Because the proposed changes to one of Wiscasset’s new cannabis ordinances are fixes to the wrong version that passed, those changes will be retroactive to the June town vote, Town Manager Dennis Simmons explained in a phone interview Sept. 6. Sept. 5, selectmen agreed to put the would-be fixes on the November ballot.

“It wasn’t the correct ordinance to start with,” Simmons said of the medical cannabis licensing one. “There were some edit errors in it. (Things) got left out ... There’s many versions of this ordinance back and forth between the selectmen and the ORC (ordinance review committee) and the attorneys ... and inadvertently the wrong one, an unedited one, got put in and was passed. And because it was essentially the wrong ordinance, we can make it retroactive back to the (June) town meeting, and say, ‘We made this mistake and we now can fix it.’”

Without the changes, medical cannabis stores can go anywhere except within 1,000 feet of the property line of a school, pre-school or childcare facility, a church, a municipal safe zone per 30-A M.R.S. 9253, a town ballfield or the town office, Wiscasset Newspaper has reported. The changes would also bar the stores anywhere except the Commercial District on Route One from Birch Point Road to the Woolwich line, and in the Rural District on Gardiner Road from the Foye Road-Gardiner Road Intersection to the Dresden line.

A change selectmen agreed Sept. 5 to propose to another cannabis ordinance, the adult use one, will not be retroactive because nothing was missing from that ordinance, Simmons said. The adult use one already states the stores can go in the Commercial District on Route One from Birch Point Road to the Woolwich line. The proposal calls for also allowing them in the Rural District on Gardiner Road from the Foye Road-Gardiner Road intersection to the Dresden line.

In the interview and the Sept. 5 meeting at the town office and on Zoom and YouTube, Simmons added he would like to see the cannabis ordinances made more consistent with each other in other ways, as well. That will not happen Nov. 7. The Sept. 5 meeting was the last one for getting ordinance proposals on that ballot, Simmons said. He told the board the possible other changes he is eyeing can go to voters later, possibly next spring. He said other changes might be needed then also, if Maine updates its marijuana laws.

“I don’t want voters getting upset because we keep bringing these back and bringing these back,” he said. The important issue right now is limiting the medical cannabis stores to Route One and Route 27, or Gardiner Road, Simmons said. 

“Don’t you think we ought to go ahead and do that,” Selectman Terry Heller asked about that ballot question. “Yes,” Simmons said.