After parts of Wiscasset’s months-old medical cannibas licensing ordinance did not make it into the final version, Town Manager Dennis Simmons said Aug. 16, “As it stands right now medical cannabis operations would be (allowed) in all zones but are excluded from the safe zones listed in the ordinance.”

According to information Lincoln County Regional Planning Commission’s Emily Rabbe provided, the ordinance voters passed in June does bar a medical cannabis business from being within 1,000 feet of the property line of “a pre-existing public or private school, pre-existing public or private pre-school or childcare facility, place of worship, a municipal ‘safe zone’ per 30-A M.R.S. 9253, municipal ball field or the Town Hall.”

Simmons was responding to Wiscasset Newspaper’s email queries after Rabbe, acting as town planner, brought up the matter with the ordinance review committee Aug. 14. 

Asked via email what led to the town’s effort to get a medical cannibas licensing ordinance change on the November ballot, Simmons said: “It appears that during the back and forth (of) the editing process between the select board’s requested edits and the attorney edits some sections ... were inadvertently changed and the paragraph containing (some of) the restrictions was deleted.”

The town has announced the planning board has a 7 p.m. Aug. 28 hearing set at the town office on the proposed changes to that ordinance and a possible change being eyed for another of the new cannabis ordinances, the one on adult use. A hearing on that date would get the proposal on track for the November ballot, Rabbe said. 

Selectman James Andretta, liaison to the ORC, said he believed selectmen would like to add Gardiner Road to places an adult use cannabis business can go. The ordinance voters passed in June allows it in the Commercial District on Route 1 from Birch Point Road to the Woolwich line. A draft Rabbe prepared based on the Aug. 14 discussion adds a second area an adult use cannabis store can go: “(The) Rural District on Gardiner Road beginning at the Foye Road/Gardiner Road Intersection and extending to the Dresden town line.”

Those are the same areas being eyed for the medical cannabis stores; the medical cannabis draft proposes cultivation, testing and manufacturing facilities be only in the Rural District; and that cannabis stores, cultivation, products manufacturing facilities and testing facilities be barred in the Village 1 and Village 2 Districts. Also proposed to be added is a restriction that made it into the adult use ordinance that passed June 13, barring the businesses from being in a building that contains housing.

In the night’s planning board meeting that followed the ORC discussion, Karl Olson, chair of both panels, urged for planning board members to make the Aug. 28 hearing. “If we don’t have a quorum then they can’t make the warrant in time.”

In a phone interview Aug. 16, Rabbe said, based largely on her experience in planning consulting in New York state, inadvertent “blips” with ordinances pop up once in a while. “We’re all humans ... so those types of things in the realm of ordinance writing and planning across not just Maine but other states as well, it’s pretty common and it’s not precedent-setting.” Sometimes an ordinance is years old when something is discovered, she added.

Also Aug. 14, a potential first applicant for a medical cannabis store met with the planning board. Christian Elie and other SeaGrass Group, LLC representatives had a pre-application meeting on adding a medical cannabis store and expanding the use of Mad Hatter’s Wonderland Emporium, 291 Bath Road. Elie told the board the company would lease the store from owner Herman Hoffman and add medical marijuana products to the store’s goods, without adding to the building or traffic.

Elie said the store would still sell pipes and papers. The goods “complement” the medical marijuana products, he said. “It’s a little bit like peanut butter and jelly.”

Olson said to make sure the business is not within 1,000 feet of the property line of a school, church, or child care facility. He said people do not always know where a child care is, so drive around and maybe see what information the state has on area child cares. Elie said the proposed location was one of the ones they got from town officials. 

A lot of work went into finding a location, Elie said. He said Woolwich already has multiple stores, “so we talked to Wiscasset. It could very well work out that we end up being the only store” due to Wiscasset’s safe zones and the relatively small space medical marijuana businesses need, he said. The business ruled out one space that was bigger than they want to lease, he said. “We simply don’t need that much store ... With the town’s guidance ... it seems that Mad Hatter fits the bill. It works. It works for us. It works for the owner. And I believe it works for the town.”

He asked what they need to do. Fill out a site plan review application and get Rabbe other requested items, then Rabbe will consider the proposal and the board will ratify the decision, Olson and Rabbe said.