JEFFERSON — Residents on Tuesday approved every item on the annual Town Meeting warrant, including funding to cover a large increase in ambulance service costs.
Voters also approved a medical marijuana ordinance that limits the number of major commercial growing operations in town to only one, while allowing smaller, home-based growers to continue.
In secret ballot voting Tuesday, residents also voted 185-52 to raise and appropriate $116,000 for the cost of ambulance service, up by $105,500 from the $10,500 appropriated at town meeting last year. However, in January the town had to hold a special town meeting at which voters agreed to appropriate another $55,000 to pay for Waldoboro Emergency Services for the remainder of the year.
Waldoboro Emergency Services serves the northern areas of Jefferson while Lincoln County Ambulance provides ambulance services to the southern sections of Jefferson, according to Walter Morris, Jefferson’s fire chief. The town’s rescue service does not transport patients.
A medical marijuana ordinance was approved by a vote of 157-73. The ordinance, according to the warrant article, will repeal all previous marijuana ordinances. In 2017, the town adopted a retail marijuana ordinance, which banned retail stores from selling recreational marijuana, but the ordinance did not apply to medical marijuana.
Residents approved every spending proposal put before them, funding items in the $969,000 town budget, up by $46,000 from the $923,000 budget approved last year.
Residents also elected a slate of municipal officials, in elections that were all uncontested.
Claudio Orff-Reed was elected to the Board of Selectmen with 213 votes and Wayne Johnston was elected as road commissioner with 197 votes.
Elected to the four available spots on the budget committee were Glenn Gervais with 174 votes, Joan Jackson with 185, James Lindsey with 174 and Catherine Walker with 197. John Bernier and Walter Greene-Morse were also both elected to fill two spots on the school committee, with 183 votes each.
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