Blue Hill voters reject recreational pot shop plan

Nope, said Blue Hill voters said about a recreational pot shop.

By Tricia Thomas

BLUE HILL—Voters in Blue Hill turned down a referendum that could have opened the door to the town’s first recreational marijuana dispensary.

The referendum, one of two that voters considered on November 4, asked whether Blue Hill should “opt in” to a Maine law that allows recreational, adult-use cannabis dispensaries. According to a post on the town website, 760 voters rejected the referendum, while 582 supported it.

Brian Sherwell, a Sedgwick resident, first expressed interest in siting a recreational dispensary in Blue Hill last spring. At the board’s direction, Sherwell mounted a petition to get the matter placed on the ballot. If it had been approved, Blue Hill would have “opted in” to a state law that permits recreational dispensaries. The select board then would have had three months to develop an ordinance regulating the shop and any future ones.

“We appreciate everyone who took the time to learn about and discuss the issue,” Sherwell said in a written statement after the election. “Bringing people together to talk and decide as a town was always the point, and we’re grateful for the conversations that came out of that.”

The ballot vote followed an early morning special town hall meeting, at which a majority of the nearly 50 voters who assembled approved a 180-day moratorium on recreational dispensaries. The select board proposed the moratorium to give it time to develop an ordinance governing recreational dispensaries, should the referendum be approved, chair Ellen Best told the audience at the 7:30 a.m. meeting. Once developed, passage of the ordinance would require a town vote, likely in the spring. 

“This doesn’t affect today’s vote upstairs at all,” Best told the crowd, who were standing against walls, and sitting in chairs, on windowsills and on the floor in the board’s first-floor conference room. “If the vote upstairs is in the affirmative today, this gives the town an opportunity and some time to get an ordinance, as allowed by law, drafted and then presented to the town for a vote.”

Select board member D. Scott Miller told the audience that a “no” vote on the referendum would render the moratorium moot.

“Right now, cannabis establishments are not allowed in town. If the vote is ‘no,’ they will continue to not be allowed in town and, my view is, if the vote is ‘no,’ we will withdraw the moratorium and not draft the ordinance.”