The Bath Planning Board voted to delay a hearing on rules for retail marijuana establishments in Bath Tuesday. (Nathan Strout / The Times Record)
BATH — The Bath Planning Board voted to postpone a Tuesday public hearing on regulations for retail marijuana in Bath, citing unclear language and an undefined term within the proposed rules.
City Planner Ben Averill said the issues came to light as city staff and planning board members were preparing for their regular scheduled meeting Tuesday. Averill described most of the changes as small clerical issues, such as ensuring that the language looked similar to other city ordinances.
“A lot of the changes have to do with quantifying definitions. It’s been confusing for all of the board and myself with conflicting definitions between the adult use law and the medical marijuana law,” Averill said after the planning board meeting.
The most significant issue with the draft regulations, according to Averill, was that the language failed to define retail caregiver facilities — storefronts where caregivers could sell medical marijuana to patients.
“We realized that we had defined dispensary and we had defined retail store, but we did not have a definition for a retail caregiver facility,” explained Averill.
According to Averill, the planning board felt more comfortable waiting until the language issues were ironed out before holding a public hearing.
“It wasn’t lightly that we delayed having the public hearing,” said Averill. “I think when we add that new definition in, it will make it a lot clearer and allow us to (…) ensure that we’ve covered all our bases.”
Though Mainers voted to legalize recreational marijuana in November of 2016, municipalities like Bath have held off on putting local regulations in place until the state had put forth its rules for recreational marijuana. Now that municipalities have some guidance from the state on what those rules will look like, they’ve been able to move forward with setting up their own local regulations for retail establishments. The public hearing originally scheduled for Tuesday would have been the public’s first chance to comment on the proposed regulations.
According to Bath’s draft rules, retail marijuana business will be required to be licensed by the state and city and install security measures. In addition, marijuana odor cannot emanate from the building. The regulations also set up a 500-foot buffer zone around schools, licensed child care facilities, substance abuse rehabilitation or treatment centers and halfway houses.
The planning board will meet for a workshop on April 16 where they are expected to approve of a final draft of the language for the regulations. Assuming that all the issues are worked out, the planning board will hold the public hearing on the retail marijuana regulations at their next scheduled meeting on May 7.
Comments are not available on this story.
Send questions/comments to the editors.
