WILTON — The Board of Selectpersons voted Tuesday to hold a special town meeting Oct. 17 to vote on a six-month moratorium on licenses for cannabis businesses.
The meeting will be held at 6 p.m. at the Town Office.
Town Manager Perry Ellsworth said the moratorium would allow a committee comprised of selectpersons and Planning Board members time to adjust the town’s ordinances governing adult use and medical marijuana cultivation facilities, caregiver retail stores, product manufacturing facilities, testing facilities and marijuana stores.
All license applications scheduled with the Planning Board before Oct. 17, or applicants that have already met with the Planning Board, will continue to have their applications processed.
The Select Board has been discussing the need for a moratorium since April when Ellsworth suggested it halt new applications.
“I feel that we’re out of control,” Ellsworth said then. “We ought to take a breather. We ought to have a moratorium on any new growth facilities until we take a look at it once again and decide whether we want to be the pot capital of the world along with Farmington, or whether we want to be exploiting those things that we have that are best here.”
Four new growth operations were inspected in April and are working with the Select Board to secure licenses. Two medical use retail shops are awaiting approval from the board.
Ellsworth worked with Bernstein, Shur, Sawyer & Nelson law firm in Portland at a meeting in August to draft the moratorium.
A public hearing on the proposed moratorium was held Tuesday before the Select Board meting.
“What this moratorium necessarily does,” Ellsworth said, “is it allows a group of people the opportunity for the next 180 days to work on the ordinance to bring it up to speed to what it ought to be.”
The cannabis ordinance committee was formed in July .
If the moratorium is approved, any license applications filed after Oct. 17 will be held until the moratorium is lifted.
The Select Board has the option to extend the moratorium another six months.
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