Cairo opts out of cannabis business

The town board chose not to host marijuana dispensaries and lounges, with Town Supervisor John Coyne and board members MaryJo Cords and Tim Powers voting to opt out of both cannabis options.

Town councilmen Stephen Kralovich and Jason Watts voted against the opt-out measure.

“There’s not enough information for municipalities to opt in,” Coyne said on Wednesday. “There’s no guarantee as to what percentage we’re going to get as far as our share of revenue. There’s no information about what needs to be done to have a business open in your community. It’s just very vague. By opting out, it gives the community an opportunity to opt back in later when we have more information.”

Coyne said there have been no applications to the town from outside business groups hoping to establish dispensaries.

“It hasn’t reached that stage,” Coyne said. “When the Cairo Development Foundation says they have people, nobody has ever come forward to the planning board to start a preliminary process or the town board. No one has reached out to our website to say, ‘Hey, we’re interested, let’s sit down and talk.’”

As part of the state legislation that legalized the possession and use of marijuana in April, a local excise tax of 4% will be imposed on the sale of marijuana. From that tax, 75% of the funds will be channeled to local municipalities, while 25% will go to the counties where cannabis shops are located.

Watts, who will begin his two-year term as Cairo town supervisor on Jan. 1, said his reason for allowing cannabis establishments in the town was purely financial.

“For me, it was just about money,” he said Tuesday. “Just so we can have more revenue coming in and do more stuff with it. It’s here (cannabis) and it’s legal, so what’s the difference between that and a bar or a liquor store? We should at least have had a distribution center. What’s the difference between a liquor store and a dispensary? There’s no difference.”

The law allows municipalities that choose to opt out to opt back in at a later date if they so choose.

Watts said he hopes the board will revisit the issue in 2022. Coyne and Cords’ terms will expire at the end of this year.

“I want to see with the new board what their feelings are before we spend all kinds of money with the attorneys,” Watts said. “If the new board wants to opt back in, I want to try to have a vote on it.”

Cords said she was waiting for more information on state guidelines and the financial benefits the town would receive from allowing the dispensaries.

“I had a couple of reasons (for opting out) and one is I don’t think we had all the information,” she said Wednesday. “Since we have the ability to opt in at any time, I thought if we could just wait for more information, that would be helpful. I understand that we don’t have all of the regulations and all of the information from the state. The second thing was that since other towns are opting in, I thought we could see how it works in other towns first and then if we wanted to we could opt in.”

Residents attending the town board meeting were overwhelmingly in favor of opting in to the cannabis dispensaries, but Powers said the matter should be open to a townwide vote.

“I think at the end of the day it needs to be put out for a public referendum,” Powers said Wednesday. “Out of a community of 6,700 people, I think everybody that’s eligible to vote needs to vote on this. Not just the town board or 40 people in a room. I believe on an issue of this magnitude that is something we need to have.”

Kralovich said he was more inclined to allow dispensaries in the town than lounges.

“I had gone into the meeting thinking that I was probably going to vote to opt out, but after listening to the whole room they kind of persuaded me,” he said Wednesday. “I know that we could use the money. It was pretty much boiled down to the possible revenue that we could get in the end.”

The board took one vote on both the dispensaries and the lounges, voting to opt out of both in one resolution.

Sherry True, who will represent Cairo in the Greene County Legislature beginning in January, attended the board meeting and said later that she was in favor of the town opting in on cannabis dispensaries.

“I was more disappointed than anything else,” True said Wednesday. “I really would have liked to have seen an opportunity to have been able to explore the options by opting in. It’s really going to take a while before the state has finalized what the rules and regulations are going to be. There are some already in place, but within that year, we could have stayed in and not have to go through the whole process of opting in. We’re not even sure what that’s going to look like.”

Powers said if the board decides to tackle the issue again in 2022, he will continue to oppose opting in on cannabis.

“There’s no doubt in my mind that they’re going to revisit it, but I’ll still be an unequivocal no,” he said. “We have to have a chance to look at the information and see what guidelines the state is going to put forth. I’m going to call for a referendum, because every voting member of this community needs to have a voice in this, not just the 40 who showed up because they’re pro-pot. A lot of them are from New York City, so there you go.”

Powers noted that cannabis use is still prohibited by federal law. The board member said he was more opposed to the concept of lounges than allowing dispensaries in the town.

“I definitely do not want lounges,” Powers said. “We have a big enough drug problem in Cairo now. To have those that are employable choose not to be sitting around in lounges getting stoned all day, I have an issue with that as well. We’ve got some big things coming from the county with infrastructure across Route 23 that will create a whole bunch of new jobs. Those new jobs aren’t going to do any good if nobody wants to work.”