Two town committees are working on parallel paths to bring next year's annual town meeting a cannabis cultivation bylaw on which voters can agree.
Specifically, the Planning Board and Agricultural Commission hope to find language that two-thirds of the meeting participants can support in order to replace an outdated bylaw put on the books in May 2017 mostly as a "placeholder" to respond to the November 2016 passage of a public question that decriminalized cannabis in the commonwealth.
Since that time, the state's Cannabis Control Commission has defined ground rules for production in Massachusetts, and the town has seen one submission for a special permit under the 2017 bylaw to establish an indoor/outdoor grow facility on Blair Road.
It also saw a confusing process leading to the 2020 annual town meeting that started with the Planning Board developing a bylaw that allowed indoor and outdoor production under more restrictions than found in the 2017 bylaw. After hearing a lot from opponents to outdoor growing, including many of the same neighbors who fought the 2019 Massflora proposal, and no advocacy raised on the other side of the issue, the Planning Board altered its proposed draft bylaw to allow only indoor production.
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