Pepperell Planning Board approves 23 Maple Street land division, sets marijuana bylaw hearings

PEPPERELL — February 11, 2019 — Pepperell Planning Board endorses Maple Street land split and moves toward marijuana zoning public hearings. The board unanimously approved an approval-not-required plan for the division of 23 Maple Street, with land surveyor John Lindermuth's plan meeting all required checklist elements; a pending sewer easement was noted in the record but did not block endorsement. The board also voted unanimously to appoint Dan Fallon, a commercial real estate adviser, as its representative to the town's dormant Economic Development Advisory Committee, which has not convened in roughly three years. On the recreational marijuana zoning bylaw, staff reported that comments from the Board of Health and the police chief were in hand but that town counsel had not yet responded; the board committed to pressing counsel for comments by week's end and tentatively set public hearings for March 18 and April 1, with a warrant-article placeholder to be requested from the Select Board. The master plan process drew pointed criticism: after nearly a year of work, the committee has approved only one of 12 required chapters, with members calling the current format — which reads every survey response aloud at meetings — "brutal" and pledging to push for two chapters per session and hard chapter-level deadlines.