Around New England

Voters in Little Town Say No To Selling School To Pot Farm

March 8, 2019

Voters in the western Massachusetts town of Heath have rejected a proposal by the town’s selectmen to sell a closed school for $250,000 to a business that wants to use it to cultivate marijuana.

The proposal required a two-thirds majority at Town Meeting, but got only a simple majority, 95-77. (That’s 55 to 45 percent and 20 votes short of two-thirds, but a local news story in the Greenfield Recorder describes the result as “just shy.”)

Some residents thought the selling price was too low and some wondered what effect a marijuana facility might have on Heath, a town of about 700 people north of Route 2 on the Vermont border, about 10 miles northwest of Greenfield.