 Good to go. Pursuant to Chapter 20 of the Acts of 2021 and extended again by Chapter 2 of the Acts of 2023, this meeting will be conducted via remote means. Members of the public who wish to access the meeting may do so in the following manner by emailing Steve McCarthy at McCarthyS at AmherstMA.gov. That's M-C-C-A-R-T-H-Y-S at AmherstMA.gov. No in-person attendance of members of the public will be permitted, but every effort will be made to ensure that the public can adequately access the proceedings in real time by the technological means. In the event that we are unable to do so for reasons of economic hardship and despite best efforts, we will post on the Amherst website an audio or video reporting transcript or other comprehensive record of proceedings as soon as possible after the meeting. And with that done, we'll call the meeting to order at 5.03 p.m. and take a roll call of attendance. Helen? Here. Dylan? Yeah. And I'm here, so we're three here and two absent who may potentially join us when we can. OK, so the next up is public comment. Is there anyone here for public comment? And that is general comment unrelated to anything on the agenda. So if you're here for a licensed application or one of the discussion topics, please hold your comment until then. If you are here for general public comment, raise your hand by hitting the raise hand button. No? OK. That is public comment. Next up is licenses. A, Common Pictures License Application, CV-127 Carefree Cakery, LLC at 71 Coles Road. Are there people here for that, Steve? Yes, Alicia Bryant, I believe, is the owner, so she should be coming in. OK, fantastic. Hello, Ms. Bryant. Hi, how are you? Great, how are you? Great. Great, so we'd love to hear about your business. Sure, so Carefree Cakery is a bakery that specializes in cakes, things for custom cakes for weddings, birthdays, things of that nature, and additionally gluten-free and vegan goods as well. So largely just a dessert shop, anything you can think of for sweets, it'll likely be there. Fantastic. Great. Everyone got a copy of the license application? Does anyone have any questions or comments about the application? If not, is there a motion to approve CV-127? So moved. Oh, who is it? It's Dylan. OK, Dylan, thank you, Dylan. Is there a second? I'll second. Thanks, Hallie. Any further discussion? If there is not, then we'll take a vote. Hallie. Aye. Dylan. Aye. Gaston. Aye. And aye, that is 4 to 0 with one absent. And your application is approved. Thank you so much for coming in. And best wishes for your business. We're really excited. Thank you all so much. All right, thanks. Bye-bye. Take care. OK, so now we move on to our discussion topics. And first up is the marijuana regulation. So what we talked about last time is we want to be, Steve, do we want to work on establishing the marijuana subcommittee first? Or did you look more into that? Or were we just going to launch other regulations? I did do some research into that. So to establish a subcommittee that's composed of only members of the board, so no people outside the board, then the board can just do that via vote. And if there was three people on this subcommittee, then only two would be a quorum. So the board would have to think about who would want to be on that subcommittee. And other people could certainly come in and comment. But they wouldn't be core members of the subcommittee. And I did also find that Worcester has a local marijuana license, so I sent along the ordinance for that. I thought that would be interesting. And from our last meeting focusing on this, I am working on getting some information about the diversion and education programs funded with the host-community agreement funds, the pre and post-change revenues from the host-community agreements, and public safety reports and the impact of marijuana businesses versus the alcohol related ones, so I'm working on that. OK, so that's still in process. So I don't know if we want to go too far into it right now or do we want to, I mean, I wish Doug were here, to figure out who wants to be on that. Do we definitely want to set up the marijuana regulation subcommittee of three people so that I can kind of meet with only two if necessary, because people's schedules seem to be getting. We do want to make that call now or just wait until we have everybody here. So what do you think, Dylan? Well, let me say, I mean, I like the idea of a three-person subcommittee for ease of forum, but the thing if we can do it all in a friendly way, just because you're not on the subcommittee, you don't get an official vote, but it's all the same people on the regular committee. It's just a convenience thing. We can kind of approach it in that way of like, hey, what do you think about this? All right, well, if you were voting, it would be this. So we'll carry that vote, you know, decided and that we have three members of the subcommittee, two yes and a one no, the two members in attendance who would vote no. Can we just like approach it like normal people and not like very strict, like particular bureaucrats like, well, technically, they're not on the subcommittee. Right. So what would be the advantage? Is anything, yeah, that was my point, yeah, pretty good. Oh, I was wondering if there's an advantage to having the, I mean, did we want to just move, is the idea just to move more quickly on the whole topic as opposed to just bringing it up at every meeting and going like talking about it that way? Because, I mean, does anybody see the need to have, the need to have? Well, I mean, I think the advantage is just like when we've done the task force, like when Halle and I had a task force or, I did a little support of Dylan preparing the club regulations, it's just, there's a lot of, you know, legwork that would consume the whole meeting. And so that's the, I think that's the purpose is that to really make progress on this stuff takes some focus that is tough in these meetings. That's, I guess that would be the theory of it. Okay, so a little more targeted than what we'd be able to talk about in our regular meeting. So who would want to, so we have a quorum, we could set such a thing up today. So who, do we have three people who would like to go at this thing? Did we want to wait for Doug or see if he wants to join? I mean, as long as Doug is acting superintendent. I kind of feel like he has a lot on his plate. Yeah, I think so too. For him either. So is there a way, can we vote by email? I don't believe so, not for official vote. For official vote, okay. And he said you, he's 50-50 might be coming today, might not make it today. Yep. Okay. I mean, I don't want to leave him out if he wants to be a part of the, yeah, Dylan, go ahead. Although I do- As you say, if we like the idea of just like three person subcommittee just so we can have the meetings, whoever can attend, we can just, if two people want to come and talk about it in public, awesome, great. Okay. But, you know, we're going to approach it in the way where, you know, all five of us show up, we treat it more or less the same as we would treat this meeting. I think it would be, I'm definitely happy then not being on the subcommittee. And I think it ends up being, you know, kind of relevant whether or not Doug is officially on or off it because there's no more official- Because he still hasn't put, right. He hasn't put it anyway. Exactly. Right, okay. All right, well, let's just set it up. And so we have three people who are willing to go on the subcommittee. Oh, I'll go. I'm willing. If Doug has a burning desire, I'm also willing to step away from subcommittee. Oh, okay. I mean, if someone, if one of you is, you know, kind of happy to be the driver of, you know, I will, I am happy to support, I'm, you know, my summer's kind of crazy work, unfortunately. Okay. All right, Dylan, were you gonna say something? As you're gonna say, like, I'll be on it, but I don't think that's the best, I'm the best person for that. Okay, okay. Well, let's, let's see. So Hallie, you're willing to rotate out if Doug has a burning desire to be on it or Gaston, Dylan, one of you could possibly rotate out. Would that be all right? If Doug really wants to. Okay, so I'll say yes. Hallie will say yes. You guys flip a coin and we'll just get it established. And then we can figure out who, who we can vote in or out at the next meeting. Okay. If Gaston thinks he's gonna 10 more than me, I'd rather be Gaston. But then again, as long as he's gonna be the 10, that's the whole idea, so. Yeah, I mean, I guess, what's the, what's the, what's the vision? I mean, just to review, Steve, these will be public meetings. Is that the way it works? Yeah, so they'll be fully public meetings. The board can establish kind of a different board that, you know, would post its own agendas and, and minutes and things like that and have different composition. But that way, the quorum of this board would not be needed. Just a quorum of that board. So if there was three members of only two would be needed, but that allows for a way for, if there's only two people who can meet on any particular day, then that could be a quorum. Just two members of license commissions, not a quorum. So it's just a way to kind of work around that and give a little bit more flexibility. But it's also, it also allows us to like, have more than two people talking outside, right? So yeah, I mean, they would see, I mean, we're still, we're not gonna, we're not gonna violate town, open meetings. Exactly, yeah. Yeah, it'll be public meetings and publicly posted and everything. Well, I, that's, I'm happy to, I'm happy to join and, you know, this 5 p.m. Thursday slot is probably the easiest one to protect for me, but I guess we can always vary that as long as we provide Steve with, what is it, three business days notice? 48 hours ahead of time, but for me to try to get it all sorted, yeah. I have to get into the town clerk 48 hours ahead of time. Okay, Dylan, were you gonna say something? He's frozen. Dylan, you're frozen. Bad reception coming to me. Okay. I've got, I've got bad reception to come back to me when it's good to be here. Okay, all right. Oh, there you, okay, you're looking better now. So, so we're gonna vote with Gaston and Hallie and myself on, and then we'll rearrange as necessary and try to keep a Thursday 5 p.m. slot. Is that good for everybody? Sure. So far, okay. So I moved to create a subcommittee of three with initial members, commissioners Hughes Walker and Delos Reyes. The book on marijuana regulation subcommittee. Yes. Yes. I will second that. All right. Thank you, Hallie. Any further discussion? And Steve, we can dissolve this if we need to, right? Yep. Okay. All right. Okay. Hearing no further discussion. I'll take a vote Hallie. Aye. Dylan. Aye. Gaston. Aye. And I vote aye. That is four to zero with one absent. All right. It's been established. And we can. And the meeting times will be the alternate. Yes, alternate Thursdays at five. And great. So Steve, whenever it doesn't show today, can you let him know that we did this? And tell him what time it's meeting and tell him that if he wants to be part of the subcommittee, he can. We're happy to re vote him in or exchange soft somebody out. Or if he just wants to come in on a visitor, that would be great too. But we just wanted to move forward with that. Sounds good. Okay. You should probably ask if there's any public comment on marijuana while we're on the topic. Oh, is there any public comment on this? Are there? No, there's nobody. There's nobody. We had an attendee, but they just left. Just left. Yes, we have no public. I guess my reminder is there. My request is that next, next Thursday, I am kind of on the road for the day. So I wonder if we can start on the 27th. Yes, that would be fine with me because I'll be back. Fine with me. Okay. I think I may be on a town for that one, but we can certainly work something out. Okay. All right. Sounds good. I have a question about this before we move off entirely. Okay. So, Steve, where we can talk to, I could talk to you Gaston or Haley about this, about violating open meeting law. To what extent am I allowed to talk to members of the public as myself or with somebody else? Is that strictly forbidden? I don't believe any board members can discuss items before the board out of a public meeting, but you could certainly, if you're just talking to a friend or something, you could certainly give your opinion. I think that the big, the operative question is what the deliberations are happening. So board members would be verboten, but if you just want to talk to your friend about it, that's certainly fine. Got it. Oh, yeah. Because I'd like to solicit some, get a sense of what members of the public think. And it's definitely, harder to get them to show up to a Zoom meeting to maybe ask somebody out in public, hey, what do you think? What's your opinion about this? But I don't want to go around violating open meeting. They try to collect public input from people. Yeah, collecting public input is certainly fine. I think the key criteria is deliberations happening. Outside of a public meeting. I think, I know on ZBA site visits, obviously you asked clarifying questions and the one thing was anything that was asked on a site visit simply had to be recorded in a meeting, something like that's efficient. Like let's say I was talking to somebody who may even be like a potential person who would want to open a marijuana shop, right? Or this type of thing. If I were to ask the question like, hey, what would you be looking for if I were to then report to the meeting? Hey, I spoke to this individual on this date. These were the questions that were asked. Is something like that suffice? I, it's been a little while since I've been involved with the site visits. So I don't know exactly how they structure that with the open meeting law. But I mean, if you're just talking to somebody about their general thoughts, that's fine. It doesn't need to be in a public meeting or recorded at all. But, you know, deliberation is kind of where the, so you certainly wouldn't want to say, yeah, you do this and we can get it approved or something. But you could just say, you know, generally speaking, you know, what would be a good, something you'd look for in a regulatory environment, that type of thing. Yeah, okay. Good to know. I mean, as we do this, do we have an email address besides you, Steve? Like for public comment, that might be worth posting somewhere on our website. The board doesn't, I know the town has to pay some, some for each email address so they generally don't give them to boards, but they can certainly just pass along to me and notice, you know, comment for the board license commissioners and I can pass it right along. Okay. Great. Any other questions? Anything else on this topic? If not, then let's go on to rental registration bylaw and Steve forwarded all of the answers from KP law, where I think he responded, Mr. Murray and Ms. Goldberg responded specifically to some of the detailed questions about the scenarios. So everyone, do we want to talk about that today? We have time for that. I haven't heard back from Mandy about when they're sending this up to the town council. I think it's going to be a while, but they did, I think one of the more important things that KP law did is asked the committee to provide exactly like a specifics about what it would mean to not pass an inspection or to, to fail on an inspection, which is useful. And so they have to probably come up with that. Yes, Gaston. I'm sorry to go back to the candidates, but I wanted to, if I could just note, I looked at the Worcester law and I just wanted to observe what are some of the policy things that are interesting there just to have in the back of our mind. Is that it limits the number of licenses for cannabis to 20% of the number available for alcohol. So that was interesting. Relating alcohol licenses to cannabis. And then the other point is like, the 500 feet of schools, which I guess is pretty standard. Besides that, it seemed pretty, pretty much the expected stuff here, but it's a great starting point for us and a very good checklist. So thank you for finding that, Steve. Yeah, no problem. It was hard. I knew somewhere around there had done one, but I wasn't sure which city and they had it pretty buried, but I thought it'd be a great thing to work off of. Hey, Doug. Thank you. Good to see you, Doug. Yeah, good to see you. So we're going to, we're actually just to, we hope you're doing well. No, you're busy. So just to bring you up to speed, we are in the discussion topics and we just, we're about to launch into rental registration bylaw. However, what we did is literally two minutes ago, we voted to establish a marijuana regulation subcommittee with three people on it, so that two people could be a quorum and it could meet outside. And we already elected three people, but if you really want to join, if you want to be one of those three people, we have, anyone is willing to swap out with you. Well, I think given my current status, it's going to be tough for me. I'm happy to offer, suggest any advice given sort of things I've done to date. I think, given that we're trying to move forward with this, I'm guessing my capacity to help in that way is going to be pretty limited. So I'm going to step back on that. And of course, answer any questions anybody has when they go through the work. So. Okay, great. So the meetings will be on alternate Thursdays at five o'clock and anyone, anyone of us can join in as a, not a participant, whatever, as a sort of a guest. I can't remember what the name is anymore. And so Steve, would you be able to, for the documentation on that, would you be able to email that around to everybody on the board or is it just the people on the committee? Well, I could certainly CC them as interested parties. And we could also certainly continue to have an agenda item on the normal license commission agenda. All right. I think like Gaston said, this would really just be kind of for that focused in the weed stuff that still needs to be conducted in a public meeting, of course, but I take up too much time every other week on a normal meeting. Okay, great. And so the first meeting of that subcommittee is tentatively July 27th at five o'clock. Okay. So are we ready to move on to rental? I was just to point out to Doug, the Worcester law that Steve sent around, just scanning it, one of the interesting policy points is that they max out the number of cannabis adult use licenses as a percentage of alcohol licenses. Oh, really? 20%. Yeah, we have, if I may, we have the zoning limitation of eight total. I don't know how that compares percentage-wise, but that's it. And that may have to change with if they go to public consumption. Yeah, that's an interesting point. Okay, so next up is rental. Are we ready for rental registration by-law? Anything else on marijuana regulation? Any questions? Nope, okay. So rental registration by-law. Steve sent around the documents from KP law. Did everybody get a chance to look through them? Or do you want to look through them quickly now? Responses from the attorneys about some of our questions. These are the same that we got for the, we had at the last meeting, right? Yes, I think so. We just didn't get a chance to talk about it. Okay. I mean, I thought that the issue that I had been asking about, which is basically what could we meaningfully do as an appellate body? I felt like they brought clarity to that and made it seem tenable, even if unlikely for us to get much action. No, I agree. Is there anything we wanted to, we want to change or recommend to the committee? I mean, we're all still in favor of conducting the hearings for LitDeep. So any recommendations or everything looks good? I think that after our last discussion, I think we've got some of our client questions in there. So yeah, I think it's going to be personally, I think it's going to be a wait and see. We can over engineer it only before we get something. Okay. We get something like, oh, our carefully laid plans. We could have seen this coming. Right. All right. So is it worth having Manny Johannicky back in or should we just tell her everything looks great? I mean, I think that the, I think we could just say that the feedback from the attorneys on the appeals seemed, I mean, it seems fine. They have some specific recommendations like clarifying what it means to pass an inspection. Right. And that certainly seems like it would be important for us if we were reviewing anything to know what that had happened or not happened clearly. So I think we could say that the feedback from the attorneys seemed sensible to us if you all agree. All right. I thought so. Everybody. Yes. Yeah. Okay. Great. So I will email Manny with that. And okay. And then we'll see what happens. All right. If we're done with that one onto interim police chief, Steve. So this is, this one's been kind of bouncing around on the agenda waiting for a meeting for a while. But I just did want to say that Captain Ting is the interim police chief. I had a good meeting with him about some different issues with the license commission. He was very supportive and I'm happy to help any way you can. And in response to the request that he reached out to the ABCC and try to establish a contact there, he said he would. So I haven't heard any update on that, but I thought it was just worth saying that in a meeting. Oh, that's great. Thanks, Steve. Would you, and I'm sure he's, you know, trying to got a lot to do right now, but maybe as it gets later into the summer, could you follow up on the ABCC thing just before the students come back? With end of August, probably. Yes, Doug. So I just had a question, Steve, you may or may not know this, you know, in the obviously Chief Ting is in place as an interim. Is there a sense of when the permanent position will be filled? Not that I'm aware of, no. I'm there, there may be a sense, but I'm not privy to it, so. Okay, no, I'm just curious. Okay, great. If there are no other questions about that, thanks again, Steve, and we'll go on to upcoming meetings and agendas. So our next meeting is July 20th at five. And do you have anything that, you know, any licenses coming up, Steve, that you know about that we'd need a quorum for or I guess we need it in general? I don't have anything I know is coming in. No, it's been rather slow. Okay, I'm not gonna be here for sure. And I can't phone in or whatever. So as long as there are three others, everything should be okay. And Steve, do you want me to, should we just put all of the discussion topics on now? Or do you wanna talk to somebody else to set the agenda on that Tuesday? Well, I guess we can take a look at it now. We can keep everything here. We can keep marijuana. Yes. Rental regs, do we feel need to keep that on? I don't think so. I don't think police chief, just the two. Is there anything else? Maybe the lunch cards, we can probably have an update on that. Sure, are they coming back in? Food trucks. Well, I've been doing some legwork with different town departments about kind of the nighttime service. And there seems to be some support with maybe potentially closing off Prey Street to offer that. Right, okay. So I am just trying to follow up with the engineering department of DPW, but we could possibly take a look at any changes to the bylaw or the regulations that might be needed for that and try to set a plan in place for the fall we could continue with that topic. Okay, super. Well, why don't you put it on just in case there's gonna be an update? I'll offer one quick thing on that. The closing of the street would be, it's the public way, under the guidance of the, or under the control of the town council. Yeah. So that, I don't know if they could permanently do it or they would have, I think they would have to take action. We can make recommendations to them though. Yeah, we will, that's certainly the other thing I'll have to take a look at. I spoke to Paul about it a little bit and I think there, he has some authority to do it on a temporary basis, but we'd have to, I think you're right, it probably would need to be the town council. So another thing we can look at. If we don't have any licenses, do we still want to have the meeting? I guess you don't have to. Do we have a placeholder in case something comes up, but if there are no licenses to review? What do you think, Steve? I don't think we have anything, particularly pressing, especially considering we'll have the marijuana subcommittee to focus on that. So I'd be fine with, like Kelly said, having a planning on it, but cancelling it if there's nothing that comes up. I think time passes when it comes up. So that's fine. And just in case something, because something has in the past, you would call, ordinarily you would call Doug to talk about that, but if not, who do you call after that? Like if Doug is not available. So Doug is the vice chair. I'm around. Okay. I'm not leaving town. You're never not, Doug. I just haven't seen you in a while. I'm just trying to make it easy for you. So okay, well, you just call Doug. Yeah, it'll be a quick decision, I think if anything, you know. Okay, all right. So no meeting on the 20th, unless Steve needs it, there needs to be a meeting in which case call Doug. Okay. Yeah, if many green lights in the sky, Doug. That's right. And great. And then on the 27th, I guess Steve will be in touch and see if people are able to, so who couldn't, I guess it just needs to be me and Halle or me and Gaston or Halle and Gaston, but we can deal with that after the 23rd. Okay. Well, we have all five here. Do we have any, so besides you, Marion, is everybody else think they would make it on the 20th? Yes. I hope so. And well, we have everybody, as the summer is very busy, or summer is very busy with vacations anyway, it might be good to take a look at August too. So I think we would be looking at the 3rd and the 17th, potentially the 31st, what are those look like for people if you just have any idea, if you'll definitely be out. I'll be here. Definitely out. Who's out? I am 31st, definitely. You're out on the 31st. I'll be in Vermont, in the woods. Oh, nice. And you can't be tripped. I can do the 3rd. I can do, what's the next one, the 17th? I can't do the 31st. Everybody else. I'm here for all of those, so. And Gaston, you too, right? For which date are we talking about? August 3rd, August 17th, and August 31st. August 3rd is the one that's not good for me. Okay, just tentative. Obviously things might change, but just tentative, I'm definitely gonna be a novice or something. Okay, I mean, yeah, actually, I'll be on the Cape on the 17th and I'll be in Boston on the 3rd, so those are not ideal. So if I'm a quorum breaker, we should maybe talk about it. Okay, I'll be here for both of those, but not the 31st. Doug will be here. Hallie will be here. 33rd, I'm good, 31st. Okay. And Dylan, which ones are you out? Just the last weekend, the last one in August. The 31st. Okay, so potentially we're okay, but Steve's. All right, well, that sounds good. Obviously plans may change, but it's good to just get a sense of this day is definitely not gonna work. So. Okay. Great. So we've done the subcommittee's establishment of marijuana regulation. Submit kitty, we did that. Topics not reasonably anticipated 48 hours prior to the meeting. Yes, Gaston. I just, we have someone, I don't know if we, they're here for public comment. Oh, let's see. No, that's the, that's a newspaper reporter. Okay. Case if there's any public comment, you can just click the raise hand button and. Oh, yes. No, okay. All right. No topics not reasonably anticipated prior to the meeting, anything. I have none. I have none. Okay. In that case, is there a motion to adjourn? So moved. Thank you, Doug. As there a second. Second. Thank you, Dylan. Any further, just obviously not. We'll take a vote. Hallie. Hi. Dylan. Hi. Gaston. Hi. Doug. Hi. And I vote aye, five to zero. We're adjourned at 539 PM. Thanks everybody. I'll see some of you on the 27th. Sounds great. Okay. Yeah, see you later. Thanks a lot. Thank you. Nice seeing you guys, everybody. Bye.