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MANCHESTER â The Select Board held its annual town informational meeting Saturday, but just about everything about the meeting was different this year due to changes forced by the coronavirus pandemic.
Instead of hundreds of people milling about in the Manchester Elementary Middle School gymnasium and sitting in the bleachers and folding chairs, Manchester residents instead logged on to the townâs Zoom meeting.
At its height, the number of people in the Zoom meeting was 75, well short of even the smallest in-person meeting participation.
âThis is a new experience for all of us,â said Select Board Chairman Ivan Beattie to open the meeting. âThis is not town meeting as we have all come to know it. This is an information meeting.â
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Although state regulators may not begin issuing cannabis retailer licenses until as late as October 2022, voters in Bennington and Pownal will decide at their respective town meetings this year whether to allow such establishments in the future.
S.54, the state law passed last year that lays out how Vermontâs cannabis marketplace will be regulated, requires municipalities to âaffirmatively permitâ via Australian ballot retail cannabis shops, âintegrated licenseesâ â existing medical dispensaries that obtain permission to engage in an array of cannabis-related activities, including retail sales â or both types of enterprises to operate locally. Pownalâs ballot asks voters about both types of licensees in one article, while Benningtonâs ballot asks about each type in separate articles.
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Although state regulators may not begin issuing cannabis retailer licenses until as late as October 2022, voters in Pawlet and Danby will decide March 2 at their respective town meetings whether to allow such establishments in the future.
S.54, the state law passed last year that lays out how Vermontâs cannabis marketplace will be regulated, requires municipalities to âaffirmatively permitâ via Australian ballot, retail cannabis shops, âintegrated licenseesâ â existing medical dispensaries that obtain permission to engage in an array of activities, including retail sales â or both types of enterprises to operate locally.
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MANCHESTER â The Manchester Select Board dotted its âIâs and crossed its âTâs as it finalized its warning for Town Meeting Day at its meeting Tuesday.
In order to get its warning finalized there were a few loose ends to tie up.
The one that took the most discussion was what to do with the $50,000 funding request from the Manchester Business Association.
The board tossed around the idea of whether to include $50,000 funding in the town budget or put it on the ballot as a warned appropriation.
The matter has been approved in recent years as a warned item, but a change to the way the budget was prepared started the conversation of including it in the budget this year as part of a proposed change in the way the town accounted for the appropriations and connected them to the local option tax revenues.