By: Jacob Kessler
The Delta Board of Education sent a letter to the Delta Village Administrator, Brad Peebles, to make their position known to the Delta Council regarding the marijuana ballot initiative.
The letter states “At the February 22, 2022, Board of Education meeting, board members conducted a discussion about the Village of Delta’s marijuana initiative, and specifically a document labeled “Ballot Initiative” provided to me around the end of October 2021 by Mayor Wilton.”
The letter continues, “The Board takes issue with the Village’s unauthorized use of the Pike-Delta-York Local School District’s name and unexpected attempt to tie the District to the Village’s initiative.”
“The Board is expressing their wishes to the Village of Delta to not use the district’s name or any reference to the school district in your initiative.”
“Additionally, the Board is in agreement they would not accept the marijuana money as the use of this money “for drug education and awareness for student population,” as stated in the initiative, seems extremely hypocritical.”
The document labeled “Ballot Initiative” does show at the bottom that Four Hundred Thousand Dollars would be provided to the Pike-Delta-York School District’s General Fund with an additional One Hundred Thousand Dollars being given to the District to be used for drug education and awareness.
According to Delta Superintendent Ted Haselman, the letter was sent as a result of the school’s name being used, and it is the position of the board that they do not want their name used for this measure and will not accept the money as offered in the initiative.
When this letter was discussed during the Delta Council meeting, which took place on Monday, March 7th, council questioned if the schools name was being used in the official ballot language that voters will be seeing come election time.
It was stated that the specific ballot language does not include their name, and only states the issue at hand, which is the cultivations, manufacturing, and dispensing of medical marijuana in the Village of Delta.
Jacob can be reached at jacob@thevillagereporter.com