By Carol Britton Meyer

The select board soon will begin the process of reviewing proposals by as many as three businesses for approval to sell retail marijuana in Hull.

The Alternative Compassion Services medical marijuana dispensary on George Washington Boulevard and another Hull business – Skarr Inc., owned by Mambo’s restaurant’s Anthony Ghosn – have submitted applications requesting a Host Community Agreement with the town to sell retail marijuana. According to Town Counsel James Lampke, a third application also may be submitted.

Hull will have the ability to issue two recreational marijuana licenses following special town meeting approval this past summer to allow the sale of recreational marijuana in Hull – subject to approval by the Attorney General within 90 days, or Dec. 18, unless an extension is requested pending receipt of further information.

Following a lengthy discussion at this week’s select board meeting, the decision was made to schedule a meeting on Wednesday, Dec. 13, at which time Lampke will bring the board up to date on the current status of Hull’s marijuana regulations and provide a brief history of the process and for the board to begin an initial review of these rules and regulations. The meeting will be open for public comment.

Irwin Nesoff, who led the meeting as chair in Greg Grey’s absence, said ACS submitted its application to the select board but members haven’t yet seen the other application.

At a future date, the select board will review the applications in public session to ensure they have received all required information.

“We wouldn’t be approving anything at that time,” Nesoff said.

Concerns were expressed by some board members that they don’t yet have enough information to respond to questions from the applicants and the public. The Dec. 13 meeting is a step in that direction.

“This is a highly regulated industry, and we have to be careful during this transitional period, because there are so many open questions and we don’t want any information to be [unintentionally] miscommunicated,” select board member Jason McCann said.

“We expect to be fully involved in the process from beginning to end,” said select board member Jerry Taverna.

At one point, there was a discussion about possibly limiting public comment – as allowed under certain circumstances in the select board’s new policy – until the board is thoroughly prepared to answer questions in order to allow a basic review of the applications in public to ensure they are complete, but the Dec. 13 meeting was scheduled instead for that purpose.

“We shouldn’t cut off public discussion at any point,” Taverna said. “If that were to happen, I might decide to join the public [in the audience] as a protest.”

Because the discussion took place under select board updates and was not referenced on the meeting’s published agenda, Lampke advised the board that the conversation should continue in a separate meeting as a posted agenda item.

He also noted that the board “has to be careful to not give any appearance of favoring one business over the other, because full presentations [by the applicants] haven’t been made yet.”

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