This evening, Tuesday, Oct. 10, the Planning and Zoning Commission was poised to vote to permanently prohibit cannabis businesses from operating in Wilton.
The move would have run counter to repeated public comments in 2021 from members of the Board of Selectmen and First Selectwoman Lynne Vanderslice that such a decision should be made via public referendum. The proposed ban on an emerging industry would also stand out amidst frequent comments from the town’s Economic Development Commission and P&Z’s own Wilton Center Master Plan Subcommittee about the need to attract new businesses to the town.
Reached by GOOD Morning Wilton on Tuesday morning for an explanation as to why the Commission was moving forward with a permanent ban rather than extending the current moratorium, Town Planner Michael Wrinn called it an error and announced that the hearing would be postponed. As of 4:45 p.m. Tuesday, it remains on the agenda for this evening’s meeting.
The moratorium was originally put in place in Sept. 2021 not to allow P&Z more time to consider the issue, but to allow the BOS to hold a special meeting and town vote on the topic.
As for that special meeting and referendum, it is unclear why, when, and even if the town decided to forgo it. GMW asked Vanderslice on Tuesday what became of this promised public engagement process and how the decision ended up as the sole purview of P&Z.
“Without having time to go back and look at all the meeting minutes since December 2021,” she responded via email, “I don’t recall whether the BOS actually made a decision not to put a Cannabis question on the May 2022 ballot nor made a decision to delegate a decision to P&Z.”
She added that BOS, “may have had many more pressing topics to address in the first four months of 2022,” listing finding a new CFO, adding a town administrator, ARPA funding allotment and the Police headquarters project, among others. She added that she did not hear interest from more than two or three residents.
From a Public Referendum to a Quiet Commission Vote
In 2021, the approach was different.
“Do we want to consider restricting or prohibiting sale of recreational marijuana in Wilton?” Vanderslice posed in the July 20, 2021 meeting of BOS. “My gut tells me we should do it by Special Town Meeting, that’s how we’ve always done issues around alcohol.”
“I like the idea of citizen participation,” said then-Selectwoman Deb McFadden. “The right thing to do is to let citizens have a conversation.” She also noted that a special meeting would yield more public engagement than simply holding a hearing at BOS.
Vanderslice agreed, later adding that additional public information sessions with presentations by the Wilton Police Department and town agencies may be needed as well. “I don’t want it to just be the one discussion at the Town Meeting,” she said.
“We need citizen engagement on the issue,” Selectman Joshua Cole said. “My personal view is, I don’t think there’s anything to be gained economically from it. But we need to hear from the public.” Then-Selectwoman Lori Bufano added that she agreed with Cole.
Plans to add the topic to the Nov. 2021 ballot stalled due to legal restrictions on the Town’s ability to proactively add local questions to a general election ballot. This led the town to put in place a temporary moratorium.
P&Z first voted on a one-year moratorium on the industry in Sept. 2021. In a letter to P&Z supporting the moratorium, Vanderslice wrote, “Such a temporary modification would provide adequate time for the Board of Selectmen to hold a Special Town Meeting with adjourned vote.”
No such Special Town Meeting or adjourned vote on cannabis businesses was ever held. The last mention of the topic in BOS minutes dates back to Dec. 2021, which noted that “Referendum on Headquarters and Cannabis will be considered at May Annual town meeting.”
Over the next year, discussion of a Special Town Meeting and referendum seems to have vanished, replaced by an explanation that the role of the moratorium was to allow time for more data to emerge from nearby towns on the impact of the industry.
Such data has proven scarce, according to Wrinn, who explained during the Sept. 26 meeting of P&Z that only Stamford and Danbury have businesses up and running. No data from these towns was shared during the Commission’s discussion. Although Norwalk has approved three cannabis businesses, one of which will be located near the Wilton border at 430 Main Ave., none are in operation yet.
In Sept. 2022, with the expiration of the initial moratorium looming, P&Z voted to extend it for another year, and it is now set to expire on Oct. 29. Rather than extend the moratorium a second time, either to allow for the desired data to emerge or for the BOS to hold the special town meeting as originally described, a resolution was drafted and posted to the town website that would have made the prohibition permanent.
“We don’t have much data on impact,” Wrinn said to P&Z on Sept. 26. “And so most towns have taken a position that, until we see what we’re actually going to get out of these, we’re going to prohibit it.” He noted that New Canaan, Weston, Newtown, Ridgefield, and Greenwich have all prohibited cannabis establishments, and Westport allows only medical use businesses.
The first two public hearings on the topic — held in Sept. 2021 and Sept. 2022 — yielded just one public comment, submitted in writing. Resident Matt Brand urged the Commission in 2021 to include a “sunset” provision in the moratorium to “prevent the board from extending the moratorium indefinitely without a public vote.”
Looking Ahead
The decision about whether and how to regulate cannabis establishments comes at a time when several of Wilton’s local commissions are grappling with how to attract new business interest to town.
BFJ Planning, the consulting firm hired to conduct the Wilton Center Area Master Plan under the auspices of P&Z, noted in an economic assessment that Wilton does not have “any regional draw in the downtown that would attract additional shoppers.”
In March 2022, Mike Spremulli, who heads the commercial real estate division of William Pitt Sotheby’s International Realty, told EDC bluntly, “What’s the draw for someone in Westport to come to Wilton? There’s nothing specific that differentiates Wilton per se from the surrounding towns.”
A ban as proposed would prohibit a wide range of businesses within the industry, including a producer, dispensary facility, cultivator, micro-cultivator, retailer, hybrid retailer, food and beverage manufacturer, product manufacturer, product packager, delivery service, or transporter. In the July 2021 meeting of the BOS, McFadden noted that towns in New York State have begun repurposing underutilized buildings and industrial spaces as cannabis production sites. Green Thumb Industries’ campus at a former correctional facility in Warwick, NY is one such example.
This evening (Oct. 10) at 7 p.m. via Zoom, the Planning and Zoning Commission will convene for a meeting that will seemingly not include the public hearing on a potential ban. Whenever that hearing is rescheduled, members of the public will be able to testify live via Zoom or deliver comments in writing by emailing Michael Wrinn. The deadline for written comments is noon on the day of a hearing.
Regarding the proposed ban on cannabis sales in town, this entire lack of a public process seems to suggest a good deal of discussion and decision making behind the scenes, without primary input by Wilton residents. Why is the topic of cannabis sales being punted to forums in which our voices appear to have less and less impact?
One would expect the question to be put to a town referendum, as the question of alcohol sales was, or at least a special meeting, but not this process that smacks of secretiveness.