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Date: 4/12/2022
LUDLOW – After initially enacting a moratorium on marijuana establishments in 2016, the Ludlow Board of Selectmen met with the Planning Board on April 5 to discuss possible next steps in ending the moratorium.
As the meeting’s first order of business, the board reorganized with Antonio Goncalves taking over as the Select Board’s chair for the upcoming year while James Gennette was appointed to the vice chair seat.
To begin the discussion, Planning Board Chair Christopher Coelho said now was the time to take a closer look at ending the moratorium.
“I think the area in general has reached a saturation point where we would not have to worry about a run on the town for facilities, there are a lot of facilities in the surrounding towns. I don’t think a lot of the problems that were anticipated have really manifested,” he said. “The problems you’re seeing are more related to things like odor, and at the beginning, there was traffic.”
To further explore bringing the marijuana industry to Ludlow, Coelho suggested speaking to experts and other towns.
“I really think if we were to bring in people with good input who have already applied some of these planning methodologies to figure this out, like Holyoke or Chicopee, and engage with some of the people that are in the industry, I think we could come out with some really good rules and bylaws to follow to make this industry grow a little bit,” he said.
To end the moratorium, it would have to pass at the fall Town Meeting in October.
Goncalves said ending the moratorium could help create more new growth in town.
“We have been fortunate the last decade or two decades with new growth here in town to help the tax base. I think a lot of that with Center Street wrapping up, we are done with all the major condominium projects, we are not going to have a lot of growth with nothing coming in,” he said. “Next year would almost certainly be an override situation, this probably could be the time.”
While there is not as much money to be made through development, Goncalves said he spoke to an expert who said there is still opportunity to make money from the sales tax component.
Though he said he was in favor of looking into different avenues for new growth, including marijuana establishments, board member Derek DeBarge said it was necessary to engage the residents about their thoughts and to reach out to larger organizations like Ludlow CARES, so it becomes a larger community discussion. “If we’re not growing as a town then we are backing up,” he said.
Town Administrator Marc Strange said ending the moratorium could lead to a new source of revenue for the town.
“Agawam was kind of the same way and they voted 50-49 against legalization, which meant that there was a moratorium for a long time and then the door kind of creaked open with grow facilities, cultivation facilities, manufacturing and now everything is allowed except for retail,” he said. “It is a great source of revenue, and the industry is so heavily regulated. The market might be too saturated, but it can’t hurt to open the door.”
Because the Planning Board was just opening the discussion about ending the moratorium, no further motion was required, but the Board of Selectmen gave the board permission to begin exploring the moratorium.
During the meeting, the board also sat down with Town Accountant Kim Collins and Finance Committee Chair Maureen “Kim” Downing to discuss budget changes during the final stages before Town Meeting on May 9.
“Last Wednesday with the levy limit sitting at $86,000, I was emailed that we needed $5,000 for the mailings for the trash, and we also needed a rounding of $167,000 for a bond payment for the radio communications principal pay down,” Downing said. “We ended up taking $22,000 out of the levy and it came out to $64,400, which we felt, based on the last-minute additions that we didn’t know about, that was reasonable.”
After the initial discovery of the radio communications payment, Collins said the budget was adjusted to reflect the increase to the debt payment. Included in the changes to the budget would be removing a proposed grant writer position, adding $5,000 to the postage line item, cutting the building inspector and Department of Public Works budget by $45,000 and $30,000 respectively and adding the additional $167,000 for the debt payment.
During a review of the budget before the meeting and doing research into the actual state aid amount, Collins said she found that the town was receiving $145,000 more in state aid than initially anticipated. With the new amount, the board went through to approve positions including a grants writer/procurement officer along with the principal payment for the radio communications tower. The changes also included a $35,000 cut to the building inspector budget and another $10,000 from the building inspector’s professional service budget.
The Ludlow Board of Selectmen next meets on April 19 and coverage of that meeting will appear in the April 28 edition of The Reminder.