BY ANDY GARDNER
North Country This Week

MASSENA – Village officials will be encouraging the public to voice their opinions on how the Board of Trustees should regulate cannabis businesses.

Mayor Tim Ahlfeld said Trustee Matt Lebire has been putting together a fact sheet on the new law. It legalizes cannabis possession and use for ages 21 and up, and also allows for commercial cannabis sales starting next year.

“The legislation is thousands of pages long. And then you’ve got different groups that have looked at it, like the New York Conference of Mayors and so on. They’ve put it in more of a readable format for non-attorney types,” Ahlfeld said.

He said the fact sheet, once finalized, will go on the Village of Massena website and Facebook page.

Once residents have read it, the mayor encourages them to air their opinions to local lawmakers.

“Come to meetings, email us, talk to board members, come to the office and talk directly about it,” he said.

At this point, village officials are leaning toward adopting the state guidelines as written, which would be broken down in the previously mentioned fact sheet.

“I think we should just follow whatever the state’s put out. New York state has had plenty of time to see the successes and failures of different areas of the United States and build upon those what they feel would be best,” Ahlfeld said. “I’ve talked to our code enforcement and chief of police and they feel the same way too: we should just follow the legislation as written.”

He said the state law allows for on-site consumption of cannabis products. That’s one area where Ahlfeld said they’re still uncertain of what to do locally.

“There are some things in there that discuss whether you’re going to have on-site consumption, whether we go ahead with on-site consumption. Maybe we’ll wait on that, maybe we’ll continue on that,” he said.

At the May village board meeting, Trustee Lebire had raised the concern of impaired drivers leaving businesses that could allow on-site consumption. Police Chief Jason Olson said officers are already trained in spotting it.

“We’re trained to do DWI drugs ... we’ve been handling it for years,” Olson said last month. “We’ll enforce it. We’ve been enforcing it for years.”

The New York state law also says cannabis businesses can’t be near schools or churches, Chief Code Officer Aaron Hardy told trustees at their May meeting.

Ahlfeld on Wednesday, June 2 said they’re sending out the survey now so they can be ready to go when the time comes for regulated cannabis sales to begin.

“We want to make sure it wasn’t done in a silo or too late at the end of the year,” he said. “Hopefully our community will respond, one way or the other, pro or con. The final decision is going to be up to the governing body, the Board of Trustees.”