Williamstown Board of Health Reduces Number of Tobacco Licenses
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. – The Board of Health on Monday morning decided to reduce the town's number of tobacco sales licenses by one and tentatively agreed to hold a public hearing in July to overhaul the town's regulations on those sales.
In a unanimous vote at the end of its monthly meeting, three members of the five-person board decided to trim the number of tobacco licenses from seven to six, reflecting the fact that only six of the available licenses currently are in use.
It also discussed a more long-term strategy of inserting into the town's health code language that "retires" licenses in the future if and when they go out of use.
That was one of the amendments suggested by South County's Tri-Town Health Department, which last month agreed to do a comprehensive review of Williamstown's local tobacco regulations in order to align them with current state law.
Jim Wilusz of Tri-Town remotely attended Monday's meeting and reviewed proposed changes with four members of the Board of Health — Erwin Stuebner, Ronald Stant, James Parkinson and Devan Bartels.
Bartels, who needed to leave the meeting before the subsequent vote to make the immediate change to the number of licenses available in town, was one of several members who supported the idea of "retiring" unused licenses when the code is revamped.
That was one of three major substantive changes that Tri-Town suggested, along more minor amendments, like adding "whereas" clauses that will make the local regulations more able to withstand challenges from parties found in violation.
The other two big suggestions: banning "smoking bars" in town and banning the sale of flavor enhancers.
Wilusz explained that the latter suggestion would address a workaround the tobacco industry developed in response to the commonwealth's ban on selling flavored tobacco products for off-site consumption.
"There are some products out there that the state law doesn't capture," Wilusz said. "For example, flavored hemp products, flavored rolling papers. … The intent of the state law is to ban flavored tobacco. As the industry responds back, they're putting out all sorts of products that are used to enhance the 'non-flavored' tobacco.
"One policy you could consider is, if you don't want to allow enhancers of any magnitude, you could leave this [suggested] language in there."
Smoking bars, Wilusz said, remain fairly uncommon in Massachusetts, which has only a couple of dozen active facilities.
"That's the only place people can get access to flavors, but they have to consume on site," Wilusz said of the bars. "Some towns are considering not allowing smoking bars in their communities."
Williamstown currently has none, but it has talked in the past about implementing a pre-emptive ban before a license is sought, Health Inspector Jeff Kennedy told Wilusz and the board.
The board members agreed that it makes sense to include the smoking bar prohibition along with the full complement of amendments suggested by Tri-Town.
The next step, Kennedy explained, is to hold a public hearing on the proposed changes and vote them into effect.
The BOH members agreed to have Kennedy take a final pass through the code amendments suggested by Tri-Town and distribute them to the members for review in the next week or two. If the members respond individually to Kennedy saying that the amended language is ready to post, he said the town could advertise the hearing as soon as July.
Kennedy also said he would notify the six current tobacco license holders of the proposed changes and the date of the hearing to allow them to testify to the board.
In other business on Monday, the Board of Health heard a follow up on a complaint from a resident about rats in her apartment building and met with a resident who said noise from his neighbor's rooster is diminishing his quality of life.
A resident of an apartment on North Hoosac Road told the board that an infestation in the walls of her unit continues even after a court dismissed her complaint against her landlord following work by an exterminator.
Jennifer McCue told the Board of Health that her complaints were "shrugged off" in a court hearing last week even though the problem continues.
"We're still hearing them in the walls," McCue told the BOH. "Where they were chewing the other day, it sounded like a beaver in the wall. There's no way a beaver could get into the wall, so obviously it was a rat."
She said she heard the rodent activity near electrical wiring and was worried that it could lead to a fire in the building.
Kennedy told the board he was informed that the exterminator was not finding any new animals in its traps, which indicated that the problem was addressed. But he promised to continue contacting the apartment's manager and the exterminator to monitor the situation.
"We'll certainly try to help you as much as we can," Stuebner told McCue.
Another resident, James Abdou of 392 White Oaks Road, met with the board Monday in hopes it could intervene on his behalf with a neighbor whose rooster crows "13 hours per day," Abdou said.
"Today, the rooster started at 5:50 a.m., but it really got going at 7 a.m.," Abdou said. "They stopped at 8 p.m. last night. I'd say they're active about 15 minutes every hour. During that period, the noise occurs every 15 seconds. When you do the math, it's 800 times a day.
"I cannot perform work [in my house]. I can't sleep, can't read, can't watch TV, can't crack a window. It's decimating my quality of life and probably decimating my property value."
Abdou said the problem began for him in the spring after he was away from his White Oaks residence in the winter. He said the rooster's coop is about 70 feet from the property line and about 100 feet from his house.
Kennedy told the board that in his capacity as the town's animal inspector, his responsibility is to ensure that livestock are adequately housed and fed. Neither he nor the board members could find anything in the town's health regulations that specifically addressed the type of noise vexing Abdou, who came with articles documenting how other communities in Massachusetts have dealt with similar complaints.
A spreadsheet maintained by the Northeast Organic Farming Association and posted on the mass.gov website shows that local regulations vary wildly, with most towns tracked allowing at least some "backyard chickens" but many, like Great Barrington, banning roosters.
Kennedy said if the Board of Health wants to add language on roosters into the town code, it should collaborate with the Agricultural Commission, which has the right to review farm-related regulations in the town. He offered to reach out to the chair of the commission on behalf of the Board of Health.
Tags: board of health, chickens, tobacco regulations,
