 Councilor Hanson, I'm going to be stepping away from my computer, but you can text me if there's anything you need over the course of the meeting. Okay. Thank you so much, Jordan. But I think it's pretty straightforward from here. Okay. Thanks so much. I really appreciate it. Certainly. Bye-bye. Well, thanks everyone for being here. I'm just in the process of promoting our many panelists for today. So just hang on for a moment. And I'll do that kind of as we're getting started too because I don't want to hold everyone up. But we don't have a quorum of councillor, so it's a little bit less formal, just so folks know. But basically our agenda today, and we've called this meeting today together for the city to bring in folks who are experts or otherwise involved in Act 164, the state statute that regulates, that was passed last year, that authorizes a legal market and regulates recreational cannabis. And we're discussing local level regulation of cannabis and gaining insights from our speakers today on what the city of Burlington, what options lay before the city of Burlington right now and looking for advice and better understanding of that and the implications of those decision points. So thanks again to all the guests that are here. I think we have eight speakers and we'll go through them. Want to make sure that all the councillors are on before we dive in. But we'll give a maximum of five minutes to each speaker and we're really asking from you all, the speakers, if you could speak to your understanding of the state statute and specifically what you understand Burlington's authority under the state statute to regulate cannabis at the local level with a specific interest in racial and economic justice. And then once each of our panelists speak, we'll then go to councillors for Q&A as well as we have the Racial Equity and Inclusion and Belonging Director for the city, Tayisha Green joining us who will be able to ask any questions as well if she has them. Councillor Carpenter, am I missing anything before we dive in? I think that's it and as we have time, we have members of the public and we don't invite them to ask questions as well. Part of this is also a quick primer on the staggered licenses and how you, how that impacts the industry and in particular the city. Yeah. Absolutely. So I guess I'm just going to go ahead and if you're hanging tight as an attendee don't worry and you're meant to be a panelist, I'll be getting to you shortly. I just don't want to have everyone sit and wait while I do that. So what I'm going to do is turn it over to our first speaker. I think we'll just, we'll go in alphabetical order to start off. So that would be, sorry, I'm just getting the speakers together. We'll go to, well, why don't we, let's just, let's just kick things off with the one person that I see on the screen. Peter Pearson, are you ready to kick things off while I get all the other speakers lined up? Sure. Be glad to. Thank you so much. Sure. Just so I understand, counselor, do you expect me to, is everybody giving a few comments and then waiting until questions or how do you expect that to happen? Yeah. So we'll give everyone up to up to five minutes to, to provide your insights and perspectives. And then once everyone does that, we'll then go to, we'll give the public a chance to, to weigh in if we didn't have anyone sign up in advance, but maybe we'll have a few members of the public. And then we'll go to a Q&A where counselors can ask panelists questions. Okay. Well, I probably hear more to try to answer questions that counselors have and others. But to the extent that, well, I'm Chris Pearson, I'm a state center here in Chittenden County and I live in Burlington Ward 1. And a longtime advocate for legalization and really across the board trying to end prohibition, which I see as a failed policy around substance use. This bill represents, I guess the first successful move towards medical marijuana was 2004. So this represents a long time coming in a slow march towards removing prohibition on cannabis. And it was passed in a hostile environment. I mean, this needs to be really clear. This was not something we waltzed through. The Senate has passed this many times, but on its way to become law, we had to overcome a speaker of the house that was an opponent, basically, and a hostile governor. So the bill is not everything we think it should be. It is a product of compromise, like you will have in most legislative process. The bill was passed in was one of the compromises. It was pushed by prohibitionists and the original draft as it passed by the Senate several times included an option for municipalities to opt out. That got flipped on its head and prohibitionists prevailed and you see before you this question of cities must approve upfront before you can have retail shops. Just for retail, that's the only question that cities can come in and out of. Somewhere along throughout this whole process and arriving late in the actual language was a debate about how do we handle the medical dispensaries, the folks that I view as being on the front lines, having hammered out many of the challenges of Vermont embarking on something that the federal government didn't support, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. Throughout their history, they've had a license, the license to operate under the medical provision. There was no stratification among growers, among cultivators, people that process and people that sell. There was one license, I want to be a medical dispensary, boom. You have to be vertically integrated. That is the medical setup and it exists still in the law today. As we move forward on adult use recreational, we're very interested in spreading it out and democratizing this potential of the economy and frankly we all understand a very robust illicit economy right now. It's trying to bring it above board. In version of bill after bill that was passed or advanced, the fear was corporate weed. You didn't want the Anheuser-Busch, the R.J. Reynolds model. You wanted the Lawson's Brewery and the Zero Gravity Brewery model so that you would have more people participating in the economy here. This is particularly important in the growing side of it because after all cannabis is a plant, there's a zillion strains and you want a really, that's particularly where people are active in the illicit market, you want to bring them above board. So our bill and our law is the most democratized of any state that's gone forward in creating small grower licenses, unlimited numbers of very small grower licenses. Well how do you get them to market? That is a challenge for just any kind of small producer of any product. How do you get them to market? The feeling was you could solve two problems. You could solve three problems. You could solve the problem of what do you do with the dispensaries that have been operating, not at wild province mind you, but under a restrictive environment for a few years. What do you do with them because they're vertically integrated? How do you get small growers in particular who face historic disadvantages, who don't have the resources necessarily of a big player? How do you get them into markets? And how does the state get revenue fairly quickly because all the regulation that the state's enacting and going through costs money and nobody wanted to spend state dollars on this, they wanted to be as closed a loop as possible. So what we decided in the end was to allow dispensaries to come first to market because after all they already have stores, presumably it's pretty easy for them to do that. That also provides an outlet for the small growers. So you've paired these two things and you get them a little bit earlier because mechanically that's possible and that should generate some revenue early on so that the state's not having to front too much revenue as we regulate. Does that make sense? So the question before the council is what kind of question do you ask on the ballot? To the legislature's mind, what we compromised was fine, have an opt-in. If you want to have stores, voters have to approve it. Right in the process when we settled out how to deal with dispensaries and the so-called integrated licenses, that language was added that says, you know, voters must approve retail or integrated licenses. So it was never in our mind either or really, it was just a language of, oops, we also have to deal with integrated when you're doing retail licenses. So I never imagined, I don't think a single legislator ever imagined that towns would bifurcate the way that I understand you've been talking about. And I would just say... You could wrap up, Senator Pearson, just so we have a time. I'm sorry? I was just a time check if you could wind down your thoughts. Let me just say that any business can have multiple licenses, which would allow them therefore to parallel the integrated structure, okay? It's just that medical has had to be integrated today. And it is presumed that you, in Burlington, you get a 1% local options tax. You have that to control as you do through your normal appropriation. And I'm very supportive of the idea of setting up some kind of fun to advantage particular players and historically disadvantaged communities getting into the marketplace. I think that's great. I worry about this bifurcation of the ballot question on types of licenses. It seems like you have power through zoning, through your permitting process and other regulation of businesses the way you do bars to have some handle on businesses opening. So anyway, that's a little bit of the history. I hope that helps. And thanks for looking into this. Great. Thank you so much, Senator Pearson. So yeah, now we'll take it just in alphabetical order by last name. So that would be Joshua Decatur from Trace. Joshua, are you with us and ready to speak? Yeah, no problem. Thank you. Thanks for being here. And if you could just introduce yourself and yeah, you'll have about five minutes. Yeah, absolutely. My name is Joshua Decatur. I'm the CEO at Trace. I'm from Burlington originally or outside of Burlington, lived in Burlington for a long time and Trace is a Vermont company. We're based in Burlington. You know, we're remote right now with everything going on, but we fully intend to call Burlington home for a long time. So because I'm going first from our coalition, I think I'll start with a little background on why we're here today and who we're here in support of. First thing to know, I guess, is that Trace is a service provider to cannabis and hemp companies and also governments themselves. We provide regulatory track and trace software. And we got involved in a coalition along with the Racial Justice Alliance, World Vermont, NOFA and Vermont Growers Association so that we could help support folks in our community that were talking about some of the issues, the social issues, the racial justice issues, the economic opportunity issues, the local economic empowerment issues. They're at the heart of cannabis and cannabis legalization. And we wanted to find folks in the community really speaking on those issues who had well thought out ideas that we could support. And I think that's important from our perspective and something that should frame our conversation is that beneficiaries of unjust systems and systems that have some aspect of institutionalized racism or institutionalized classism stand to benefit simply by doing nothing as events occur and as legislation and programs comes forward and comes into existence. So I think it's clear for a lot of folks in the community at this point that doing nothing has not been a good strategy towards addressing any challenges or problems in cannabis legalization and regulation really is an important opportunity, I think, to do things in a more product, more just way than they've historically been done. So with that, we're standing behind the coalition, the language that's been put forward for the city council and really hope that folks here today take a more people oriented approach to the question about how Burlington wants to opt in and how Burlington wants to enter the cannabis market. It's a real opportunity to help people and a real responsibility, I think, for communities to learn from programs that haven't worked well in other states and that takes time and that takes active investment and I think that takes prioritizing local ownership and local communities that have been harmed the most by cannabis and the history of the war on drugs. With that, I'll leave it to the rest of our coalition. Thanks. Thank you so much, Joshua. We appreciate it. Next, we will go over to Mark Hughes. If you're ready, Mark. Jack, I'm gonna take a pass. I'll come in at the end. Got it, got it. All right, then we'll go next to David Mickenburg if you're ready. I am. Thank you for having this as an important topic. I'll just do a little intro. My name is David Mickenburg. I grew up in Burlington and after spending some time in the Midwest and New York, I returned to Burlington in 2006 where I'm an attorney and I've spent most of my career working on drug policy reform issues, things like access to methadone treatment, needle exchange, working to provide access to naloxone treatment, safe injection facilities and safe access to cannabis. And my work on Act 164 was on behalf of a national organization that advocates for the reform of our nation's misguided cannabis laws. So happy to be here. From my perspective, the legislature passed Act 164 in large part to provide an opportunity to establish a system of cannabis regulation that provided two things. One was safe access to cannabis for those that weren't interested or didn't weren't able to grow their own. As you may know, Vermont was a first state in the country through the legislature to pass a bill legalizing cannabis for growing of your own, but didn't provide any safe access for those that could not grow on their own. And two, the legislature was focused on access to the cannabis industry and providing wide access to the cannabis industry. In the bill, there were a variety of consumer protections that required things like testing, packaging, the establishment of educational materials, environmental standards and pesticide standards and many others. Those were all in as a large part of the bill on the consumer protection side of the legislation. There are also many, as has been alluded to, many parts of the bill that involve access and much of that is related to establishing and much of the discussion was to establishing a system in which small producers, small cultivators can come into the market and come into the market early. And just along those lines, for instance, in the bill, there were lower regulatory thresholds for small cultivators. So for folks that are growing 1,000 square feet or less, they would have lower requirements. These regulations haven't been formulated yet, but they would have lower regulatory requirements than other producers. There were limitations on the number of licenses that one entity could have in terms as Senator Pierson alluded to. Everyone could have certain types of licenses, but there was built-in systems so that the market couldn't be dominated by one particular player, one or two particular players. They also included provisions like not making nonviolent drug offenses an automatic disqualifier to be involved in the marketplace, something that we had grappled with for years that pushed to try to prevent, try to make sure that people that have been proportionally impacted by the war on drugs would have an opportunity to enter the market. There are a variety of social equity provisions in the bill, which I'm sure will be discussed, all with the idea of creating access to the marketplace for a variety of people. I do share the opinion that I think Vermont's bill was perhaps, if not the, perhaps one of the most democratic bills in the country. So on the specific language that you all have proposed, at least at this point, I just wanted to mention one sort of technical thing. I sat through virtually every single hearing that has happened on this issue, probably for the last, certainly the last two years, if not the last 10 years, since I've been working on it. And the issue around the opt-in, just to be clear, was really an issue focused on opting in for the selling of cannabis. So in the language of the resolution proposed, there is references to requiring opting in for other activities, things like cultivating product manufacturer, wholesale testing lab as it pertains to the integrated license holders. That was never contemplated. I never heard a discussion once in any committee, any conversation throughout the entire process that any entity, whether it was an integrated license holder or otherwise, would have to have communities opt in for those activities. So that particular piece I just wanted to highlight for you in your resolution, I think is outside the scope of what the legislature contemplated when it required the opt-in. The opt-in was really a part of political compromise that said, do communities want establishment selling cannabis or not? And that's really all it was. The other pieces of it were not ever discussed or contemplated. So that's just specific feedback on the language that you provided. I'm sure I'm close to, if not past my five minutes and thank you for your time. Great, thank you, David. And now, next we'll go to Jeffrey Pizzatello. Good evening, everybody. Can you hear me okay? Excellent. Thank you, Jack. Thank you, Sarah. Thank you, Joan and Jane, I see. And the rest of the city council members that have joined us this evening, thank you guys for hosting this. And Senator Pearson, good to see you and everyone else. My name is Jeffrey Pizzatello for those of you who don't know. I'm a Burlington resident. I'm over here in Ward 5 and I am the executive director and the co-founder of the Vermont Growers Association. We represent Vermont's cannabis professionals in this state. We are the trade association, we're a nonprofit, we're a 501c4, so we're a mutual benefit organization and we're seeking to really think of us no differently than the Vermont Growers Association and Greg Newton in the 1990s. For those who recall, we want that small craft market that we have for BR to draw that analogy. So we are more than just growers. We are retailers. We're every corner of the industry in Vermont. We like to say there's more than just craft growers. There's craft retailers, craft distributors, and so on. And so that's who we are. We are the next foam brewer that we have in town. So we are sincerely appreciate this opportunity to have our voice heard. Lots of times, especially over the past couple of years, cannabis is still somewhat of a taboo subject matter. So again, the capacity to have our voices heard, a lot of us operate in the shadows. And let me pick up on that. One of the important items for our members is the ability to transition into a legal marketplace. We are grateful for the legislative work done on Act 164, but one of the reasons why our organization and cannabis professionals across the state would have liked to see more done in Act 164 is because of accessibility. It's very difficult for us to see our path forward in this marketplace as it's currently written. That speaks to equality, that speaks to equity, and that brings us to why we're here today. So I look forward to hearing from everyone and answering some questions and assisting in this process as much as possible and sharing the grower, craft, cultivator, cannabis professional insights throughout this evening. Thank you. Thank you so much, Jeffrey. And next, we will turn it over to Virginia Ren. Hi, thank you for having me and inviting me. So I'm Virginia Renfrew. I thought I'd just do a little background on myself. I have a consulting firm, Zassen Renfrew Consulting, which started in 1998. And our first, one of our first clients was Vermont Cares and the People with AIDS Coalition. And in 2000, we advocated for a law that would allow certain people that had certain medical conditions to actually legally possess cannabis. And so Bill was introduced and we worked on that and it took us four years to get it through. It was the most restricted law in the country and it actually remains to be the most restricted law in the country for medical cannabis. Over the years, we've made some small changes to that, Bill. I think the biggest change that occurred was when patients came together and went to the legislature and said, we want to be able to go someplace to actually buy our cannabis. And we wanna make sure that it's a safe and reliable product. So in 2011, the legislature passed the Cannabis Dispensory Bill. And in 2013 was when the first dispensaries opened. And in 2015, I started to represent the dispensaries in the Vermont legislature. In 2018, the Vermont legislature who the Senate as Senator Pearson mentioned had passed bills for adult use, but the House had always hit a wall. And in 2018, the legislature passed basically allowing anyone over the age of 21 to possess cannabis a small an ounce, I believe, and to grow their own. Within a year, we saw the impact that that actually had on the dispensaries. The numbers had been growing steadily since 2013 and then it started to go down. So in Act 164, there is a section in that bill that speaks of the importance of the Medical Cannabis Program and the legislature's support for this program. And I will say that the legislature has been supportive, but there's certain ones that aren't. So it's been a struggle over the years. So in Act 156, the 164, the dispensaries were given a very short lead time. One reason for this was knowing that the dispensaries are already regulated by the state. They have a proven record with the state and they could start to help to bring revenue in to help to fund this program. Another important reason was the legislature wanted small growers to be able to start selling before larger growers. And they felt that allowing them to be licensed and at the same time that the dispensaries were licensed would actually be able to do this and would be to promote a craft growing and ensure that their products would be among the first to be sold to Vermonters. I spent many hours in committees over the last 22 years, but certainly following this Act 164 and listening to testimony and listening to committee discussions. In regards to the language on the ballot, I believe from those conversations that I heard that the intent of that language was to say to Vermonter who vote, do you want a retail store in your city or town? I think that's really all that Act 164 is asking of cities and towns is do you support a retail cannabis store in your city or town? And I think that other issues that you wanna have on your ballot would be separate from what Act 164 is asking for because to me that's the only thing that Act 164 is asking for. And I totally support Burlington's efforts to ensure fair access and equity for communities disproportionately impacted by the war on drugs. And I think, you know, whatever you choose to have on your ballot in that respect is your decision. That's a policy decision for you to make. Thank you. Great, thank you so much, Virginia. And next, and I just, for members of the public, I posted in the chat that you should be out all able to see the list of the speakers as well. And next we'll go over to Shane Lynn if you're ready, Shane. Hi, everybody. Thank you for the opportunity to speak to the council here. I did send in just a draft letter, which I won't read through, but I did send my comments through and I wanted to see if there's any questions I could ask. So I'm sure what I've learned over the years with cannabis, are there a ton of questions usually? And I wanted to make myself available to answer any questions. Obviously, this resolution is drafted would have an impact on our business, on my business. I'm a 30 year resident of Burlington, a UVM grad, a native Bermont are been working in the cannabis space now for probably for 12 years. We've been operational for eight here in Burlington. The other kind of concern I do have with the resolution is it doesn't necessarily eliminate other outside companies from coming into Vermont, if passed, they could apply for retail. These are large, large companies that everybody has spoken about. And they still could be very competitive and potentially put the BIPOC and women-led businesses at a disadvantage is still. So I'm not sure if the way the draft is currently worded achieves a result that everybody's looking for. Again, I'm here to be collaborative, would like to make myself available for any questions if the counselors have that. Thank you for your time. Great. Thank you, Shane. Next, we'll go to Graham. Graham, you'll have to help me pronounce your last name. I don't wanna get it wrong. Thank you, counselor. My name's Graham, you're thanks for not, sorry, my wife's coming home. We have a nine month old daughter who's here and a dog as well. So you're getting the full working from home vibe on this call here. It's okay, we can hear your voice clearly. So no problem. Thank you. I live in Marshfield, Vermont. So, and I work in policy director at Royal Vermont. I'm no longer a Burlington resident, although I did live in Burlington for a number of years when I was going to school and living and working there as well. I'm here today to support this resolution and it is part of this coalition working with the Racial Justice Alliance, the Northeast Organic Farming Association of Vermont, Trace Vermont and Vermont Growers Association. We started working on this legislation in 2018 attending the cannabis commission and some of their meetings that were held remotely around the state and continue to try to provide testimony as we could throughout the sessions. And I'm here to answer questions. I'm here to do my best to respond to you all. And I guess what I'd like to say up front is that I think what you're seeing is that we're all here because we disagreed with the policy of prohibition. We don't think it was effective at achieving whatever goals were there. And we know that a lot of it was founded in racism and xenophobia and things we want to leave behind and things we also want to bring some reparative passing forward to achieve. And a lot of us here in this room just had different maybe ideas of what equity access or parent inclusion looked like. And I think you saw that in this, at the different advocacy and legislative process. And I would say that our coalition members felt pretty left out of this process. And we talk about compromise, we really weren't given any voice in what those compromises looked like or very little. And working at the local level is one of the few things sort of left to us outside of legislative process we're also revisiting right now. But just to address a few things that were said I think a couple of comments were said that this is the most progressive legislation in the U.S. and I think we can objectively point to other pieces of legislation in different states at the county level and also at the state level, which are more progressive in different ways. It was said that sort of the ability to dispensaries to vertically integrate was equated to how other businesses can vertically integrate. And I just want to let you all know that that's really not exactly true. Dispensaries can open an unlimited number of businesses and a limited number of locations at an unlimited scale that can test their own product. And the public can pay for the testing of the product if they don't want to test their own product if I'm remembering correctly. And whereas the vertical integration that can be achieved by normal businesses is to have one retail location, one growing location, one processing location, et cetera. In terms of the lower requirements for small cultivators and what equity that respect looks like I think I should say enough that NOFA Vermont and Royal Vermont are here testifying to the opposite that small cultivators and growers do not have a place in this bill or do not have an adequate place. We've seen the integrated licenses have all of the privileges spelled out in this legislation and none of the privileges for these other scales of cultivation are spelled out. And those who wanted to provide testimony and really work on articulating that have not been given the opportunity to do so. I think Shane's other comment is well worth taking into account. And we are working at amendments at the legislative level at the state level to try to actually put different scale limitations on businesses, on production caps in general, such that there can actually be so alleviate some of those concerns about out of state businesses or large actors coming in. If there's a cap on the scale of what you can produce then there's also a cap on the scale of business that's probably gonna want to exploit that in Vermont. And maybe that's all I'll say for now. I would just encourage you all to explore some of the material that our coalition put out over time. Some of our concerns we have amended legislation are putting forth, which puts forth a number of other concerns that we have about where inequity lives from agricultural racial equity and economic perspective in the larger Act 164. Thank you, Graham. Shane, I see you raising your hand. We're just gonna get through. We just have two more speakers, Shane, and then it's gonna go to a Q&A. So, okay, seeing a thumbs up. So, we'll next go to Laura Subin, if you're ready. Hi, thanks for having me and for having this conversation. My name is Laura Subin and I direct the Vermont Coalition to Regulate Marijuana. Here's the name of the organization because back when we started in 2014 all of the state's laws used that language. Happily, that's changing as part of the... Galatially slow in my opinion, a paradigm shift on understanding of these issues. And central to that is something that I've worked hard for many years with members of my coalition, which includes the ACLU and other civil rights organizations. At one point it includes the Racial Justice Alliance. I don't know if we've revisited that in a long time, Mark, maybe. But to center these conversations where they really should be about where the harms of prohibition lay. And I think that everyone on this panel agrees that there was a radically disproportionate and hugely harmful impact on communities of color based on cannabis prohibition. So I came to this work without orientation. It has guided me throughout my efforts along the way. I wanna start sort of at backwards from the order you posed the questions to the panelists and look at what else the city council might do. And I think Senator Pearson referenced this, but I would urge you to look at the 1% local tax and to put, I think that everybody in this conversation who has the power to do so needs to put money where their mouths are as far as racial justice and social equity. And to use that money to build up programming that would increase access to BIPOC people, people who have been harmed, directly harmed by the cannabis prohibition by communities that have been directly harmed by cannabis prohibition. I hope that we will all work towards ongoing criminal justice reform and not get complacent that that's the end of the conversation about decriminalization and legalization of drugs and look at Chittenden County has a progressive state attorney, what more can be done in policies. She just decided to stop asking for cash bail. There are a number of ways in addition to act 164 that we need to look at achieving racial justice and social equity goals in regard to cannabis policy. And I think legalization and tax and regulate are beginning and not an end to that conversation. I am also an attorney, I don't know if I mentioned that. And I do, and this is not my area of expertise and I know the city council has its own attorneys they can use, but I do worry about challenges to the resolution as I read it. I think it goes beyond the scope as other people have said of what the mandate was about what the ballot question about opting in and opting out. And so it concerns me that it would challenge any vote that took place with a resolution that had the language that I've seen so far. I also, I think somebody else said, I don't think it would achieve the goals that it would be designed to achieve because putting out licenses for integrated licensees I think it was to 2024 for about two years. If those entities wanted to, they could apply for the other licenses and become vertically integrated anyway. And so to the extent that there are fears about the market share of the existing cannabis dispensaries this language wouldn't stop them from going the other route and getting licensed up and accessing the market in that way. I also share the fear that there are other entities, large business entities that I worry about coming in and might be just as detrimental to small farmers gaining access and small retailers gaining access. And so this language wouldn't help prevent that. So I do think that there was a lot of debate and about the timing of the licenses and I don't think my personal opinions about it aren't particularly relevant, but the timeline is also in statute. So I also worry about how much flexibilities municipalities actually have in that way as well because the timeline is pretty explicit in the statute. So I do think that Burlington absolutely should move forward and put a ballot item to voters as soon as possible. Burlington's law-supported legal cannabis sales, businesses need security to plan and understand where they're going to be able to operate. If Burlington doesn't move forward, they're going to get left behind by neighboring jurisdictions that will move forward. And I think that the city council should put this on the ballot so that people don't have to go out and collect signatures to get it on a ballot during a pandemic. And I think that's really important. I think right now the most important thing is to take action to get it on the ballot because otherwise I feel fairly certain that there will be people that will go out and collect signatures to try to get it on the ballot. I think the ballot question should be simple and clear, something to the effect of affirmatively permit the operation of a licensed cannabis retailer or and that would include integrated licensees. So I think that so you could have language that said something like, shall the town of Burlington allow for the retail sales of cannabis by entities authorized to sell under Act 164. I think that voters deserve the right to have language that's simple and understandable. The average voter in Burlington doesn't know what an integrated license is and doesn't know the pros and cons of the timing of issuing any of these licenses. So I think that to confuse voters with a ballot question is bad practice. And I also think it's subject to legal challenges. So again, if you're looking at the goals of achieving racial justice in this program, I have some concerns about whether this language could do that. I do think that the city council could play a role in supporting issuing letters of support of programs that prioritize social equity in their applications even beyond what the state will require because that is a priority that is required by the state, but above and beyond voluntary commitments to using some of their profits for social equity programming. We're seeing that happen already with cannabis businesses, with CBD cannabis businesses and that should be encouraged in every way by the city council. And so I think that you do have other ways to meet your goals rather than affecting the timing of one category of license through your ballot question. I think that's probably about five minutes and I think that is what I wanted to say. Oh, and I did just also wanna add, I think that there is some misunderstanding about the integrated licenses. I don't think it's accurate that they will have special privileges after everybody's licensed up. They will also be required to have independent testing. That's a really important piece of this legislation because I think that independent testing for all cannabis retail entities has been something that we have been missing and should be welcomed as far as quality of product, safety of product, equity in the market, all of those things. So I think that the intention of the legislature is to acknowledge that we have integrated businesses already and see how they can survive but also to then have them be subject to the same rules once the rules are made. And that's another important timing question. I spent, I heard a lot of, I was in all those committee rooms too and trying to figure out how we could get small growers to sell while rulemaking was going on for some of these other details. And so I think that the idea to use the existing dispensaries but then have them switch over and be governed by the cannabis control board like everybody else once the rulemaking process is completed. Great. Thank you, Laura. I appreciate that. So that is everyone. Mark, I wanted to clarify, were you just waiting for the Q&A or did you wanna also share your thoughts as well? Yeah, I think I got a couple of words. I was actually running late for the meeting because I was sitting in another meeting before this with the mayor and talking about public safety here in Burlington. So I just wanted to just get myself grounded. So I appreciate that. Thank you. And good afternoon to everyone and for those of you, I know Virginia, that sure is good to see you again. And I wanted to just shout out to all of y'all that I know and some of you that I don't and just share a couple of thoughts but mostly take questions. Chris Pearson, it's also good to see you as well, sir. I will just give you a little bit of background from the perspective of justice for all and the Racial Justice Alliance and the work that we've been doing here. The first time this came across my radar was back at the close of 18, the beginning of 19 when I noticed that there were three reports that were released by the cannabis, the marijuana commission, I think it was. And it disturbed me that there was no, not one word on equity in any of those reports. And the reason why it was disturbing because I knew it was really gonna be used to inform the work that was done on S54. So I testified and I went in and spent a lot of time with Dick Sears and company and sent a judiciary and also sought to intercept this bill in house judiciary and also provided myself and our constituents. I think did quite a bit to, let's just say, keep the conference committee informed on our position. There's also a petition that we circulated. I think there's probably over 500 signatures on it. I'll just drop a link to it there during this time. After conference, the governor's non-signing statement is pretty clear on just where we felt short on equity the reason why I'm not giving you a big background on the racial equity implications and all of the history on the world drugs and just all of the challenges that just go with something like this is because I'm just exhausted, especially in this climate right now. And if I have to educate you on that then I think we got bigger problems. So yeah, there's ongoing work. The coalition, we continue to do this work. We've already sat down. Chris, I don't think you were able to make it but we've sat down with the rest of the members, Dick and Joe and Jeanette and I don't forget who else is there. And yeah, we have another, we're taking another pass at it and we've already submitted some language and it's in ledge console. And so we're gonna continue this fight for the small growers and those who are emerging in the market and yeah, the folks who are of color who are trying to get in this market. Full disclosure, I own a cannabis business. I've owned a cannabis business since 2019. The reason why I haven't made any moves on this because I don't have any money and I don't have any land. And I would imagine that most black people across the state and folks here in Burlington would probably say the same thing. So I just wanna make sure I'm very transparent about the work that I'm doing. I think everybody on this call who know me knows that I do the work for a lot of other reasons but yes, I do have a personal interest in this and I wanna make you aware of that. I wanna just talk just briefly about achieving the goal. I've heard a couple of comments about the goal, what it is that we're trying to achieve. I think nobody's better here to explain that goal than I am, you know, I think it's pretty clear. We've gotten locked out of the market. We're fighting really hard and I think it was only because our fight or mostly because our fight that the expungement bill actually made it across the finish line this year too. So we're grateful that at least that work has started. We're gonna have to go back and revisit that too. It's unfortunate that we had to wait for regulation to get expungement because actually equity is where you start talking about, with regulation, it's an equity conversation expungement should have been a legalization conversation but I wonder, the question here is simple is after having done everything that we can do to try to get some attention at the state legislature to and providing language that was modeled largely after Illinois's policy, which is probably some of the best policy for racial equity in this business in the nation and being told throughout the entire time, especially towards the finish line from many of the folks who represent big business, some of who are on the call right now that we just need to get this across. We've been working at this for a long time and this sounds really familiar to me because I hear it a lot. Just wait, just wait. If you just wait, then you'll get yours later. So we had no choice because the policy was passed at the statewide level and but we do have the option to go back and continue to fight and that's exactly what we're doing. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, here we have the largest city in the state who have the opportunity to place a question on about despite what anybody is saying here in terms of what the legislatures intent was and I won't argue that. But I will argue is that I think the city attorney seems that it seems that she was pretty comfortable with this question because it was ready to go. And although I understand the intent to me and this is just us doing our homework and just saying, wait a minute, there might be something that we actually can do here at the city as we continue to fight this fight for racial equity to make sure that black and brown folks and that folks who are small growers have an opportunity to enter this market in a way where the playing field is a level, level a little bit. So yeah, what it does is it just holds folks that are already doing well in another section of the market back for a little while, make some space for folks to come in who are maybe like me, don't have any land, don't have any money, don't have any business and want to get started in this market. Now some people are going to tell you, well, you know, there's this opportunity, you got this opportunity to make a whole lot of money. And if you just, if you pull back, then you're not going to be able to get the taxes that you would normally get. And you could use those taxes and give those taxes to these folks who are black and brown businesses. Well, what does that matter if you're placing them at a disadvantage? Basically what you're saying is we're going to get a head start so we can help you. But you're already in the market and you're already doing well. So yeah, there is a little bit of a loophole in there. And I think that I very much believe and I'll leave it to the legal ease to make that final decision that it could be used. And I don't think that it would cause, you know, a whole lot of harm. And I think the other thing we have to remember is it should be used in conjunction with the other tools that we have at our disposal here in the city in terms of making our own rules, making our own ordinances to fill the gap in those areas where some of my colleagues have told you that this doesn't necessarily quote unquote, meet our needs. So I think the tool is there. I think that there's an opportunity and this is where I'll close Jack is just to say that. So here we are. This is the largest city in Vermont. Obviously this has gotten a lot of folks' attention. So welcome to the party folks. And so this is important to a lot of folks. And obviously there is some ramification. There's something that some, there is an interest that folks that are owners call have. So counselors, I ask you, consider that. What do you think folks are here for? Okay. I think it's pretty clear what I'm here for. And so I'll say that this is your moment, Burlington. This is your opportunity because what you can do is you can define this market in a way that you will set an example that reflects your priorities. The priorities that you expressed when you declared racism as a public health emergency. The priorities that you expressed when you set a million dollars aside to address racial equity. The priorities that you expressed when you hired an executive director of racial equity inclusion and belonging. And the priorities that you expressed when you were the first city in the United States to decide that reparations was important enough that you would do it at your city. So this is your moment. This is your opportunity. And as much as the rest of the state doesn't like to hear it as Burlington goes, so does Vermont. I'll take your questions. Thank you, Mark. All right. Well, we've now made it through the full panelists and we've still got about an hour for Q&A, which is great. I did wanna give members of the public the opportunity to weigh in. No one had signed up in advance, but if you're on the call from the public, you can use the raise hand function in Zoom or you can send an email to me, Jay Hansen at BurlingtonBT.gov and we'd be happy to unmute your microphone and let you speak. I'm not seeing anyone at the moment. We can circle back again at the end as well for members of the public. So at this time, I wanna give city counselors the opportunity and I do see you raising your hand, Shane, but I just, I wanna give city counselors the opportunity to ask questions. And yeah, if any counselors would like to go to Shane and hear what he's thinking or if have any questions for any of our panelists, please just indicate that and I'll go to you. Councillor Carpenter, go ahead. The concept I'm struggling with is, I believe we need to opt in. I believe we need to prioritize the use of our option tax to support BIPOC businesses. And I understand the goal of delaying the integrated licensee to enter the retail market to give other small business growers and BIPOC growers opportunity to enter that market. I'm still confused a little bit around that concept. So I appreciate people's response. And in particular, I think I heard a couple speakers speak about the fact that we as a municipality don't have any ability. We don't issue licenses, it's all done by the state. Are there other things that we as a city can do to promote our own small growers and BIPOC growers getting licenses first or more quickly? And maybe we do it through ballot or maybe we do it through policy, but I appreciate some observations on that. Yeah, and Councillor Carpenter, because we have nine panelists, I think it might be necessary to indicate who you wanna go to, otherwise it's gonna be very difficult, I think. Well, I guess it's really, there appears to be a difference of opinion on whether allowing the one integrated licensee in sooner or not allows. So I guess I'll ask Jeffrey's opinion on that. And I guess on the other issue on the license, how do we promote, how does the municipality promote getting the kind of licensees we want in? Because I'm more almost worried about the Walmart of cannabis coming in here and do we at all have any opportunity? And I don't know whether David or Chris can answer that. Okay, so you wanna start with Jeffrey then? Yeah, so the question is, how much difference does it make to have the one dispensary in first relative to the marketplace? Would you like me to address it in, with regards to any aspect of the, that advantage or that one getting earlier before the other, anything specific that you wanted to be doing? Well, I mean, the way we've proposed the ballot item and certainly Councillor Hanson and I are understanding early on was the intent was to give advantage to small growers and BIPOC owners to get into the marketplace first. I'm hearing differing opinions on that. So I'm just really trying to, I'm struggling with how much advantage does that give your members, for example? I got it, thank you. So we often hear this five month window, you know, which is a figure that I think has been tossed around earlier this evening. And that is what's written in the act is that five month window. I believe it's May, is the initial sort of license date. And then five months down is when basically all of us, everyone else other than the dispensaries would have access. So the reason why our members interpret that five months as more like 24 to 36 months is because of the business development and everything that's involved behind this. And what do I mean by that? So recently, you know, we had one of the more reputable storefronts who is a member of ours, the Vermont Hempacurian come to us and say, hey, Jeff, you know, it's gonna take me at least 12 months to get my business off the ground the day I get starting the day I get that license. So that is the realistic timeframe that we're looking at. It's not what's written to the law that five month window, the realistic timeframe, which we're talking about in terms of equity and equality when individuals in Burlington would be able to access this market and rightfully operate within it, that five month window is not an accurate representation of that timeframe. Financing, insurance, trying to find a building, how long do these things take? Very long. If at all, and something to keep in mind, everyone who does apply and obtain a license will not necessarily mean that they're gonna be an operating business, right? That's just the nature of, so there's gonna be a lot of licenses given out, not everyone's gonna, the free market will come into play here. So that timeframe, just to come back to that, in reality is a couple of years. And we know this by looking at other states, this is nothing new. We can turn to a couple of states that have passed very similar laws as Vermont, not identical, but similar, where they have a kind of this control board with staggered licensing and lots of the similarities of this law. Massachusetts was one of them, Michigan was one of them, Oregon was one of them. Again, they're not identical, but they have some similarities. And in those similarities, we see some of these flaws and some of that is attributed to this timeline. So what we fear is that accessibility, when will we actually be able to get in the market? So contrast that with dispensaries. On day one, on day one, the act says they'll be able to, in May, transfer stock immediately from medical to rec. So we know they'll be operating immediately on day one and that's fine. We think there's, again, we think there's a place for them in this marketplace. But coming back to everyone else, that's where we arrive at that 36 month concept. It's grounded in the reality of starting a business in this emerging marketplace. I hope that answers your question. Councilor Carpenter, you still have the floor and sounded like you wanted to go to a couple other folks as well. Feel free. Well, I'm interested in the concept of how to get licensees into Burlington, the Vermont licensees versus the Walmart licensees. Don't speak. David. So a couple of things. One, just on the timeline, just to be clear, small growers who are defined in the law as a thousand square feet or less are prioritized with the integrated license holders as the first to receive licenses. So they will be prioritized. So that's built into the timeline based on the state statute. In addition, there's prioritization for licensing for the language of the law, women and minority-owned businesses already. So that's built in to the state. I'm not saying anything about what you would do on a local level. I'm just saying in terms of getting the folks that you've described as wanting to get into the market, those prioritizations were done on the state level and the Cannabis Control Board when looking at their licensing process and the applications will take those prioritizations into account. There's other priorities, things like folks that provide good wages and benefits, folks that are environmentally conscious, things like that. So there's a prioritization list built into the statute, which hopefully will help do what you described, which we all want, which is to have the largest participation possible, at least in part. So in response to your question, and the other piece that you had mentioned and asked that look at is the local authority. The licensing can be done just by the state, but it also in Act 164 sets up a sort of local cannabis board equivalent to what you do around alcohol licensing. So whatever inherent authorities you have related to that, you can also have, you don't have to, but it gives you the option to be able to have local authority through your local cannabis, lack of a better term, cannabis control board, your local cannabis control board. So I'm not an expert in municipal law. I don't know the extent to which you have, what authority you have under that, but there are inherent authorities under that and allowed under the statute. So I hope that helps clarify that a bit for you. Just one more. So does that mean we could slow down some licensees and give priority to others? Well, that would probably, I don't know the answer to that question. You mean you're talking about through your local authority. I mean, that would be a question for your attorneys. I'm not sure just cause I don't know the extent of your authority. There's nothing in Act 164 that addresses that. It doesn't give you more or less. It just says what you have. And so it just gives you the opportunity to set up this board. So your attorneys will be able to advise you on that. But whatever authority you have, you can then exercise through that particular. But you can't license anyone. So for instance, if small growers, if it's a, let's say not small growers, so somebody over a thousand square feet, you couldn't license them first, whether it fit your criteria of what you wanted because the state hasn't licensed them yet. So it does require a state license at the outset. So at the very minimum, the only folks that will get licensed early on will be small growers and the integrated licenses for that five months period. So. Sir Carpenter, you all stop. I don't want to hog the whole thing, but I see Senator Pearson. So you have an answer. Well, I think the easiest parallel, I'm not an attorney either. It's the authority you have over bars. I mean, a bar gets a state license to operate and comes to the city to get its establishment license or whatever it's called, can't open until the city signs off. So I do think there's parallels. Remember, we're only talking about the stores. There could be somebody making brownies. There could be somebody growing that none of that city, no city has authority over that. That's a state license and you're up and running. The thing that I just want to remind everybody is we're not talking about who gets into the market, who gets to, you know, get a head start. I think I've heard the language. We're talking about what business operates in Burlington. There are going to be integrated licenses. If they're closed out of Burlington, they're going to set up in South Burlington and South Burlington will enjoy the local 1% revenue from that and do whatever it wishes to with the extra revenue. So there is kind of a funny discussion that I'm hearing about what we want and what we don't want. And I think it's important to just be reminded that we're talking about businesses operating in Burlington. It's appropriate that we're asking hard questions about what kind of businesses we want and what that looks like, but we should not pretend that this is going to have broad implications on social justice, on racial justice and economic justice. This is going to have implications within the borders of Burlington. And if we say no, South Burlington, Winooski, Colchester, whatever, more than likely you're going to say yes. South Burlington, I was reminded today, has its term meeting in May. So they may well enjoy watching our decision and make economically calculated decisions following that. I don't know, but you know, that is just important to keep in mind. We're not really talking about something that's a hard barrier here, clearly geographically. And then as I think it was Laura pointed out, there's nothing to prevent a dispensary owner from getting just a store retail license, operating its medical under one umbrella and a store on another. So there's a lot of, I'm hearing a lot of great motivation to improve the work that Montpelier did. And we're indeed looking to make improvements even now. But I do think the context has to be realistic about, you know, we're limitedly talking about stores and talking about when and where within the boundaries of Burlington. Thank you, John. Councilor Carpenter, are you all set? I see other panelists and other counselors trying to get in. You're all good. So I see you Mark and I know Shane a while ago was trying to get in as well, but we are over an hour in and five out of the six counselors haven't had the opportunity to say anything yet. So do other counselors wanna offer questions or comments? Yes, I would like to if you don't mind. This is Ali Gang. Councilor Jain, go ahead and Councilor Shannon, you'll be right after that. Thank you, Councilor Shannon for allowing me to, because I have to leave. First and foremost, I think thank you all for being here. Yes, this is just amazing to hear directly from experts and people who have been working on this for a while, especially Senator Pearson. Thank you so much for all your work around Act 164. You know, Mark did ask a question earlier about why we are here. Me personally, I'm here to just learn and to grow. And when I say grow, it's not to grow cannabis like he does. I'm just wanna understand this issue better. And in order to better educate my constituents. But I'm in complete agreement with Laura Sabans. Completely, how about we just put a ballot item that is very simple, right? To our voters. And once we pass this, then I think we need to have the hard conversation. But how do we support bipartisan, you know? That's exactly where I am. And now my question is maybe to the city attorney, Eileen, is that possible to have this conversation about who do we prioritize? Who do we support this in terms of the revenue, later date, at a later date and not to put it on the ballot? Yes. Okay, perfect. That's all I needed to know. And thank you again. I have to leave for another minute. Thank you all. Thank you, Councillor Jang. Councillor Gatz, can I just clarify the resolution on the table, so to speak? Moved the prioritization of the revenue to a resolved clause, because we recognize putting it on the ballot would be complicated. So we are asking the city council to prioritize these to the revenue, but it won't, as it's right now, it's not a ballot question. It's a city council priority question. And we need to do that. Yeah, and I'm here just about the language that need to go to the ballot, to the voters. And it seems that anything else it can wait and we can work on that, right? Yeah. Thank you, sorry. Thank you, Councillor Jang and Councillor Carpenter. I have Councillor Shannon waiting. Please go ahead. Thank you, Councillor Hanson. Thank you everybody for coming and educating us, because this is definitely not something I have any, background as far as what's happened at the legislature. So this has been really informative for me. I'm wondering if anybody has anybody on this call, and I'm sorry, it was hard for me to follow what everybody's expertise was, but I'm wondering if there's anybody on the call representing the consumer. And before we maybe somebody answers that or not, I appreciate the effort to use this in support of the BIPOC community, but I'm not convinced, and I could be convinced, but I'm not convinced at this point that holding the integrated businesses out for two years or three years necessarily does that for a bunch of reasons. One is that Burlington is a very small place, and I walk to South Burlington on maybe not a daily basis in the winter, but certainly in the summer, Shaw's is South Burlington. And so I think that forcing a business that potentially serves consumers very well to South Burlington could disadvantage Burlington and the BIPOC community in Burlington, because if we're able to get that 1% sales tax and we're able to allocate some portion or all of the 1% sales tax to BIPOC initiatives, we're kind of shooting ourself in the foot to, if we're setting ourself up to be less successful to not get as much of that 1% revenue because we are forcing the business that meets the needs of the consumer best. And I don't know if that's the case, I'm just saying that might be the case, but if we force that business across the border so that South Burlington gets that 1% sales tax, I don't think we have served the citizens of Burlington well or the BIPOC community well. And if what we're really trying to do is to give some advantage to BIPOC businesses as opposed to BIPOC, the BIPOC community, then probably we should outright say that rather than focusing on small businesses, say only BIPOC can open businesses within this timeframe. I don't think that that's a good idea because I think that that is too limited a view of how we're going to benefit the BIPOC community here. So as Ali said, and as others have said, I prefer the more, the simple question. I also, we know that you can't put double questions on the ballot, then people don't really know that they may have a yes answer to one and a no answer to the other. And it confuses people, you don't really know what they mean when they say yes or no when there's a double question. So I don't think we should do that. And if I would like to hear from Shane, I wanna hear, cause he wanted to respond to something that somebody else had said and I would like to hear from Shane. And if there is anybody in this meeting who represents consumers, I'd like to hear from them as well. And I'll just wait for those two responses. Thanks, Councilor Shannon. Yeah, Shane, go ahead, please. Thank you for that. I just wanted to go back and it's a little ways back now. Graham had mentioned that potentially that we have unlimited locations that we can go to. That's not currently the case in the medical law. There's, you know, we're allowed so many locations and that's the same in Act 164 as well. And so I just wanted to clarify that point. Thank you, Shane. To Councilor Shannon's other question, I'm not sure that we have anyone just representing the consumer. Excuse me, Laura. So maybe I'm wrong about that. No, I certainly can't claim to represent all cannabis consumers, but I do represent a coalition of thousands of individuals and I have spent hours and hours and hours having conversations with Vermonters around the state about cannabis policy. And I think there are valid concerns. I think that this is an extremely complex issue. And for any of us to claim that we speak for all of the growers or all of the consumers or all of the retailers, that's an awfully big claim to make. I think that it would be in me, I again, think that a primary goal of the city council, I would applaud you if it is centered around BIPOC because those are the individuals who have been most harmed by prohibition. And many times the needs of small growers and the needs of BIPOC individuals are very much aligned. But maybe they're, but maybe not always. And there are some issues with the status quo. If you, for example, right now, if you own a home, you can grow your cannabis yourself and get it legally right now. If you rent, which are disproportionately BIPOC people that rent and don't own, you may very well not have any legal way to get cannabis until these stores come online. So I think that to have someone that has this as their central focus in all of the ways the decisions are made in Burlington would be really important. You do have the right to create this local cannabis commission. I would urge you to have one of the commissioners on that, have this as their mandated central focus so that every issue that comes before you as you make these decisions, you have someone who is required to consider it through the lens of the impact on the BIPOC community. Okay. Great, thanks. I have Mark and also Graham raising their hand. Councillor Shannon, though I wanna make sure, are you, you still have the floor. I wanted to actually address a question. Can you hang on just for a second. Mark, just hang on for a second. I wanna make sure that Councillor Shannon, you still, you still did have the floor. We do have Mark trying to get in as well as Graham raising his hand, but I just wanted to make sure that you didn't have anything else. No, that's all. Thank you very much. Okay. Great. And what I was actually trying to do is address the question that she had. Go ahead, Mark. And then we'll go to Graham after that. Okay. So I think that I think it's important to understand that the timeline of May of 2022 is that's just when the licenses will start to become, well, they'll start issuing those licenses. And that first five months that we were talking about there, I think that's that period where the folks who are integrated, they would be able to, you know, enter in the market as well as the growers. And to David's point, he'd indicated that there would be some level of priority that would be set, but we'll come back to that because it's not quite that straightforward. But what I wanted to indicate though, Councillor Shannon is, is that, you know, there will be a period when businesses start to come online after that. But that five month period, it'll only allow for growers to come into the market at the same time as these integrated folks, nobody else. That's kind of problematic for black and brown folks because we don't have land and we don't have money generally. So that's the challenge. That's kind of a rub, if you know what I mean. But I just want to push back a little bit, Councillor Shannon on the idea that there would be this market that exists elsewhere, but doesn't exist here because there's nothing that really indicates that these small businesses that come in and take this market in the city of Burlington wouldn't be able to do the same volume in terms of demand that the large ones would. So I think that that's a little bit, this is just my unprofessional perspective, but I think it might be a little bit of a leap of logic to assume that if these larger businesses don't operate in Burlington that there would be no availability of the product because I just don't think that's the case. And I'll just conclude with just going back to the assertion that was made earlier that well, yeah, well, other businesses will be able to enter the market at that time. It's only growers, only cultivators will have that window of five months at the beginning. Again, that's problematic for black folks because again, we don't have land and the other piece of that is as David said that there will be priorities that are set for black and brown folks just for clarification. This was a kick of the can down the road that was deferred to the cannabis control board that they would have the ability to consider as a priority licenses. It's not automatic, it's just in their consideration they could consider this is a board that is yet to be formed, that they would have the ability to consider as a priority. So I just wanna make sure that there's clarity as we're explaining priorities because there's a stark difference between a priority that exists out of the gate and one that will be considered by a board that's yet to be formed as a part of their decision-making process. Great, thank you, Mark. Graham, you had your hand up before. I do wanna get Councillor Stromberg and myself haven't gotten in yet, but okay, I see you nodding so maybe you can hold off for a moment. Councillor Stromberg, did you have any questions or comments? I feel like I have a ton of questions on this, but the purpose of my being here is to also learn and I appreciate everyone's input thus far. I tend to echo a little bit of what Mark had just said. Personally, I think that that's important. And then I also wanted to say that we shouldn't really be looking at things in terms of borders of, I feel like the BIPOC population in South Burlington matters just as much. And I think we should be thinking about us as kind of a collective whole as a community and not so much like things stop at the border of the city because again, we do wanna show that we can lead the way. So I think that's kind of just like, there's a lot of details within that, but like the overarching thought that should be kind of thought about. But I think, I don't know, I, there's, yeah, this is really kind of dense and I'm happy we're doing this because we desperately need to. And I just thank everyone for their input. Yeah, maybe come back to me. I might have a few other questions. I appreciate it. Thanks. Thanks, Councillor Stromberg. Yeah, feel free, Councillors. If you have more questions, let me know. I do have a few that I wanted to get out there. So something that keeps coming up in this conversation is the vertically integrated businesses and Senator Pearson, I'd love if you could answer this. So they're vertically integrated, but at the same time, I'm hearing that, they would be buying from small growers. Can you just clarify that? Because to me, that is at odds with the idea of vertical integration. And I just want to understand what we mean by vertical integration. So I think, actually, I'm going to ask Mickenburg or Laura or Virginia to clarify the specifics of your question, but because they're probably more conversant. We didn't give the dispensaries a vertically, we didn't say, let's give them vertical integration. We were setting up a medical system under a federal government that didn't want anything. And so we gave them a license to operate a dispensary and that meant they could grow, they could test, they could cultivate, they could create tinctures, whatever, and they could sell. So that was just a dispensary license. It was one thing. Nobody else could do any one little part of that. It was a dispensary, we licensed a very small number of them as we were tiptoeing into this. Now that we're going into the recreational adult use market, we realized, hey, there's a lot of pieces to this business. We don't want them heavily concentrated in a few hands. We want to spread it around. And so we started setting up, okay, well, you need to have growers, you need to have cultivators, you need to have, there's all these different pieces. But what do you do with the businesses that are still in their infancy, really, who actually do have this vertical integration? What do you do with them? Do you say to Shane, thanks for operating your business, squeak and buy for some number of years. Now you can only pick one slice of it. We were stuck, it was tricky. Do you just say to them, you can only stay in the medical universe and we'll let the recreational market be somewhere else? That didn't seem fair either. There was no great answer. So the vertical license is just a way of acknowledging this transition that businesses like Shane's, who's a Burlington business, by the way, is gonna have to go through. It wasn't a desire to give Shane a step, like the motivation wasn't, hey, let's make sure Shane gets every piece of this. It was, Shane has an existing business. What is it gonna look like in five years? We can't snuff him out because we're now broadening access to cannabis. And so I just, it's just an important mindset and forgive me if I'm repeating myself, but we're not sort of, it's not a clean shift, right? Because they're just set up in entirely different universes. And to the specifics of your question, I don't know if Laura, David or Virginia, one of you could answer more with more knowledge. That was really helpful, Senator Pearson. Yeah, Laura, if you wanted to briefly clarify. Well, I think that I understand your question and I think that you're right. So in that, it does seem like a contradiction because if the integrated licensees are vertically integrated, they can grow their product and then they can sell their product. And that has been a concern of many cannabis growers out there saying, well, what makes you think that they will sell our product instead of their own product if they have this headstart because the law doesn't compel them to do that? I don't know, I thought that might have been the question that you were asking. Yeah, essentially because I heard and I think it was, I don't know, a couple of people mentioned that during that first window, the dispensaries would buy from small growers. And in my head, I was saying, well, if they're integrated, why are they buying from small growers and not growing their own product? That was my confusion. And I personally think that that's a legitimate concern. The statute does not require them to buy from other growers. So I think that is something to be aware of. That said, when almost every state and maybe even every state rolled out their programs, the issue was not having enough supply. And so I think that many people who supported this, given that concern said, well, there is no way these entities are gonna be able to grow enough themselves to meet the demand even in those five months. And so the people that support it felt comfortable saying they're because of the laws of supply and demand, they're going to end up having to buy from these other small growers because they're not gonna be able to meet the demand with their own supply. So I do think that I understand the concern that you raise very much. No, that's really helpful. And the point being too, is that they're prohibited from purchasing from large growers. Is that true? Okay, good evening, yeah. Okay. Councilor Hanson, if I could just- Yeah, go ahead, Senator Pearson. We just signed off on a bill today that actually would look at mandating that they take, I think it was as much as a quarter or a third of their supply from the small growers. So this is an active conversation. I mean, you're in the middle of history here, a long history of China and prohibition. And to me, there's a simplicity argument for the straightforward question of voters while you guys hold on to your power to appropriate money in all sorts of the good ways we've been talking about tonight. I just wanna add to the small producers providing to the large corporate outlets. This is, there's precedent for this. This happened in the 90s. Recall the Vermont Brewers Association in Vermont. This was called contract brewing. And something that Noonan taught us was brewers don't like to do this, especially craft brewers. It impacts their reputation. Their reputation is all they have as craft artists. So this is not something we should be relying on when it comes to Act 164. What we hear within our constituency is this is a no-go. I just wanted to put that out there. Contract growing is not something that growers want to do. It's not desirable. And I do believe my colleague, Graham, was trying to get awarded. I just wanted to say that. Yeah, Graham, you were trying to get in earlier on. I wanna go to you. Yeah, I just wanted to apologize for miss speaking before I was certainly a little distracted, but I do have a number of pages of legislation right here that actually delineate the privileges dispensaries have. And I could read that off to folks if that would be helpful. It sort of dismisses not only some, one of the things I said about the multiple locations, but it also clarifies that dispensary registered pursuant to this chapter may attain one integrated license or a maximum of one of each type of license. An integrated license may not hold a separate cultivator, wholesale or manufacturer or retailer or testing license. That is one thing. I just wanna get you to a dispensary license pursuant to this chapter may engage in practices that are not permitted for cannabis establishment. As such, a dispensary may be vertically integrated under one license, sell tax free cannabis and cannabis products to patients and caregivers, deliver cannabis and cannabis products to patients and caregivers, allow patients and caregivers to purchase cannabis and cannabis products without leaving their vehicles. Produce and sell cannabis and cannabis products that have a higher THC content and it's permitted by other establishments. Produce and sell cannabis products that may not otherwise be permitted for cannabis establishment and sell larger quantities. And then there's another thing that actually does clarify exactly what I said about testing, which is that they can test themselves. And if you want to be independent, if you were going to an independent testing through the agency agriculture, then the public, department of public safety will pay for that testing. So those are all privileges that other cannabis establishments will not be allowed to have. And I just wanna echo a little bit of what Jeffrey said, like it's, I have to admit some frustration because even now, Senator Pearson, I mean, you're talking about a bill coming up that's about small growers and one of the main, not about us, but out of us, like you have the Northeast Organic Farmer Association or all of Vermont here asking to provide testimony on this, asking to inform this. And we have not been consulted in where I'm here being told that myself, I'm a small farmer, Jeffrey and other people he represents, we're being told that our needs are being met and what you're hearing from us is that we're not being met. We actually haven't been asked. And that, you know, as a small farmer, I say that direct markets are how small farms stay alive. We stay alive based on direct market relationship. It's a craft product, it's who we are, it's what we sell, it's that relationship. We don't, we're not reliant on wholesale prices. You know, we are the price makers, not price takers. And I understand exactly what Pearson, Senator Pearson is saying about the history that brought us to this place with these integrated licenses. And I certainly applaud, you know, Shane's been doing great work. Like that's not what we're here to complain about. Shane, we're trying to achieve some equity in this process and make sure that the people we represent have equal standing here and are actually, you know, brought into the process of informing the language of what this looks like in the long run. Thank you, Graham. We are, we've got about 20 minutes left and I just wanna try to, you know, I appreciate all these perspectives as much as we can focus in here with the decisions before the council specifically. And one question I had for the city attorney is, is there anything that we can do? I think this question's been swirling around. Attorney Blackwood with licensing, for example, could we prohibit out of state licenses? Could we prohibit applicants above a certain size? I mean, is there anything that the city can do to control who's able to get a local license? So I think the local control board is gonna work just like your local control board works for alcohol, which is that when the regulations are written, it will tell us exactly what kinds of things that we have ability to look at. But I think it's gonna be limited to what you think about in the alcohol context and I don't think those kinds of things would fall under it. Once somebody's got a state license, I don't think we're gonna be able to say to them, no, you can't have, you're not gonna get a separate license in Burlington. It's gonna be like your local control board. Okay. Attorney Blackwood, this is a question. Relative to the discussion on the ballot about delaying the opt-in for integrated licenses, could that be done in something other than a ballot question? So if we approve an opt-in on the ballot in general, is there an opportunity to just, and as I understand it, there's only two types of licenses that can sell in the city or will be able to sell in the city. Can we through ordinance or some other fashion establish a different time? Once we agree to opt-in, can we say these people can opt-in later? You're not opt-in, open a store. So there's a specific section in the law that says that we cannot by ordinance condition the operation of a cannabis establishment or the issuance or renewal of a municipal permit to operate it on any basis other than the conditions explicitly stated in subsection C here, which is under the local cannabis control section. And it does say we may issue an administer local control licenses. They do call it a license. And that we can condition it on compliance with zoning regulations, ordinances regulating signs or public nuisances, a violation of any condition placed upon a license like we do with local control commission now. And then we administer the rules furnished by the board. So it looks to me like those are the only conditions I can see that we can make a formal recommendation on. Now, because they have to go through a local control board process, there could be practically a way that things move at a different pace than they move at the state level. I don't know if that's helping. Yes. Yeah, I'll set councilor Carpenter. Do any other counselors have anything? Director Green, did you have any questions or comments for our panelists? Thank you, councilor Hanson. I just wanna make sure that we're not forgetting to make sure that this whole process is as racially equitable as it can be. And I think that we're forgetting about the people who were harmed and the people who benefited off of that harm for decades. And if we remember who was harmed and put them first, then maybe we can come to some kind of conclusion that would be equitable. That's pretty much all I had to say, councilor Hanson. Okay. Thank you, director Green. I see David and Shane with their hands raised, David. Thank you. I just wanted to make a just very technical point. It was mentioned about direct to market other than that first five month period, a small grower or frankly any grower can also apply for retail license too. So under the law that's contemplated, you can go direct to market with your product not within that first five month period, but anytime after that growers throughout the state can apply for both a grower license and a retail license. In fact, they've established what is called a small retailer license, which again is a lower threshold license like the small grower license. So I just wanted to make that technical point. Thank you, David. Shane, go ahead. Thank you. I just wanted to piggyback a little bit on Senator Pearson's comments and give a little more detail on that. For us being integrated, that discussion that was ongoing at the state house, our concern was literally, are we gonna have to lay people off? We have a vertical integration, I have people that work in the lab, I have people that cultivate, I have folks that work in the kitchen. And if we're not able to do certain components, which silo, which employees are potentially gonna have to let go to participate in the future marketplace? So that was one of the conversations there. Small growers, we've really, a couple of years ago, we've wanted to have small growers come into the medical market even so that we could purchase from them. That was something though that had a really hard time getting traction at the committee level. We did support that though. The bigger picture here with this adult market is supply, there won't be enough supply. I'm not going to be able to build a facility big enough. I don't have $50 million to go build a facility to grow all the cannabis that's gonna be sold in Vermont. That's where it is gonna take a marketplace to fill those demands that are coming. And we wanna be collaborative with the growers. And as Dave just said, after that five month period, cultivators, small cultivators, craft growers can get a retail license as well. We're excited to work with the small craft grower to build that relationship. Be able to bring their product into the marketplace. It will be branded their product. So customers, consumers will start to know that product earlier than other brands potentially. That's gonna help the small grower. That's the intention of that. There's gonna be demand for their product and we wanna help them get to market with that. Graham also mentioned some other caveats for the medical program that were, you know, defined for us because the medical program has been shrinking in size since legalization or home grow past the state house. Again, that's something that we supported. We did not interfere with that. We believe in home grow. We've always supported caregivers here in Vermont. It's a plant. We believe people should be able to grow their medicine if they wanna grow it. Even growing itself can be part of the process for people healing themselves. So we do believe in the small graph grower. It's Vermont. I was born and raised here. This is my community. I bought plenty of beer in Burlington, Vermont and support the local breweries. So I appreciate everybody's comments at this point and look forward to additional questions if there are any. Thanks, Shane. And yeah, we are running up against time. We've got a little over 10 minutes. I'm gonna prioritize if counselors have any additional questions. I do see you, Josh. And if there's no counselor questions, I'll go right to Josh and any other panelists that wants to speak. You can raise your hand. I'm looking at counselors first. Counselor Carpenter. Just a question for Shane or anybody else. How much has the medical market in states more developed than Vermont diminished? I mean, in states where there's now legal adult youth, do you have any sense of, I mean, my presumption is it will diminish since people won't have to go to a doctor to get a prescription. They would prefer to just walk down the street and, but do you have any sense of how much the medical market has diminished? For us, since 2018 here in Vermont, it's down by 30% at this point. We have roughly 5,500 patients registered. With the registry, it's probably around 4,000 at this point. Maybe 4,200. Colorado's medical market has decreased over time. It's still there. It has found a floor at this point, I think. This is one of the conversations we really engaged with at the state house was that we wanted to ensure that the medical program continues to survive here in Vermont. It has a service. It has a role to play. People that are using cannabis for their treatments, alternative treatments, going into a Pearl Street beverage is not their environment. They're not gonna wanna do that. And so how do we sustain a medical market? And that goes back to Graham's, highlighting those details that we did get, not limiting the THC. There's no limit on the THC in the medical market. That's because medical patients might need a higher dose of milligrams of THC than the average consumer. And so we made efforts to make sure the medical market can survive here in Vermont. Would you still, for those services, higher THC and home delivery and all of that, would that still just be limited to the medical market? Yes. Yes. The consumer of that marijuana would still have to have the prescription or... Yeah, and that's one of the things that's difficult. Like you said, the average consumer right now, potentially in the future, can walk down, purchase cannabis in the medical market. You have to go to the doctor. You then have to do a follow-up appointment 90 days later. You have to pay for a card. There are a lot of steps involved for the medical patient currently. And so we wanted to try to make that process less hurdles for them, more incentive for them to be a part of the medical program, knowing that they want to not only have different products, but they want to have different conversations when they do come in. And so that was the intent in trying to define the medical program more so going ahead right now. So... You all set, Councillor Karpner? Great. So Joshua and Jeffrey both trying to get in and now Laura as well. Before that, any other councillors? Okay, Joshua, go ahead. Thank you, appreciate it. I just wanted to respond to something that Senator Pearson said earlier. It sounded like there was an undercurrent of acknowledging that the medical program didn't go well and that there were certain considerations acknowledged, I think on your part by lawmakers in drafting S54, what was S54? To make it so that because business has been slow, the medical markets have been shrinking, things like that, that there were some sort of acknowledgement of that and some sort of privilege granted to these permit holders in the new market that could account for the fact that they're established, they're around as medical dispensaries. I do think it's important to call out that the definition of medical dispensary was synonymous with a vertically integrated company. So even though they're a medical dispensary, they're still vertically integrated, these vertically integrated permits are also vertically integrated. And I also want to acknowledge that this isn't just about Shane. Shane and Champlain Valley Dispensary have been doing good work. There's four other integrated permit holders would be integrated permits, sorry, about two other publicly traded companies. And these are companies that can access $50 million quite easily to build a grow facility that would supply their whole demand. And they would have no incentive to reach out to small growers to stock their products. And they would go after opening up a dispensary likely in the largest county, largest city in the state. So, how do we know that even Champlain Valley Dispensary isn't going to be outcompeted by these larger companies in that context? I think there's a, even though it may sound like a pain in the butt to go get a different permit and enter the market that way, that might be more protective for Shane and for his business as well, given what could happen if that headstart is really taken advantage of by publicly traded corporations that have access to capital that isn't really imaginable for a lot of small rural farmers and a lot of black and brown folks in Vermont, definitely a lot of Burlington residents. So, I guess really I just wanna bring it back to what seems to be really the question again, which is this privileged entry, do we want that to be rolled back? And thank you, Tyastia, for bringing up who's really been harmed the most and asking us to come back to that and take that perspective because I think if there is any sort of special consideration or slant in this market, it has to be towards the people that were harmed the most by this plan. So, I think there's been a lot of talk here about why we shouldn't do something that impacts at the end of the day, five different permits held by three different companies and there's a whole city and a whole state of people trying to get involved in the industry that should have access to it. Thanks, Josh. Councillor Carpenter and I have Geoffrey and Laura waiting, but go ahead. If someone could clarify, can all five of those companies come into Burlington tomorrow or right now I understand there's only five integrated licenses in the state. Can the state issue five more integrated licenses? And so of the five, could all five operate in Burlington? If somebody could answer. I'm seeing a lot of mixed responses, Councillor Carpenter. Who did you want to go to, Councillor Carpenter? David, I just want to know the law, if they can come in or not. Yeah, well, it's not like all the things in this, it's not a straightforward answer. One of the criteria that the Cannabis Control Board does look at is geographic diversity. So, as they did consider during the rollout of the medical program, geographic diversity, right now there's only one medical dispensary in Burlington. There's only one in Chittinac County. And so that is part of the consideration that the Cannabis Control Board will take in to account when issuing licenses. So there's nothing that prohibits it explicitly other than the fact that the Board will make those determinations. But there's five licenses now, or really technically four. If all four of them wanted to open a shop in Burlington, could they? Well, what I'm saying is I think it's hard to answer that question. Jeff may have thoughts on it. I think because geographic considerations are part of the Board's task, I think it would be difficult, but at the same time, it could be possible. So. All right. So I have Jeff and Laura waiting, but Councillor Carpenter, are you all set? All right, this is probably gonna be it unless any other councillors come to me and we're just otherwise we're gonna wrap up with Jeff and Laura. Go ahead, Jeff. Thank you. I guess, you know, the way that we interpret this law, there really is not much stopping Councillor Carpenter that from occurring. So come May, in fact, I wouldn't even be surprised if given their resources, they already had retail locations in this. In the city, they're just waiting for approval and the licensing to come through. Let's be clear. This is an emerging industry across this country, but it's a multi-billion dollar industry. And within these national stats, it's something like less than 3% of these businesses are people of color own, less than 3% nationwide. And so stepping back, who's largely benefiting from these laws, state by state, there's about 13 of them now, so what I would just impose upon the Councillors who are with us this evening is, what do we want Burlington to look like in these coming years? Ask ourselves these questions. What harm is done to the city of, to the residents of Burlington if we were to move through in this direction, which is attempting to even the playing field for those most harmed by prohibition and those with less access to capital and land as maybe some of these dispensaries. So that's really what I would leave it as. And I will say this, it really is timing. We will get there eventually. We will have the foam brewery, we will hopefully have reputable people of color own businesses. It's a matter of do we want it in two years, three years or maybe five, 10 years. That's really what we're thinking about here. So ask yourself, what do we want Burlington to be? Do we want to lead by example or follow that status quo? And I'll just end it there. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Laura. I just wanted to add, I think that this is an important question and that personally, I worked with a lot of people who are on this call and advocated to find ways to infuse them on the system with enough startup capital so that there wouldn't be a quote, head start for dispensaries. And those were efforts that the dispensary owners didn't fight against. Ultimately, this is what the law said. And I think we should continue to advocate to make as Senator Pearson said, to amend this law and improve this law. I just hope that this conversation doesn't distract from what I think maybe are more important because no matter what the timing of the licenses, if BIPOC people and people that suffered, and there's a huge overlap from criminal convictions from cannabis who lost job opportunities, who don't have capital, no matter when they're allowed access to licenses, some of those people are not going to be able to get them if there aren't funds, if there aren't support, if there aren't no interest loans, if there's not technical assistance around developing these businesses. And so to me, I think figuring out how as a city that's, I hope that's what you wanna look like and that's what you help to build and make models for, not just through this law, but in all of the work that you do as a city council. And I think that's, I just don't want that to get lost in the details of this particular question because I think that is a larger and more important question. Thank you, Laura. We are right up against time and I really, really appreciate everyone for taking the time to participate. This was great. A lot of really interesting perspectives. I think we had a diversity of perspectives offered and you all were really respectful and I think shared the time really well with one another and made my job a lot easier in terms of managing the whole thing. So thank you all so much and I hope you'll continue to engage with us and help us as we make this really important decision. So we don't need a formal adjournment vote because we never had a quorum of councillors so we can just end it informally by just saying thanks everyone and have a great evening. Thank you. Thank you.