WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The Select Board on Monday voted to update its host community agreement with the one cannabis dealer in town and signed on to a new 10-year agreement with Spectrum to provide cable television service to residents.

 

The three-year HCA with Silver Therapeutics, which opened its doors in the Williamstown Shopping Plaza in 2019, lapsed some time ago, Town Manager Robert Menicocci told the board, but the town and the retailer were waiting for new guidance from the state's Cannabis Control Commission.

 

"We were a little concerned with putting together host agreements kind of mid-air while [the CCC was] telegraphing changes they were going to make in terms of impact fees and the nature of what our host agreement needs to be like," Menicocci said. "We have been waiting and waiting on them for some time to draft what was promised to us of a model host agreement.

 

"And we wanted to give ourselves a little more time to digest that model host agreement, because there were some concerns municipalities had raised in general around what the commission had put forward."

 

Menicocci said that when early adopters, like Williamstown, formed the first HCAs in the wake of 2016's state referendum decriminalizing pot, there was more autonomy for municipalities. Now the CCC is attempting to create a structured regulatory environment similar to that in place for alcohol licenses.

 

Silver Therapeutics needs to renew its state license in December, prompting the town to renew the local agreement that retailers need to have in place, Menicocci said.

 

"We feel it's reasonable to move ahead with the host agreement at this point — continue to work with [Josh Silver], continue to work with our Legislature around the refinements that will come out of the control commission," Menicocci said.