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Date: 8/24/2022
LUDLOW – After initially attempting a discussion during its Aug. 11 meeting, the Ludlow Planning Board met on Aug. 18 to discuss several bylaw amendments to be put forward at the October Town Meeting, but decided that all of the potential articles would be pushed back for further review ahead of Annual Town Meeting in May. The articles were required to be submitted to the Board of Selectmen’s Office by Aug. 22 to be on the October warrant.
When discussing a bylaw amendment that would end the moratorium on recreational cannabis businesses in town, board Vice Chair Raymond Phoenix said he was concerned about reviewing a more updated printout of the bylaw than what was provided to the board prior to the meeting. Phoenix said he was concerned about what changes occurred between the two versions.
“There’s nothing calling out how this is different from than what was sent out prior to the meeting. When it’s different from what we were sent to review, there should be something indicating on here what those changes were,” he said.
Town Planner Doug Stefancik said he “cleaned up” the newer version after sending the initial draft to the board. When Stefancik suggested reviewing the document line by line during the meeting, Phoenix said he wanted the board members to take the updated document home to review before discussing it further.
Board members Kathleen Houle and Joshua Carpenter also pointed out discrepancies between the two versions.
Phoenix added that he was in favor of pushing the bylaw to the Annual Town Meeting.
“I think when we were discussing this with the Board of Selectmen, one of the things we talked about was having sufficient opportunity for dialogue and discussion on it. Even just for regular bylaw discussion, we have an ongoing struggle with not getting the process started early enough,” he said.
Board Chair Joseph Queiroga said the board’s process needs to change to get articles before Town Meeting.
“I don’t have a problem with going to the spring. We need to do something different than what we’ve been doing and plan on not having one or two meetings, but whatever meetings we need to make sure that we are all 95 percent,” he said.
Board member Christopher Coelho said he wanted a structured discussion and schedule around the bylaw as it is prepared for the spring.
“We need a timeline on how we’re going to solve these problems and how we’re going to go through this process and not jam it through a week before,” he said. “I want an action plan on this that we can hold to.”
Phoenix said the board should begin hosting public hearings in January to prepare to submit the article for Town Meeting when the warrant opens in March. Prior to those hearings he suggested that the board begin officially discussing the bylaw by October.
“We should have something we feel is deliverable no later than February,” he said.
The board unanimously agreed to table the discussion about the cannabis bylaw from the October Town Meeting and prepare it for the May Town Meeting.
Cannabis bylaw discussion
While the bylaw was officially pushed off for review ahead of the Annual Town Meeting, the board did discuss some of the changes they would like to see in a potential bylaw, which would amend the medical cannabis treatment facility bylaw established in 2014.
One of the proposed amendments to the cannabis bylaw included requiring a 500-foot setback from a school, the current state requirement, which Phoenix said was unnecessary in the bylaw.
“Let’s take it back out because it doesn’t belong in there. If we put nothing, then it defaults to the state. If we’re going to the default to the 500, we should just take it out and let the state law take over. The only time we should bother to say anything is if it matters,” he said.
By defaulting to the state law, Phoenix said that number would be flexible if the state changes its rules.
Phoenix added that he was in favor of allowing cannabis businesses in town.
“I have no problem with it being next to my house, I’d rather one of these facilities than a cell tower, a mini-mall, or a bowling alley or nine out of 10 other things in town,” he said. “There are tight controls on what has to happen there, there’s going to be higher police presence because of the perception of the business and it is one of the most tightly regulated things we can have in town.”
Phoenix said the initial moratorium was a knee-jerk reaction to uncertainties surrounding the cannabis industry.
“What we have now was highly reactive to an unknown, which is really easy to get an emotional response to, and that’s what we got. We didn’t have any hard data on how these places work, so we said no. Now we have data we can look at and say, ‘That’s not what we thought it was going to be so let’s look at doing that here,’” he said.
Board of Selectmen Vice Chair James Gennette, who was in attendance for the meeting, said he was against cannabis businesses but if the bylaw were to be brought before Town Meeting, he wanted to make sure it was properly reviewed. He asked if a cannabis business would require a special permit and Coelho said they would be required before any cannabis business could set up shop in town.
When Gennette raised concerns about the traffic caused by a cannabis business, Stefancik said the traffic flow from those businesses have died down based on observations in Northampton.
“It doesn’t seem to be the problem it once was; I think they were very busy in the early stages but if you drive by some of these places now, the parking lots are dead,” Stefancik said.
Queiroga said he was concerned about the reception in town of overturning the current prohibition on recreational marijuana.
“The only thing I see is that the mood of people in Ludlow is still sizable that don’t want it at all and some of those people will be at the Town Meeting, so I wonder how much we want to push it to the extreme,” he said. “I think getting it approved is the biggest problem.”
The Ludlow Planning Board next met on Aug. 25.