SAUGUS — The seven cannabis companies seeking to open in town will have to wait a little longer to learn their fates.
The Board of Selectmen will not meet on Tuesday, Nov. 14, to resume the cannabis hearings that began in September. With members short of a quorum on that date, new Chair Debra Panetta said the board will determine when to resume the hearings at its next regularly scheduled meeting on Nov. 21.
The extension of the hearings marks the latest delay in a process that began last May when Town Meeting voted to amend the town’s zoning to permit recreational marijuana. The attorney general’s office authorized the zoning change last November, and the town requested information from cannabis companies this January. Responses to the RFI were submitted in February, and Town Manager Scott Crabtree assembled a committee to review those, which ultimately generated a report issued in July.
The initial hearings, which lasted more than six hours over two nights in September as companies sold themselves to board members and members sparred over the board’s role in the process, were reconvened in October. However, a procedural error forced members to push them back into November.
The process has grown contentious — with Panetta and Cogliano trading barbs after Cogliano lambasted the process undertaken by Crabtree and the Marijuana Establishment Review Committee.
Panetta has said she was prepared to vote on the proposals at the close of the initial September hearings, but Cogliano said he wanted more time to review the proposals in depth and conduct site visits. Even at the October meeting, he said he felt unprepared to vote on some applicants because of his questions for Crabtree and the committee.
For his part, Crabtree has said the committee can not do so because of legal requirements surrounding the RFI process and that the report, which he and other town department heads compiled after months of work, speaks for itself. The report advises Crabtree on how to proceed with the signing of a Host Community Agreement and does not explicitly guide Selectmen.
The town’s zoning bylaws permit up to three dispensaries to open in town, meaning board members will likely, at the very least, whittle down the field from seven prior to making any final decisions. Members could, in theory, vote to issue S-2 permits to each company and leave Crabtree to negotiate the final terms, but it appears unlikely they will do so.
Across three nights of hearings, members have yet to comment on their feelings about each applicant.
