DEERFIELD — After months of talk about how to approach new state regulations over recreational marijuana, a final decision could come at this year’s annual Town Meeting Monday, when residents will also get a chance to vote on the town’s $14.7 million budget.
At one point, the town was going to have a chance to outright prohibit recreational marijuana establishments, but a decision by the Planning Board ended that bid.
Now, residents will have an opportunity to vote on a lengthy bylaw that determines where business and farmers can grow and sell marijuana, both recreational and medical.
There will still be two questions on the warrant that call for prohibitions for recreational marijuana.
The only way a town, like Deerfield, that approved recreational marijuana on the November 2016 ballot question, can vote for a prohibition of recreational marijuana is if it does so both at its Town Meeting and at its town election.
The Planning Board struck the prohibition question from the ballot, essentially leaving those two warrant articles on prohibition without any functionality.
The question town officials are asking, though, is what will happen if the bylaw is not passed. This will mean Deerfield could have no bylaws on the books for recreational marijuana, other than the broad regulations the state’s Cannabis Control Commission created earlier this year.
The bylaw calls for the Planning Board to be the special permit granting authority on all marijuana establishes besides medical marijuana treatment centers. Regardless of what happens with the bylaw, there is an article to approve a 3 percent local sales tax on marijuana.
An article calling for an additional liquor license could also affect the marijuana conversation, if passed, because the number of available marijuana licenses is directly tied to the number of liquor licenses.
As a part of an effort to buy a John Deere subcompact utility tractor for the Frontier Regional School District, Deerfield is being asked to pay for about $17,000 of the potentially $35,000.
Residents also will be asked to join the Pioneer Valley Mosquito Control District for an initial one-year term.
This is a regional endeavor, which has been spearheaded by Deerfield’s Carolyn Shores Ness, selectwoman and head of the town’s Board of Health.
The budget comes in at $14.7 million, about a 3 percent increase from last year’s $14.2 million approved budget.
The Select Board is calling for about $1 million for total government expenses, $1.1 million for public safety, $8.8 million for education with $4.7 million of that on Deerfield Elementary School and $3.8 million of that on Frontier Regional School, $1 million on public works, $142,000 on human services and $256,000 of culture and recreation.