The Marion Board of Health wants to regulate and require a permit for private residents to grow recreational marijuana at home, and it approved the draft regulation during its April 24 meeting.

The board has been under the advisement of its casual consultant, Cheryl Sbarra from the Massachusetts Association of Health Boards, on possible municipal regulation of recreational marijuana commercial establishments, and in a general “model” regulation she provided to the board there is a policy option to permit and regulate “grow your own” so-called “operations.” This option, however, is marked by an asterisk because Sbarra, and the committee she sits on, is uncertain any board of health has the legal authority to do so.

The law that was enacted upon voters’ adoption of the 2016 statewide referendum Question 4 to legalize recreational marijuana granted to citizens the right to grow six plants per adult, up to 12 plants, within the home without a permit.

The Marion Board of Health’s draft regulation does not specify how much they would like to charge a resident for a permit to home grow marijuana that they are legally allowed to grow, but the regulation does specify that permits would expire on December 31 of every year and need to be renewed.

The board also inserted a section that would require compliance of home inspections. The section reads, “Each applicant shall submit to a pre-approval inspection by the Marion Board of Health or its designated agents, which may include fire officials and building inspectors, to ensure that the location for cultivation complies with public health and safety requirements and practices, including fire safety and building code provisions.”

            Another section states that residents would have to submit to further “reasonable” inspections, while another section states that, should the Board of Health or its agents encounter mold or other diseases infecting the plants, the Town could then destroy the plants, “…as well as surrounding plants, to prevent a threat to the public’s health.”

            In a follow-up after the meeting, the Board of Health was not entirely confident on what it was they were regulating. When asked if the regulations they approved that night would regulate the six plants per adult (12 maximum per house) or some additional marijuana growing operating inside a home, Chairman John Howard replied, “I’m not sure.”

Howard said he was not sure how many plants an adult was allowed to grow at home at this time, and whether a town-issued permit would affect that number.

When asked why the board chose to include a section requiring a home cultivation permit, which is not required in any Massachusetts community, Howard mistakenly stated, “The [Cannabis Control Commission] established that as part of the state regulation.”

The CCC released its comprehensive regulations on recreational adult-use marijuana commercial and retail establishments in March, but it did not include any language pertaining to personal home cultivation that would supersede the referendum vote that permits home growing.

The board’s draft regulation does not state a specific fee it would impose should it find legality in the measure, nor did it state any penalty or how it would enforce its regulation.

The rest of the regulations pertain to commercial marijuana establishment licenses, which do not appear to deviate from the CCC’s regulations released in March.

The Board of Health must hold a public hearing on its proposed marijuana regulations allowing for public comment before voting the regulations into law. That public hearing is scheduled for Tuesday, May 22, at 4:30 pm at the Marion Town House.

The next regular meeting of the Marion Board of Health is scheduled for May 8 at 4:30 pm at the Marion Town House.

Marion Board of Health

By Jean Perry

The Rochester Planning Board has some upgrades it wants to add to the Town’s solar bylaw, and on April 24 board members discussed the best ways to go about bolstering the bylaw and making it a bit more restrictive.

At the top of the list, the board wants to impose a 300-foot setback from any roadway, public or private, unless existing topographical features would naturally screen the solar panels from view.

“That’s not unheard of,” said Planning Board Chairman Arnie Johnson. “I think this would help us try to preserve somewhat without being too invasive on property owners’ rights.”

But as board member Gary Florindo pointed out, being too close to the panels is just as important to abutting property owners as it is for people passing by on the roads, sending the conversation in another direction with the suggestion of imposing a setback on property lines.

The state and the ensuing bylaws are relatively accommodating to solar developers, Florindo pointed out, “But we should also be accommodating the taxpayers of Rochester.” After all, added board member Ben Bailey, people don’t move to Rochester so they can look out their windows and see a bunch of steel and glass. And with six or seven solar projects lining up for Planning Board approval, as Town Planner Steve Starrett pointed out, the board should get its proverbial ducks in a row.

Board member Chris Silveira suggested that within the residential/agricultural zone – pretty much most of Rochester – maybe current regulations surrounding those setbacks would already apply, and maybe the same 100-foot setback for a “major farm building” should apply to solar panels.

“They are structures,” Johnson pondered.

“Yeah they are,” said Bailey, “and they’re a major structure.”

The board agreed to pose the legal question to Town Counsel Blair Bailey, and if he did not see it that way then the board may pursue a 100-foot setback from abutting lot lines in the solar bylaw.

The board also seeks to reduce the threshold for defining “large-scale” solar farms from 250 kilowatts to 200 kilowatts.

Johnson said he would prefer to address large-scale tree clear-cutting in regards to solar projects as well, but town counsel advised not to try to make too many changes to the bylaw at one time, at the risk of Town Meeting voting down an article proposing numerous changes all at once – something that has happened in the past.

An article that was sponsored by the Board of Selectmen to extend the recreational marijuana establishment moratorium until July 2019 will be vetted during an imminent public hearing before the Planning Board, but according to Starrett, the Attorney General’s Office has declared that it would not be approving any further moratoriums beyond the December 31, 2018 date of expiration. Johnson was unsure how that would play out on the Town Meeting floor, but the board’s only concern is hosting the public hearing and making its own decision on whether to recommend, not recommend, or take no position on the article.

As Johnson pointed out, if the townspeople preferred to ban all recreational marijuana establishments in town, the article would have to be approved by Town Meeting and then a subsequent ballot question would have to pass.

Another article that will be vetted during a public hearing is an amendment to the Site Plan Review Bylaw specifying that an applicant who needs approval by both the Planning Board and the Zoning Board of Appeals shall appear before the ZBA before it must seek approval from the Planning Board – a “housekeeping” item, as Johnson put it. This amendment would simply save the applicant money on engineering costs and also time, since a project could not come to fruition without ZBA approval and the Site Plan Review is a lengthy process with the Planning Board.

This matter came up during the Rochester Farms appeal, with the appellant party arguing that the bylaw implies a project should go to the Planning Board first before the ZBA.

“So this clarifies it and closes that loophole,” said Johnson.

The public hearings for all these bylaw change articles will be during the board’s May 16 meeting.

In other matters, Johnson announced that the board’s approval of the Borrego Solar Systems solar farm slated for the corner of Rounseville Road at Mendell Road was appealed and will be heard during a public hearing before the Zoning Board of Appeals on May 24 at 7:00 pm at the Town Hall.

The next meeting of the Rochester Planning Board is scheduled for May 8 at 7:00 pm at the Rochester senior center on Dexter Lane.

Rochester Planning Board

By Jean Perry