distill complicated situations and uh to explain to us the current status, basically what had happened that caused us to have our situation or our discussions before, what has occurred in the legislature in this last session to change that and where we stand right now.

So he'll give us that.

We have prepared uh some important documents, so a little stack of those is about four, uh and they're just uh important things that you can refer to uh uh later on if you have questions.

They're a uh copy of our applicable ordinance that we have had in effect since 1993, and which the uh impact of uh has waxed and waned a bit with the efforts of the legislature from time to time.

But we'll talk about that and the current status.

Uh we also have uh uh uh a copy of the statute upon which our ordinance is based, which is the somewhat off change section 1145 9.1.

So we have it in the form that it took after August of 21 when our legislature uh sent us into a little bit of a tailspin with their actions.

Then we'll have a copy of the resolution that this council passed uh in response to that.

And then finally, we'll have a copy of the recent legislation that is passed.

This is the enrolled version.