 Good morning. My name is James Petper. Today is Monday, April 11th, 2022. And I call this meeting to order for Mars to once again address some of the common questions and concerns and issues that have been raised over the past week. So, first relates to the division of fire safety. So I spoke with the division of fire safety last week and I just want to reiterate that it is a requirement that everyone speaks to fire safety, regardless of what license type you're looking for. Let me clarify that. Fire safety has a very specific jurisdiction. They have jurisdiction over public buildings. There is a definition of public building and statute. The CCB, the Canada's board has no authority to waive this jurisdiction or would we, the rules around fire safety are there to ensure that you're safe and that anyone that may be impacted by your operation is also safe. So the board does want every licensee to talk to fire safety and will look for verification that you have. This is not meant to be an onerous process. I again, I spoke to fire safety last week and they verified if you are a home occupancy. And your home is not connected to another building and you don't have employees or allow members of the general public into your establishment that this conversation will be very quick. And they can issue you a form letter indicating that your business is not subject to their jurisdiction. Even if your business is operating in a public building, this is not meant to be onerous. They just want to make sure your space can be accessible to emergency services and is not dangerous to your employees or your neighbors. I can say that if you're a kind of a product manufacturer, particularly a tier two or a tier three or retailer, you should expect a more thorough review given the potential impacts of your permitted operations. But regardless of your license type, we will be looking for confirmation that you've been in touch with the Division of Fire Safety. They've designated two primary points of contact. Landon Wheeler handles the southern part of the state. Essentially, kind of you drew a line across the tip of Windsor County. So part of Addison County and everything below is Landon Wheeler. Ben Moffitt is doing everything north of that. We'll post their contact information. I'll also say it here right now. Landon, you can call his cell phone 802-216-0501. You can email him at landon.wheeler at vermont.gov. And for Ben Moffitt, it's 802-479-7581. And it's Benjamin dot Moffitt, M-O-F-F-A-T-T at vermont.gov. And again, these guys are going to look at your business plan, your business location, and they can make a very quick determination whether or not you're subject to their jurisdiction. With respect to banking and insurance, we know that affordable banking and insurance is very difficult to obtain for cannabis businesses. We also recognize though if you took cannabis out of the equation, banking and insurance would be absolutely necessary for any small business, both to protect the business owner but also to protect the general public. So, you know, just at the risk of being repetitive, you know, the board is requiring that you make a good faith effort to get a bank account and to get commercially reasonable levels of insurance. And if this is an impossibility, the board will consider waivers, but we really need to see that you've at least tried to get insurance and banking. This is not an endorsement, but we do know that VSECU and NEFCU, New England Federal Credit Union, have cannabis businesses that they've created depository accounts for. And it's not an endorsement, but you can at least talk to them. They really do, both of those institutions do want to see a pre-qualification letter from the board before they talk to you. On the insurance side, again, this is not an endorsement, but NFP, NFP is the current insurer of at least one cannabis business in the state. I spoke to one of their underwriters and they're more than happy to discuss insurance options with prospective licensees. The person I spoke with is named Scott Foster. He's the vice president of risk management at NFP. He's happy to field emails and phone calls. His email is scott.foster, F-O-S-T-E-R at NFP.com and his phone number is 408-792-5453. I know there's other options on the insurance front. I spoke to the folks at Hickok and Boardman. I believe Winooski Insurance is also a possibility. So once again, not an endorsement of any of those companies, but please at least pick up the phone and try and talk to some people before you turn to the board on these issues. With respect to tax compliance, we've been in touch again with the Department of Tax over the past week. They're going to be publishing guidance for people seeking a cannabis license later this week. You know, the communications with the Department of Finance pursuant to our rules is a two-step process. In order to get licensed by the Cannabis Board, you need to be in good standing with the tax department. That's one communication that you need to make before you get licensed. It's a very straightforward, simple process. You can do it from your home. You can email a good standing request to tax.compliancesupportatvermont.gov. That's tax.compliancesupportatvermont.gov. And just the email should indicate in the subject line that you're seeking good standing requests for a cannabis license. And then in the email itself include the name of your business and the business ID or a social security number or a federal employee identification number. The tax department is not willing to issue a tax ID number to you until you have a cannabis license. So after obtaining a license from the board, but before you start your business operations, you have to register with the tax department to ensure that all of your tax accounts are set up. The registration is free, but you need to get a license from the board. They need your license number in order to set that up. So again, the tax department is going to be releasing guidance. We'll link to it. We'll have it up on our website as well. But you have to kind of have two separate communications with the tax department, the good standing request, pre-licensure, and then the tax ID number, post-licensure. So let's see an update on pre-qualification. Again, I just want to remind everyone that pre-qualification is not required for licensure. It's a voluntary process that's primarily aimed at clearing people that might have a criminal conviction or something else going on in their past. They want to figure out whether or not the board is willing to grant them a license before they make any capital expenditures or before they enter into any sort of long-term lease agreements. It's also helpful when you're talking to banks or towns or other government agencies to have something from the board that shows you've been pre-authorized. You know, in some ways this is similar to getting pre-qualified for a mortgage. You know, some of people just want to know that you've been pre-approved to do business so that you're not wasting anyone's time. But that being said, pre-qualification might not be right for you or the business that you envision, particularly if your licensing window is already open or it's about to be open. But if you want to hear more about the benefits of pre-qualification, I talked about them at last week's meeting on April 4th. You can watch that on YouTube. And we're going to be issuing some more pre-qualification licenses today. I did want to give just a very brief update on some of the numbers. Bear with me one second. So as of this morning, we've had 603 pre-qualification applications. I think it's important to note there that not all of those are complete. In fact, the vast majority of them are incomplete. They're people that have started an application, but they haven't uploaded all the appropriate documents. They haven't paid a fee. They haven't filled out their form B, et cetera. For instance, we have 251 pre-qualification applicants for tier one cultivators. Of those 251, 219 of them are incomplete for one reason or another. So we will be issuing some more today and we are getting in touch with people with incomplete applications, whether it's for the fee or for the form B. So just a brief update on the numbers again, 251 tier one cultivators. We do have cultivation pre-qualification applications at every tier level for cultivators. We have 91 pre-qualification applications for retail storefronts. We have 22 for tier one manufacturers, 46 for tier two manufacturers, 22 for tier three manufacturers, 26 for wholesalers, eight testing laboratories, and nine integrated. And obviously the law only allows up to five integrated licenses. So I think that just shows that there's some confusion about the integrated licenses and pre-qualification. We've also, of course, opened our initial licensing window for small cultivators, integrated licensees, and testing facilities. I think as of today, there are, I think, 29 fully submitted applications for operating licenses. We have not, I don't think, to date checked to see whether those are actually complete, but they've at least been fully submitted, as in all the required fields have been fully filled out. Just to reiterate on fingerprinting as well. So the board has to date not been authorized to receive fingerprints for background checks by the FBI, despite having applied for that authorization about a year ago. We're working on this issue on a number of fronts, but I think it's unlikely that it will be resolved by the time we need to start issuing licenses. So the current plan, which you can just follow on our application process, is to, you do not need to submit fingerprints for the kind of operating license. It will be asked through the application process to share where you've lived or done business for the past seven years, and the board is contracting with the third party vendor to do background checks in those states. The process is not necessarily ideal, and it does involve an additional cost to the licensee. We will direct you to the third party that does that check at the appropriate time in the application process. And we'll continue to keep our materials and guidance up to date and let you know what's required here if it changes. We got some questions, I think last week about the security of our licensing portal. I know Julie has reached out to our team over the agency of digital services about that. And so, Julie, do you want to just give a little update as to what they responded? Yeah, sure. So our licensing and registration application is built on the enterprise sales force platform. And that has a number of international certifications that spread across the security and the storage of data in the platform. Additionally, for the cloud, it utilizes network security measures to verify all traffic attempts to get into the system. And it uses a number of different methods to detect potential bad actors. They've shared with us a list, we can maybe put that up on our website, some of this information. But just to be brief, further, sales force wanted to be sure that we all understood that they used individual logins for each login and the cookies that they apply only apply to each session. So that is another way that they protect data. And it's hosted on a secure server that has multiple data paths to ensure reliability and performance. And there's a lot of repetitive storage backup and security layers. So that's part of the rundown of that. So as always, you know, we, the board will take questions, you know, from the public as you kind of start filling out your applications and questions arise. The best thing to start with is to kind of look on our website for our guidance. And to answer questions that come through throughout the week, try and keep those the guidance documents up to date. So if you have questions for the board, please start by looking at our guidance documents. The next best place if you don't see your answer there would be to email the board. The email address here is CCB dot info at Vermont dot gov. And again, we do have a phone you can call you can call us leave a message. Our number is 802-828-1010 and you hit option zero to get the adult use line and you know feel free to leave a message and we'll try and get back to you as quickly as we can. Other than that, Julie, Kyle, have you had a chance to review the minutes from April 4. All right. Well, is there a motion to approve the minutes. Seconded. All in favor. Hi. Great. All right. Why don't we move to the rest of our agenda then. So today we're going to review some additional pre qualification applications for approval. We have been able to speed up the process internally as we expected. And I think I'll turn things over to Bryn. Yep. So reminder about the process, our internal process for review of the pre qualification applications. Staff has reviewed all of the submissions that the board is going to review today for both completeness and. Sufficiency of the upload. So that means that every element of the operating plan and the background checks. Are provided their screen to ensure they haven't been pre qualified for another cannabis business license and also that they have not been convicted. Of a presumptively disqualifying offense. And if the applicant demonstrates compliance with rules one for one and one for two, and they are deemed to be suitable for pre qualification by staff, then we are recommending them for pre qualification today. So, I'm just going to go through the list. We've got 28 of them today. And I'll go through the list to identify the submission number. We are anonymizing the list of individuals that are involved in the business and also the business name. So we just have a submission number and the type of license sought. So I'm just going to go through and identify them by submission number and the type of pre qualification they're seeking. And then at the end, I'll remind you that they are all recommended for pre qualification. So submission number 10. Submission number 17. Submission number one. Submission number 25 is outdoor tier one, submission number 44 is outdoor tier one. Submission number 68 is individually tier one. Submission number 76 is mixed tier one. Submission 80 is indoor tier one. Submission 87 is mixed tier one. Submission 112 is indoor tier one. Submission 116 is indoor tier one. Submission 203 is mixed tier one. Submission number three is indoor tier one. Submission number nine is indoor tier one. Submission 61 is indoor tier one. Submission 65 is outdoor tier one. Submission 73 is mixed tier one. Submission 88 is outdoor tier one. Submission 92 is indoor tier one. Submission 122 is Indoor Tier 1. Submission 137 is Indoor Tier 1. Submission 151 is Outdoor Tier 1. Submission 153 is Indoor Tier 1. Submission 160 is Mixed Tier 1. Submission 167 is Indoor Tier 1. Submission 192 is Indoor Tier 1. Submission 304 is indoor Tier 1. Submission 295 is indoor Tier 1. Submission 89 is mixed Tier 1, and that is the end of the list. Each of these 28 submissions have all satisfied the criteria for completeness and sufficiency of their uploads. They've been screened. None of them are applicants for another license type. They have not been pre-qualified for another business license. None of them have any presumptively disqualifying offenses, and they've all demonstrated suitability for pre-qualification. There they are. For your consideration. Should we approve them all at once? Is that a possibility? Yes. All right. Do we have a motion? The way you could file your motion. I'll do the same one as last time. I move that the board accept each of the recommendations for pre-qualification approval as presented to us by staff in this meeting. Second the motion. All right. Any discussion? All right. All in favor? Aye. Aye. Great. So, Bryn, obviously these people don't know who they are. Can you just explain what the next steps for people that are wondering? Yeah. The next steps are that the board of staff will generate a letter that will be sent to each applicant that's been pre-qualified. We will also reach out. We will send you this letter by email and we'll let you know, give you a link to the board meeting that your application was reviewed in and tell you what your submission number is. So, you can view the board meeting where your application was reviewed and you also get the letter attached that identifies you as a pre-qualified applicant for a Canvas business license by the board. Great. Well, we are a little bit ahead of schedule, but there's nothing wrong with that. Why don't we move to public comment? So, we'll handle this the same way that we always do. If you've joined via the link, please raise your virtual hand if you'd like to make a public comment. Then, once we've been through those, we will move to the people that joined via the link. Again, we try not to answer questions directly during the public comment period. We do note your questions and we try to get answers, especially to the more frequently asked questions, both on our website and at the beginning of these meetings. So, feel free to ask a question if you'd like. That's the comment that you want to make, but just recognize that we can't always answer questions directly during these public comment windows. Dave first. Hey all. So, last week four, this week looked like maybe 10, 12 for the numbers that the chair indicated earlier. There are 32 completed tier one prequels. So, I guess it would be good to get some clarity from you guys as to what you've done today because we have to just follow along and there's no real numbers that you gave us. So, it's hard for us to track and it's hard for us to really get a sense of what your pace is on this process going forward. And I know this is all developing and you're also learning as you go along. So, please understand I want to express patience, but I have a lot of clients who are just really breathing down my neck. And so, I'm breathing down yours in response to that. And thank you, please try to get through more. Thanks, bye. Sorry. Alan is next. Yes, I was wondering about your guys' inspection policies before getting the licenses. Thanks, Alan. Someone who had their hand raised, but they lowered it before I could catch their name. Oh, Glenn. How you guys doing? I guess I was just calling in response to Dave's comment and I want to thank you guys for doing the work. I realized that there's a process that's involved and I think there's an anonymity factor that has to be considered for sure, but also the fact that you're focused on cultivation and making sure that those that are looking to get seats in the ground and started for the season ahead can. So, thank you for doing that. I guess to Dave's point, while there's a lot of things going on, our collective is working to essentially create banking solutions and open up a lot of what I call the white collar holdup, because ultimately there's, you guys know this, there's a fee structure of exercise fees for this industry being levied by some credit unions and some banks and others are looking towards private banking and family banks and things of that nature to qualify. And yeah, we could all look the other way or call it what it is. And so, you know, I'm trying to rapidly work with people that are approaching us in the decentralized and blockchain banking sector and they're proposing solutions that are existing federally insured, you know, AML qualified. I did the background research. I used to work in that industry. I know the anti-money laundering industry from a technology perspective well. They are not a bank, but, you know, we're still exploring it and seeing if there's an opportunity to utilize an API with our compliance management system, the cannabis collective. And in doing so, we would be able to then potentially work with the agency of digital services in a way hopefully that would be able to port all of the compliance data that we're capturing across to you guys as well as we're doing this for the, well, we're doing it for our clients that are members that are working in the hemp space currently. So we're trying to now work through all the 20, the current 2022 USDA regulations as well as Vermont hemp and AAFM rules. So we're trying to put that into the same interface and ideally we'd like to have an API so that we can port all of that information to you guys directly. But in that process of being able to do that, there is the potential for us to then create the necessary records to essentially send to the tax department, to the CCB, to the agency of agriculture and all the necessary bodies so that they can understand from a compliance perspective what's going on. I think it's the most transparent way that we could actually onboard a number of people in the unregulated markets today that are all good actors, intentions with positivity, trying to make a living at the thing they've been in their entire lives. I literally met up with somebody who has a Harvard degree and prison sentences that had put him in a bad position. But his knowledge and expertise is levels beyond the corporate app I see system. So I just want you guys to understand that there's a lot of really great talent falling away to the wayside. So I hope I'm going to reach out to you by email. I'm not looking for answers here. We do hope as much work and rapidly to try to create solutions. And I hope we can find some means to utilize all of the technology at hand to give you guys what you need for compliance but to onboard many more that 20 to 30 people that I know today that you could be reviewing their applications if they had a banking solution. So that's what we're working on. I'll write to you guys and see if we can get some conversations happening. Thanks so much. Great. Thanks, bud. Anyone else you joined by the link? Please raise your virtual hand. Jason. Hey, good morning. Just maybe an update on the software for tracking. This way we just have an idea is there one company that we're using? Maybe there's some research that we can do to prep cost and availability. Thanks. Yeah, thanks, Jason. We'll have an update as soon as we're ready. Anyone else by the link? Otherwise, if you joined by the phone, you can hit star six on mute yourself. If you'd like to make a comment, we'll close the public comment window. So that's the rest of our agenda. Any last thoughts or any last issues we wanna address for still in this meeting? I know that we went through a couple of things fairly quickly, but we pre-qualified 28 businesses today, not 10 to 12. And with the four last week that we did, we've cleared 32. And I understand that there's 32 complete tier one applications that have made it through the pre-qualification process at this point. So my understanding is everybody who's submitted everything to the board that they need for pre-qual as a tier one applicant has made it through that process. Is that a correct way to interpret where we are? Okay, just wanna correct that misnomer that was said at the beginning of the meeting. All right. Well, then I guess we will adjourn for the day and we'll be back next Monday at 11. Thanks, everyone.