SANDISFIELD — With its back against the wall and spurred by several proposals to grow marijuana in town, the Sandisfield Selectboard voted unanimously Monday night, March 15, to place a bylaw governing cannabis operations on the annual town meeting warrant for May 15.
The selectboard, however, opted to double the allowable town-wide canopy size from 150,000 square feet to 300,000 and, on the advice of the Planning Board, require additional odor-control measures.
The town Planning Board had prepared the proposed bylaw in response to a public demand in the wake of several applications for growing facilities in the town, but Planning Board chair Roger Kohler said some members of his board felt the initial canopy limit and tier structures, as proposed, were too restrictive.
Indeed, at a Planning Board hearing on the proposal on March 11, selectboard member George Riley acknowledged that the previous square-footage limit was somewhat arbitrary.
“We just plugged in a figure there, 150,000 square feet,” Riley said. “That was not done on the basis of any research; it was kind of a placeholder.”
The planning board recognized the concern that such a low amount of square footage could put a damper on smaller growers. Should Sama be permitted to grow in town, the 150,000-square-foot canopy restriction would have left only 50,000 square feet, or about one acre for others.
Finance Committee chair Roger Brown had suggested the proposed town-wide size restriction of 150,000 square feet was so stringent it would amount to “back-door prohibition” because it would effectively limit subsequent cannabis growers to such a small size that any operation would be economically unsustainable.
Others, however, liked the canopy restriction the way it was originally written, while still others wanted a higher canopy limit. For purposes of the proposed bylaw, canopy is defined as “clearly identifiable boundaries of all areas(s) that will contain mature plants at any point in time.”
Last week, the only significant change the Planning Board made to the proposed bylaws was the addition of a line requiring all proposals to include best management practices to limit light pollution in order to preserve the night sky.
See video below of the March 15 Sandisfield Selectboard meeting. The discussion of the cannabis bylaw begins after approximately one minute:
At issue are proposals for several cannabis grow facilities in town. Unlike most other Berkshire County municipalities, Sandisfield currently has no bylaws in its zoning code addressing the issue of marijuana production. In the absence of a zoning bylaw specifically regulating cannabis facilities, the Planning Board scrambled to draft one. Click here to view it.
The proposed bylaw — now revised — needed to be formally endorsed by the selectboard by March 15 in order to be included on the warrant for the May 15 annual town meeting, where it will now need a two-thirds majority of voters to become law. The revised bylaw will be forwarded to town counsel Jonathan M. Silverstein for his review.
Of immediate concern is a proposal by a company from out of state to build a large cannabis grow facility near the intersection of Abby and Town Hill roads. If approved, the project proposed by Sama Productions LLC would include the construction of a 5,000-square-foot processing building and 23 greenhouses on concrete slabs totaling 100,000 square feet on 46 acres of vacant land — some of it forest, some of it overgrowth.
In response to the controversial Sama proposal, an opposition group called Sandisfield Neighbors For A Pot-Free Forest was formed, and the group has hired Springfield attorney Jesse Belcher-Timme to represent it. Click here to read an Edge article from last week that includes background on the Sama proposal, along with interviews of key players in the developing story.
“I’ve had a lot of baptism-by-fire education on cannabis, and everything related to it, in the last several months,” said selectboard chair Brian O’Rourke Monday night.
O’Rourke said he felt it was his responsibility to put a cannabis bylaw on the warrant for the annual town meeting that “has a strong possibility of passing” by a two-thirds majority.
“I don’t feel, at 150,000 square feet, that this has that possibility,” O’Rourke added. “If not, then we are left unprotected for another year.”
Resident Carl Nett, who has advocated for a larger canopy limit, posted on the Connect Sandisfield Facebook page, producing a graphic [see below] illustrating the footprint of different canopy sizes on the town of Sandisfield which, at 53 square miles, is the largest town geographically in Berkshire County and the eighth largest in Massachusetts.
“Of course, 150,000 s.f. is the restriction contained in the draft bylaws, which I feel is unnecessarily far too restrictive, and one of several reasons I will vote NO on the draft bylaws,” Nett wrote.
Nett also produced a second graphic showing the relative impact to Sandisfield’s revenues that different canopy limits might have. The host community agreement Sama signed with the town last year stipulated that the community impact fee would be 3% of gross sales. Click here to read it. Sama officials would not offer an estimate on revenue to the town, but O’Rourke has said it could be hundreds of thousands of dollars a year or equivalent to approximately 110 new homes built on Sandisfield land.
Nett’s opposition to the bylaw is notable because he had been an outspoken advocate of increasing the permissible canopy size, but vowed to vote against the amended bylaw because it did not go far enough.
Nett, a business and systems analyst with a Ph.D., has projected the facility will provide annual revenues to the town of between $300,000 to $450,000, not including the property taxes on the greenhouses and the land.
The Sama proposal has divided the town. Sandisfield Neighbors For A Pot-Free Forest has produced lawn signs opposing the project. Other cannabis companies seeking approvals to grow are Berkshire Mountain Cannabis, Green Patriot and DayDreamz Estates, a limited liability corporation that lists a Sandisfield address and has already successfully negotiated a host community agreement with the town.
A little more than a year ago, Sama, then known as Fulcrum Enterprises, initially proposed to construct 15 enclosed greenhouses totaling approximately 80,000 square feet on VanDeusenville Road in the Housatonic section of Great Barrington. In the face of fierce criticism from nearby residents, Sama later scaled back the plan to nearly 59,000 square feet, then withdrew the proposal under withering pressure.
The selectboard voted unanimously to send the amended bylaw to town meeting. The Planning Board, which is the special-permit-granting authority, has not yet set a date for its public hearing on the special permit application from Sama.
Edge intern Janey Beardsley contributed to this report.
