BERNARDSTON — A state bill threatens to end Happy Valley Compassion Center’s plans to operate a nonprofit medical marijuana grow facility in a former restaurant at 199 Huckle Hill Road.
House Bill 4326 would amend section three of Massachusetts general laws chapter 40A, which ensures that agriculturalists in Right to Farm towns, like Bernardston, don’t have to comply with local zoning.
“What the bill is proposing to do is carve out medical marijuana from agriculture,” said Jim Counihan, chief executive officer of Happy Valley Compassion Center.
Currently, the law allows the grow facility to be anywhere in Bernardston, and Counihan and his two business partners are already leasing a building in a residential agricultural zone with the intent to renovate it for their purposes.
“There’s been strong support from almost everybody in Bernardston and agreement that this is agriculture,” Counihan said. “When we found out about this bill, it obviously highly concerned us.”
The bill would apply to all Right to Farm towns across the state and is currently being handled by the House Committee on Steering, Policy and Scheduling, according to the 189th General Court of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts’ website (malegislature.gov/Bills/189/House/H4326).
“In the last 10 days, we became aware that it made it to the third reading,” Counihan said. “We were surprised it had made it (so far) and still people didn’t know much about it.”
In response, Counihan requested that the Board of Selectmen oppose the bill, or at a minimum, ask that Bernardston be excluded, which the board has agreed to do.
In a letter from the Board of Selectmen to State Rep. Paul Mark and Sen. Stan Rosenberg, the board explained how losing the medical marijuana grow facility would be detrimental to the town’s economy.
“House Bill 4326 as currently drafted would severely adversely impact the Town of Bernardston’s economic development efforts,” the letter reads. “This company will bring much-needed living wage, agriculturally based employment to the town.”
“Bernardston’s tax burden increases every year on the backs of local residents, many on fixed incomes, struggling to stay in their homes,” the letter continues. “We face an annual challenge to balance the needs of the community with basic services and their ability to pay for the same. Clean, green-based economic development such as a medical marijuana cultivation facility is something we embrace for the good of the community and for the region.”
Counihan also holds out hope that perhaps, should the bill come to a vote and be passed into law, Happy Valley Compassion Center might be grandfathered in, as the organization would have received the town’s support prior to the change in the law.
“We’re still excited about (the grow facility) and moving forward with it, and hoping to get to the next phase of the project,” Counihan said of how the bill has affected Happy Valley Compassion Center’s planning. “But having clarity around this issue would be helpful.”
“The last thing we would want to do is spend a lot of money and start the grow and employ a lot of people, and then be told by the state ‘You have to stop doing this,’” Counihan said.