Kennett Township drafts ordinance regulating pot facilities

KENNETT TOWNSHIP » Nobody wants to grow, distribute, or sell medical marijuana in Kennett Township. Yet.

But in case someone does anytime soon, the township has begun drafting an ordinance to regulate it.

Last year the state Legislature approved the commercial operations necessary to produce and sell medical marijuana, and since then a number of licenses have been granted to start such operations. At their first bimonthly meeting Wednesday night, the Kennett supervisors noted that East Marlborough Township had

recently denied a proposal to locate an indoor marijuana growing operation there.

So Kennett Township has begun planning for a similar request by drafting an ordinance that would regulate the location, hours, and security plans for marijuana-oriented businesses, according to Township Manager Lisa Moore.

Moore said the township’s zoning enforcement officer provided input on the ordinance, the township solicitor drafted it, and the township and county planning boards have reviewed it. She said the solicitor believed it made sense to have the regulations in place ahead of any proposals like the one in East Marlborough.

“We felt it was better to be ahead of the game,” Moore said.

According to Moore, the next step was for the supervisors to authorize that the ordinance be advertised so that they could discuss it and vote in October on whether to adopt it. The motion to authorize advertising the ordinance passed unanimously.

Moore said the ordinance is currently available on the township website if anyone wanted to review it.

CWA appeal

In other business, the supervisors voted to authorize the township solicitor to represent the township zoning enforcement officer during the appeal process of a decision she had made regarding the Chester Water Authority’s proposal to perform renovations at its site on 745 Norway Road.

The water authority wanted to increase the impervious coverage beyond what the ordinance allowed, and some neighbors filed an appeal questioning the zoning officer’s decision that the water authority’s use of the property was not a special exception.

The supervisors agreed it was standard procedure to have the solicitor represent the zoning officer in the appeal, and so the authorization passed unanimously.

Richard Stat, one of the neighbors appealing the decision, asked if the solicitor was being instructed simply to represent the township official or if he would be instructed to decide for himself if the decision were sound.

Scudder Stevens, the chair of the board of supervisors, said it was every attorney’s role to represent his or her client, not to judge the merits of the case. He said he would be surprised if the solicitor did anything other than represent the zoning officer “irrespective of his personal feelings in the matter.”

Moore warned that it was a legal matter and not appropriate for discussion in a forum other than the appeal hearing. “We will have to wait until the hearing to see how things go,” she said.

In other business, the supervisors voted to congratulate the KAU baseball team for winning the national Junior League World Series championship.