Barre Select Board seats nine-member marijuana bylaw review committee

BARRE -- January 22, 2019, Barre Select Board forms nine-member Marijuana Bylaw Review Committee after two Town Meeting failures. The board unanimously appointed seven full members, Ralph Rogers, Chris Higgins, Cathy Inman, Tom Donahue, Nika Jenkins, Jane Day, and Armen Jansen, and two alternates, Becky Laventure and Hillary Strickland, charging the committee to return recommendations on marijuana zoning and general bylaws to both the Select Board and Planning Board before April 1, 2019. The meeting opened with a board member publicly rebutting an anonymous letter alleging that proposed committee members had improper ties to a marijuana business, saying "when people from the community asked to speak to me I usually answer, show up and meet them." The board also authorized the police chief to sign a state-model school resource officer MOU already approved by the School Committee, approved conditional offers to two full-time and one part-time police officer candidates, and heard a public presentation on the town's draft Hazard Mitigation Plan, which must clear a 14-day comment period before submission to FEMA, eligibility for federal mitigation grants lapsed when the prior plan expired in 2018.