Marijuana Hearing Public Comment Causes Confusion, Misinterpretation Of Statement
The Bourne School Committee has issued a statement to set the record straight regarding a public comment made by a resident in opposition to marijuana during a planning board hearing last month.
The Enterprise recently learned that “a school committee statement” that was read into the record by a resident during the planning board’s June 8 discussion on marijuana zoning was not, in fact, issued by the Bourne School Committee. The statement, read by Douglas K. Oesterheld of Monument Beach, was actually issued by the school committee of the Barnstable Public Schools in 2018.
The introduction of what Mr. Oesterheld read as simply “a school committee statement” left many—including planning board chairman Daniel Doucette—with the impression that the statement came from the Bourne School Committee; however, committee chairwoman Emily Berry was taken aback upon learning of it and told the Enterprise last week that the Bourne School Committee has not and will not release any such statement in relation to the town’s discussions or bylaws on marijuana.
The Enterprise also spoke with Mr. Oesterheld last week. He not only confirmed that the statement was not from the Bourne School Committee, but said that his omission of any mention of the Town of Barnstable, its schools or its school committee was actually a deliberate move on his part.
“I had no problem causing the confusion,” he said with a chuckle. “That was intentional.”
The MeetingThe planning board’s ongoing discussion of marijuana zoning was once again on the agenda for its June 8 meeting. During the discussion, Mr. Oesterheld took to the podium to address the board and share his sentiments, which were in opposition to and critical of the concept of lifting the town-wide ban on marijuana sales. He told the board that his position on the zoning bylaw for marijuana establishments in Bourne would be to “zone none.”
“As I see it,” he said, “it’s a matter of accessibility.” Mr. Oesterheld then said that he would like to read a statement from “the school committee” along the lines of marijuana zoning. He asked if it was appropriate at that time and was given the affirmative by Mr. Doucette.
Mr. Oesterheld recited the following: “We, the school committee, stand in opposition to any amendment to current zoning regulations that would create cannabis overlay districts within the town. We support the prohibition of nonmedical marijuana establishments in all zoning districts. The committee believes that legalizing the commercialization of marijuana through cultivation and sale in the town is not in the best interest of our students.”
He continued reading the statement, which starkly condemned the allowance of marijuana use or sale in town and touted a “dismal set of life outcomes” as consequences of marijuana use, including welfare dependency, greater unemployment and lower life satisfaction.
“We believe that the Council has the opportunity to send a clear, concise, and unequivocal message to our students that the adults of this community will not put our own commercial or recreational interests above their safety and well-being,” Mr. Oesterheld read, “and we will not be hypocrites telling students to ‘just say no’ while simultaneously marketing edibles and other enticing marijuana products.”
Mr. Oesterheld concludes the statement by saying that “the school committee does not share the belief that ‘retail pot shops are not a threat, but an asset’”; however, he continued speaking, saying that the Bourne Opt-Out Committee sent a similar statement to the Bourne School Committee, the planning board and the select board in 2018.
“The school committee took it under advisement,” Mr. Oesterheld said. “Apparently, you folks are still taking it under advisement because we haven’t had a response about those issues yet.”
Mr. Doucette said the board understands his position and asked Mr. Oesterheld to submit the letter for the record; Mr. Oesterheld said he could provide “a form of the letter.”
A Tale Of Two School Committees
Once the Enterprise became aware of the statement read by Mr. Oesterheld, the newspaper reached out to school committee chairwoman Ms. Berry, who said she was unaware of any such statement being made by or on behalf of the Bourne School Committee.
Research resulted in the Enterprise obtaining a copy of meeting minutes from the Bourne School Committee’s meeting on January 9, 2019. According to those meeting minutes and subsequent coverage in the Enterprise, Mr. Oesterheld approached the school committee at that time regarding recreational marijuana in Bourne and suggested it take a stance in opposition to the proposed repeal that was slated for and ultimately defeated at Special Town Meeting in October 2019. In doing so, he referenced such a stance taken by the Barnstable School Committee against marijuana zoning and submitted a copy of the statement for the record, along with letters that were forwarded to the Bourne School Committee and other boards.
Meeting minutes from that meeting indicate that Christopher Hyldburg, chairman of the school committee at the time, stated publicly that the school committee cannot provide a legal position on the issue of recreational marijuana, as it “is already addressed within its policies.” Meeting coverage from the Enterprise reflects Mr. Hyldburg’s emphasis of the district’s zero-tolerance policy on controlled substances, which aligns with Massachusetts General Law policy regarding drug-free school zones.
The current Bourne School Committee has since reiterated its former chairman’s sentiments. In response to confusion over Mr. Oesterheld’s June 8 public comments, the committee issued an official statement this week that reads: “This individual has no affiliation or connection to the Bourne School Committee or Bourne Public Schools. Any statement made on our behalf by him should be disregarded and does not carry any validity whatsoever.”
Ms. Berry—who was elected to the school committee not long after the above referenced meeting, in the spring of 2019, told the Enterprise in an email that in her now four-year tenure, Mr. Oesterheld has not reached out to the Bourne School Committee in any way.
The Barnstable School Committee’s statement on marijuana appears to have been removed from the district’s website; Google’s top search result is a webpage titled “School Committee Position Statement Adult Use Marijuana” that appears to have once linked through to the Barnstable Public Schools’ website but no longer exists.
An article covering the Barnstable School Committee’s announcement was published by the Barnstable Patriot on August 2, 2018, suggesting the statement was issued in late July or early August. Excerpts from the statement quoted in that article matched the excerpts read by Mr. Oesterheld at the planning board meeting on June 8 practically verbatim.
Calculated Confusion
After a number of attempts to contact Mr. Oesterheld, the Enterprise was able to speak with him over the phone last Thursday, June 29.
Mr. Oesterheld confirmed that the statement he read on June 8 was from the Barnstable School Committee circa 2018, and said that he did submit that same statement to various entities in Bourne—including the school committee, select board and planning board—at that time for consideration.
He also said his omission of language that would have identified the statement as being issued by another town’s school committee while reading it at the planning board’s meeting was completely intentional.
Mr. Oesterheld said that when he first brought the statement to the town in 2019 and requested that it take a similar stance he was told it was taken “under advisement,” but he ultimately never heard back from any of the boards contacted. This unresponsiveness to the anti-marijuana arguments posed in the statement, which Mr. Oesterheld wholly stands behind, pushed him “to get that into the record in any sort of meaningful way.”
Speaking with the Enterprise, Mr. Oesterheld said his vague preface of what he recited as being “a school committee statement,” rather than a Bourne School Committee statement, was intentional.
“I can’t say it’s the Bourne School Committee statement, and if I said it was the Barnstable School Committee statement, it would be dismissed as not being relevant,” Mr. Oesterheld said. “I wanted people to think about what was in the statement rather than who issued the statement.”
A verbatim transcript of Mr. Oesterheld’s public comments from June 8 reads: “As I see it, it’s a matter of accessibility…in fact, I’d like to read a statement from the school committee along this line about marijuana establishments, is that appropriate at this time?” A voice-to-text transcription service used in the newsroom also transcribed Mr. Oesterheld’s words as being “from the school committee,” rather than the more general introduction of “a school committee statement” that he maintained when speaking with the Enterprise on Thursday.
In addition to his verbal public comments, Mr. Oesterheld submitted a copy of the statement he read to the planning board for public record, as requested by the chairman, which can be found on the planning board’s webpage. The submitted statement is the original from the Barnstable School Committee and has no omissions of references to Barnstable or its school committee. The first sentence of the statement submitted to the public record file begins “We, the School Committee of the Barnstable Public Schools…”
Mr. Oesterheld also included two letters, both from 2018—one was sent from the Bourne Opt-Out Committee to the select board and planning board; the other was sent from Mr. Oesterheld on behalf of the opt-out committee and the Bourne Cares Committee to the school committee.
Those submissions, Mr. Oesterheld said, gave “full disclosure” of the statement’s origins.
Walking A Fine Line
Speaking with the Enterprise last week, planning board chairman Mr. Doucette said it was “news to [me]” that the statement read by Mr. Oesterheld on June 8 was not actually issued by the Bourne School Committee. He said it was “unfortunate” that someone would present information “that they vow is correct, and that is incorrect.”
It is difficult, he continued, because he does not want to have to police public commenting nor to be accused of violating Open Meeting Law, but he also wants to “have good faith” that comments made during a public hearing are being represented accurately.
“You have public comment because you want people to come out and speak freely and honestly,” Mr. Doucette said. “If I were to stop somebody here and there, [they] would make it appear that I’m trying to silence [them] in a public hearing, and that’s the last thing that I want to do.”
At the June 8 meeting, Mr. Oesterheld voiced his concern about just that when addressing the planning board: that the town’s discussions surrounding marijuana create an “unequal playing field” and can be shaped to support one viewpoint over another. One way of doing this, he said, is “to abbreviate the amount of time opponents have,” or to give extra time to the petitioners. Both of these things, he said, have happened, and the general question he posed to the board was, “At what point does that point of view [opposing marijuana] come up in this discussion?”
Mr. Oesterheld’s caution to not verbally attribute the statement to Barnstable for fear of it being dismissed as irrelevant seems, to have been worthwhile, at least in terms of his goal of getting it on record—when asked if he would have allowed the statement to be read at the meeting had its origins been clear from the start, Mr. Doucette said “probably not.”
“That’s what I wanted to avoid: somebody saying ‘this is from outside the town so we don’t have to listen to it,’” Mr. Oesterheld said.
As for the confusion caused by the omission of the statement’s mid-Cape origins, Mr. Oesterheld is more focused on the bigger picture rather than the semantics of who said what.
“In a way, I’m sorry for that,” Mr. Oesterheld said, “but more importantly, I wanted them to focus on the argument of that school committee and the argument that is being made, because nobody is standing up for the ban on marijuana or speaking to the harms of marijuana, and that includes our own school committee.”
Mr. Oesterheld denied that his presentation of the statement was misleading, saying that he “wanted to cite facts rather than have it dismissed.” When asked about the vagueness surrounding his presentation of the statement into public record, he maintained that it was not introduced in a way that would lead the public to believe the statement came from the Bourne School Committee.
“All I can say is that it wasn’t presented that way,” he said. “People can make assumptions of what they want, but that’s not the way it was presented.”
Moving Forward
Bourne Select Board chairwoman Mary Jane Mastrangelo told the Enterprise that she was watching the June 8 meeting when the statement was read. She said she asked a member of the planning board if the board member had seen the letter and whether it was current from the Bourne School Committee, but that board member had not seen the letter and was unable to answer.
“It is disappointing when deceptive or misleading tactics are used to convince people to support one side of an issue,” Ms. Mastrangelo said in an email. “I am hopeful that over the next few months both sides of this issue will be able to present their side accurately and that the voters will be able to make a well-informed decision if it comes up at Town Meeting again.”
Ms. Mastrangelo said Bourne has been “pretty equally divided” on the issue of marijuana in town, but noted that “there are some in the ‘middle’ who might support a repeal of the ban if there is zoning in place to protect the interests of the town and the abutters.”
As the planning board continues to work on creating a zoning bylaw for the town, Ms. Mastrangelo advised that people be mindful of “giving a true and accurate presentation of information.” Mr. Doucette concurred and told the Enterprise that if the information, as presented during public comment on June 8, was “found to be incorrect,” he intends to “make comment” at the planning board’s next hearing.
“I like to have open and honest discussion for everybody,” Mr. Doucette said. “I know that there [are] people who don’t want [marijuana], and I know that there [are] people who want it, and there’s people in the middle; but let’s all hear it, debate it, and come out with an answer. That’s all.”