Back in the fall of 2022, when you were chair, I came to your Select Board meetings to ask what the Select Board could do to encourage your wife to get her ass in gear and open the Apothecary.

At one of those meetings, this was made clear:

Because your wife held a special permit with the Planning Board, the Select Board’s “hands were tied.” The town would need to wait until your wife’s special permit from the Planning Board lapsed in the fall of 2023 before anything could be done by the Select Board.

Keep in mind, that in the fall of 2022, I thought your wife might still open the shop. (It wasn’t until February 2023 that I first considered that your wife had been paid NOT to open the Apothecary.)

Before I get into what’s happened relative to your wife’s Special Permit at 160 Ayer Road—which in practical terms lapsed on September 20, 2023 and in administrative terms lapsed on November 16, 2023 when the Planning Board (at 1:54:50) made a finding that “she didn’t do anything” and voted to send a letter to this effect to the Select Board, who would now have the authority to determine whether to “keep going with Littleton Apothecary or open it up to someone else*”—there’s some interesting history about 160 Ayer Road.

In July, 2022, Littleton entered into an HCA with MRM INDUSTRIES LLC, hereinafter, “MRM.” The HCA gave MRM permission to make cannabis-infused products in Suites 1 & 2 at 160 Ayer Road. At the time, the building was owned by Athena Assets, LLC.

When Masood Shaikh, as the representative of MRM, reported the existence of its HCA with the Town of Littleton to the Cannabis Control Commission, MRM used “July 12, 2022” as the date of the HCA.

When former Town Administrator Anthony Ansaldi, as the representative of Littleton, reported the HCA to the Cannabis Control Commission, he used “July 28, 2022.”

The discrepancy in date is not insignificant, as it goes to show (on its face) the sloppy contracting that your board (probably with Chuck at the helm as the “go-to” guy for all things cannabis) is engaging in—on behalf of the town.

As a physical document, itself, MRM’s July 2022 HCA is undated. The HCA’s preamble reads, “entered into this ___ day of July, 2022.” A “license to print money” was how your wife regarded these cannabis HCAs, and a license needs a start date and an end date.

With an HCA in hand, MRM applied on July 15th to the Planning Board seeking a special permit to build out Suites 1 & 2 at 160 Ayer Road. As per our bylaws, all cannabis-related businesses must receive a special permit from the Planning Board.

As required by law, the Planning Board posted a notice with the town clerk on July 21, 2022, published legal notices on August 1 and 8, 2022, and held a hearing on August 15, which was continued until September 19, 2022.

On September 29, 2022, two special permits and a site plan were approved by the Planning Board, allowing MRM to build out its facility to make cannabis-infused products in Suites 1 & 2 at 160 Ayer Road.

On November 1, 2022, the deed for the sale of 160 Ayer Road was recorded with the Massachusetts Registry of Deeds (Middlesex South, Book 80900, Page 411). The seller, Athena Assets, LLC, sold Suites 1, 2, 3, and 4 (of the six suites located at 160 Ayer Road; Suites 5 & 6 are Cherrystone Furniture’s) to MR3 LLC^ for $1.5m.

Also on November 1, 2022, prior to Littleton’s Special Town Meeting, the Select Board and FinComm met in the teachers’ lunchroom at the Middle School in an unrecorded open meeting.

“HCA Update” was on the pre-STM agenda, along with the regular and usual Select Board/FinComm, pre-STM discussion about the articles that would be discussed later that evening.

For a recently “hot” issue that had been discussed a lot by the Select Board, I was surprised that it would have been put on the agenda at that time, and in that unrecorded place.

That is, I was surprised until I remembered who set the agenda for that meeting: you, Matthew, as chair.

Well, good thing I was there to hear Town Counsel’s HCA update, which, in effect, was this: the Select Board is advised to reach out to every cannabis-related business that holds an HCA with Littleton and renegotiate the “Community Impact Fee” term because the law says so.

On March 27, 2023, the Select Board and MRM amended MRM’s July 2022 HCA.

Curiously, your board didn’t limit its amending to merely the Community Impact Fee. Your board also changed the term, i.e., the “start date” of the HCA itself. (I didn’t hear town counsel suggest that.)

But even more curiously, the Select Board and MRM backdated the start date—to way back in time, to before MRM was even an LLC in Massachusetts.

The new eight-year term for MRM’s HCA with the town of Littleton starts on May 4, 2020: the very same day your wife entered into her HCA with the town to open a recreational cannabis shop that she’s done nothing on.

This can’t be a coincidence. Of all the dates to pick on March 27, 2023, to backdate MRM’s HCA to they agreed to May 4, 2020.

Did you know?

I bet Chuck did.

TTYS,

Jkb

*SAGA Cannabis, LLC would give every last penny—approximately one hundred million of them—to residents of Littleton who live in poverty. This is the only way I can think of to right the wrong your wife (and by extension, you, Matthew) has done to this town over all of this.

As I write these words, a private jet (likely transporting a straight, white guy with power, influence, and money from Mansion A to Mansion B) flies overhead and icebergs are on the move. We’re running out of time to be good to each other.

^ MR3 is a New York LLC, organized on July 28, 2021. Although LLCs in Massachusetts must state in their Certificates of Organization the “general character of the business,” e.g. MRM’s is “Applying for licensure from the Cannabis Control Commission,” New York’s Division of Corporations does not require the filer of Articles of Incorporation to state what business or enterprise the LLC plans to engage in. MR3’s filing is legally (and perhaps purposefully) vague.