Volume 17, Number 52
Berlin’s Only Hometown Newspaper
www.berlincitizen.com
Thursday, December 26, 2013
P&Z scheduled hearing for marijuana moratorium By Daniel Jackson The Berlin Citizen
The Planning and Zoning Commission will hold a public hearing at its Jan. 9 meeting to discuss placing a temporary prohibition on medical marijuana production and distribution facilities in the town. Town Planner Hellyn Riggins said she needs more time to study the medical marijuana laws and figure out the best way to apply the law to Berlin’s zoning code. Last year, the state changed its medical marijuana laws. Among the changes, marijuana can be grown by licensed growers, sold by pharmacists to approved Connecticut residents who suffer from debilitating conditions like cancer, glaucoma or Parkinson’s disease. While some towns are welcoming medical marijuana businesses, other towns have enacted moratoriums. At the beginning of the month, Wallingford prohibited placed a ban on medical marijuana businesses. It joined towns like West Hartford, Shelton, Ansonia, Monroe,
“What other uses are they most compatible with?” Riggins said. The town could create a whole new zone or place marijuana production and distribution into existing zones, but she wants more to find out how to fit the new law into Berlin’s regulations. Currently, no business has applied for a license to cultivate or distribute the drug in town, Riggins said. “It’s going to be like package stores, as I understand it, she said. The state has a limit on how many package stores can operate in each town. However, Riggins said, that’s only what she’s been told. In the time that the town’s moratorium on marijuana cultivation and distribution would last, she would talk to experts, study other towns In this Dec. 6 photo, Elle Beau, an employee of The Clinic, a Denverand watch how the court interprets based dispensary with several outlets, reaches into a display case for the new law. “Nothing makes sense on a law marijuana while helping a customer. (AP Photo/Brennan Linsley)(AP until the court has interpreted it,” Photo/Brennan Linsley) Riggins said. Studying the effects of new legTrumbull, Westport and Ridgefield. tions. The law allows for cultivation, For Riggins, putting the law into assembly and distribution of maripractice opens up a slew of ques- juana in Connecticut towns. See Hearing / Page 4
Sandy changed preparedness… kind of By Daniel Jackson The Berlin Citizen
Hurricane Sandy caused 72 deaths and wrought $50 billion in property damage in the United States last year, according to the National Weather Service. While the category one hurricane was small by hurricane standards, it begs the question: with more than a year between us and the storm, how much better are we prepared to handle emergencies of that scale? According to conversations with the American Red Cross, Connecticut Light & Power and Home Depot, the answer is yes, there are more large-scale prepara-
tions, but no, people are not completely prepared when disruptive weather events converge over our hills. Matt Canty, store manager for the Home Depot in Berlin, has seen a 40 percent increase in the number of whole-house generators his store has sold. These kind of generators, opposed to portable generators, usually are thought-out purchases for consumers, as Home Depot will send an employee to the person’s house to size the generator and discuss fuel types. When the power goes out, the homeowner only needs to go outside and turn the key. But this kind of planning
is not the case for smaller preparedness items, where Canty sees people reacting to weather events. Take, for example, the first snow of the year. Home Depot stocks shovels and ice right at the end of October, but the rush for shovels and ice melt didn’t come until a blanket of snow lay over sidewalks and driveways. On that first day of snow, the Berlin Home Depot sold 400 snow shovels and 16 pallets of ice melt. “They let the little things go right until it hit the ground,” Canty said. Paul Shipman, spokesman for the Connecticut chapter of the American Red Cross,
said it’s human nature not to be prepared. “We don’t want to dwell on the negative possibility,” he said. In May, the Red Cross released a study which found many coastal residents are unprepared for the “next big storm.” The survey polled 1,400 U.S. residents that lived along the coast from Texas to Maine. Fifty-six percent were very or somewhat concerned that they lived in a future-hurricane’s path. Only half of the respondents had a plan to evacuate and almost a third did not have a plan or an emergency kit. Shipman defined prepared-
ness more broadly than preparing for a major disaster that threatens life and limb. Instead, he said preparedness is resilience, the ability to “quickly bounce back from emergencies of any kind.” For him, preparedness is economic: the ability to travel to work after a snowstorm, or if the power goes out, business owners turning to their plans of how to keep operating without power. Shipman said preparedness sometimes can be overwhelming. He suggested people think back to some of the major storms and ask “What were the things you See Sandy / Page 11