By more than a 2-1 margin in a five-minute meeting, Woolwich voters on Wednesday, March 17 approved ordinance amendments that will enable Sea Grass Group to pursue licensing for its proposed marijuana cultivation business on Sam Moore Road. The referendum vote ran 61 in favor of the amending the planning ordinance, 27 against doing so.

Town Clerk Anthony Blasi said 31 absentee ballots were cast in advance of the special town meeting held in the municipal building hearing room. Two residents turned out at the meeting and there was no discussion of the article. Bill Longley and Selectman Allen Greene both raised their hands in favor of the article’s passage when moderator John Chapman called for a vote. Both Longley and Greene had served on the town’s marijuana committee that came up with three ordinances overwhelmingly passed by voters at the annual town meeting.

Selectmen’s Chairman David King Sr. told Wiscasset Newspaper he thought the turnout would be higher. “When I arrived this morning to set up the polls in the lobby there were people in the parking lot waiting to vote.”

Selectman Jason Shaw said the turnout kind of surprised him as well. “No, it’s not what I expected but we did our best to get the word out in advance. It was on the town’s website and in the newspaper. The planning board also sent out a mailer to every household in town.”

The referendum was held to clarify the relationship between marijuana cultivation in the rural district, and businesses permitted as home occupations, with marijuana cultivation facilities now being considered as an agribusiness. The ordinance restricts marijuana growing facilities to the town’s rural and general purpose districts.

The ordinance changes were needed before Sea Grass Group could get final local and state licensing for the proposed construction of a 7,000-square-foot greenhouse to cultivate marijuana to be sold by retail outlets. During a February Zoom meeting with the select board, Stephen Elie of Sea Grass Group said the business hoped to break ground on the growing facility in the spring or early summer. The barn-like building will be set back from the road, which is unpaved and screened by trees, he said. The grounds, he added, would be equipped with state-of-the-art security including cameras, monitors and exterior lighting activated by motion sensors.

Elie said the business was strictly wholesale and there would be very little traffic going into and out of the facility. Sea Grass Group plans to produce four marijuana crops a year, he added.