By Theresa Knapp 

The Town of Hopedale accepts two fees from marijuana businesses as negotiated in their Host Community Agreements: 

• A three percent excise tax paid by the customer that goes to the town’s general budget; and 

• A second three percent “impact fee” paid by the establishment, using post-tax dollars, that goes to the town to be held in escrow; this money can only be spent if the town can document specific costs caused by the marijuana business - it cannot be used for anything else and is not part of the town’s general budget.  

• The fees are paid quarterly to the town. 

At its meeting on Jan. 10, the Select Board discussed adjusting the impact fee, and was expected to make a decision at its Jan. 24 meeting (which was held after Hopedale Town News went to print). 

Towns can opt to collect an impact fee from zero to three percent. Alternative arrangements discussed at the Jan. 10 meeting included decreasing the percentage and/or creating a dollar cap - for example, $50,000 - so the business would stop adding to the account once the cap was met. 

Caroline Frankel, who opened Caroline’s Cannabis at 4 Charlesview Road in October (and has welcomed over 12,000 customers to date), said she has paid $1.2 million in impact fees in another town and that money is sitting in an account because that community cannot identify any impact her business has had in that town. 

Nicholas Obolensky, attorney for Frankel, said “What we’ve found with Caroline’s in almost three years of operation in a nearby town is the town has not been able to document any cost imposed upon it as a result of Caroline’s establishment operating there. So it doesn’t really make sense. It’s not fair from a fairness or free market perspective but it just also doesn’t make sense for a town to collect, collect, collect all these funds” and not be able to use them when the establishments could be putting that money back into their businesses. 

Jonathan Lum of High Hopes, which opened at 1 Menfi Way in August (and recently paid a $30,000 impact fee to the town), was also at the meeting. 

Both business representatives said they are more than willing to pay for any impacts made and, if they do not, their license renewal from the town and the state would be in jeopardy. 

“The last thing a business wants to do is upset the town that gives them a license to operate there,” Obolensky said. “I think allowing the operators to have that working capital now will do a lot more for the business and for bringing more people into Hopedale.”