As final preparations for the Fall Town Meeting warrant are underway, voters will likely take up Memorial Stadium funding, recreational marijuana, and roadway construction, but not a controversial plan to let cranberry farmers build solar farms over their crops.

According to an email sent to the Planning Board on September 12, NextSun Energy, which proposed a citizens petition zoning bylaw to allow the town’s struggling cranberry farmers to build solar farms over their crops, requested to pull the bylaw from the agenda.

It follows the Planning Board’s unanimous rejection of the proposal at its September 10 meeting amid numerous legal, ethical, and fairness issues with the proposal.

The bylaw would have allowed several cranberry bogs in Dartmouth to build large solar farms over their crops. Planning Board members and the town’s legal counsel felt it unfairly excluded other agricultural uses, was tailored to benefit a solar company and not farmers, and the town might have been at the will of the state to enforce its own state law regarding the SMART program.

Here are other major items which will likely appear on the 13-article warrant, which were discussed at a joint meeting between the Select Board and Finance Committee on September 17:

Memorial Stadium

The School Department will seek $1.1 million to advance Phase 1 of its proposal to renovate Memorial Stadium, in addition to the $400,000 which has yet been spent previously approved by Town Meeting. It will fund the installation of a turf field and lighting improvements and related work.

The total cost for Phase 1 is $1.9 million -- $1.4 in construction costs, with an additional 30 percent added for overhead, design and testing, and contingency costs. The remaining money will likely be sourced from the School Department’s School Choice funds. Other school districts pay Dartmouth tuition to send their students to Dartmouth schools. 

Recreational marijuana zoning

The town’s moratorium on recreational marijuana is set to expire, so new zoning regulations are being proposed to outline where and how companies could operate in town. If passed, a recreational marijuana shops would be allowed in the in zoning districts at the northeastern tip of Dartmouth near the New Bedford Industrial Park, and on Faunce Corner Road from Ventura Drive to near Interstate 195.

High Hill Road land purchase

The town is proposing to purchase a property on High Hill Road for $400,000 with community preservation funds, although Director of Finance Greg Barnes said a LAND Grant could reimburse $232,000 of the purchase cost. The property would complete a three-plus mile-long strip of public and nonprofit lands from the north part of town’s eastern and western borders, which could be used for hiking with a trail.

Mendes-Monteiro House

With $100,000 in community preservation funds and $400,000 in revenues, Partners in Housing, inc. proposes to build an eight-unit mix of assisted and independent-living senior housing at the existing Anderson Way public housing complex.  

Town Clerk fee increases

Town Clerk Lynn Medeiros is proposing to up many of the fees from her office. The fees cover everything from birth and marriage records and licenses to power of attorney records.

Capital plan

In addition to Memorial Stadium, the Department of Public Works is proposing the largest chunk of big-ticket items. The department is upping its normal road maintenance funding from $900,000 in previous years to $1 million, and is seeking additional funds to target a Bliss Corner subdivision for reconstruction. It’s an initiative to focus more on Dartmouth’s aging secondary roads, particularly those in subdivisions, Barnes said.

The DPW also wants to put to use funds previously approved to improve Faunce Corner Road from the railroad tracks to Old Fall River Road, fund improvements to water quality and the removal of TTHMs -- bi-products formed from disinfecting water, and replace equipment and vehicles.

Town government is proposing $190,000 to fund technology and infrastructure improvements, the police department is seeking to use $147,234 to replace vehicles, Parks and Recreation is asking for $159,000 to replace vehicles, equipment, and install security cameras at several properties, and DCTV is asking to use $65,000 to improve its studio and building. A $700,000 item for continued funding of the previously approved library project is also on the agenda.

Funds for the capital plan are sourced from surplus revenue, a variety of enterprise and earnings accounts of town departments which generate revenue, and a previously approved Town Meeting article relating to Faunce Corner Road. This year’s capital plan is $4.7 million.

The Fall Town Meeting is set for October 16. The Select Board will take up its recommendations next Monday.