 So Betsy, would you remind us what 819 is all about? Yes, Madam Chair, and I'm actually gonna turn it over to my colleague Michelle Childs, but who is here from Legislative Council. But, big picture. H819 is in regard to municipal authority to regulate marijuana odors via ordinance. Thank you. Good morning. Thanks for having me in for the record in the House Office of Legislative Council. And Betsy Ann and I are gonna kind of co-staff this and maybe be in and out because I wrapped all the drug laws and I worked on all the marijuana laws, but she's your expert, obviously, in government operations and municipal authority. So we're gonna tag team on this. So just as she mentioned, the bill is introduced is fairly straightforward. It's amending actually a section. So Title 18 is where you have your drug law. So where you have all of your marijuana laws. It's in the health chapter under regulated drugs. And so you'll recall first thing out of the gate this year was the action on H511, which became Act 86. And just for a little recap of what it did is it allows anyone who's 21 years or older, as of July 1st of this year, to be able to possess an ounce or less of marijuana. They can also cultivate up to two mature plants and four immature plants in their dwelling. Dwelling is kind of the just, there's a definition of it in 511. And maybe it might be helpful, maybe if Denise might take a link from Act 86 and put that under H819 as well. That might be helpful for you guys. Oh, that's pretty fabulous, thank you. That's great, so you guys can go back and forth because you might be wanting to consult the underlying as you're talking about the policy for H819. And so there is the individual limits for what somebody can cultivate is also the per dwelling unit. So if you have multiple adults living in a home or an apartment, they would still be restricted that per dwelling unit would be the two mature and the four immature. There are restrictions on where you can consume marijuana. And I'll show you that because that's gonna be, I think directly related to what you're talking about at H819. So there's a provision in H819, you'll see up here at the top of the page. And this goes into effect on July 1st, along with the rest of Act 86, is that a person shall not consume marijuana in a public place. Public place is defined extremely broadly. So there are, as we start to see the law play out, people will start to figure out where is not included, but for the most part, it's gonna be mostly people's home, private homes, and their property. But public place would be any public accommodation, it'd be street sidewalk, lawn in the state house out in the general public. And so I just wanna let you know there, and it's a civil penalty, so it's a ticketable offense. And in that law, you'll see and here's, in the way that it's just structured, I don't, you guys maybe experienced this before where you have in one session, two bills that amend the same section of law. Have you ever done that where one goes really fast and then you wanna amend the same section on law, and so we do a July 2nd effective date so that one doesn't cancel out the other. And so that's the way that H819 is structured, is so the language that you see in section one would take effect on July 2nd, right after the other one does, just so you understand how they're kind of piggybacked. And so in Act 86 is this existing language, right here what you see, which is that the section that is allowing people to possess and to consume with restriction doesn't prohibit a municipality from adopting civil ordinance to provide additional penalties for consumption of marijuana. So if there was, so there's the general ability to be able to ticket, something that goes to judicial bureau, I mean, is the municipalities have the authority to be able to do their own with regard to public consumption. And this is just adding the additional authority for municipality to define as a public nuisance any significant odor that emanates from a person's property due to marijuana consumption on property. Questions, first of all, thanks, and then why? Do we define significant odor anywhere? No. Pretty hard to do with that, just your case. Why are we kind of dropped? Well, the earlier language prohibits use in virtually anywhere outdoors within the municipality, the street and alley of park, I mean, it's just about the entire town outdoors. Yes, although, you know, in your, I mean, imagine what was gonna come up and what the decision points for the municipality is gonna be is that if people are so, I live in Montpelier, right? So it's a pretty densely populated, you know, from the way to my neighbors from my back porch or whatever. So if somebody is, they're not, they're on their own private property, I'm sitting on my back porch, or I'm sitting out on my back, you know, my yard, there, if I, so maybe I should use me, but if someone was consuming marijuana in their own backyard, you know, that is, I might be able to be visible to my neighbors. I might be able to be visible from the sidewalk, somebody, you know, looking into my backyard, but I'm not in a public place, according to the definition under Act 86. And so I think the issue is really gonna be one of, when somebody is consuming under Act, you know, in accordance with Act 86 on their private property, but maybe the marijuana smoke wafts over and can be smelled by their neighbors, is that something that Towns want to adopt something and identifies a public sense? And if they do, that then seems to come very close to a total ban, because if anybody smells it, coming from a private dwelling or the yard, a municipality could deem that to be a significant odor. Oh, they smelled it, it's got to be significant. Boom, now you can't even smoke it in your house or maybe you'd have to have to close your windows. This then just comes so close to potentially being a total ban, that I wonder why we would have passed the earlier law of the law. I think that would be a question for the sponsors. Yeah. And also, there might be some help answering your question, Lauren, in the document that Tom Little sent to us from the commission, the governor's commission on marijuana. We've got Rob and then Jim. Couple of questions around this. Going back to the cultivation, my understanding you have four mature plants, two mature plants, correct? Two mature, four immature. Correct. But you can have an unlimited amount of the first fry fries. Right, so the way that it is is that there are requirements about how it has to be cultivated, but any marijuana that you cultivate from those mature plants you're allowed to keep as long as it is stored on the property, as long as it is stored on the property where the marijuana is cultivated and reasonable precautions are taken to kind of secure it to make sure that people who shouldn't be accessing it like under 21s. So that does not count towards the ounce, but the H-19 only deals with the consumption aspect, so it's mostly just gonna be about smoking. There are out west where you have very, very large cultivation operations. I think there have been some towns that have been looking at regulating the odors coming from those large cultivation spaces, but the amounts per dwelling unit are fairly small, and this doesn't, the H-19 only deals with the consumption piece, not with any odors coming from growing a couple plants. Well, is there any language in here that pertains to multifamily units? Part of the code? No, but the way that, well, in Act 86, the dwelling unit is defined, if you have a multifamily, it's each dwelling unit, so if you have a triplex, it's each one that can have the individual allotment. Can they smoke in their individual units? If it is, as long as it's not prohibited by the lease. Jim? So along the same line, so nothing in current law would prohibit an apartment from apartment complex from having more restrictive than the state law? Oh, no, there's nothing that affects the lease agreement with regard to landlords and whatever the lesses are doing, so I imagine what you're gonna see probably with a lot of places where people are renting property is landlords are gonna say, put in the lease, that you can't do that because they may have issues around, well, I don't wanna jeopardize my insurance, my homeowner's insurance by, because you have to have written permission from your landlord if you're gonna, if you're going to be cultivating in that space, and so. But how about using the product? Not for using, no, but if you're gonna be cultivating, you're not gonna have permission. Okay, but if you're using the product, can the landlord prevent that? Yeah, they can do that now, just like they can say, we don't want you smoking cigarettes in your apartment, we don't want you smoking marijuana in your apartment. The sponsor has brought up the issue of maybe condo associations or town home associations where you're in close quarters. Could they, could the association prevent use of marijuana within that complex? I don't know anything about condo associations and those specific rules that regulate those, but I don't see why it would necessarily be any different from like anybody who owns property that is contract, you know, that has an agreement with either the homeowner's or the tenants, there's nothing in Act 86 that says that you can't regulate that by contract by these. Okay. What, one other, but maybe more foreign, so I can, I have a response to Warren's question. Okay. In terms of why would we pass the law and then allow Ms. Pallie to, I guess I would liken it back to a letter. We've had prohibition and whatever, many years ago, but we still allow for it in write-downs. I mean, again, it's the town that would have to, and in this particular case, I guess it would only be those towns that are close quarters, it certainly wouldn't apply to Chittenden because we're just too spread out. Yeah. We've got quite a lineup in the show. I hope you were intending to stay with us for a while. I can, and then also I just want to let you know is I do have Sarah Anderson right over here. Sarah is one of our, she's a third-year law student who's working on this too, and so you may see her sometimes when we have to pop out and we're just pushing towards you. Thank you very much. Well, we've got Marcia, Jessica, and John, and then I would hope we could have Betsy come and do her part of this so that we can start on the folks who have come in from outside to talk with us about this bill. So, Marcia? So, who am I asking a question to? Oh, where'd she go? There she went. Michelle, Marcia wants to ask you a question. Okay, please. How would this work as far as hotels, because under liquor law, your room that you have rented for the night basically counts as your residence for that evening. How does that work? Act 8.6 does not permit consumption in any public accommodations, which would include, which would be all hotels. Which would include hotels, okay? So it would not be considered your first or second evening to consume in a hotel. Thank you. That's my question. So, I have a question. Michelle, can you hand it to Jessica and John, both, not to pose the question to you. So, I'm just curious about a noise, would this be similar to a noise ordinance, so to go back a little bit to what Jim was asking, first you can answer that, if you want. I would have Betsy and address that in regard to the municipal authority pieces. Okay, okay. No, no, that's okay. I was just trying to figure out if you lived in a condo and you'd say you own yours, Townhouse, and they own their Townhouse, and there's a wall between maybe that you share because the Townhouses are connected. And so now, as far under a noise ordinance, if there's a big party next door and it's 3 a.m., you can call the police and say, hey, the noise, you know, we have a noise ordinance and blah, blah, blah. I just wondered if it would be the same rule because of this, as far as odor from marijuana, would they be able to? So, you're talking about specifically around condo association? Well, more so, it doesn't have to be condo, because it could be, like you gave the example of the neighborhood, so you're in your home and you live pretty close, because you're in Montpelier and the house is, like you said, you can go see out on that porch. And so, it could be on your porch as well. Right, I think maybe I would take that to Betsy and to talk a little bit more about how nuisance ordinances are typically enforced in municipalities. Okay, thank you so much. Okay. The shelves are from Kristen. Okay. Head, show them. Well, I guess my question is a municipal question, so I'll save it for Betsy. Okay, thank you very much. Michelle, thank you. Okay, Betsy, so you've got your first couple of questions. This is your first question, right here. After you finish telling us whatever you want, you can tell us. Let me just pull up the general municipal authority, regulatory authority. This is the go-to statute for municipal regulatory authority. It's 24 VSA 2291. It provides a long list of the issues that municipalities can regulate. I'll just pull it up very quickly because currently you'll see once I pull up this statute. 14. That's right. Representative Ganyu are ahead of me. Subdivision 14 already allows, show you the intro language, that for the purpose of promoting the public health, safety, welfare, and convenience, a town, city, or incorporated village shall have the following powers. So these are things that they're authorized to do. You go down to Subdivision 14, it's a very broad to define what constitutes a public nuisance and to provide procedures to take action for its abatement or removal as the public health, safety, or welfare may require. This is broad nuisance authority to define what constitutes a nuisance and then to provide procedures to abate those nuisances. Towns treat nuisances in different ways. It could possibly be noise as a nuisance or maybe certain trash. And actually I think I'm not very familiar with the nitty gritty of each town and what they do for Norman's authority. Maybe the LCT would be a good resource for the boots on the ground implementation of this nuisance execution of this law that allows nuisance authority. However, so that's broad nuisance authority would think, oh, well so, don't municipalities have this authority already to regulate this marijuana odor? And so I should say, as a legislative attorney, I can tell you what the law says and what case law says. I cannot provide legal advice or guidance to towns. And I'm not in the executive or judicial branches that would actually try to prosecute or defend laws or in the judicial branch that would adjudicate any challenges. But let me just give you a run through of municipal authority. Now you've seen the document that I'm about to pull up before. Our Dylan's Rule handout. Remember, we're a Dylan's Rule state which essentially means that the state controls municipalities and through our case law, and this is case law that is applied throughout the states that are Dylan's Rule state. Dylan's Rule being for John Forrest Dylan, he was an Iowa Supreme Court Justice and he became an expert on municipal powers. But you can see down in this portion two of municipal authority case law, these are our Vermont Supreme Court cases or some of them on municipal authority. If you look down to the second bullet says we have adopted Dylan's Rule declaring that a municipality has only those powers and functions specifically authorized by the legislature and such additional functions as maybe incident, subordinate, or necessary to the exercise thereof. So a municipality has to be granted specific authority or to have authority that derives from the specific authority that was given to a municipality. That's Michelle was reviewing for you the provisions of Act 86. There's a few things that stick out that Michelle already reviewed, but I'll go back to them for you. For example, on page five of the Act, there is the language regarding the ability of people to possess certain amounts of marijuana. And of these amounts that are permitted, the language goes on to say that here are the amounts of marijuana that may be possessed. And a person who possesses those amounts shall not be penalized or sanctioned in any manner by the state or any of its political subdivisions or denied any right or privilege under state law. So people throughout the state are allowed to possess these amounts of marijuana. Then at the top of page six, it goes on to say that a person shall not consume marijuana in a public place. Just saying in these public places, as that term is defined, marijuana cannot be consumed there. So if it's not a public place, consumption would be allowed. And then the bottom of page seven, it goes on to say, but the section does not prohibit a municipality from adopting a civil ordinance to provide additional penalties for consumption of marijuana in a public place. That public place definition. So it appears to me based on our Dillon's Rule Case Law that municipal authority right now under Act 86 is limited to ordinances to provide penalties for consumption of marijuana in a public place. So because that's the current law, limited authority of municipalities to regulate the consumption of marijuana, it does seem that a municipality, if you did want to allow a municipality to regulate voters emanating from one's private place where they live, for example, you would need to give a municipality that specific authority. And that's what H819 is designed to do. To amend Act 86, that Act 86 language to say, okay, the section does not prohibit a municipality from adopting a civil ordinance to provide additional penalties for consumption of marijuana in a public place, or to define as a public nuisance any significant odor that emanates from a person's property due to marijuana consumption on the property. But this is a policy decision for you to make if you want to give municipalities this authority to so regulate marijuana odors that emanate from a person's property. Would that make sense? Yes, thanks. John, you've already answered your question. No, that's the answer, I already answered it. Oh, I'm sorry, I thought you would ask your question. Okay, and I'm still not sure that I understand. So right now, do municipalities have the ability to regulate noise? Is that the same sort of ordinance as this would be? I believe that they are, yes, I believe it seems like they're along the same vein. It likely is if towns regulate noise, it's likely through nuisance authority, I would think. I have it take a survey of towns to see what kind of nuisance ordinances they have adopted. Maybe that's where the LCT might be a resource to discuss those types of ordinances to address nuisance and city noise. But it seems to be along the same thing. Ear versus skin and skin and cysts. Loud noise. Police officer comes, can you turn it down? Yes, okay. It seems like the same idea. Gwen, would you like to weigh in? Gwen, Zach, I have a VLC today, I can shed maybe a little bit of light on this. So if you look at McQuellan municipal corporations, treatises, which basically talks about municipal authority, when you're looking at the definition of nuisance as well, there's no one core definition that's not really possible to define it. I'll just read from what it does. It may be generally stated that a nuisance is a thin conditioner use of some continuity as distinguished from a solitary act, which through offensive odors, noises, substances, smoke, ashes, and soot, dust, gas, fumes, et cetera, works, hurts, annoyances, inconveniences, or damages to the public or to another with respect to his or her comfort, health, repose, or safety. And then going back to what was just said about the Dillings Rule application here, you still have to link that back to some specific language to give the authority for those things. So next. So before I ask a question, I was going to make a little statement here. These odors are certainly going to cause a lot of work for state and local police because as people are smelling odors, especially if they don't really want to be exposed to it or don't want people to even use it, they're certainly going to be calling in local police often. And when they smell the odor, when they smell the odor and they see somebody get in their car to drive, they are certainly going to be calling the police to let them know that these people, I smell the odor and now they're driving. I think it's going to be quite a burden on local police. I think a lot of this is a burden on an awful lot of municipalities. So my question is, we have town health officers. And I just wonder, are they going to have some special training? Are they going to get involved with this? When they get the calls, are they going to pass it on to the local police or state police? I'm not sure if it affects those local officers. Answer that at this point. Any other questions for Betsy? Okay, then committee, are we good with starting here from some of our guests who are here to help flesh out information in this regard? Betsy, thank you for that. Yeah. I'll check it out. Do you have a question about it? Well, yes. I can start it. Yeah, turn it off. Turn it off. Turn it off. Did you know I nominated the committee director of committee IT? Woo, woo, woo. I don't really want to help. Betsy, I'm sorry to interrupt you. That's not sense down there. But do I remember correctly that your needs is in and out this morning? No, I'm good this morning. Good this morning. Okay, great. Thank you very much. All right, if we could, please. I'd like to ask Chief Page, if you wouldn't mind this. It's my understanding that you raised this issue with your local reps. I did, yes. Yeah. Oh, please. Can you see? Yes. There's no standing on ceremony in here. She said she was back. No, if you've got a bad thing going on, I'm good. No, I'm good. Oh, okay. So we would ask for the record for you to identify yourself because it's all recorded. Okay. And then if you could tell us what your concerns are, why you brought this issue to your reps, anything you want to tell us at all about this bill? Okay. My name's Timothy Page. I'm the Chief Police for St. John'sburg. All right. I think the most concerning part for us, as far as the police department, are going to be multiple unit rentals, dwellings, that where the smoke is gonna emanate from one to another. We're not looking to be so restricted that we're denying the use. That's not what it's about. It's about we are going to get those types of complaints and they are gonna be numerous. Especially until I think landlords can put in their lease that they allow it or they don't allow it. And I think that those that get hashed out over time, people will begin to know that this unit allows it and this one doesn't and they'll move to those residences accordingly. But until that happens, there's going to be a mixture of people in those residences and those types of complaints that are gonna come in where the people are affected by the smoke and want us to do something about it. So in order for us to do that, we'd have to have a local ordinance. And that's another thing that we would need some time to talk about because as I said, we don't want it to be so overly restrictive that it denies the person their right of use. But we do need it to be decide what type of restriction we're talking about and exactly what type of units it's going to affect. So it's something that's gonna need to be hashed out over time here. Questions for the Chief from the keynote. Well, and then Laura. Along with your line, Chief, I have several rental properties and I have to say that this is causing a little distress here in that scenario that you're paying is a very realistic one. In fact, that's what happens a little bit even today. And I could see where, I mean, would it be fair to say that you talked with the tenants a couple of times, but then all of a sudden it's like, hey, Mr. Miss Lane Lord, we've got a situation here that we keep showing up on your property fairly frequently. What are you gonna do about it? That's very real possibility because if it becomes overwhelming, that is who we're going to go see because it's, we can't be there numerous time after time after time. Our resources are limited and they can't be focused on that one area. So we would be looking to the property owner to be part of the solution. Okay, other questions that you have. That's right, thank you very much. I appreciate what you said about not wanting to be so restricted that it brings my fear into play, but there are other municipalities and other departments that may not be as generous as St. John's very is. So it seems to me you will have the burden of defining significant in this proposed statute. What is a significant order that eminents? I think that's what I'm talking about when I say that's something that needs to be discussed and determined. Over time. But yeah, it's going to need to include our representatives and the VLCT and we'll have to sit down and we'll have to hash out what we're going to define as significant. So we're not overly restrictive, but yet we're looking to the needs of the other candidates who are being offended by the order. So it's, and it is going to happen. It's not a question of maybe we know that it will. And I'm not so much concerned with the backyard use and it wastes into somebody else's backyard. If that's a problem, I think that can be defined in this too, but that's not going to be as burdensome as the multi-family units and stuff. So. Well, thank you. And Rob has a follow-up. There seems to be a little connection here between noise and the order. When you have a noise complaint, do you have sort of a threshold that you start from and go from there as far as how you respond and deal with the situation? Noise complaints deal mainly with the timeframe because that's usually people's sleep. And so that's an easier thing to enforce because between this time and this time, you can't have a noise that disturbs other people, basically. So that's pretty straightforward. Where this doesn't have a set timeframe, it's going to be when someone deans they're being offended by, basically. So, and we'll have to have like I was just saying to Schittsman with that. We'll have to have some type of standard that will have to apply because we can't just, one officer's offensiveness is not another officer. So we have to have a standard that we'll be able to use in that regard. And what that is, I can't tell you, that's what we'd have to have to show. Thank you. So let me ask this question. Should we infer from what you're saying in regards to needing to hash out the real thing of significance over time with the LCT and your local state reps? Is it your suggestion that that discussion happen before this bill is moved, if it's moved? Or can this, in your view, be moved without that definition having been worked out? I think we obviously have to have something in place. So I think the bill can move forward without that significance determined. I think we have to have faith in our legislators and on the governing bodies of our municipalities that they're going to make good decisions. But it is something that is desperately gonna be needed because like we've said, we are going to be going to these and without anything in place to address it, it's just going to snowball. And eventually it morphs into other violations because we have people fighting over it. So we'd like to look it in the bud before it happens. And like I said, we're not looking to be overly restrictive. So I really believe it could move forward and give us that position before this happens with the caveat that it is going to be thought about in length before we do anything. Thank you, Dennis. So this may not be for you, as far as marijuana consumption eating it or whatever, if something doesn't emit any odor. So I just wondered if maybe it needs to be due to marijuana smoking, burning, something that causes odor. Because all it says is marijuana consumption. I just wonder if we need to be a little bit more clear. You're not going to get an odor unless something's burning from what I recall. I can tell you that marijuana has a wicked odor when it's growing and you can smell it very easily. I was supposed to have only have two plants. That won't matter. One or two will smell it. To follow up on representative Devereux early questions. Let's say that it's a Saturday afternoon and somebody is on their back patio and they're inviting recreationally. And then they hop on a vehicle and drive off. And you get the phone call that representative Devereux is now on the road and I know for a fact he was inviting. Does that give you probable cause to get behind him and have an interaction with her then? I would say your conversation with the complainant is what's going to determine it. If you've got a complainant that's willing to testify in regards to what they saw and then what they witnessed operation of the vehicle, then yes you do. Or smelled, not saw. No, you'd have to see that actual person consuming the marijuana and then drive away. So if you have those things in place then yes, you'd be able to do that. And but if you have a person that says, well I don't want to get involved I'm not going to do anything. So it makes it very iffy. So it could happen. So if I was the complainant and I just said, listen I know that he was there, I can smell it but I didn't see him and that probably would be a determining factor for how he would proceed or not proceed. Right, I mean I can always observe operation and if there's any untoward operation that in and of itself would be an indicator. But just going that I smelled marijuana and then this person drove away and that's going to probably happen a lot and we're not going to be able to observe operation or every car that's leaving everywhere. So it is. Just to check on the follow up on that, isn't that, does that happen now with alcohol? I mean people would say I saw them in the bar and they were drinking. Yeah, happens all the time. So how do you differentiate that? It's the same as what I just said. It's if that person is willing to come forward and say with alcohol it would be different because you have a limit. So with marijuana you can't consume a drive. With alcohol you can consume so much. So with that somebody says I just saw so and so drinking and he left the bar. I mean that's what you do at a bar. So that's really not much. But again we'd observe operation if we could and if there was any operation that signified that the person might be under the influence then yes we can do something. But it's all, it all depends on what we see and what we're told. Any other questions for the Chief? Thank you very much. Thank you. I appreciate it. So I want to ask our two St. John's very impressed. Did either of you like to give any testimony or are you here just to listen? I just, I know myself got back to the record. I don't have anything to add to what the Chief had to say. No, I mean because I was here when you all had the wrong around. But I may just add to this again. I'm so thankful that Chief was here. I think we already had discussion. We'd also have heard from members of our select board and they delegated that to our town manager. But unfortunately in lieu of next week being his busy week with town hall meeting week he's on vacation in Hawaii. So that's why he couldn't have been here today. He couldn't have caught him on the phone. I told him that but for some reason he was like, you know, I really want to just enjoy my vacation. They don't have phones in Hawaii. But no, but again, I appreciate you all continuing to take this time and certainly our municipality was very interested to at least have this enabling language show that way. If obviously they so chose, they would have the ability to look at new and new circumstances relating to this order. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Okay, so I, yes, you do not need to say unless you want to say, but you're welcome to say. Thank you. How about we hear, let's take care of both perspectives at once. If we can follow up, we have that phone number for Trevor Whipple. And he's coming, this is his cell number and he's gonna be walking out of his staff meeting. And folks, so that if we could, after we talk with Trevor, what I'd like to do is get Tom Little on the phone. So if you could pull up on your devices, what he sent to us, Tom Little sent us an extensive piece of writing in his role as co-chair of the governor's commission. Yes. Do you think I should just go down at 9.30 or a little before or wait? 9.30 your hour, use your best judgment, please. Well, this is riveting. You're, you're an old man. Ways to meet is more important than that. They're retiring, that's key. I got a five-day old donut right there. So folks, you're pulling up Tom Little's stuff, right? So you're ready for his call after Trevor. Is it under his name or did you send it? Yes, it's under his name. And how long ago? It was emailed yesterday. Yes, it's on our web page. Hi, this is Trevor. Trevor, hi, it's Tomato Townsend calling from House Government Operations. Well, good morning. Good morning. Can you spend a few moments with us right now on the phone? I can, yeah, I'm getting to a quiet space and we should be good. Okay, great, thank you. As you're walking up, I wanted to tell you, just heard from the police chief in St. Johnsbury and it was he who raised this issue with his state reps asking if they would help move something along to provide a basis for a community if they wanted to establish an ordinance about the odors, should there be such. Right, okay. So from your perspective, what would you, so we've heard from St. Johnsbury, which is a community configured in certain ways and of a certain size, your perspective dealing with a much larger population? Sure, yeah, and certainly thank you for the opportunity to speak with you and I'm sorry I can't be there. I think I lose quite a bit by not hearing others and I don't want to be repetitious of what Chief Page had to offer. But I'm not sure that this is an issue that we'll face often, but the struggle is if we do face the issue, if we don't have a mechanism to deal with it, it's going to be incredibly difficult for some of our citizens. A particular concern to me is we have so much, lack of a better term, congregate housing or joint housing facilities where we have some large apartment structures, condo structures that I equate this a little bit to like our public nuisance ordinance that regulates noise. If you live in a close quarters building with lots of other people in their apartments or their condominiums and your neighbor likes to listen to his music at level seven at midnight because that's when he happens to be awake, we have a mechanism now to try to help mediate or mitigate that through local ordinance. Some of the concerns I have is that as we move forward and prepare for legalization of marijuana, there's a lot that we don't know and we're not gonna know until we actually go there, but I have concerns about particularly these joint housing facilities that if I'm a non-smoker and maybe have a young baby in my house and the person that directly about my domicile is a person who believes in the use of marijuana, they're growing some marijuana, they're using it regularly, they have their friends over and now the smoke starts to either through the hallway through a joint heating ventilation system. If that starts to enter my domicile and the landlord has not put any restrictions on my lease what am I to do? And if somebody calls the police and says, I'm trying to live a drug-free, smoke-free life and my neighbors think differently than me and now I can't be in my home, the police have no mechanism to deal with that other than telling them to turn to their landlord, which is one means of regress, but it's not expeditious and it's not gonna help us today. Thank you, Trevor. You all set for a question or two? Oh, sure, yeah. I think that my understanding, I'm read it in a bit, but the legislation deals quite well with a lot of the public areas, I can't smoke in a park, can't smoke in cars, that type of thing, but yes, I'd be happy to check it from folks. Thank you, Trevor. Cindy Weed from Enosburg. Hi, thank you. How do you handle cigarette smoke going into a home with a new baby? Again, at this point, we have not had a lot of those calls and we would turn the person to their landlord. I differentiate only a little bit in that certainly there's health impacts to cigarette smokes, but I don't think that there's some of the mind-altering, the body-mechanism-altering, I think it's had a different level than marijuana smoke in my home. Thank you. Rob LeClaire from Berrytown. Good morning, Chief. Good morning. We had a conversation about, say if you had gotten a phone call from someone reporting a gathering on an afternoon and people were smoking marijuana and then got in their vehicles and drove off as to how you would react to that from the Chief in St. John'sbury. A question I have around that is there's a constant analogy between marijuana and alcohol consumption, but isn't some of it the intent? In other words, you can go on a bar, have a beer, and your intent isn't to get under the influence, but isn't it always the intent that when you're smoking marijuana that your intent is to get under some level of being under the influence to some degree? I mean, I have not done a lot of surveying of regular marijuana users, but that's my understanding is that we smoke marijuana because it alters how we feel. There are some that will indicate that smoking of marijuana has medicinal properties. We see it, we've had medical marijuana for a number of years now, but certainly my understanding of marijuana, and I've never used it. Not in college, not in high school, so I don't have the personal experience, but talking to folks that have is that it does have an impact on your body, upon your thinking. Thank you. Other questions for Chief Wibble? John Gannon from Wilmington. So sort of falling on the ropes question about medical marijuana. I mean, wouldn't this, you know, a public nuisance ordinance with respect to the odor of marijuana, potentially prohibit people who are using marijuana for medical purposes from using it, which would cause me some concern. I mean, there is evidence that medical marijuana does have tremendous benefits for some people, and I hate to see them being denied the right to make themselves healthy. Well, I mean, what I see this ability to craft an ordinance is for a nuisance. We have had, and I testified on medical marijuana when it was passed, and I was in very into time, so that's more than 11 years ago. We had no calls. Nobody has ever called about medical marijuana. And I see it differently because I see a medical marijuana user as somebody that's using, on their own, they don't, we don't have a congregation of 12 medical marijuana users who say, come over to my house Friday night after work, and I get together and use our medical marijuana. Medical marijuana users, at least I see more restraint, left the impact on those around them. What I'm looking at is someone who, we have the Super Bowl Party, and I invite 10 or 12 of my friends over, and we're sharing some beer, and we're gathering together, but if suddenly everybody decides that they want to smoke marijuana, and we have an overabundant, so that there really is another potential to impact the neighbors. I don't see it as having any impact on medical marijuana as of today. We've had no complaints, and I don't see that changing. But we have had people ask questions about condos and apartment areas where somebody could be smoking purely for medical purposes, and the odor drifts down the hallway or into another apartment through the air ducts. I mean, how would we address that? I mean, I'd be concerned about denying the people the right to use medical marijuana. Yeah, I mean, I still think I feel as a non-marijuana user that I should not have somebody else's use impact my life. I think that that medical marijuana user, as they do today, I believe just out of a nuisance category, should be doing it in such a way that it does not have a negative impact on neighbors. Now, whether, I don't want to get down a rabbit hole, but whether there's a clause inserted that says there's some special protection for a medical marijuana user, I don't have a recommendation on how to do that. I guess the only thing I can reflect upon is that we have medical marijuana now, and this isn't an issue. Jessica Bromstead from Shelburne and then Rob Leclerc from Berrytown again. All right, thank you. So this is more part of the discussion with Representative Gammon, but I, I mean, the other issue here that I thought of earlier, and I'm not sure where I'm at on all this, but just to bring up is that smoking cigarettes, we have gotten to the point where culturally, nobody wants anybody smoking in their house, or everybody goes outside on the doorsteps, including my own brother, you know, we kick him out. But if we now start saying that not only we're gonna kick you out because you're smoking marijuana, you're smoking it, I'm talking about the actual smoke, then we say on the outside, we're gonna also call you on it because you're outside affecting people. It is sort of, this is hard. This is probably why I voted against. But this is a hard issue because honestly, just think about, just think about someone that's smoking a cigar. And I know that when I lived in an apartment in Burlington, our neighbor was a cigar smoker, and it was terrible because he would do that every morning before work. So we're getting dressed to go to school smelling his cigar outside. So this is hard. That's all, that's the only reason I'm running. It's not a carried away. It's not a carried or a little different. Committee, if I could, I think Trevor was trying to respond. Yeah, no, I didn't, I need to cut you off for my apology. Yeah, I mean, that's an unattended consequence here. And my testimony, my take on marijuana is no secret. I'm well documented and that's an unintended consequence here is that now that we're going to allow this to happen in our society, it has an impact, and I'm sorry, I'm a very staunch anti-marijuana person. I will respect the law, we will enforce the law, but why am I right as someone who does not want to be exposed to marijuana smoke? Why shouldn't that be equal to someone who wants to be exposed to marijuana smoke? If I'm paying to live in a building and that's my domicile, I can't just go to a hotel because my neighbor decides they want to smoke marijuana. And yes, I know it's difficult, it's going to be legal for someone to smoke marijuana, but they can go somewhere, they can move somewhere, they can go somewhere else to smoke to a different place. And I'm not saying you folks in legislature have determined that it will be legal for this to happen. I respect that. And I think we just need to try to find a balance to what about the folks that don't wanna be exposed to that and they're in the safety and the comfort of their home. How do we regulate that? I mean, I guess I push back a little bit to you folks and say, what do I as a police chief tell someone in my community who has a vested in their life savings in a condominium who now finds out that their next door neighbor is growing marijuana, regularly smoking marijuana, and they have to smell and breathe and live it every day. I don't have an answer to that and it's potentially going to be difficult. Trevor, we now have Rob from Berrytown followed by John from Wilmington and then back to Cindy from Edisburg. Rob? Wow, I should make sure to come and testify in person. Never, this many questions. Actually, sorry, Chief. Sorry, Chief, this one isn't for you. This is just your question about the medical marijuana, John. I had a tenant that had the medical marijuana card but they disclosed it to me up front and we had the discussion about how they were going to deal with it and we agreed that they weren't going to smoke it, that they were going to put it in and deal with it the other way is that there's what they call it, puncture, tincture, tincture, they were going to use that. And the other thing about the tobacco, I as a landlord, I do have to address that issue. I've had tenants call me and say, listen, the people downstairs are smoking and I have my young child here and I don't want it and I have to deal with it. Absolutely. Absolutely. So this just makes it even more difficult. One more time, yeah. John from Wellington. So, I mean, the thing I'm struggling with is this whole idea of a concept of odor nuisance because, you know, I live in a fairly rural area. We have a lot of farms, you know, people spread manure. My wife loves this now. I'm not so sure about it. But, I mean, what if that's next? What if we say, you know, spreading marijuana is an odor nuisance and we basically take a huge chunk of our economy and throw it away? Spreading manure. No, spreading manure. Excuse me. I apologize for my. I can give you the Trevor Whipple response. It can't give you the police chief response but I'm not a scientist. I've got zero medical background but I grew up working on a dairy farm and manure didn't alter my mind. Maneuver didn't impact my lungs that I'm aware of. I think it made me grow tall and strong but, you know, the smoke from marijuana, we know that there's dangers to secondhand smoke. And, you know, I think we have an even escalated concern with marijuana because there are, we're talking about medicinal properties. There are mind-altering body-altering components in marijuana and, you know, it's easy to smoke, you know, coming directly through my air vent. I believe that's going to have a very different impact on me than if I smell the fragrance smell of a Vermont farm. Cindy from Edisburg. Yeah, thank you chief. There's been testimony that 80,000 people already are using marijuana in the state. So have you got any calls in South Burlington about that yet? I mean, we get calls about the people who are, you know, smoking in their car, smoking, the scene smoking at the park but, you know, as far as someone in their home and, you know, one of the representatives there asked about medical marijuana. We've had medical marijuana. We have a facility here that grows in marijuana and we've had no calls about that. So it has not been an issue for us. You know, one of my concerns and my hesitancy here is as it becomes legal, how much will use change, you know, and how much will accepted group use. And I don't necessarily worry about, you know, a person after work sitting down at home and lighting up some marijuana to enjoy us. A law will now allow them to do any more than I do as someone cracking open a beer after work. You know, more concerning to me is large gatherings in a communal building and not being able to provide any relief to anyone. Thank you. So, Trevor, I made it here. I just wanna make sure we have a clear understanding if there is clarity to be understood. As it relates to the bill before us, 819, that's its number, isn't it? 819, yeah, yeah. Would you, are you able to encourage us to move forward or do you think we should put this back on the wall or otherwise amend? I did not print the bill this morning. My memory of the bill is that it's to allow municipalities to craft ordinance, correct? Yes. So that being the case, I would be, I would ask the committee to support the bill and give some ability to a community to craft an ordinance if they saw necessary to assist folks in their community who may be negatively impacted by the use of marijuana by others. Okay, thank you. Thank you. Committee, anything else for Trevor or should we let him get back to his staff? Yes. Back to your staff, Trevor. Thank you. Thank you, thank you. Thank you, folks. I know there's a lot of different ways to look at this but I appreciate your time and thank you, chair. Thank you. Okay, bye-bye. Okay, bye-bye. Everybody's already pulled up Tom's piece. You're there? Of course, I've got to go. An email? No. Yeah, it was an email. It was an email. It's also on the page. Okay. Under Tom's name. On our webpage, it's the last one on the list for today. And we asked, where's the, where's the, attached on our page is the, his attachment isn't there. There was an attachment. Through his letter? I thought, no, no, no, I take it back. I take it back. It wasn't in the first email. Yeah, so it's here. This is the attachment. Thank you. I was getting confused, obviously. Okay, so let's try and get Tom on the phone while we're dialing him up, refresh your minds, re-scan what he wrote, and it's underlined that he underlined to call our attention. Yep. Tom's the co-chair of the Governor's Commission on Marijuana, among other things. Hello, Tom? Yes. Tom, hi, it's made of Townsend Calling from House Government Operations. Good morning. Good morning. Is now an okay time? Yes, perfect. Great, thank you so much. And we have pulled up on our respective devices here in committee. The piece that you wrote and sent to us by way of an attachment to your email. So we have that in front of us. Would you just, would you like to verbalize, you know, put the verbal clothing on the, on the skeleton? Be happy to, and I guess I'd start out by mentioning the report that the commission issued in the middle of January. That was a pretty wild time when 5-11 was getting ready to go to the floor, and I'm not sure that a lot of people had an opportunity to read in a, in a reflective way what the commission report had in it under those circumstances. But I think it's a pretty good resource. It covers a lot of issues that reflect the concerns of local government. Doesn't provide a lot of, you know, concrete proposals, but some of them are just placeholders and hopefully will be further addressed when the commission issues its final report this coming December, which is the plan. Okay. And I think the focus of the single biggest focus of the December 2018 report is likely to be a discussion of and proposals concerning a, whether the state should move to a fully regulated and licensed retail sales model. But in any legalization model, including what we have now, that'll be effective this coming July, you have issues involving local government and one of the specific pieces in the January 2018 report was a recommendation that towns be given authority to regulate, excuse me, nuisances. The report covers or mentions both older nuisances from cannabis use and older nuisances caused by cannabis cultivation. My understanding of H819 is that it's focusing exclusively on the authority of a town or city to enact an ordinance treating consumption-based odor as a nuisance. That is the language in the bill is introduced. Right. And I've had some brief email exchanges with one of the sponsors of the bill, Representative Wilhoi, just to get a sense of where he was coming from on this, but I haven't had a chance to engage in a more detailed discussion about it. But, and I don't know what the committee's background is in the law of nuisances or nuisances, but I also don't, and that's something that the committee could get, sure get some support on from legislative counsel. And we have heard from Betsy Rask with regard to municipalities and their authorities in this regard. So I don't know whether Betsy's testimony or that of others would be that a clarifying bill like this is fine as is in terms of its, the level of detail to which it gets with concerning a clarifying carve out for towns and cities to enact nuisance ordinances here. But this seems like it's certainly not inconsistent with H511, which I don't think purports to restrict local nuisance regulations. And it's certainly consistent with the report that we issued in the middle of January. So I guess I don't wanna read the memo back to the committee and I guess I'll stop there for now. Thank you, Tom. And thank you for trusting that we have actually read your memo, which we have, so thank you. Questions from the committee for Tom. Here's Rob Leclerc from Berry Town, Tom. Good morning, Tom. Good morning. And this may be more of a question for alleged counsel than you potentially, but do you have an opinion? Say if you have a, I don't even know if I wanna call it a municipality, but you have a small town that doesn't have any ordinances and has this issue and Vermont State Police are the one that end up responding. Do they have anything that they can point to to address the issue in statute? Well, if that gets somewhat back into the weeds of the different types of nuisance laws, there are, under the common law of civil nuisances, the courts will hear a claim by a private citizen, a resident of the town, against another resident or business, claiming that the activity on the other person or business's property is so regularly and impactfully heard by the courts. They're learning their enjoyment of their own property that that's amounts to a private nuisance that the civil courts should respond to and ultimately if the plaintiff in that kind of a case prevails, the judge can order an abatement of that activity or some type of remediation of it. That gets you into all sorts of other related areas of local and state permitting. Sometimes you read about cases where someone is trying to reopen an old quarry or do some rock crushing and there's often, in those cases, there's a lot of potential negative impacts in terms of noise, dust and other stuff and blasting and so sometimes a property owner in those situations will go to court asking a judge to say, this is a nuisance, stop it. That's not the kind of thing a state police officer would want to get involved in. If the activity on that property was somehow, and I'm sort of just thinking out loud here, it was somehow so pervasive and intense that it could sort of credibly be alleged to be violating some state standard or statute. The state police might get involved but I think they would be more likely if called to refer that to Department of Environmental Conservation or some department in the Agency of Natural Resources that might have a direct regulatory oversight over that kind of activity. In terms of odor emanating from somebody's house or yard from a consuming cannabis, I don't know in the small town scenario, my guess is that if there was a credible complaint that law enforcement might at least do a stop by the property to see if there's anything else going on. Well, I'll stop there. Okay. Thank you, sir. Thank you, Tom. I've lost track. Was there somebody else in line? No. Committee, anyone else want to ask Tom a question? No, Cindy from Innesburg. Hi, Tom. You have some underlined language and the second part of it that's not underlined, you talk about in communities with limited or no local law enforcement. Other municipal officials should have sufficient resources to assume the responsibility of enforcing local ordinances. And could you explain that? I'm not sure what you're really saying there. Well, I think it ties in a little bit to my response to the previous question. If in a small town with no local law enforcement, it would maybe a contract with the county sheriff or the state police for some level of coverage for highway safety, for example. And there are, spillover effects or the claim is that there are spillover effects from marijuana consumption or marijuana aggro operation. This is suggesting that there should be at least consideration given to providing some regional or statewide resources for towns like that to help react to that. Excuse me, those are the other municipal officials should have sufficient resources. That's what you mean? I mean, I think that's the, the commission didn't take detailed testimony on this. I think we did, the subcommittee that helped develop this particular set of recommendations had on it members of local government and the representatives of the Malika cities and towns. And I think this is just reflective of an overall level of concern or anxiety about the unknown and what, how inadequate local resources can be. Thank you. Okay. Anyone else for Tom? Tom, just for clarification purposes in your attachment, the language which is in italics, is that the words in italics, those words are taken from the January report. Yes? Yes, for beta. Okay. I just wanted to double check that. Contrasted with the words which are not in italics, those are your words in writing to us. Correct? Correct. Yes. Okay. Just as a follow up to that. So the commission's hope, I would assume then, because I did go back and look this up, but it seemed to me you were saying it would be great if legislators thought about these sort of issues. Is that right? Yeah, I think so. One of the things to keep in mind at the high level is that the two states that we sort of know the most about even there, the legalization has only been in effect for less than 10 years. Our Washington and Colorado, both of which are states where county government is much more robust than it is in Vermont. And that's not always easy to translate into practical advice or specific steps in the legislative context. But I think it's just helpful, it's healthy to be aware of that. If you visit states like that and you start talking to people in state government or in the legislature and get into a discussion about how things work in Vermont in that respect, they will often be scratching their heads and finding it hard to believe that you could have a state like Vermont with 246 towns where the town government has so much authority. And at the same time, if you hear from the league of cities and towns, let's say, yeah, we sort of have authority, but we don't have any independent authority. We're relying on the legislature to give us the parcel out authority. And that's why I think the league is interested in a bill like this that would make it clear that there is local jurisdiction for nuisances. Jessica, you have a follow up? I just wanna say that because I have two sons that live in Colorado, I'm in total agreement with what you're saying, Tom, because the rules around municipalities there or especially for rental units is unbelievable and it vary, I don't know if I should use the word onerous. I mean, they really do come down on exactly what they expect of rental units. And they, in my history, are really struggling with this issue of how to deal with odors and other issues around marijuana use in those environments. And something that I haven't really shared with the committee but is really important, I think, to consider now that we're considering a bill like this is that my son who has had real issues with THC consumption was, we had to bring him home because he had used so much that he started having panic attacks due to the THC because it was being stored in his fatty tissues. So after spending much time, and I won't go through the whole story, but much time with help here in an outpatient setting, he returned to school and this was in the dorms. So I have two examples, which I think really pertain. In the dorms, we had to move him out because the amount intensity of marijuana use inside the dorms where it was prohibited, he was still gathering the THC into his fatty tissues. And however, saliva testing, which we did because we wanted to be sure that he wasn't lying to us, he came back negative. So he wasn't using, but he was ingesting the smoke. And then we moved him into his own apartment on a fourth floor, so we'd have no one above him and same sort of thing. It was all by himself, no one else. And it went along fine. He was there for a full year and last summer, everything was great, a big group moved in downstairs. And again, the amount of marijuana smoking was so bad that he started to have panic attacks again. So we had to move him again. So my point only being that this can, it only impacts a very small percentage of users that have this issue, but it is an issue. And it is important, I think that we address it. But thank you. John Gannon. So, I mean, Jessica, I understand your concerns, but I mean landlords today can prohibit smoking in apartments. So I mean, I have apartments and I mean- And they have prohibited it. Yeah, I prohibit, I prohibit drug use actually at this point, illegal drug use. And I actually, like Rob have a tenant who uses medical marijuana, as in Rob's case, it's tinctures and edibles. So I mean, you know, I think landlords do have undercurrent law ways to prevent the situation you just described. But one comment on that is that in type, I forget which, whether it's in title 18, but if you sort of scroll through the table of contents, you can see where the General Assembly has chosen in other contexts to provide considerable more structure for how towns and cities can enact ordinances, as I said, in other contexts. And I think landfills is one they don't have this open in front of me, but that's one, I mean, one, there's sort of two approaches to this. One is H819, which says towns that this to be clear, towns continue to have this nuisance authority. And the other would be for the Pledge of Sager to say we want to put some structure around that so that the authority of the town in that regard is not either not unlimited or is focused or structured in a certain way. I'm not personally aware of any towns that have already gone in this direction to enact a nuisance regulations about consumption of cannabis on premises where that can, you know, the odor and it can move into adjoining properties and causing either health problems that represent the fronts that it's related or just simply unpleasantness to have that kind of odor be a bother. Thank you, Tom. Would you mind eating anything else for Tom? Okay, Tom, we're gonna let you go back and hopefully just lying down and continuing to heal, okay? Appreciate it, good luck with the legislation. Thank you so much for your time, Tom. Okay, bye-bye. Peace recovery from surgery, which was wonderful. As Dr. said. No, so folks, a thing to be thinking about thinking about also as we continue taking testimony what prompts me to say this is seeing the words that were in that report to consider whether or not we wanna say marijuana, if we move forward with this, to say marijuana consumption and cultivation, the two pieces such as within the commission's recommendation might be good. Angela, Angela's here, yes. No, that's for you. Yes, would you join us? Absolutely. And you're here from the Vermont Department of Owners Association, yes? Yes. Okay. And for the record. Absolutely, good morning. My name's Angela Zeikowski. I am a practicing attorney and I'm the director of the Vermont Department of Owners Association. We are a statewide trade association for residential landlords. And so I'm here representing the interests of those folks for the committee today. So I think I've heard a lot of testimony here about trying to compare this particular ordinance or change to a noise ordinance. I don't know that that's maybe the proper analogy. I think throughout this entire conversation, if we were to substitute cigarette smoke for marijuana smoke, we may be having a different conversation, right? This, that's a very similar issue. Landlords face it currently. Tenant smoking, one tenant complaining about another tenant smoking. Landlords have the right to prohibit that in the lease, like they will marijuana use and cultivation in their units. And we heard from the police chief Whipple that he gets zero calls about cigarette smoke because it's something that's dealt with between the two parties that are contracting with each other, the landlord and the tenant. So I'm not sure that this public nuisance language about regulating odor is necessary at this time. There are currently tools in place for the two parties who would be dealing with this, the landlord and tenant, to deal with it. Landlord can prohibit it on their property. Tenants who have that prohibition if they're being impacted by marijuana smoke, just like they can now, if they're being impacted by cigarette smoke, can make a complaint to the landlord. And it's the landlord's obligation to start addressing that and dealing with it. And because this committee may not deal with a lot of housing issues, the process the landlord has for dealing with that currently is if they have credible evidence that say a tenant is violating a no smoking policy, they first have to send a 30 day termination notice to that party. And if the behavior doesn't stop or the tenant doesn't move who's in violation, the landlord has to then start court action, which can take anywhere from two months to nine or 10 months to get through the process. Meanwhile, the landlord has to prove that that particular tenant is smoking in violation of this policy in the lease. So it's a pretty heavy burden on the landlord for having to deal with that. One of my concerns is that if we have municipalities putting odor ordinances in place that instead of them dealing with the offender who is the tenant, that they are going to then point their finger at the landlord and say, well, we've done our part, we've talked to them. Now landlord, it's your job to deal with this. And if you don't or you don't do it quick enough, we are going to start finding you or we are going to start taking action against you, the landlord, for somebody else's behavior. Question on that last piece, Cindy. Absolutely. Hi. You're talking about landlords and tenants, but people that have private property in a confined area or city that I think is more, or at least partially, what this would address. I think I would go back to and generally my expertise is in the landlord-tenant relationship is we already have sort of an analogous situation with cigarette smoking. We hear people aren't smoking in their houses anymore. They're going outside. So you have those confined space living arrangements already where people are smoking cigarettes outside. And I think we have a pretty well-documented body of work that shows how damaging secondhand smoke is to inhale or to be around. And yet we're not grappling with that type of complaint. Jim, and then Brock. I am the last person to be an expert on marijuana, but I think arguably it's a stronger odor than cigarettes. That's not my area of expertise either. Not either. I just remember back to my college days. So you're just making a statement? Yes. Rob? Well, a couple things. In my youth, maybe I did inhale once or twice, unlike a formal person. I didn't say I inhale. You know, I continued the walk of the mile in the shoes that she's talking about. And a lot of the tenants' behaviors seem to wind up in my lap, even though that they really shouldn't. I guess I'm going to ask a broader question here is on this particular piece of legislation that we're looking at. Are we looking to tailor this? I mean, either we're giving a municipality Z the authority to go through and act ordinances I guess, what are we trying to get at here? With all this, are we trying to be more prescriptive in what we're sending down or over? It's kind of a general question. We're asking it to. Anybody wants to answer it? I don't want to answer. I mean, Cindy, what I just said to her was if John is partying at his house next door for me with all of his friends smoking marijuana and I'm sitting there with my grandchild who's three months old and I don't want to have a cloud coming in my direction. I think that's what this is about. Apartments look like maybe they're covered but as an individual, what am I supposed to do when he's infringing upon my air, just like my noise? Sure, I get that. So I'm just throwing it out. I'm not. What I'm reading here is that are we going to give, allow the adoption of civil ordinances to address the marijuana issue? And to me, that's kind of a yes or no thing. Richard, what's going on? All it is is enabling legislation. So if a select board gets a lot of complaints all of a sudden and they want to address it, they can try. Right now, it sounds like maybe they can't try if they get a lot of complaints or it's not clear. Doesn't the 511 or that law prohibit this from happening? That's why we have to enable it. That was my understanding. If you read what both the commission's report from the marijuana, I know that Tom Little's co-chair of in Tom Little's memo, he really does talk about how municipalities need, he believes, some authority to regulate or prohibit odor and nuisances caused by cannabis use and cultivation. And then also looking at how can communities, what are they going to do with that ability? John? Well, I mean, getting back to Angela's testimony, I do agree with her that it puts the land award on the hook when they have a tenant who is smoking marijuana. And I mean, that's who the, if there is a public ordinance, that's probably who they're going to talk to because that's probably the most responsible party at that location, whether they're a resident landlord or they just own the apartment building, that's probably the person that has the most to lose. Well, the most skin in the game. Right, or the most skin in the game. And I am concerned about putting a further burden on business owners who are trying to do their business. I mean, if they've tried to write into their leases that you can't smoke, whether it's cigarette smoke or marijuana smoke, I mean, they're trying to do the right thing. And I know our police chief in our town has talked to landlords about trying to curb drug use and other things through leases. So I mean, I just worry about how far this is going to go. And I mean, if this was, why this hasn't happened with cigarette smoke and other odors, and you know, as this is, you know, I also see it as a potential slippery slope for a lot of odor nuisances. So I just worry where this is going to end. And if we could just keep focused with regard to Angela's testimony. I always focus. To have a larger conversation among ourselves. One of the things that causes me concern is how do you define a significant odor? I mean, one of the maybe advantages with noise ordinances is that most of them have written into them decibel levels and there are decibel meters that can be used to determine if the noise is too loud or during certain times of the night, if it can be heard from the street, that it's deemed too loud. So there's some very easily identifiable ways to determine if a noise ordinance is being violated. Whereas odor ordinance, I mean, everybody's nose is a little bit different and some people might be more susceptible or may be more sensitive. I mean, taking a representative weed's example, if that was not a marijuana smoking outside but with cigarette smoking and I was the neighbor, that would actually have a really big impact on me because I'm very sensitive to cigarette smoke. But it's just something that I've learned to live with because I personally don't feel like I have the right to tell them what they can and can't be doing on their property. But that's my personal viewpoint. But I think it becomes very difficult to try to regulate this type of scenario and I just am concerned about what municipalities may do with this and the impact it would have on my landlord constituents. Does anybody in the committee have further questions for Angela? Thank you very much. Thank you very much. Lynn, VLCT. Hi everyone, I'm Zaka, I'm in the Lames It Is In Towns. In the interest of time, I want to repeat prior testimony and just sort of comment on the proposal as is and some of our concerns and what we like. We support the idea behind the legislation and the proposed legislation giving the option, the enabling authority to have communities decide whether or not they want to have some standards in place to deal with odors from marijuana consumption. And the only real concerns here have already actually been mentioned with the language including the word significant odor. Not being able to define that, I think our preference would be either to define significant or get rid of the word significant entirely and as Tom Little had mentioned earlier, more of a question as to why the odor would be limited to consumption rather than consumption and cultivation because those are two issues that are already very big issues for municipalities and other states that have legalized. So we support this, again it's just enabling authority, it still has to go through the whole process of the ordinance adoption and I can guarantee that in a place like Burlington that might want to go do something like that, they're gonna have significant public hearings and hear a lot of feedback from individuals and they'll be quite a vetting process to determine what works and what doesn't work for that particular community. So I'm open to any questions. I have reached out to many states over the last three years since this marijuana issue has been on the table and talked to many municipalities and I know more than I thought I'd ever know about marijuana and I just would like to reiterate that of all of the states that have legalized marijuana, they're all homeroom states, either pure homeroom states or limited homeroom states and we are the only state that has legalized marijuana that's a difference real estate. So really paying attention to that authority that's given to municipalities is really important because right now the only thing that gives any authority to municipality right now is prohibiting the consumption in a public place but even then it's only after adoption of a civil ordinance to do so. So I guess a good way of looking at this is to say if we didn't pass this, what would municipalities do when they get complaints about these sorts of issues and sort of have that sort of play out? But I'd be happy to answer any questions. I mentioned Burlington and I won't begin to understand what's in Burlington's city charter but they seem to have more authority than perhaps other municipalities because of their charter. Do we know if they could regulate it today based on their charter? I would think that even if they did have something prior to 5-11 it would be trumped by the legislation that was passed so I would assume that the answer is no. Other questions, yes, Rob. So based on your comments, Glenn, that I'm gathering that you feel that something has to pass and it may need to be even a bit broader than what this language covers. The feedback that I have gotten from other communities in other states is that this is a significant issue and the complaints that they get are not falling on the state. They're falling either on the county or local governments. So granted, let's just say this had cultivation also included in the language. It may not be as big of an issue now because of the limited amount of marijuana that's currently allowed but if down the line in Vermont decides to expand it and allow a lot more home grows or widespread home grows or even commercial or industrial grows like you see out west, it will be absolutely necessary because it has been such an issue out there and you'll see an entire department like in Denver for example, you'll see an entire municipal department spending millions of dollars just dealing with odor issues and it's not an inexpensive, regular process. Well, it's not much of a stretch to think that currently cultivation is illegal when it becomes legal that it's gonna become more of an issue regardless now. Potentially, I would assume that there might be some increase in cultivation once people are allowed to cultivate. Thank you. She's moving into speaker mode. I can't say for sure, but I'm assuming. Other questions for Gwen, Jan. So, Gwen, I'm not sure we all are on this particular field but as I see it, we have two choices. We can advance it like it is with some slight amendment or wait and see if your select boards get a lot of complaints between July and December and try to tackle it in January. And I just didn't know if you had any insider preferences as to what direction you'd like to see us go now. The LLC has been advocating for disenabling authority since this discussion's began for years. The calls are gonna come regardless of whether there's gonna be, you know, whether this passes or it doesn't pass, it'll be a frustration that they don't have the authority or just that going through the process of adopting or it's in general is tough and they're always having to adopt their eyes and cross their T's and make sure everything. I mean, these are very time consuming processes and especially for these sorts of issues that are very emotional and people have very strong opinions on. That's just a guarantee. So I guess in terms of workload, maybe it would be a better idea to just not do anything because then municipality can say call your representative because they can give us an evening of authority but for those towns that really wanna grapple with it, you know, that's their choice. I just, I see this as being proactive. I don't see it down side to it. I think we need to do something ahead of time before. Where does I support it? I support it. Rob? Well, I totally support it and I absolutely agree with you but I think we need to expand it in that it's gotta be not just about the consumption but the cultivation. And there's a small part of me that it can't be just about the odor potentially in that, again, I'm looking at it from a landlord's perspective but I got a tenant that's all of a sudden decided to do some hand growing and I don't know about it. Is there a safety component to it where now we got grow lights and higher electrical use and now all of a sudden I got something going on in an apartment that I'm not in there but maybe once every couple months. I'm just not sure that odor should be the only deterrent factor. That's a whole, I can talk for hours about that. I might actually send a PowerPoint presentation that I gave about this whole municipal issue with this marijuana legalization that goes through all of these things is all of the multitude of issues that you're dealing with, again, like when you're talking about comparing other states that are legalized and states like Vermont where we don't have building codes by and large, you can count up on it and how many municipalities have building codes and we don't really have any zoning or code enforcement like other states have for single family drawings. It's a big issue when you're talking about grows and lights because it's already an issue in other states that have permitting processes in place for commercial grows and even residential just because they already have these codes in place for electric and plumbing. So once you start killing away the onion, you realize Vermont's really very different from how other states are running. I just wondered if we needed a little language around that, the medical marijuana issue and stuff. I don't want to make it onerous or odorous or odorous or whatever. I understand where John is coming from, but I'm going to tell you what, regardless if I have a tenant that has a medical marijuana card, if they're smoking it in the building and it's causing my other tenants some issues, I still have to address it as a landlord. So that's where, yeah, we can try to work it out like I have, but all this winds up on the landlord's lap, every bit of it winds up on our laps. I'm glad obviously it's a real pain. Wouldn't it be helpful? I wonder if the medical marijuana user was on the ground floor apartment instead of the third floor apartment. You can't dictate where they'd go necessarily. Can I? Well, I just try to work with them. I don't know. I think I'm on the phone. And we're getting... Getting into the weeds. So it's not indicating a desire to weigh in on these pieces? Which one? The medical, no, we don't... I mean, that's separate in our opinion. I will answer, actually, since you're back here representing Deborah, that you had a question about the public health officer and the impact on this. So just by definition, public health officers really only charged with dealing with sort of severe sort of health code issues, where we're talking about public health hazards and public health risks. So really it's a much higher standard in terms of the rules that are in place from the Department of Health. So this wouldn't be an issue of a town health officer unless, for example, if you pass this legislation and it also goes back to the question that you had with Tom Little, which is the whole giving resources for people other than law enforcement to enact or to be the ticketing officer for violations. Like, for example, I'm a former zoning administrator for the town of Richmond. And so I was given the authority through the Judiciary Bureau to have ticketing authority to issue a ticket, a model law enforcement officer. But you can delegate us like we're obviously can delegate someone to have ticketing authority over a certain issue. So maybe a town would delegate that authority, but it wouldn't be an authority that's invested in them in terms of their job description as a health officer. But it could be a significant risk, especially some of the hand smoke for traffic. Well, given the standards that I've seen from the Department of Health, I don't know how that would, I don't see how it would rise to that level. You have to really, it has to be a pretty severe instance of a public health risk. And odors for even smoking don't rise to that level. So could you send us that white paper? I think it would be helpful. It was a PowerPoint presentation. Okay, my power. Yeah, I'll send it, yeah, I'll send it. That would be great, thank you. Okay, so committee, any other questions for one? Is there anybody else in the room that you wanted to be heard from on this issue, on this bill? No, I'm sure. When, if you have time, going back to where you've received it before. Sure. And we'll have it. Go back to where you came from. No. Hi, I'm Virginia Renfrew. I represent the Medical Marijuana Dispensaries and I also represent the HIV community. And I wasn't planning on testifying today but just sitting in here and listening. And I thought that I would just raise some concerns that I have around this. And I think that it would be a concern of the significant odor. How do you define that? I understand that. But I think removing significant and just having any odor in not thinking about, let's remove like the apartments in the multiple homes. Let's talk about someone on their private property. And I think as you heard from one of the police chiefs that they really haven't received any calls around Medical Marijuana patients who have since 19, since 2004, been able to have, grow two plants. So that has not been, but they have to grow it inside. In a locked room. So the odor would be just inside of their house not outside. But I just think that when you think about somebody, the legislature has passed legalization of marijuana. And so now you're saying, if you're sitting on your porch, your privately owned home and your neighbor is down this, not that far away, that you could actually be cited for that. And I think, again, you go back to how if your neighbor smokes cigarettes, I'm sure that that is, can be disturbing to you. And, but I just, I definitely have some concerns around, how this is gonna play out. And if this is at this point even needed. Is it, in fact, better, I think, as you had said, or said in Harrison, that to wait and see because I'm not sure if you're really looking for a problem that doesn't exist. I also have some concerns around dispensaries because dispensaries do cultivate. And we haven't had complaints about odor. But, I mean, obviously if you drive up to a dispensary outside, even though they're growing inside, you can smell the cannabis being grown. They're not in residential areas. And, but one of them is in a business complex. And again, there's been no complaints, but then again, there could be. So, I just wanted you to kind of weigh that as you're thinking about moving forward with this, but. Any questions about Virginia? More comment. I think it's very important to leave the word significant in there, even though it's a burden to describe it, but without it, the least trivial. Somebody is walking down the sidewalk and they smell something, yeah. Yeah, I mean, we have to have, we have to have some threshold. Yeah, that's it. Thank you. Thank you. Marsha, just some comments. So many things you can, that are manufactured or are being grown, you can smell before you get to them. If you're around a coffee roaster, you can smell the coffee. If you're going to a distillery, you can smell it from the outside. So, I would want to know if there are studies that determine whether or not the aroma has an effect. Now, is there a connection between aroma and actually having an effect on someone who's breathing that in? Obviously, secondhand smoke can be, you know, can be harmful, even just for the smoke part. I don't know if it actually gets the person high too, but obviously it can be absorbed. I'd like to see some more studies on these effects. Dennis? I think around that, Marsha, they've done some stuff and I don't know where to find it at this point around living close to a pig farm or large chicken, egg-producing operations. And it certainly is pretty bad. Oh, different. And people who spread manure in the spring, I know. Dairy? I know some dairy farms that they certainly, the neighbors don't like it there for a few weeks or something and it works its way in and kind of dissipates a little. I'm pretty sure there's some thresholds for the Department of Health. I would think around those things anyway. Any other conversation or any other discussion? I'll just say that I think we might be jumping the gun on this one a little bit. There's no problem that anybody can identify, including, I mean, it's out there now. It's probably not gonna change much. And even if the incidence of complaints double, it'll still be zero. I mean, the whole town of South Burlington is pretty tight. But this problem's in Colorado. But anyways, so there's the significant part, I think is maybe would need to be defined. And the tenant, where are my board members, hold on. Angela Hancheman was concerned about it falling onto apartment owners, which I think, we need to think about that. I don't say anyway. So I'm just, what problem are we trying to solve? I think if we have a problem, then we can solve it. One of the time comes, but it just seems to me that there's a few outstanding issues that needs to be, or questions that need to be answered first. Jessica and Carl, I just want to say that we're not, this bill is not making the ordinance happen. We're just giving, I think the problem that we're dealing with is that we live in a Dillon's state and all the other states that have legalized are in, what's the other one? And so that makes the whole playing field a bit different. And so what we're doing is just trying to level that a little bit and give municipalities the opportunity to do this if they want to, but they still have to have public hearings. And so it's quite a process still. And they probably would wait too until they, I would hope they would until they have concerns they don't have to pass it. They're not going to want to jump into this. I would assume, so, Rob? As much as I normally do what you say in many ways, I have to totally disagree on this one. Currently it is illegal. It's going to be legal. We're going to have, these issues are going to arise. And I think like Patty had said, this is an opportunity to be somewhat proactive rather than putting municipalities and communities in a position of saying, well, there's not a whole lot we can do right now. I think we have an obligation to give them the tools along with what we've given them. And that's what you call it a problem or not, but we have to give them the tools that they need to address these issues. And I'm going to climb on my soul box here as a landlord. I mean, everything winds up in my lap. And this is just one more darn thing. And we've somehow got to work together to help work on this situation. Because it's going to, you said there's 80,000 now. It could maybe double. Who knows? Jim? You know, I was initially thinking that maybe it would be okay to wait till January and just see. But as I think about it, if we don't provide the enabling, especially now that the issue has been brought to light and put before it, this committee will bear the full brunt of responsibility if complaints come in July, August, September, and we have not, we have blocked. By doing nothing, we have blocked municipalities of having the right, the ability to do an ordinance, which they may not do, but we've taken that a right. That we've taken that ability away from them by spending this morning on this issue with the bill before us. So that's just, that's a question for all of us. Do we want that responsibility? And I would add to that, that let's say hypothetically we move forward and give the, add this authority to the list of authorities which the state has given to communities should they want to take advantage of that authority, it takes up. There's time that's necessary for a community to take to make an ordinance. It's not something they can do overnight. You know, if we don't do, if we're not, I would suggest to use the term you used Patty, somewhat proactive in this. If we waited to January, we put communities behind the eight-fold, behind the eight-ball, doubly, because we wouldn't have given them the authority proactively. And then even if we did it in January, then they're still behind the eight-ball because of being behind in terms of the time it takes to put an ordinance in place if they want to do that. Based on the local news I saw, aren't we being given some credit for not allowing some local ordinance changes to go forward that some wanted to? I do believe so. I don't know what's going on here again. But that's basically what, but that's based, if I could, this is a reference to the proposals out of Burlington a couple of times through proposed charter change. For that piece, there is a statue, a Vermont statue on the books, which specifically and quite clearly prohibits local communities from creating their own ordinances around firearms. Correct. So it's a good effort, but it's an apple and an orange. If I... I don't think so. I mean, the credit's being given. And just, and finally, if we do decide to go forward, I would agree significant needs to be in there. I would support a card out for medical marijuana and I would add caution to an interest to getting into the growing. I kind of liked the more focused consumption for now. Okay, that's fine. I don't know if that's fine. I just think we got to be careful that we don't bite off more than we can chew. No pun intended. No pun intended. Yes. We can bite a line just in practice.