A Becket board said yes to a cannabis farm. A legal challenge remains | The South Berkshires | Media Pyro

BECKET – Eight months ago, a Connecticut company received a special permit to grow cannabis indoors in Becket, after a year of initial review.

But the weed farm is sitting on the sidelines, pending an appeal to the state’s Land Court that will go to trial next year. On Wednesday, a judge rejected the farm’s opponents’ ability to score quickly, in what is known as a summary judgment. They will seek to overturn last spring’s Planning Board approval.

That means more lawsuits are ahead, with a trial likely starting as early as a year after the board voted 4-1 in March to send TetraHydra AgTek LLC to construction of a large marijuana plant on Quarry Road.

Michael Goodenough, a TetraHydra partner, told the Planning Board after the vote that he was humbled to win approval, then promised opponents he would address their concerns.

“I hope to provide you with the first tours of the building to kibosh one of the concerns,” he said at the time.

Instead of granting those visits, TetraHydra has gone to court to defend the neighbors’ appeals brought in early June, their objections in an eight-page complaint.

The project is not appropriate for this rural area, according to the petitioners.

TetraHydra is ready to create local jobs and be a good corporate citizen, its lawyers are counters.

The farm plans to build a 31,310-square-foot greenhouse on Bonny Rigg Hill Road, about a half-mile above the Massachusetts Turnpike.

TetraHydra’s attorney, Joshua Segal of Lawson & Weitzen LLP of Boston, said the company is interested in working with Becket.

“The judge decided that the board did the right thing,” he said Thursday. “My client did everything the board asked and looked to get this project off the ground as quickly as possible.”

Segal said he hopes the State Court will decide the dispute in 2023. A conference call between the lawyers is scheduled for February 13. The discovery process will close at the end of January .

“This is a small business trying to renovate this farm,” he said. “They are trying to be good citizens in Becket and hope to be a strong partner in the city, moving forward. They want to move as soon as they can.

The complaint names all members of the Planning Board, including Robert T. Ronzio, James. P. Levy, Alvin Blake, Howard Lerner and Ann Krawet. Joel B. Bard, of KP Law, represented the city. By agreement, Segal, TetraHydra’s attorney, is defending the lawsuit in court.

Mitchell I. Greenwald, the Pittsfield attorney representing the neighbors, said this week’s decision puts the challenge behind a full review by a State Court judge.

“We’re continuing to search and we’re very ready to move forward with all the testing and all the facts,” he said. “We think we’re getting the facts right.”

Greenwald said his clients believe the board did not fulfill its duty to balance the benefits and risks when considering the applicant’s special permit application.

The lawsuit, he said, won’t go into the question “whether the Planning Board has carefully considered the needs of the neighborhood, including the city. Both laws must be considered.

“The board has a very narrow view of what the neighborhood looks like,” he said. “Defining the neighborhood with one word doesn’t really work.”

Judge’s decision

In his ruling this week, Judge Michael D. Vhay denied the 32 plaintiffs’ request to overturn the Planning Board’s special permit, on the grounds that it applies in two ways. to “management”.

One of those ways, attorneys in the case say, involves the group’s handling of concerns about the farm’s impact on the neighborhood.

Segal, on behalf of the plaintiffs, argued in a filing that the board considered how the business would affect the area. “That the Board did not specifically use the term ‘adjacent’ in the manner requested by Plaintiffs does not invalidate its reasoning or its decision,” he wrote.

In their complaint, the plaintiffs allege that Ronzio, the chairman of the board, asked during the trial if the enemies were still living in the area of ​​the proposed farm – ai He expressed concern when, in a long speech, he recalled his upbringing in the Boston area and called Brookline a neighborhood of “rabbis and doctors.”

“It says the neighborhood is where this is [cannabis] The subject was not the Jews but the neighborhoods he chose to exterminate [in Becket] i,” said the complaint. “The fact is … that in the broadest part of the movement there are Jews and Gentiles, although the parts are not known.”

In his findings, Vhay said city ordinances require the board to determine, in writing, that the “adverse effects” of a new use, such as a cannabis farm, “are not more than its benefits to the city or the district ….”

Vhay found that while the entire board did not provide such a written finding, each member addressed the issue.

“Although Plaintiffs correctly state that the majority of the Board did not prepare a ‘written decision’ to address the benefits of the building and/or harm to the city and neighborhood, ” wrote the judge, “the terms of the agreement reflect the majority’s desire to prevent the negative effects of the proposed building from outweighing its beneficial effects on the city and the neighborhood.

The board issued several regulations, according to Vhay, that show an effort to consider the farm’s neighborhood impact.

“Therefore the Board’s decision was not erroneous by failure to include the required findings,” Vhay wrote.

The court also did not accept the plaintiffs’ argument that TetraHydra did not submit all parts of the application. The lawsuit alleges that the company was negligent in submitting site plans that did not show what a completed building would look like. TetraHydra was also guilty of failing to demonstrate that it had a Cannabis Regulatory Commission license or the right to obtain a license.

The judge said his reading of the law did not require the kinds of disclosures the plaintiffs believed were missing.

As to the third point, regarding the conditions laid down by the board on the subject, Vhay refused to deal with it, saying that the question would be discussed at a later date.