MATTAWAMKEAG, Maine — Mattawamkeag will not be known as “Pot Town.”
Residents voted 52-22 at a special town meeting Monday night to reject a tentatively agreed upon proposal from a Lebanon-based company to buy the former Dr. Carl Troutt School for $69,000 and turn it into a medical marijuana dispensary.
John Whitehouse, chairman of the Board of Selectmen, said he was disappointed with the decision. Town leaders have had four informal offers to buy the building during the last few years and only one other sales-purchase agreement, which eventually was withdrawn.
“I voted for the proposal,” Whitehouse added. “I think if it is done properly and regulated properly, as the state has put in place the regulations, it can be done. As to the concerns [expressed by several residents during the meeting] about Mattawamkeag being ‘pot town’ or whatever — well, Brewer isn’t known as Pot Town, and they’ve got one.”
A town in Aroostook County has another of the eight medical marijuana dispensaries operating statewide, and it isn’t known as Pot Town either, Whitehouse said.
Selectmen voted 3-0 last month to accept a tentative agreement with Patterson & Patterson LLC to purchase the school at 41 Graham Lane, pending the outcome of the meeting. A representative from the company did not attend the meeting.
Whitehouse complied Monday with a Bangor Daily News Freedom of Information Access request for a copy of the the sales-purchase agreement, but efforts to contact the company were not successful.
Many of the approximately 90 residents who attended the meeting expressed distrust of the proposal. Two people expressed fears the facility would add to the area’s problems with illegal marijuana usage. Others said the dispensary would provide a needed service to the state. The debate was civil but lively. Moderator Dean Libbey did not require residents to state their names before speaking.
“If they are medical, why don’t they go to where there is a doctor or a medical facility? Where are they getting all this cash? I would like to see them near a doctor or a hospital,” one woman said. “Wouldn’t you?”
Another resident wondered why someone would want to grow and dispense marijuana legally in a town “where there is no police force.”
“We don’t need to be known as a community that is known for being a pot-grower,” the man continued. “Are willing to sit there and say that this is OK?”
“I understand that fences and security systems are required,” the man said. “But if somebody wants to break in, the nearest police take 45 minutes or longer to get here.”
“Nobody is going to just let their property be taken,” another resident interjected.
As required by state law, the dispensary would need to have security fencing and alarms, and no one other than certified facility personnel and the facility’s clients would be allowed access to the marijuana, Whitehouse said.
Several aspects of the deal are tentative, Whitehouse said. The state Legislature would be required to alter existing dispensary regulations to allow the Troutt school to become the state’s ninth licensed dispensary, Whitehouse said.
Another resident, who appeared to be in his 30s, declared flatly that Mattawamkeag needed the employment and tax revenue the facility could provide. He described himself as “probably the youngest person in the room” and said the town was losing population because it had nothing much to offer anyone.
Another resident thought people’s fears about the facility’s security were overblown and the fundamentally good nature of such facilities wasn’t well understood.
“Would you feel the same way if they were going to create an aspirin factory to make aspirin?” he asked.
Residents Puggy Brackett and Lisa Tolman said after the meeting that a local at-risk youth program housed at Northern Penobscot Tech Region III, The Carleton Project, likely would move into the former school next year. Others said they didn’t want to lose the open fields around the school or its shoreline along the Penobscot River to a private developer.
Whitehouse said he wasn’t aware of any pending offer from that program.
“There may be one other person interested in it, but there may be a zoning issue with it,” Whitehouse said. “I would rather not go into that right now.”