HADLEY — Guidelines for selling and cultivating recreational marijuana, the purchase of new vehicles and equipment for town and school departments, and a policy requiring business owners to keep a recently built sidewalk on Route 9 clear of snow and ice will come before a special Town Meeting Thursday.
The 16-article warrant will be taken up by residents beginning at 7 p.m. at Hopkins Academy.
The Planning Board is bringing forward a bylaw related to adult-use marijuana establishments which will allow stores to be permitted for sales in the commercial district, and for people to grow marijuana crops in other areas of town. The bylaw will also impose a cap of two retailers, which planners define as 20 percent of the number of package stores in Hadley for off-site consumption.
Other marijuana-related business will include extending the moratorium on retail sales from Nov. 30, 2018 to June 1, 2019, and to impose up to $300 fines for consumption of recreational marijuana on public ways.
Capital spending on the warrant includes $569,400 in purchases using a variety of funding sources, with any borrowing done within the property tax levy limit, except for an $85,000 dump truck for the Department of Public Works and $55,400 in cafeteria renovations at Hopkins Academy. Those two expenditures will be subject to a later ballot vote. Other capital spending includes $8,000 for appraisal software, $25,000 for reconditioning Callahan Well 1 and $15,000 for relocating Hadley Media from the Hooker School Building.
A new general bylaw has been created to make sure the DPW is not responsible for winter maintenance on the sidewalk installed this summer by the Mass. Department of Transportation on the south side of Route 9 from Hampshire Mall to University Drive in Amherst.
Select Board Chairwoman Joyce Chunglo said the DPW is already burdened by plowing and sanding sidewalks on West Street and Middle Street, as well as a section of Route 9 from town center to the Coolidge Bridge.
“We feel the business owners from South Maple Street to the town of Amherst line should be responsible for taking care of those sidewalks, since they want the patrons’ business,” Chunglo said.
Town Administrator David Nixon said residents will be asked to increase the $18.29 million operating budget approved at Town Meeting by $200,520, or 11 percent, to $18.49 million. The budget will remain balanced and preserve all services, he said.
The changes were made due to a 2 percent cost-of-living adjustment for non-union personnel, the settlement of union contracts and bills that have arrived since spring, Nixon said.
Community Preservation Act spending will include $23,000 to implement a privately paid for restoration plan for 18th century gravestones at the Hockanum Cemetery, $12,000 to do a study for the other four town burial grounds, which CPA Committee Chairman Andrew Morris-Friedman said will carry on the work of late cemetery steward Fred Oakley, and $26,000 for the continued renovation of the steeple and roof area of the historic North Hadley Congregational Church.
Other articles includes establishing a new revolving fund so the towns Park and Recreation Department can assume responsibility for the afterschool program previously run by the private Hadley Kids Inc., transferring $80,000 from sewer reserves to cover the cost of emergency sewer line repairs on Route 9 done over the summer, revising a 1928 vote so the DPW can take over from the Cemetery Committee various cemetery maintenance and amending a town bylaw so buildings in the historic overlay district can use standing-seam metal roofs, rather than being mandated to have a shingle-like appearance.
Scott Merzbach can be reached at smerzbach@gazettenet.com.
