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Date: 3/15/2021
HOLYOKE – The Holyoke Planning Board and Ordinance Committee hosted a joint meeting on March 9 where a variety of topics were discussed including changes to the city’s marijuana industry ordinances.
The meeting began with addressing the topic of creating a revolving fund for the city’s municipal rideshare funding, which they get from the state through the Transportation Network Company each year. City Auditor Tanya Wdowiak explained that the city had been receiving funds since 2018 and the purpose of the funds was “an assessment based on the Uber and Lyft rides that people take in the city.” She said the revenue was mandated “to be spent on certain expenditures for the city,”
Wdowiak said in 2018 the city received $7,200 from the funds, they received $12,000 in 2019 and $16,000 in 2020. “We just want to take these revenues and put them into a revolving fund so that way when we have to report out to the state on what we’ve actually spent the money on, because like I said, it is dedicated revenues, we can actually have a cleaner accounting system and an easier reporting system,” she said. The purpose of the funds, she explained, was “to address the impact of transportation network services, municipal roads, bridges and other transportation infrastructure.”
City engineer, Robert Peirent, said the first year the city received the funds they invested in survey work for Complete Streets projects underway. He said due to the nature of the funding and what it must be used for, he and Wdowiak thought “this was a good fit for some small projects that don’t have a source of funding unto themselves.”
He explained that they were looking into spending this year’s allocation around the Valley BikeShare Program. “It’s a combination of putting funding into three new ValleyBike share stations that are being targeted into the construction costs, as well as there’s an administrative cost that gets carried across all the communities that are participating in the Valley Bike share and this would help to pay that as well,” he said.
Ultimately, the item was tabled until the committees could get more information on how to structure such a fund.
Another significant topic of discussion during the meeting was the revision of several code changes regarding the marijuana industry. Director of Planning and Economic Development, Aaron Vega, explained there were “three buckets of changes.” He said the changes were “in line with recent CCC regulation guidelines.” Some of these changes, Vega said, included taking out the Board of Health since they no longer oversaw the industry and including delivery since that had been approved by the CCC.
Additionally, Vega said previously there had been some confusion on how the “buffer zone” surrounding dispensaries should be defined. However, recently the CCC had put out guidance regarding that, so that would be updated with the code revisions as well. The last change, he said, was “to present the framing for an overlay district downtown cannabis overlay district.” He emphasized that the maps were “rough” and included designated areas.
Vega said he was excited to be continuing the work with the emerging cannabis industry and said the city had “close now to 50 host community agreements in the pipeline, many of them with provisional licenses already at the state level.” He added that the city was currently, “on hold with a couple of great opportunities in the delivery world as well.”
“We have not signed any host community agreements on the delivery world as we wait for it to be officially in our ordinances in line with the CCC regulations and state law,” he said.
Councilor Linda Vacon questioned if delivery was included in the ordnance if the city had to allow the service. Vega said while they did not have to allow the service within the city, he felt it would be a disadvantage to make that decision. He also said there would be nothing Holyoke could do to stop surrounding communities who decided to allow marijuana delivery to be delivered within city limits. Vega added that there were some Holyoke residents wanting to break into the industry and this was the only way for them to do so, through marijuana delivery.
Vega also went on to emphasize that he felt that Holyoke would be most successful pursuing the manufacturing facet of the marijuana industry. “It’s my feeling strongly that the most viable and long lasting asset to Holyoke is in the manufacturing. Dispensaries are nice, but it brings in traffic, it brings in people that are going to visit our restaurants, etc., but the manufacturers that are employing 200, 300 people, putting in tens of millions of dollars of investment are the ones that are going to weather the storm,” he said. “I think when you look at this industry in 10 to 15 years, you’re going to see some of the big players, the True Leafs and the GTI’s with a mix of the small growers, very similar to how you think about beer.”
He went on to say he felt that Holyoke would be home to several “big players” such as Sam Adams and Anheuser-Busch’s “of the cannabis word,” but he also hoped to “allow the small microgrowers,” similar to microbrewers of beer. When asked about delivery again, Vega explained that there were two different types of licenses that could be awarded by the CCC for a marijuana delivery business. The first, he explained, was called a courier license and compared it to the food delivery app, Grubhub “for cannabis.” He said, “You order something from INSA, and you call Aaron Vega’s delivery service, I’d go to INSA, pick up your delivery, bring it back to you, you hopefully give me a tip.” For couriers, he said the city was planning on a .05 percent impact fee, but if they were a social equity candidate Vega said that fee could also be zero.
The other license that could be awarded by the CCC for a marijuana delivery business, Vega explained, was called a delivery operator license. “This license would go through the whole site plan review light, get the special permit, etc,” he said. Vega said it was previously referred to as a warehouse license before, but the word warehouse had been removed. Once the individual applying for the license was approved, Vega said, they would be able to “buy wholesale from any manufacturer or grower.”
“Again, Aaron Vega’s delivery service, I would be able to go to every manufacturer and grower in the state and collect stuff and bring it back to my place in Holyoke. That way people who go to my website and say ‘oh, he has this product from Worcester, he has this product from Boston, he has this product from INSA,’” he said. “I could have products from all over the state that wouldn’t necessarily be available to users in this part.”
The overlay district change, he said, would allow for the storefronts on Main Street, High Street and Maple Street to sell cannabis on the ground floor, but also allow for housing above the store.
After more discussion, the public hearing was opened to members of the public to comment. After one resident spoke initially about her plans to begin a cannabis delivery business and why it would benefit the city including providing equity within the industry, others spoke in favor and in support of the resident seeking to have the delivery license approved.
Ultimately, the public hearing was closed. Once the Planning Board makes a positive or negative recommendation regarding the changes, the Ordinance Committee will then take a vote on the changes.