 To order with getting a roll call and because I do have a slide up, I may have to get a couple of you to tell me who you are since it only shows me as a plus three. But from NACB, we have Gina Crenwinkel and Jeffrey Gallegos and John, who is here with us now. Then also from the subcommittee, we have Ashley Reynolds, Nautavis, thank you, Nautavishne. Julio, did I see that you were here? I'm here. Okay, fantastic. And then it looks like we may have two additional people, but I can't tell what the name is. We have Susanna Davis. Thank you. Susanna, I heard you pop in. And who else? We have Julie from the Vermont Control Cannabis Commission. Yeah, I got that. It looks like there's another person and maybe I'm just seeing things. I think I'm in there twice, once as the camera and once to record. Okay, thank you so much. I appreciate that. Okay, very good. So in coming to order, this is just our normal reminder that we do each week of what our milestones are. And Friday is October 1st, so that everyone is aware. And that is our first milestone date for putting a plan together for reducing or eliminating fees for social equity applicants with our next big milestone coming October 15th. And then of course, in November 2021, there is the desire to have a larger scale meeting with the subcommittee and the advisory committee and stakeholders for social equity. So with that being said, I would like to note that we do not have any electronic comments that were submitted this week, but to remind everyone and I'll replace this desk because it appears I picked up an old one that if you would like to make public comments, you may do so at ccb.vermont.gov through the public input form. But we do not have any today. And then I would like to move to approval of Thursday, September 23rd, social equity subcommittee meeting minutes. May I get a motion to approve? Motion to approve. And a second? All second. Thank you so much. Excellent. So today's big agenda item fees. And so Gina, if you'd like to tell me where you'd like to be directed or if you'd like to start here, that works just fine. So we get to start where we left off with such a really heated conversation we were having on this. And obviously this is one of our, you know, one of our most important topics that we're going to be speaking about. So I really want to take this time right now to really go over where we sort of left it off is the application fee should be waived for social equity. And then we were recommendation one, which is the first year the license should be waived. The second year we should have 25% of the fee. Third year 50% of the fee. Fourth year 75% of the fee. Fifth year full price. We also recommended a waiver possibility for the first and second year if you were able to demonstrate financial need but also had a plan to remedy this situation going forward. So what is your business plan to increase revenue and profitability? We also have gotten, so it doesn't mean it will be completely waived, but partial or full waiver can occur during those years. And then we got into a lovely conversation about should we have cash on how much a social equity licensee should make revenue-wise. If they hit a certain cash, then they be mandated to pay for their annual license. And so I'm going to just hand this over to Ashley who started us out in that conversation. And then afterwards we'll get into discussing about how many licenses that social equity candidate can apply for. So Ashley? I appreciate that. Thanks, Gina. Yeah, I did mention kind of trying to put in some kind of safeguard for abusing the program. And I think after taking the weekend to kind of think about it and thinking about, you know, capping revenue versus limiting integrated licenses, I like the route of limiting the integrated licenses, meaning that somebody can't get a license at every sector of the supply chain that is all going towards the dispensary potentially retail sales of the same entity. So I think that's the smartest way to not put all the earnability into, you know, only a handful of people's hands. I also just came out of the compliance enforcement and talking about sort of what other safeguards there are, like would they have to pay back the fees if they could afford them kind of thing retroactively after those five years. So we can get into that. But one safeguard that Massachusetts does is that if there is a request for limited or for percentages off of licensing annual fees, for instance, if somebody sells only 85% of their inventory over six months, then there would be someone to come in and say, okay, well, why aren't you selling 100% of it? You see what I'm saying? And then if they aren't able to sell upwards of 85% of their grown or acquired material for retail that they would be dropped down in here for how much they could grow or how much they could sell. So I thought that that was actually a really sensible way of going about things from Massachusetts. I wonder if we could have perhaps Jennifer in one of our meetings sometimes talk about sort of their social equity program, which I'm pretty sure is her, that's the committee she heads or the commission she heads. Yeah, so I'm familiar with Massachusetts. So the 85% that they do is a good point. They do that for all of their licensees. So it's not just for social equity. And can be something that, you know, Vermont considers, you know, if you're not being utilizing your full license, you know, should you go down a tier in licensing, especially for a cultivator on standpoint. And we do make lots of notation to the Massachusetts models. I know we've done it with the recommendation for fee and application waivers. And then we are also going to talk about the benefits that they have. And if the attachments that have been sent to you via email and what is at the end of this PowerPoint presentation link shows a comparison of what exactly Massachusetts is doing just to get into more details as well. But yes, they have a really great program out there. And those are definitely things that we consider on this phone call right now. I really like about the suggestions that are limiting revenue, because we want people to have the ability to succeed. And tapping that could result in them not working as hard, but perhaps limiting the amount of licenses that social equity is able to apply for under a social equity program. So right now, I mean, I would love to hear Julio, what is your opinion about this? And what I'm thinking is just one license per person and then going over the possible licenses that we have available to make sure that we're okay with each of those licenses. I guess my question is whether you mean one license per step in the chain of production through retail or whether you mean that a social equity license can only apply to one run on the chain of distribution? I wasn't sure. What are you referring to? So I was referring to that they're allowed to pick one chain, the one license reduction per social equity candidate per any stage in distribution. So if you want to, you can have a reduction in cultivation and that you choose one of those tiers of cultivation, but you couldn't get a dispensary and a cultivation license. So could they, are they eligible to get those licenses on a non-social equity basis? Yeah. To compete with other folks, is that the idea? That's the idea. So what we're trying to do is not to infuse the market way just because they feel that we have the application fee and there's no fee for us for the first year of trying to get all of the licenses and seeing where their best fit may be really for them to choose a concentration that they would like to follow. But this is an open conversation so I'd love to hear your opinion. You can say yeah or no to that. Well, I'm trying to get more information so I feel a little more confident on what direction I want to take. I haven't yet heard anyone really identify even with a ballpark as to what the size of the fees that the state would be waiving or for any given year. And so it's hard to really judge how much the state is giving up or how much of an advantage it is to other non-social equity or the social equity actors compared to their competitors. Do we have any idea yet what that amount is? Because I think when you're talking about whether you're giving someone quote too much, I don't really have any real sense of how much is a full license fee for any of the years. I'm going to just see if I have, I do have, and I'm going to see how we can kind of share this. Nika, I'm going to email this to you. And this has not been voted on so this is really just to pose the fees that have been sent to Nika once she has it is received. So this is just a conversation that we're having today. It's not to say that we need to limit the amount of licenses that a social equity candidate can have. We're just seeing, you know, having a conversation is that something that we want to do for Vermont. I see, Jeffrey, you have your hand up. And Nika, if you can just check your email, I forward you those fees. Yes, thanks, Nika. A couple of things have come up. So first of all, according to, so this is an Act 164 in section 909B. My understanding is that integrated licenses will already be limited to people that hold the dispensary registration on April 1st, 2022. There should be no more than five total integrated licenses, one for each registered dispensary. So it sounds like there's already a structure in place based on my reading of this part of the Act 164. So maybe we don't need to go too far into how to limit integrated licenses because they already are. And then as far as the fees go, I think you said Nika's going to post that one coming from the market structure, subcommittee of where they're at as far as the amount, is that what you said, Gina? Okay. And also, I think it's overall to look at the social equity program, the reason why the fees are being waived is because the dues have already been paid by the social equity applicant. And to not look at this like the state is giving a freebie to social equity applicants, the social equity applicant has already kind of paid their application fee by the disproportionate impact of Canada's prohibition. So just maybe to remember that that's what we're coming from is not just like a handout. I didn't mean it to be taken that way. I'm really talking about when you waive a fee, it's an opportunity cost to the state of Vermont that would be money that the state of Vermont would realize that could be used for other aspects of the program. I just don't even, I haven't heard, and I've only been, I'm late for this game, to this center prize. So I haven't heard any, I just don't even have a sense of the scale like what Massachusetts fees are, and I don't even know if that's even a comparator to Vermont. But because I don't know how much of a, you know, how much is being waived, it's hard for me to say that continuing the waiver through, you know, 50% or 75% of what I don't, I just don't really know, and I don't know how that impacts the social equity applicants who are trying to start, and I don't know how it implicates funding that would be otherwise available for other aspects of the program. So it's just as hard for me, it's hard for me to get my hands around that without even having even, you know, just a rough ballpark of what we're talking about in terms of fees for those years. So, we have just gotten those, so one of the issues that we've been having is that we are creating the market as we're creating the social equity program. So this is, you know, something new to us, and just please bear with us because these numbers can change at any time. So these are just a rough estimate now. You know, this is what they are talking about in the other market. Point of clarification about the integrated licenses, so the integrated license type itself is limited, but licensees could essentially vertically integrate, like they could be a retailer or a producer or something. So that is just a point of clarification for this conversation. Thank you. You're welcome. Nader, you have a question? I did accidentally raise my hand, but I do have a thought on my mind that I was just thinking of. Could we potentially see any problems if we have some licenses that are much more expensive than other licenses? And for example, I'm looking at the Tier 1 license, $10,000 compared to the Tier 1 outdoor cultivation license, which is $500. And I know that these can change, but could there potentially be issues if people are planning ahead and they're thinking, you know, I'm going to try the social equity license for the most expensive one. And then there'll be a lot of candidates for that license. And then there'll be more competition for these other licenses. I mean, again, I'm not a business person, but I'm just wondering what potential issues there could be, if there's any thoughts on that. Great question. That's why we're having this discussion right now, Ashley. I think that's a really, really good point. And that's where MindBind goes as well. I want there to be as little barriers for a social equity applicant to get set up and be successful. But, okay, we flood the market because a social equity applicant applies for the largest grow in indoor cultivation. Then all of that flower has to be sold somewhere. And then what? So then another social equity applicant has had all the fees have been waiting for them to have their dispensary. We're looking at these fees, and this is a ton of money. And yes, this is definitely an aspect of a barrier for any applicant social equity or not. But it's all expensive. It's all expensive. And so I think we are relatively in agreement that we just don't want to see abuse happen at every aspect of the supply chain. But I think you hit the nail on the head there that's 100% what could happen potentially. And can we just go back really quickly so it's really quickly clear that there can be vertical integration for an entity that has so they have a dispensary, they have a grow, they have a processing license, and they have what's the other one? What am I saying? So one can be vertically integrated or we are saying we are limiting the integrated license to prevent vertical integration for one entity. Can you just clarify that? My mind is making it clarification, but I want to make sure it's specifically for everyone. Yeah, and Julie, if you can just clarify I believe that she did say you couldn't get an integrated license but that's for the medicinal cannabis dispensaries now. But you would be able to get licenses in the different areas. Is that correct Julie? Yes, so the integrated license as a license type is limited but you could stack if you will, as maybe a better term right? You could stack a retailer with a manufacturer with a you know, with a grow operation you could stack your licenses maybe the better way to use it when it's individual license types. I don't know if it's a medical program but are we assuming that the medical dispensaries are all going to become rep dispensaries and that then that will already be in place for them or? No, I'm sure if they're going to have integrated licenses actually. Okay, thank you. But right now they are vertically integrated. So I think we should take a look at this. They have up to 5,000 square feet at 500 3,000 square feet for 2,000 on tier 3 which is 6,000 square feet at 4,000 and then tier 4 which is up to 10,000 square feet that is a delayed one so it would not be available at the start. Actually you still have your hand up. Do you have a comment? And then we have tier 1 indoor cultivation the same thing. So we have 1,000 square feet at 2,000 tier 2 at 2,500 square feet 8,000 tier 3 which is 5,000 square feet at 12,000 tier 4 is 10,000 square feet at 20,000 tier 5 is 25,000 square feet and that would be at 50,000. And then tier 6 is also delayed so that will not be available unless the market demands it which would be up to 50,000 square feet at 75,000 and that is not a delay. Do you have your hand? Yes, thanks. I just wanted to clarify to this group also that the market structure subcommittees 2 proposals. So this fee proposal A is only one of them and kind of the more higher priced one. So we have the same kind of structure but our lower price lower fee. Yes. Jaffrey, thank you for that. I think this is the one they sent main so I think this might be the one that they're leaning towards but I'm not sure. As I've said these prices are subject to change. It's a little hard I know to make decisions when we're making other decisions that impact our decisions. But this would give people a rough idea of what it would look like. Who know you'll have your hand raised. Yes, thank you. I think these numbers even if these are ballpark numbers I think really helped me. I don't share the concern that about waiving fees according to that schedule you previously put up based on a social equity applicant becoming extraordinarily successful 50% waiver of that amount to $10,000 in wage state fees I don't think is particularly impactful unless there's a projection that there are going to be many hundreds or thousands of these licenses at that amount for social equity applicants I don't know that there is any kind of I don't think there's any cap or I don't know if there's any projection or estimate of how many people would be seeking these licenses. And I think those concerns for me are particularly or I don't know I have to put this in the opposite way. I have even less concern about the waivers for the retailer or manufacturing consequences compared to the large cultivation license fee. Thank you for your opinion so far on these. Retail licenses are significantly less so we have retail that goes anywhere from $5,000 it'll be $5,000 for a storefront $2,000 if you're cloning and then they have additional on regulation so it's limited is $1,500 manufacturing license is here one is $10,000 tier two is $2,500 so the difference is solvent extraction that a tier one can do that a tier two cannot which significantly limits them. Then we have integrated which is the $50,000 which we're not worried about and then the whole sale and testing laboratories is $1,000 each so far. This is the proposal fee right now of which seems to have similar pricing as the first one. Ashley, I see your hand raised. I just want to kind of touch on, you know, we haven't gotten as far as like how many social equity applicant licenses are there going to be. Are we going to limit licenses at all in Vermont? To put it in perspective, the Massachusetts has like quite a robust demand for cannabis and I would say, you know, yeah and just in that state there's a hundred dispensary for that huge state and Boston and all that like Vermont doesn't have that so I you know I do hear what Julio is saying that there's not going to be hundreds of thousands of people coming to Vermont that are seeking this type of license but now that there's no residency requirement, I mean why wouldn't someone who sees an opportunity to take advantage of you know an opportunity? I mean this is incredible for anybody to be on the journey of owning a cannabis company on this wild ride and I feel that we just really got to make sure I don't want to limit things to a level that doesn't allow for a level playing ground but I really think we should think long and hard to be sure that we don't just have you know hundreds of people coming from other states, yes they may be social equity applicants under what we had just determined is the definition but I don't want to see that we just get flooded. Like there's huge potential for flooding the market in all aspects of the supply chain in all aspects of applicants and so that has happened in plenty of other legal cannabis states and I really were so tiny that the ability to flood is so small and we saw this already happen in the hemp industry that like there was a huge bust or a huge boom and then a bust and I really just want to try to prevent that on all levels regardless of the applicant status. Gina I can't raise I can't raise my hands because I'm showing screen so just to put perspective for you one thing to leave there's 6.7 million people in the state of Massachusetts do 100 licenses. Did she clarify because I was on that call whether what kind of lessons those were? Those were just accessories. Just accessories. So 6.7 million people 100 licenses 660 in Vermont 660,000 population something that I just wanted to put the stats out there just to talk about the disparity in just your population yeah The market structure to many is having at this moment in time unlimited licenses now if that changed then I could understand us changing how many licenses we get out just trying to coincide with what they're doing. I saw Susanna's hand and then Nadar saw your hand after that. Susanna? Susanna Yeah thank you. I would be inclined to agree with Julio. I think that we're talking about a matter of scale and we have to ask ourselves how much are we going to save as a state with a surplus that has performed economically exceptionally well in the last, you know, 80 months as opposed to what benefit could this provide for small scale people looking to get into the industry. And I also think that it's really important that we keep in mind that when we talk about limiting the number of something in order to prevent lying or too much entry then we're doing two things. One, we're prioritizing commerce over everyone else or everything else. But the second thing, which I think is really common and we need to watch out for is taking an approach where the limitations we want to impose are always on marginalized people. Instead of saying if we have to impose some sort of limitation for the health of the market, let's impose it on people who historically had unmitigated prison access but instead, taking the approach that would put limitations on people who have already been historically harmed, I think only perpetuates the mindset of, you know, that it's somehow like charity that we can take, give it and take it away and that the limitation always has to be from the people from whom justice has been with health. I hope that that makes sense. A.C., thank you so much for those thoughts. Suzanne, I think it really helped for this conversation. And Nader? Thank you. I had one thought maybe a possible solution, but instead of looking at waiving the fees for just one license type, why don't, it's possible we could look at waiving a certain amount of money for either one or multiple licenses and so and I'm just making this number up just for this example but you know, if we were to say hypothetically we'll waive $5,000, that person could then pick the retail storefront license along with the tier two cultivation license or they could choose to just go for the tier three cultivation license and of course there's, you know, we can pick any number but could that be a potential solution to what we're discussing? Definitely Nader and I think it's something we should discuss right now. One thing that I would like to just give people perspective of is that you know, we're trying to help a social equity candidate who has had harm done. This is what our remedy is to it. We're also dealing with people who have been significantly underprivileged whether that was time in custody where they weren't able to work or whether that be most social economic backgrounds. Now, if our point is to try to help them to advance we need to make the bar of entry as low as possible and be able to support them throughout the chain. Another thing is that we are trying to ensure that people will be able to survive in the industry with the training and resources that we provide them with in hopes that they will have thriving businesses and that their money will then go back into taxes which helps to rebuild Vermont. It is a cycle. Even if we have people who come from other states to join Vermont they will be adding to the Vermont economy by housing by purchasing things there by helping to stimulate the lower economy. So yes, in some senses we sort of see the monetary value, oh well we're giving a waiver that costs the amount of dollars but we are hoping that this create stability in those people's lives makes them be able to rise where they currently stand and help the overall economy in a cycle. So just give that perspective which is why we have a five year tier level here which we're hoping that in the five years they will be able to be fully functional on their own and to be sustainable. So just to give an overall perspective of this picture because sometimes it's very hard to see that when we're doing slides. One of the things that I think we should talk about is you know everyone thoughts on doing limit that amount of licenses do we limit the amount of fee coverage or nothing at all just leave it as you can apply as a social equity license. So just going from my screen I have Julio and then Ashley and Nita Julio your thoughts? Well I don't know I think if the market overall is going to be limited I think that is enough of I mean I think that's enough of a kind of commercial curve there being market plots where the price is so low there's overproduction and so that no one can really be profitable in the short run you have a lot of people exiting the market I don't have concerns about adding a separate limit for social equity applicants if people otherwise meet the social equity criteria and they're given a license after we know that they're bonafide and they've got you know essentially a story to tell and I'm also not concerned if you know as the market takes shape in four or five years if it turns out that the market is dominated by social equity applicants by virtue of having reduced fees for them to take off that doesn't trouble me a bit if you know part of the state of vision for the model and the legislation is to provide opportunities for those parts of you know those parts of our economy where people have been underserved or suffered more direct harms you know if there's going to be success if those folks have the opportunities to succeed and they are succeeding then because it's going to pay back the state in terms of tax revenue I'm looking much further down the road than the first three or four years so I'm comfortable with the fee reduction that we previously saw on the slide I don't think we're quote giving too much to potentially wildly successful social equity applicants I hope we do find there are lots of them that are very successful and I don't think we need to limit the number of licenses that people otherwise meet the criteria that are set up to get such a license thank you so we have to leave it the way that it is and allow for social equity candidate to decide Ashley, your thoughts I'm not ready yet I want to keep listening Nader your thoughts I mean there's an understatement but there's a lot to consider that I'm still kind of marinating it at the moment but I'm just my thoughts are as they were ten minutes ago I'm still thinking about the idea of people social equity candidates feeling compelled to take a certain license because that license fee will be waived when in their minds they would prefer pursuing a different license because it more so fits their skills or what they desire to do so that's mostly what I'm thinking about at the moment and if anything else pops up I'll chime in thank you back to the PowerPoint presentation I would like to table this until next week about the fee I'm not next week on Thursday to really sort of have the time to really think this over one thing that I do really want to say is that everything that we're speaking about right now are hypotheticals you know we are estimating the worst and we're always sort of hoping for the best and so we would we have to rely on the person and have really had trust that a social equity candidate sees this as an opportunity and that they also want to be able to thrive and be successful and that they would choose the license or licenses in this case that would best fit them and with the support of this program so just keep that in mind we may need to get to a more balanced realization and have trust in these candidates Jeffrey sorry one last thought before it goes all the way on the table is that something I just thought of is maybe limiting every applicant in the state to a full license would encourage collaboration I don't know if you want to go that deep what was that license Jeffrey no I mean like any applicant whether they're social equity or not limited to a single license and then it kind of compels people to collaborate with each other but that's maybe not not the right concept I don't know just throwing it out there yeah unfortunately that's not our decision to make but that is a very good opinion Jeffrey I mean it does allow us to work as a unit so we're going to table this give it lots of thoughts email me if you have any questions comments this is a really tough decision this is not an easy one and so we're table it for now but I want to go into more about it that there's other fees that we need to consider they wanted to have a professional license application fee of $500 so basically it's if you were going to apply for a license you pay $500 up front it gives you an opportunity to start to look for space and then if you were fully going to commit then you can apply for a full license I was making a recommendation that that was waived employee registration fee which is a registration card fee that is required by the state of Vermont to be paid by businesses and then there were local fees of $100 which do we want the social equity candidate to pay or not I'm just giving you an overview of that to think about that when you're thinking about other ways fees and everybody should have copies of that one of the things that I think will help you when you're thinking about fees is a social equity licensee business so I really want to state that a social equity licensee business so if you're a candidate you can apply for a license a business owner should be at least 51% should be owned by a social equity candidate the social equity candidate must be involved with the daily operations and be able to make decisions for the business and the social equity candidate must meet state requirements to open a business I think that this is really important we want to guarantee that the social equity that this business is for the social equity candidate and it's not being run or charged by someone else what is everybody's thoughts around that Ashley I think it's really hard to use this word when we're talking about social equity candidate but how would you determine that how would you determine if somebody yes and 51% you can put that in your business proposal yes you can do that for your taxes but to say social equity candidate must be involved with daily operations to be able to make decisions for the business how on earth would you determine that so the reason for this provision is to make sure that someone is not opening up a company for someone else and just using that their social equity licensee so we would want to see what is your time schedule you know what is your salary you know on your partnership agreement what is the percentage of the company that is old to you you know what if there is a voting system on making decisions how much percentage does that person have so that is really important and it's just to ensure that that person that we now have a business by social equity candidate and not someone who opened up for someone else just to be able to get the reduction in fee I think that would also be really helpful looking at these fees and yes that's a part of it but I wonder if there's a way and maybe we can reference Jennifer on this one but I wonder if there's a way for us to understand like the full scope like surveillance you know all the security systems protect the folks that are working in the facility you know health inspections I mean there's so many other fees and I think that perhaps we might not really fully understand what all the start-up fees are and what all the fees not even fees it's just the cost that is to have a campus that seems like what we want to talk about the most as far as like where the most money can be made but I think it would be really helpful to try to bring that to the meeting on Thursday just to really I mean it's all expensive we understand that but like really get to know these fees I think it may make it easier for us to agree on that tier one for waiving fees yeah so right now we will we're focusing on that application fee and the licensing fee and then we will talk about specialty licenses hopefully on Thursday and benefits that people will receive and also we're going to talk about people participating in the social equity program that is not just a licensing holder because we want to ensure a very inclusive industry and that means getting social equity candidates at different levels of the industry as well and being able to get the educational resources that this program will provide we are starting right now to see what is that licensing but this is another thing that we're taking into account we will not be helping with the operational business day to day things you know the development fund it's addressed in that way and we will discuss about the co-op licensing soon to really start to say you know what the most expensive thing is is land and equipment and here's a license how we can have people work together in order to reduce that burden but this is minor in the major scale of things you know so I think that social equity candidates do realize that and so they're saying yes we're getting you know the application wage, the license fee wage but we know that it's very very expensive to play in the cannabis industry and you know we can only do as much as we can because there is a very limited budget there's only $500,000 in the cannabis development program so it would not even if we decided it would be a very low amount for everybody and so these are things to consider as I think a social equity candidate will consider when doing it and also why we don't want to limit education to just or this program to just licensee because that may not be the best route for everyone to go down and we will be once we get past this as this is our first deadline that we need to have we can start getting into the benefits and educational programs that we would like for a social equity program Nader your thoughts I mean I agree with these points here I'd like to avoid seeing social equity applicants be tokenized for their for having access to these licenses and then just being manipulated so I think these are good provisions to have and I think yeah I'll just leave it at that I think these are good provisions to have thank you and who we have I agree and the proposal here to me it very much resembles the process that is that is implemented by disadvantaged business enterprises who might receive financial assistance from federal government contracts like the agency of transportation where there are rules and procedures for if there are questions about whether there's been a change in ownership there's an obligation for the business to self report you know if the change in ownership makes it less than 51% owned for there to be if there are people who believe you know who could make a complaint and say they're not following these criteria for that to be followed up on or for the board or whoever administers decertification of licensees that they on their own based on information that they receive you know can investigate and take proceeding to decertify someone as an SBE licensee versus regular licensee and then for their I would assume there would be some you know some process involved for that for the the enterprise to be heard and answered to those those concerns I mean that's just kind of basic policing for an enforcement for any sort of license and so this doesn't I mean these criteria here I think are sensible and I think there's precedent for it in other government programs that operate every day in this country Thank you for your comment and actually are you in agreement with this criteria here can we just state for the record that we have a consensus that this is criteria that we would like to keep as part of the social FWD program and then I would like to go to public comment Julie Yep we have two If you can just type in the chat box anyone who has a public the name of anyone who shares public comment please So I think we have two public comments Hi it's Dave Silverman from Middlebury I'm an attorney I work with a lot of folks in this industry or want to be in this industry I want to respond to Nodder's question comment earlier that you know concern that fee waivers and some license type versus others might create a perverse incentive to have people go into one you know into an imperfect business type for them I really don't see that as a thing I think as Gina mentioned there's so many other costs that are going to be involved in that the control board is not going to be able to do anything about it for folks that you know a thousand dollars five thousand dollars you know even ten thousand dollars for an extraction license which is a very you know high license fee in comparison to the others but when you think about what it takes to stand up a CO2 extraction facility you know it's multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of just an equipment costs and so you know the waiver whether or not it's there I don't think it's going to move the needle for folks I think folks are going to go into a business that they can afford to go into and that they have the skills and the ability to be profit blame regardless of the fee waiver which is really nice you know I don't want to discourage fee waivers in any way I think it's a great benefit but I think where you're going to be able to really help folks access those business types you know access profitability in all these business types is through some of the other areas that the control board has authority or direction in the social equity sphere particularly the area where director Davis and the department of labor and agency of commerce community development and department of corrections are supposed to get together and create a programming technical assistance programs for social equity applicants in these businesses both in licensed businesses and ancillary businesses I think that's really a powerful tool that the board will get to use later down you know down the road it's going to need some budget allocation to be successful but I just want to kind of you know point that out make sure that your eyes on that ball as well because it's a very important one so thank you thank you hi everybody I'm Marvis so last week thank you again for the time not that he needs it but I'd like to second everything that Dave Silverman just said because very valuable insight and then I also wanted to just highlight a few things that I've heard from you all today that I think were excellent including from director Davis specifically not limiting from those who from whom justice has been withheld as I mentioned last week I'm working with a close friend and colleague he does fit the qualifications for social equity applicant and he's someone who as soon as the conversation around cannabis and Vermont picked up he said I'd love to be a part of this he just didn't know where to start and luckily he has a friend who's been in the industry so I do not have his permission to share he does have a family member who's currently serving hopefully the last year of his sentence with a canvas related crime and going through that is going to be a huge burden on his family it's going to be a huge burden for himself as it has been for many years and so he will of course be involved with the business but with the day to day decision making I just want to suggest or encourage you again to look into the idea of cohorts and hearing directly from people like Craig and other people with these lived experiences to really better define things like daily involvement because it's something that we as a business team are talking about every day trying to define roles and responsibilities within the business it's something that even though I've worked with many social equity applicants before I learned from him every day and I'm grateful both as a friend and a colleague to have those experiences to hear about them to understand them better and to work them into our business plans and the last part I just want to highlight is Julia thank you so much for what you said because I think it's a dream to imagine a successful market filled with social equity applicants it's something when we look at what's happening in the rest of the country and we see the way that social equity applicants continue to be marginalized or push to the side the idea of a Vermont market that is full of color and diversity and lived experiences is a nice dream and I hope to see it come to fruition thank you thank you any other public comments thank you that's it for public comment today thank you do we have any final comments or questions okay well then can I have a motion to adjourn this meeting I'll make that motion second thank you and I will see you all on Thursday have great days cool