 Alright, this is, my name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Cannabis Control Board. Today is October 13th, 2021. This is a meeting of the full Cannabis Board Advisory Committee, and I'm calling the meeting to order. Has everyone had a chance, or at least the majority of people had a chance to look at the minutes from our prior meeting, which was on September 29th, 2021? Yes. Could I get a motion to approve? Motion to approve. Is there a second? Ten seconds. Okay, great. Any discussion? Any changes, edits? No. Okay. Then, all in favor? Great. Okay, just a few administrative details. Thank you all for kind of doing this again, you know, two weeks after our last full advisory committee meeting, and of course all the work in between. I think, you know, we as a board have been discussing just, you know, the amount of time and effort the advisory committee has had to put into this work, and it's all been incredibly valuable input, but I think, you know, we want to move to a slightly different kind of phase of our work, and the way that, you know, I see this happening is a lot of our subcommittees are actually naturally kind of coming to a conclusion. I think a lot of them will be winding down this Thursday, and a few of them will meet next week as well. But, you know, we'll keep you posted on the final schedules for those, but our goal I think at this point will be for the board to have much longer meetings moving forward, and to have some decision points ready for you all to review at kind of a much kind of higher level, you know, before we have big milestones as a board. I'm thinking before we kind of have major reports due to the legislature and before we file our rules. So I think that that is the plan for moving forward. I've talked to a lot of you about that plan. I think a lot, there's some support about that. You know, we've done a lot of work to get to where we are today, and the point of today's meeting is to review our October 15th report, which is our market structure report, our corresponding fee structure, and our social equity criteria. And I know that, you know, we're still working on what the benefits of the social equity program will be, and we'll continue that work, but I think we should look at the criteria today, which is due to the legislature on October 15th, which is on Friday. So Jen, I don't know if you're ready to get started with the kind of overview of the market structure and the fee structure, but if you are, we'll turn it over to you. And if you want us to pull anything up on our screen, just let us know. If you want to show the, if you want to show the, actually let me check and see if I can screen share. Do I have permission to screen share? You do, yes. It should be on your screen. There should be a, in the upper right-hand corner, a little, there you go. Okay, you got it. So the fact that I'm doing that, I can't, let me see all of you, but, okay. So Jen, why don't you, so why don't you walk through it and then we'll pause for discussion and then we'll do the social equity criteria and then pause for discussion. If that makes sense. Okay. Yeah. So I'm going to walk through this very briefly because we don't have a lot of time. This is a 63-page document, which I think really goes into the fact that there's been a lot of work that has gone into this. As you know, the report is due obviously to the legislature on Friday. So in this report, you'll see the background requirements and process, the market analysis that was done, state licensing recommendations, state fee recommendations, the cost revenue and taxes, and the local fee recommendations. I will tell you that when it comes to the market analysis, Andrew has done an amazing job. I cannot explain why he can. I know that when the subcommittee only had conversations, he did a miraculous job at that. So for the background requirements and process, there is the board, the advisory committee, the subcommittees, the consultants, the relevant requirements, the fee report, and the public comment. As you know, the Cams Control Board, you have the chair, Mr. Pepper, Mr. Harris, and Ms. Helbert. And if I'm going over things you already know, feel free to tell me to speed up. The advisory committee members are here in which statutory position that they need to hold. Various subcommittees, the advisory subcommittees, compliance and enforcement, public health, market structure, social equity, metal canvas, and sustainability. And the consultants was the National Association of Cannabis Businesses. I saw Gina. I can't see anybody now. I'm not sure if anybody else from NACB is on. And then you have the team from BS Strategies. So the relevant requirements of the report, Act 62, Section 4A states that the Cannabis Control Board shall provide recommendations to the legislature. And that state fees be charged and collected, and that they should be projected to be sufficient to fund the duties of the Cannabis Control Board. And they should include amount to repay over a period of not greater than 10 years to general fund any money that it was essentially sent to the regulation fund. So this is the statutory requirement, which we were all working from the get go. I have to commend the state of Vermont Cannabis Control Board because the emphasis on public comment has been great. Time was reserved at all public, at all board meetings, advisory committee meetings and subcommittee meetings for public comment. Since the end of May, there have been 16 full board meetings, two advisory committee meetings, and 50 subcommittee meetings. And that there has been over 100 substantive comments received to the board to date. Now, can people still submit comments? Or is that part over? No, people can still submit comments. And there's a robust public comment period throughout the rulemaking process. So the market analysis, I have to say, was done by Angel Livingston, who is part of our BS team in Colorado. It was to show the supply and demand model, determine the cannabis demand, evaluate the supply, and then looking at the total supply and demand, the total cultivation required to meet that demand and projected sales. So as an overview, we developed a market analysis to do just that. Determine both annual and seasonal cannabis demand. I think the important piece of this is that there has been an emphasis on outdoor cultivation, which ultimately would result in seasonal demands. Evaluate the total square feet of cultivation in product production volume required to meet that demand, and then project both indoor and outdoor production timelines so that you can understand the seasonal trends in supply and demand. So as you can see in this very little color coded, there has been an array of data sources that was used to come up with this model. There was multiple sources and intermediate models combined to create the primary market models and the municipal level adjusted market analysis. So key results, the market analysis model, the addressable market, the cultivation. Tourism is an important part in the culture of Vermont. As you know, the consumer and population projection, and then other different topics that we had to come up with. So determining the cannabis demand, there are various consumer categories. The resident medical patient, the resident adult use consumers, the business and leisure tourism, and the border tourists. And so having said that, you can see here on the chart what the consumer is where they would be in various parts of the year. I'm not sure if everybody has access to all the data. I think it's a public document now. Okay, so the process that was used to determine the cannabis demand. We utilize the Vermont County municipal level populations, projections from the Vermont Center of Geographic Information. We overlay the state and subset past month and past year. Cannabis use frequency data from the Federal National Survey on Drug Use and Health, administered by SAMHSA. We analyze the seasonal tourism data from the Vermont Agency of Commerce and Community Development to evaluate non-Vermont resident cannabis consuming tourists on a seasonal basis. Once that happened, we integrated the seasonal demand trends from existing cannabis markets in places like Colorado, Oregon, and Washington to show month to month shifts in consumer spending. The calculation was done on cannabis expenditures by consumer cohort using the NSDUH data for inter-pass month use frequency in analogies for price per ounce. I know cost is really important when it comes to consumers. And then the projected product category-specific market using data from the Vermont Medical Sales and other regulated Northeast cannabis markets. So to evaluate the supply, there's two types of cultivation. There's the indoor light supplemented greenhouses, which allows flower plants to be harvested all year. Then there's the outdoor invasive greenhouses, which only uses light from the sun. So given the climate we have here in the Northeast, it results in one harvest per year. The cannabis control board controls when cultivators receive licenses but not when they complete their construction or harvest their plants. So once the people receive their licenses, depending on what time of year it is, it'll determine whether or not plants can be harvested outside. So the model incorporates a degree of randomness to highlight the complexities of harvest coming to the regulated market at different times of the year. And here you can see the actual graphic modeling of the cannabis cultivation. So depending on the time of year and facility, we'll determine what the product supply would be. Cannabis cultivation's supply that is evaluated is based on a yield per square foot of flowering canopy, the total grams of cannabis harvested from flowering plants divided by the area of flowering plants harvested. That's going to be important when you're talking about different tiers and the establishments that people are looking to open. Once that happens cannabis is extracted raw for high-end vaporized cartridges or dried and separated into flower and trimmed for use in inhalable and adjustable and topical forms. Cannabis allocated for extraction is first turned into concentrate but then divided amongst different types of manufacturing products. So depending on what type of product you're going to manufacture in your facility is really going to determine how much product you're going to have to yield per facility. So here we have the product production for retail supply. There's six primary product categories. You have cannabis flower, pre-rolls, concentrates, vaporizer pens, edible products and topical products. So each of these categories will have dozens to hundreds of different retail product varieties. As I said before, depending on what you're going to create will determine the amount of product that you need to produce. And from there you look at the total supply in the end. So it's evaluated on a product category basis. Supply in Vermont will vary based on the total square foot of cultivation. The month of the year, the harvested that was yielded, the extraction efficacy and efficiency and also the allocation of oil to manufacture the products. So you're going to see over time the demand for particular products from the consumers. So as I said, depending on what you're trying to create what the consumer market is will determine the total cultivation required so that assuming approximately 20% of the cultivation comes from outdoor cultivation and only has one harvest per year Vermont will likely require 400, 500,000 square feet of flowering canopy. Where flowering canopy typically makes 40 to 60% of a cultivation's facilities premises. This table here shows the balance of seasonal supply and demand with a 450,000 square foot benchmark of flowering canopy and then 20% coming from outdoors. Well the seasonal outdoor supply was surpassed in fall. Inventory can be started over time to meet those consumer needs in the winter and spring. So depending on what people are looking to open or where the board decides to go with their priority list you'll begin to see that as time goes on after the licenses have started to be allocated. One of the biggest things to consider is indoor versus outdoor cultivation. Obviously outdoor cultivation produces less total biomass per square foot since the climate up here in the Northeast only allows for one harvest in the fall. The harvest come on the market in the fall before the season starts and when the demand is actually lowest that we found. But that same 450,000 square foot of cultivation results in summer shortages if 50% of the square feet were allocated for outdoor cultivators. So it's possible to supply the market with a greater percentage of outdoor cultivation but doing so may result in larger seasonal supply swings in a less stable market for growers. So when you're trying to look at the overall market and what is sustainable it's important to consider whether you want to prioritize in your outdoor cultivation or have a balanced approach. Here you can see the percentage can be harvested with 20% outdoor or 50% outdoor. So here you can see the total projected sales that Andrew had projected from 2022 going forward in 2026 from medical dispensaries, adult use finished products and then a combined medical and adult use products and the accessories that are sold at retail. So as you can see the total retail moves upwards of $14 million and $12 million versus some of the other type. Accessories I call them. So having done that and having had all that as the background we then came to the licensing recommendations and I think that was that market analysis is important as we move forward talking about the licensing type and fee requirements the statutory requirements which the board has to consider as they're making these decisions the initial license type recommendations and then the potential future license types that I believe would be considered by the legislature. So the license and fee recommendations are really designed to have a legal cannabis market that reflects Vermont's culture in the face of the strengths. It's not a cookie cutter model that is just adopted from other states. We really took the time to make sure that the market analysis would show that it promotes sustainability and that you encourage outdoor cultivation as we talked about early on in the process. So to promote the equitable and accessible industry there's license types focus on providing access to small cultivators, individuals operating in the legacy market and individuals from community disproportionately impacted by harmful government policies including cannabis prohibition in other communities these are called disproportionately impacted areas. The board believes that the initial license type would begin the process of creating an equitable market that additional license types and tiers which I believe is going to be addressed in a later report could further this goal in Vermont. So right now the required license types that we have are cultivators, product manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, testing laboratories and integrated market. The board into tier the following license types that may also tier other ones. So cultivators and retailers need to be tiered at this time. They also must recommend state fees to be charged including application fees initial annual license fees and annual renewal fees for each type of establishment. This is the basis for any regulated market. So one thing to keep in mind when it comes to the state of Vermont is the statutory requirements. In the statutory the board needs to propose a plan for reducing or eliminating the license fees for individuals from communities that have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition or individuals directly and personally impacted by cannabis prohibition. Then we need to look at the integrated licenses as they're defined and limited in statute to the existing medical businesses. Having said that integrated licensees base of statutory $50,000 to the Cannabis Business Development Fund. Also definitions are going to be really important as the board moves forward. A small cultivator is defined in the statute as a tier in statute as a cultivator with a plant canopy or space for cultivating plants or breeding stock of not more than 1,000 square feet. So these are the really small cultivators that are going to be trying to get into the market. Plant canopy is the square footed dedicated to the live plant production. It doesn't include any part of the building like office space, storage or the like. That's literally the rooms where the plants are live. So the initial license type recommendations for cultivation you have seven outdoor tiers, seven indoor tiers in a mixed tier. For retail there are two tiers. Manufacturing have two tiers. And then there's a the wholesaler testing laboratory integrated license types. So here you can see the tiers for outdoor and indoor. Tier one obviously would be the small cultivator up from there. You have two through six. So it's important to note that tier six is designed to follow the existing land use regulations for cultivation under an acre of land. And they shall not be available initially. I think the indications that the supply is needed the board will then allow existing cultivators to expand beyond tier six or allow applications for a tier seven in the future. This is going to be a step by step process in Vermont. So the board is looking at one license targeted at small businesses and farmers so that it allows indoor and outdoor cultivation on your one license. I think the important thing to understand is that you have people that are looking to get in in the small way, not necessarily have a tier five level or higher. So it would allow the license holder to have indoor cultivation space about 2,000 square feet and grow 50 plants outdoors in the same license process. This is a way that you can prioritize outdoor cultivation but then also allow for product manufacturing throughout the year. The licensees that have the flexibility to grow how they choose and the ability to continue cultivation during the winter. So the license tiers for retail you have the storefront which people can recognize as the storefront of any business. But then also the nursery. So it enables the licensee to sell seeds and clothes to home cultivators or other licensees. This could be a standalone business. It could be held by an existing nursery or other business. But all the other regulatory requirements need to be met for someone seeking this tier of license in retail. For manufacturing, the tier one allows someone to process and manufacture cannabis in order to produce the cannabis products including extraction, solvents and including solvent based extraction. But the products could be sold to retailers and other licensees but not directly to consumers. Whereas the manufacturer in tier two allows them to manufacture cannabis products like the tier one but they would be prohibited from using the dangerous solvents such as CO2 and the extractions. This is more of a lower cost license that wanted to make infused or processed products and licensees may purchase extracts from infusing from other licensees. For the other license types, the integrated obviously of the existing medical businesses as defined in the statute, wholesale allows a licensee to purchase cannabis products from the licensee to sell to other licensees but not directly to consumers. And then the test and laboratory is there to allow a licensee to test cannabis and the products from other licensees or from any home cultivator in the state which I think is important because when you're talking about safety of the product, testing is a really important part of that for consumer health. Under the statute, future license types need to be considered and so in addition to what we had proposed we want to make sure that there's room to build the cannabis industry in Vermont in a way that really stays true to the culture of the state in prioritizing outdoor growths. So these other license types need to add additional regulatory requirements or they can be legislative authorization. The board will provide the legislature more information in 2022 but it's important to highlight them now because as this industry continues to evolve some of these decisions are going to have to be made. At this time I believe the board is discussing the license types but is not recommending all of them quite yet. We have some available that we've talked about over the past couple months. The co-op cultivation, two different tiers of retail, manufacturing delivery, on-site consumption temporary events and then entry level or reduced rate retail. So these types of licenses could be considered going forward. One of the most talked about pieces of this is the fee recommendation. What the application fees are going to be the license fees, what a social equity fee reduction could be and the fee proposal by the board. One of the backbones I believe of the statute, the one that actually one that we've considered time and again is that the statute requires the board to propose fees that are going to cover the agency's operating costs as well as any appropriations that have been received. That is an important piece to remember because as the board is talking about the fee structure and just how much they're going to really charge the fees, it all kind of pinpoints back down to it has to cover the operating costs. So especially when we talk about social equity if there's any weight fees or there's any lower fees that has to be made up in other places. Covering all the costs is like I said a significant outlier and when compared to the cannabis license fees around the country and regulatory fees in the state we try to really look at what is already being charged in the state for different industries and state consistent with that. So the board has to decide and this is really an important piece of this. There are two separate fee proposals and so we have to really take a look at what those proposals are and what the ultimate outcome is. And I'll leave this up for a second. So proposal A which is the one that would cover the costs and provide enough revenue to reimburse the state the size of the fees would keep prospective entrepreneurs out of the market and remain from an outlier when compared to most competitor states. Proposal B was designed to balance the goals of generating significant fee revenue but providing low cost entry into the market for many of these license types and keeping the fees most competitive with nearby states and other markets without limited licenses. So in this case some tax revenue would need to cover operating expenses but this investment is going to help Vermont ensure that it has a functioning and inclusive market. So just as I said before if you're going to waive or reduce fees in some areas there's going to have to be places that these are made up. Under the application fee recommendations they really were looking at a two-part licensing process so potential applicants can find an intent to apply for a process and that will allow the applicant to meet background checks in any other application requirements the board deems necessary before procuring real estate and finalizing business plans. This is an important piece because one of the things that we realize in Massachusetts is that people were paying rent on businesses long before they were even able to apply for a license. And so if the applicant in this instance submits an intent to apply the application fee will be reduced by the amount already paid through the intent. This will give the board an early sense of the demand in order to gauge the supply. It allows applicants to get state approval for their leadership team and their initial plans before having to procure real estate and allows applicants to begin the process. People are finalizing the details of their plan and allows the state to collect a portion of the application fee earlier in the process and it also provides entrepreneurs a relatively low cost first step they can use to evaluate the viability of their plan. You want to make sure that the people applying for licenses are going to be able to stay with them. I think one of the most successful pieces of any legalized industry is that they're open for longer than three years and so this will give an entrepreneur time to think about all of that as they plan. So the license fee recommendation remembering that proposal A covers the cost and proposal B is a balance. These are the fee recommendations from tiers one to six and also the mixed tier. We will look at the indoor cultivation license fees. So you can see the difference in the level of fees that would be paid through the different proposals. But remember keep in mind proposal A well to some it may look high it needs to cover the cost the operating cost of the board. Here are the retail license fees and the manufacturing license fees. So the last slide is the integrated wholesaler testing labs for registration fees. So for the employee registration fees and the local processing fees the board recommended that the municipality either be permitted to set their own fee which should be capped at $100 will be required to follow the uniform charges set in statute in Vermont and so really we don't see a large number of activity or a lot of work that's going to be have to be done at the municipal level to process the paperwork that would be required for a cannabis license but that's for each municipality to determine on their own. So one of the most important of any utilization bill is social equity and for the social equity fee there are reduction recommendations one is that application fees should be waived and that license fees should be waived in the first year but then reduced by 75, 50 and 25 percent respectively for the next three years and that licensees must demonstrate a financial need and then show plans for remedying the situation moving forward so there is going to be documentation that social equity applicants would have to prove their financial need. So the board proposal recommendation is that it strongly recommend that the legislature choose an adopt proposal B which is the lower fee schedule an adult use market correctly and inclusively but it will generate significant tax revenues most other legalized states use the resident revenue to cover costs for the cannabis regulatory agency there's not usually an outlying number in the budget that has to cover that and then some use the revenue to lessen the burden on licensees in Vermont who will benefit cannabis consumers and potential small operators. The lower fees will encourage more applications and licenses Propose B will close the projected revenue gap by encouraging the number of licenses to end up closer to the more robust rather than the dynamic and then potential future licenses type should bring additional revenue making the projected revenue gap even greater. So Jen is that a good place to pause for discussion? Sure. So the advisory committee I don't want to dominate here but I would like to stop here and solicit your input on this. Tim I know you want to talk about local fees but I would just put a pin in that for right now and just ask the advisory committee you know some of the points takeaways that I have here are you know the models project 20% indoor 80% indoor 20% outdoor does that seem about right to folks I want to hear have we done enough to encourage outdoor cultivation which is critical to our mission and do the tiering and fees look about right and I think those are some good starting points I don't know if anyone has any comments on any of this and then we'll move to local fees Tim The indoor outdoor ratios about right a good place to start great Stephanie I just wanted to acknowledge that we're talking about fees obviously for the cannabis for getting into the market being a cannabis control board but there's potentially other fees that individuals are going to have to pay and not to go into the local fee conversation right now but there's zoning permits and so on and so forth or I don't know I don't know I feel like those fees should be acknowledged so that just as a footnote somewhere that this is that thanks Stephanie anyone else want to comment on the just the general fee structure and kind of what we were thinking just you know in proposal A the difference between the indoor versus outdoor we threw out an estimation of about one to four in fees so like the lowest fee the lowest tier is $1,000 in proposal A for indoor we made it $4,000 just recognizing that there's about potentially between four and six turnover in indoor crops so we tried to equalize that a little bit with the fee structure there's nothing else Tim I know you sent a call about local fees and feel free to take the floor is there more well I don't want to take the floor really I sent an email to kind of get everything out there and I knew that you had a one hour meeting to squeeze in a lot of information just to summarize obviously I just I feel that the needs and costs and risks to local municipalities are considered and it goes a little bit beyond what you can quantify my email went into a little bit of detail what you can't quantify and what you can't quantify is honestly what some many at least some municipalities will be looking at as they make decisions whether to opt in if that continues to be the way the legislature wants communities to become participants so I think the board would do well to keep a close eye on the rate of signals that municipalities are getting interested in being part of the marketplace and you know I think that might be affected by what's moving forward to the legislature and I just wanted to I actually had a question about the proposals and it's probably something that just didn't occur to me earlier on but I was just curious about the proposal A and proposal B am I correct in understanding that proposal A pretty much assures a self-contained marketplace is self-supporting and proposal B does need some tax revenue support from General Fund that's right I guess my question is was there ever an A minus or a B plus why is it just two choices that you decided to look at did you look at any kind of median between those two examples so I think you know how we got to A which is we have a projected budget and we just kind of looked at the dynamic of how many people might participate and try to estimate what the license types or the fees needed to be B was really set to balance our fees with our competitor states essentially so that people that are looking at the market in Vermont versus Massachusetts are essentially New York I'm going to say well I'd rather just cultivate in New York it's a larger market the fees are less so it's really an attempt to kind of keep us at least in some balance with our neighbors so and also we're providing this to the legislature and providing them with a menu of options they have the ultimate say on these fees and so if they want to do some but that was the kind of two thinking and then of course if we go with proposal A and our fees are much higher than our neighboring states and just more barriers to entry there's a dynamic that was kind of in the market analysis that says that much many fewer people will actually participate which kind of cuts against one of our core principles which is trying to shift the market to a regulated space okay thank you that makes sense I don't think I have too much more to say I think I said a lot in the email if anybody is out there listening and once I copy and didn't get one because I don't have staff I just sort of tried to grab all the emails that I had I can share that with anybody that's interested and yeah there was a new piece of information on the slides I noticed that addressing in my commentary I addressed the two reasons of how they might hesitate the first being just the practical measurable work of the getting the licenses going people and the work people deserve like me on select boards and dealing with locals having concerns complaints so many issues and things like that that the that the proposal to apply the what's it called the uniform uniform charge schedule I think your fee schedule you have even a Pompey schedule forgetting the term for that that does go some way to alleviate some of my concerns on the application of the paperwork side but not too much on the other side of my concerns my only comment thanks Tim and you know I will acknowledge that the main kind of sticking point between the house and the senate when they were considering the costs that municipalities would incur was whether they should have a kind of the benefit of the excise tax or whether they should have a fee supported system and in the end the fee supported system was the way that the legislature went but I can tell you if there's not a lot of towns that are participating that that conversation might open again I would agree that's sort of what I'm hoping for it's because it's absolutely a reasonable conversation not really the purview of your board to tell the legislature that they should reconsider but I think showing some good evidence that this might be the way to go if we're going to get some good partnerships going it's a good thing to suggest please thank you Jen is there anything else in this section that you feel like we should review before I want to save time to review the social equity criteria you know we have about seven minutes before we have public we're supposed to open a public comment I really think that it's just the justification for the the revenue is the the fee revenue projections when this becomes public everyone will be able to see what exactly is in the proposal so we don't have to rule for all of that there's just a local fee recommendations which we've talked about great well I think then we should shift gears to social equity which is the other piece of the report that we have to submit by Friday so I think was Gina going to review that or here Hi Gina Hi I will try there she'll share my screen so we went over a lot of social equity you know what that candidate would look like what they would need to show for their application you know what the criteria was in our last meeting so I'll just continue from the work that we've done since then one of the major things that we discussed last time was revising the definition to families on C bond recommended that last time and so we did that we included domestic partner and that was approved by the subcommittee board as Jen has stated about and what we discussed last time about reduced application fees and licensing fee waivers and then what we didn't discuss last time was the other fees that were recommended which Jen also has discussed which is probationary licensing fees so like applied we wanted that wage employee registration fees to be paid by businesses which is done with the medicinal right now and then local fees would be paid but only for the first year and you know this is just from some information that's why we made this recommendation is that the start-up costs are the most expensive and we wanted the most cost saving in the beginning and reduce as people are able to gain revenue and then we discussed about a social equity licensing business transfer so if a company will transfer to another social equity licensee we said that would there start off with the second year which is that that many five percent off a licensing fee however if the partnership was transferred to one of the business partners or a family member they would have to take over whatever the current owners be schedule is so if they are coming next year then that company remains the same and that this was in order to prevent people to continuously restarting new fee structures also if there was a transfer within the first five years to a non-social equity licensee did new licensee business owner had to repay any cost savings the company received from the social equity beneficiary program now the reason for this was we wanted to prevent people from starting out of social equity companies and then just handing them over to other people that were non-social equity candidates in order to save money also the person the new owner would not be entitled to those benefits and so it needed to be repaid back after five years ownership transfer of ownership is allowed without penalty as they would not be receiving any more benefits at that time one of the things that we really wanted to state that the social equity benefits are not only open to a licensee holder but to anyone who would be able to that would be a social equity candidate so that we have really two separate tracks here you can still get that education benefit that we would like candidate certificate courses training workshops that would be available for any entry into the business this is to ensure and to have multiple social equity and really create an inclusive and diverse industry we need people at all different levels in the industry and social equity candidates may need that additional education and other support if you are a licensee holder you get priority licensing and processing but also the deduction as we said with licensing fees we will think about access to low interest loans through banks and we have made a recommendation to open exclusive licenses one would be a co-op and another would be a delivery the time limits of exclusivity would be determined by the remote cannabis control board so for the delivery license we recommended that it be set up as a social equity candidate is hired by a retail business as an employee that the retailer has to provide the vehicles the insurance coverage for the driver and car a customer would call in or submit an order online and then the delivery licensee holder who is a social equity licensee holder is the only one who can deliver product to customers also one of the things we stated that a delivery driver cannot store marijuana or marijuana products overnight so everything needs to be returned to the retailer for a co-op licensee we were thinking because there were such limited funds in the business development funds right now we wanted to unite and pull the money together in order to purchase land and equipment because that is always the number one most burdens for social equity candidates to be able to be successful in the industry and then have a seat to sell systems to provide be a cultivator a processor be able to be a retail store do the whole thing and then social equity candidates can maybe pay a monthly fee to support this program as we said there's only $500,000 right now that is allocated that we needed to look for alternative ways to get loans and grants which is trying to create partnership with banks and trying to get that through them at this time into we had more revenue one of the ways that we were thinking of creating more revenue was to create a cannabis trust fund so that the public can donate to this program and also that at least 5% of cannabis tax revenue goes to support the social equity program and that should be always monitored every six months to really see what the cost that the program is incurring great thank you Gina discussions for next time great yeah this is great work and obviously it's ongoing work just for Friday all we are reporting back on to the legislature are the specific criteria for eligibility for social equity and not the benefits and privileges but just for the sake of the advisory committee I would say that the board voted to eliminate opportunity zones from that criteria and the thinking was the social equity is defined by the statute as people who come from historically disproportionately impacted areas as well as people who have been personally impacted by cannabis prohibition and so we thought that based on the other two criteria that we did approve person of color or someone who's been a cannabis related offense conviction or lives with household member who has one that there was nothing in adding that kind of opportunity zone that wasn't already covered when you think about the statutory definition of social equity and so that was our kind of justification for that and I'd like to open that conversation up briefly to the advisory committee if there's any thoughts or concerns or input that they would like to provide us before we move to public comment and just as a I see you got H414 up there I think that opportunity zones are an important piece when we think about community reinvestment and using some of the cannabis revenue but I just don't think that you know when you look at criteria two and three on that screen that they add anything to the statutory definition of social equity applicant that was a decision by the board so again I'd open it up to members of the advisory committee if they'd like to comment okay I think we might just open it up to public comment if no one has any questions about taking off opportunity zones all right well advisory committee thank you again for all the incredible work you've done I know that this is not the end of our journey together but this is kind of a shift in our process and you know we will be in touch you know feel again you are still our kind of closest advisors on all of these issues even after the subcommittees wind down and our goal is to kind of convene you before our major milestones we do have a report due on November 1st that report is related to concentrates and converting CBD to Delta 9 THC and also on the medical for marijuana for symptom relief oversight committee reorganization I reached out to our exploratory committee to convene them next week if anyone would like to join that please feel free to reach out to me but I don't think that we need to open the full advisory committee before we submit that report but again if anyone would like to participate in those discussions please reach out to me other than that I say we should open a public comment if you would like if you remember the public and you joined through the link please feel free to raise your hand if you'd like to make a public comment we have Ben Mervas Ben thank you you are seen for all that's work and appreciated and we particularly appreciate the inclusion of social function or on-site function thank you very much and thank you to the club committee members thanks Ben anyone else for public comment no one's turned by phone either okay alright well I've been advised once again that we don't actually have to call a motion to adjourn I can just adjourn the meeting so if there's no one else that would like to comment from the advisory committee or from the public I will adjourn the meeting of the advisory committee just one quick question James sure Chris Walsh how are the slides that Jen and Gina presented available or is there a way we can access them like to go over them today yeah we'll get them up on our website for the members of the public and we'll email them to the advisory committee separately and I'm adding to the chat right now on here I've also supported to Nellie okay alright great thank you Gina great anything else okay I'll call this meeting adjourned see it in the chat now thank you