Staff Writer
The Caribou City Council met Monday evening, March 22 for a regular meeting during which, after having received no written or oral input, voted unanimously to raise building permit fees from $4 per $1,000 to $5. This ordinance will become effective on April 21. According to communications from Steve Wentworth, Caribou code enforcement officer to the city manager, Wentworth increasing the current price of $1 — 4,999 estimated cost from the current $25 permit fee to the amended cost of $50 would help to cover the cost incurred to review site plan, setbacks, structural detail and at least one site inspection. The $50 fee would be for all projects under $10,000, typically for accessory buildings, storage sheds, garages, decks, etc.
Also, according to Wentworth, for any project over $10,000 a fee of $5 per thousand of value would bring the intermediate sized projects ($10,000 to $50,000 in line with fees for larger projects. These projects would include additions to existing structures, new residential homes and commercial builds and other construction projects such as potato storage buildings, barns, silos, towers, electrical generating windmills, etc.
City Manager Steve Buck presented the council members with a second draft of a moratorium ordinance on Medical Marijuana Dispensaries. As a result from the referendum, passed by Maine voters in 2009, liberalizing the laws for the distribution of marijuana and to establish dispensaries, this moratorium ordinance will allow the city to prevent any marijuana dispensaries to be constructed within the city until such a time when the State of Maine has formulated the rules and regulations for the licensing of this type of facility.
It is stated within this ordinance that, “It is the intent of the Caribou City Council to so direct the cooperative development through its administrative staff to work with the Planning Board and the Community alcohol and Drug Education Team (CADET), to expeditiously review the implications of such dispensaries on, among other things, the health, safety, welfare, traffic, law enforcement, land use, aesthetics, property value and environmental impacts on the City of Caribou and its citizens to establish a future Land Use Ordinance.”
The document also states, “During the time this ordinance is in effect, no officer, official, employee, office, board, or agency of the City of Caribou shall accept, process, approve, deny, or in any other way act upon any application for a building permit, certificate of occupancy, site plan review and/or any other permits related for such use. No person or organization shall develop or operate Marijuana Dispensaries within the City of Caribou on or after the effective date of this prohibition.”
The members of the Caribou City Council voted unanimously to approve acting on the second draft of a moratorium ordinance regarding medical marijuana dispensaries.
Council members also authorized a one-week city-wide brush removal program for the 2010 season. This clean-up program available to area citizens will take place beginning Monday, May 3 through Thursday, May 6. City crews will only collect in a neighborhood once and will not make multiple passes. Residents are encouraged to place any brush or leaves to be collected at the curbside by 6 a.m. May 3, as anything placed for collection after this date will not be removed. No alternative rain dates are planned.
Residents are informed that the council panel has set a date of Monday, April 12 for a public hearing pertaining to a proposed Electrical Generating Windmill Ordinance. This public hearing will be held in the city council chambers and will begin at 7 p.m.
Caribou residents are reminded of a public hearing on Monday, March 29, at 7 p.m. in the council chambers during which council members will accept written or hear oral discussion pertaining to the 2010 municipal budget.
