City of Dallas could legalize weed – NBC 5 Dallas-Fort Worth

Dallas is making a new push to include marijuana legalization on the ballot this fall.

This coincides with the Dallas City Council’s plan to present several changes to how the city operates to voters this week. While other Texas cities have moved to legalize possession of criminal amounts of pot, Dallas has not joined them so far.

Catina Bollingerr is the executive director of Ground Game Texas, an organization that advocates for the legalization of marijuana.

“Dallas is by far the biggest city we have faced,” Boellinger said. “I think this is something we can take and put back in the hands of our community.”

Volunteers showed up at Dallas City Hall Monday with five boxes of signed petitions to turn in, to put a measure on the ballot this fall. Boellinger says the group has submitted 50,000 signatures but needs 20,000 verified signatures to qualify for the ballot.

She said that on Tuesday the group verified 22,000 signatures before delivering them to the city clerk’s office.

Ground Game Texas has spearheaded similar pot legalization efforts in cities like Austin and Denton, although Texas has not legalized recreational marijuana use.

In January, Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton sued three municipalities, including Denton, claiming each had violated state law by “adopting amnesty and no-prosecution policies.”

The pot petition is one of four citizen initiatives delivered to the city clerk’s office over the past week. This comes as the City Council prepares to consider several charter amendments this week.

The City Council has the opportunity once every ten years to send charter amendments to voters for approval in the fall. The proposed changes concern council compensation, council term limits and changing city council elections to ranked-choice voting.

Dallas City Council member Chad West said Tuesday he doesn’t know if he supports the citizen pot measure, but if the group already has the required number of signatures, it could save staff time municipal if the council approves a pot-related charter amendment.

“It’s going to be there anyway.” We might as well save the resources and put them in our own hands,” West said.

It was unclear Tuesday evening whether all proposed charter amendments would be considered at Wednesday’s meeting or whether voting on the amendments could be delayed until August, after the council returns from its July recess.

Boellinger says Ground Game Texas’ work in collecting petition signatures should allow his measure to appear on the Nov. 5 general election ballot, regardless of potential City Council votes.

“It’s up to the city to verify our signatures and hopefully we can put it on the ballot in November so people can make their voices heard,” Boellinger said.