AUGUSTA, HALLOWELL WORKING ON MEDICAL POT DISPENSARIES

Augusta plans another hearing April 27, while Hallowell's manager is
reviewing ordinances.

Officials in Augusta and Hallowell are preparing to roll out new
policies to accommodate medical marijuana sales.

Augusta officials are drafting language to add medical marijuana
dispensaries to the city's land-use ordinance, probably allowing
them to operate in a medical district near the Harold Alfond Center
for Cancer Care in north Augusta.

In Hallowell, city councilors recently decided against enacting a
moratorium on marijuana dispensaries. Instead, councilors directed
City Manager Todd Shea to handle permit applications for a
dispensary as he would an application to open any new business.

"The general feeling was, it's a business, not unlike a pharmacy or
any other business we'd have in the city," Shea said. "If that's how
the state wants to treat it, that's how the city wants to treat it."

In a November 2009 state referendum, voters approved allowing
nonprofit dispensaries to open across the state. While regulators
worked to craft rules implementing the law, several Maine
municipalities worked to establish their own rules to regulate
dispensaries within their borders.

The Augusta Planning Board held a public hearing Tuesday that drew
comment from a number of interested parties, including health care
professionals and people who previously worked in dispensaries
elsewhere and have moved to Maine, according to Planning Board
Chairman Corey Vose.

Vose said no board vote was taken on a proposal to add language
regulating medical marijuana dispensaries to the city's land-use
ordinance. Another public hearing on the topic is planned April 27.

Planners asked Matt Nazar, the city's deputy development director,
to keep working on the proposal, which would add medical marijuana
dispensaries to the types of businesses regulated by city code.

Dispensaries where marijuana is grown or sold to registered users --
or both -- probably would be allowed only in the Augusta's medical
district, which includes the proposed future site of a new
MaineGeneral Medical Center.

However, Nazar said, planners asked him to look into allowing
medical marijuana growing facilities in other city zones, such as
the industrial district and the regional commerce district.

He said such grow-only operations essentially would function as warehouses.

Shea said Hallowell Planning Board members have told him some
property owners in Hallowell have been approached by people
interested in opening a medical marijuana dispensary.

On Monday, the Hallowell City Council decided against enacting a
moratorium on marijuana dispensaries. They asked Shea to review the
city's ordinances, determine what zoning classification dispensaries
might qualify as and, if he thinks the city's existing rules are
inadequate to address a dispensary, submit a proposal to fill the
gaps in city rules to the Ordinance Review Committee.