Bowdoinham board weighs cannabis renewals, waste contracts at packed meeting

The Select Board’s May 12 agenda turned on two core functions of town government: deciding which cannabis businesses could keep operating and lining up the contracts that keep Bowdoinham’s trash and recycling system moving. In a full Kendall Meeting Room at the John C. Coombs Municipal Building, 13 School Street, the board met at 6:30 p.m. with both in-person and virtual access on the table.

The first cannabis item was North Fire, LLC, an adult-use cultivation facility at 239 Carding Machine Road, parcel R06-40B. Its renewal file described an indoor operation of about 500 square feet. The company filed its renewal application on April 16, 2026, and its Tier II site plan review had been approved by the Planning Board on April 29, 2021. A code-enforcement memo tied to the renewal said an April 17, 2025 compliance site visit found North Fire generally following its site plan approval, with one issue flagged on the south side of the property, where new evergreen trees were meant to serve as a buffer. The same memo said the odor-mitigation plan relied on four large carbon can-filters.

Residents were also given a formal path to weigh in. The town’s public-hearing notice for the renewal said written comments could be submitted and questions directed to Jason Lorrain, Bowdoinham’s code enforcement officer. That matters because the renewal is not just a state licensing exercise; it is a local check on whether a business is staying within the conditions of its approval and operating footprint.

The second cannabis renewal involved Cannabis for Medicine, LLC, at 112 Pond Road, Suite H, parcel R02-63-F. Its application described an indoor medical cannabis cultivation facility of about 500 square feet, and the applicant was identified as Muhammad Hatib. The town’s materials said the operation received Tier I site plan approval from the code enforcement officer on March 25, 2025. Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy keeps separate adult-use and medical-use licensing systems and open-data lookup tools, underscoring why Bowdoinham’s local renewals still matter after state-level approval.

The same meeting agenda also put the town’s waste system under the microscope. Board members were set to consider curbside waste pickup and transportation, a waste-to-energy contract, a Casella recycling contract, and recommendations from the Solid Waste Committee. Bowdoinham’s solid-waste materials say the town funds trash through a usage-based fee meant to cover collection, transportation and disposal, which makes each contract decision part of the town’s fiscal machinery.

Bryan Benson leads the Solid Waste and Recycling Department from 121 Pond Road, and the town had already posted FY27 trash-tag calculations and proposed solid-waste and recycling rules in May 2026. Bowdoinham’s June 11, 2025 town-meeting materials also included an article on a solid-waste-management ordinance amendment, showing the issue has been a recurring one. Taken together, the agenda showed a small town doing what local government does best and most visibly: policing business approvals, negotiating service contracts and deciding how residents will pay for the basics.