By Dawn De Busk

Staff Writer

NAPLES — It’s nice to know what’s on someone’s mind.

Naples’ selectmen and town staff feel like they have a handle on what citizens think about marijuana-based businesses and growing operations in their town.  

That’s because the town conducted a survey a few years ago asking for people’s opinions on businesses related to adult use of marijuana for recreational and medical purposes.

This year, the citizens will weigh in on the matter again when a warrant article is presented asking voters to adopt a marijuana moratorium.

The date of Naples Annual Town Meeting has not yet been set, although the town has been aiming for late April.

There will be public hearings on the moratorium before it becomes a warrant article.   

The board adopted a moratorium that prevents caregivers from joining together and creating a cooperative growing operation. This vote happened in the last quarter of 2020, during a meeting in October and again in November. Essentially, it is closing a loophole, and keeping growing operations smaller. 

“The moratorium is specifically toward the medical marijuana caregivers. There is a set of rules for them that falls under state regulation that are not part of the opt-in,” according to Naples Town Manager John Hawley. “Because Naples was an opt-out community, we thought that medical marijuana caregivers wouldn’t be allowed to have” larger growing operations in the Town of Naples. 

“What we discovered is that caregivers are finding ways to expand operations. That goes against what Naples wanted,” Hawley said, referring to the in the survey,

“We are okay with John Smith having his own grow operation for himself and his caregivers.  By law, the whole family . . . could each have five caregivers. Then, it would turn into a massive operation,” Hawley said.  

Naples Code Enforcement Officer Renee Carter said the moratorium is needed.

“We have had so many people calling, trying to find buildings in Naples so they can be caregivers [as a group] and make huge buildings into marijuana cultivation operations,” she said.

“By law, the town can be stricter than the state. For example, we are going to allow caregivers. What we can say that a husband and wife caregiver can both grow there. We are going to recommend that they can’t grow more than 30 plants between them,” Carter said.

The Naples Ordinance Review Committee (ORC) will be looking at the moratorium.

“We are making the language as simple as possible. It’s not going to be a huge and drawn out ordinance,” she said. 

The Town Planner Ben Smith, of North Star Planning, recommends that the town should “keep it simple because of enforcement. The more performance standards we add, the harder it is to enforce,” Carter said. 

In September 2018, the survey was done as a direct mailing to 2,245 residents of the town, according to officials at the town office. The number of people who answered and returned the survey was 320. 

It was almost a 2-1 ratio when it came to residents not wanting retail stores or growing facilities in their town. 

The response to whether people wanted commercial growing, cultivation or manufacturing facilities in Naples was 192 saying no and 113 saying yes, with 15 people neutral.

When asked if retail stores for recreational marijuana should be allowed in Naples: 204 people said no, 104 citizens said yes, and 12 indicated being neutral. 

When asked if retail stores for medical marijuana should be allowed in the town, slightly fewer people were against that. The answers were: 162 saying no and 137 people saying yes while 21 residents were neutral. 

The vast majority of the people who answered the survey were against marijuana social clubs existing in their town. The result to that question was: 234 saying no and 55 marking yes. Meanwhile, 29 people remained neutral.