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In a repeat of his performance at planning commission, Coun. Bob Hawkins unsuccessfully tried to double the buffer to 1,200 feet — or about two city blocks. He asked his fellow councillors to “protect our kids.”

Hawkins read a letter from a resident who said her daughters attend a dance studio near an illegal dispensary, where they sometimes confront the smell and sight of marijuana use.

“One block is practically next door,” he concluded.

His move failed 6-4. But an amendment in a similar spirit went through. Coun. Lori Bresciani succeeded in making the separation distances a two-way street, essentially banning the child-friendly land uses from setting up near pot shops.

Administration, which had initially pitched one-way buffers that would only restrict the dispensaries, confirmed that it was the first “reciprocal” zoning buffer of its kind.

It proved divisive, with Coun. Mike O’Donnell casting it as a paternalistic affront to democracy.

“Now what we’re saying is ‘I know better than you,’” he said. “If you want to put a school there and you know the cannabis is there, I’m now the one to regulate you?”

Bresciani’s idea had already come up at planning commission, where one commissioner argued that it would actually make it more difficult for perfectly wholesome establishments, like daycares, to find lodgings in the city.

But Mayor Michael Fougere came out in support of the reciprocal buffer.

“The only way to do this to be consistent logically, and on policy, is to say: ‘You can’t go in there,’” he said.

After the meeting, Gibbons questioned the move. But she used it to make a point: If councillors want to keep the dispensaries away from kids, they need look no further than the Warehouse District.

“We are the district, I think, that meets the needs of everything I’ve seen in the proposal,” she said. “We don’t have any schools, we don’t have any parks — we don’t have any of the youth-focused activity.”

awhite-crummey@postmedia.com