 I'd like to call to order a meeting of the City of Santa Rosa Planning Commission and ask for roll call, please. Let the record reflect that all commissioners are present. Okay. Item two, we took a field trip. Boy, I wish we could take more of those, but as we get older there seem to be fewer opportunities. We gathered here just outside the council chamber and took a walking tour along a path around basically a rough perimeter of downtown Santa Rosa. Patrick Streeter, one of the planning staff, stopped us periodically to discuss different parts of the downtown and the possibilities that the city has in front of it when the city is reconsidering the downtown specific plan, which is one of the broad long-term planning documents where the people and the council express how they see the city going for long into the future. So a lot of very interesting ideas and those of you who are interested in that process, please pay attention to city websites and feel free to contact the commission or staff and keep your eye on a joint session of the city council and the planning commission in early January, I believe January 8th, where we'll be discussing all of those things and the process that we're going to follow for that. Does any other commissioner wish to make a comment on the field trip? Okay. Would any staff like to comment on the field trip? Ms. Hartman? Okay. All right. Let's see. We have no minutes to approve, so we're going to move to public comment. This is the part of the meeting for any member of the public wishing to speak on a matter of interest to the commission to approach one of the podiums at the top of the room, and you have three minutes to speak. I have a number of cards here for speakers who want to comment on one or more of the public hearings that are noticed under item 10, 10.1, 10.2, and 10.3. Those of you who only have comments about those projects will be welcome to speak during those public hearings, but this public hearing would be for any general comments that anybody might have to make. So with that, I'm going to open the public hearing, and I'm not seeing anybody approach the podium. I'm going to close the public comment, and we'll move on to planning commissioner's report. Commissioner, is there anything to report? I just want to mention the Planning Commissioner's Conference that we had the pleasure of attending Saturday or two ago at Sonoma State University. It's an annual event that SSU puts on with a very good planning department they have there that has generated a lot of very skilled graduates, a lot of whom have served the City of Santa Rosa over the years, and it's a great chance that we have to be educated and learn more about what we can do better and some subjects that are of interest to the people of Santa Rosa, including land use after the fires and what sort of options or changes would be worth considering in the long term, as well as other subjects like state law changes that the City and decision makers are going to have to understand. So that was a really good experience, and I think I can speak for all of us. I think all of us were in attendance, that it was a really valuable experience, and I want to acknowledge staff's effort to set that up once again. So thank you. Yeah, Commissioner Groninger, please. Just a quick announcement. The Planning Commission subcommittee on the subdivision committee is scheduled to meet January 9th on at least one agenda item at 10 o'clock, I believe. Thank you, and we will move to department reports. Thank you, and yes, thank you for all attending the Sonoma State Seminar. That was the first time in a quite a long time that I actually got the benefit of all commissioners attending, so thank you so much for taking the time out to do that. We have a busy first week in January coming up. This is our last meeting of the year, but looking into the week of January 7th, we have quite a few items. So Commissioner Groninger, as subcommittee meeting, so I'm sorry in advance Commissioner Groninger, but you'll be quite busy that week, because on January 8th we have a Joint City Council Planning Commission study session. I don't know if the time's been set, but it's generally study session started at about 2 o'clock, and one of the main reasons why we went on a walking tour, not just because it's beautiful and we should walk our downtown as often as we can, but it was in preparation of that joint study session, because the focus of that will be to present the opportunity of our downtown plan update and to hear directly from council members and commission members, you know, if there's priority issues that you want addressed as part of that process or what your feedback is in terms of embarking on that journey. And so that will be an important meeting followed by just for your information, because it's not a joint session, but you're welcome to stay and listen as a study session on the city's comprehensive general plan update. It will kick off in 2019, though one of our first steps is to discuss scope of that type of endeavor with the city council, so that we can establish and determine the budget and funding for our comprehensive plan, so that's what that the purpose of that session is, and that will be immediately following our our joint session on the downtown plan. And then we also have a planning commission regular agenda that week, January 10th, and we will have three or four items committed for that agenda, so we do have a busy week, so it gets to rest over the holidays. Great, thanks very much. Worth commenting about the general plan that Ms. Harman just mentioned. That is the sort of constitution of land use in California for a city or a county, so those of you who it could potentially affect everybody, it's a very significant process and a process that involves a lot of public input, so I encourage anybody who cares about issues like this to speak and make your voice heard during that process and share the knowledge that you all have that that we would benefit from. Okay, statements of abstention from commissioners. Commissioners, any abstentions today? Okay, and we have no study sessions or consent items, so we're going to move to public hearings and we're going to move to item 10.1, the Aloha Iina Inc. Dispensary Conditional Use Permit, 1954 Planner Road, and the staff presentation will be given by Adam Ross. Oh, following the ex parte disclosures. Commissioner Peterson, anything to disclose? I visited the site and have no new information to disclose. I visited the site and have no further information to disclose. I also visited the site and have nothing else to disclose. I also visited the site and have nothing further to disclose. I visited the site and have nothing further to disclose. I also visited the site and have nothing further to disclose. And I visited the site as well and have nothing further to disclose. And now, Mr. Ross, the staff presentation. Thank you, Chair Edmondson and members of the commission. I'm Adam Ross, City Planner here at the City of Santa Rosa. The item before you is CUP18-060 to allow Aloha Iina Inc. to operate a medical and adult use cannabis retail dispensary with delivery to operate at 1954 Planner Road, Suite B. The proposed hours of operation are 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., 7 days a week. Cannabis, the square footage breakdown is approximately 1,720 square feet of the cannabis retail with storage and office at 200 square feet. The location is within a new building located on Piner Road and Marlowe. Marlowe Road, it's a new construction. If you could see it here, this is an aerial image. We have, it was approved by Planning Commission for this new retail space with the drive-through back in 2015 with a design review approved in early 2016. The cannabis dispensary is in the smaller of the two buildings, Building B. Some of the project history includes April 19th, the application was submitted, neighborhood meeting was held June 6th, May 31st, a notice of incomplete application was sent. June 21st, a completeness review and time extension was received by city staff. June 21st, as well, the response to incomplete letter was received by staff. June 26th, a notice of complete application was sent to the applicant. July 24th, a referral was sent out to city departments for review of the project, as well as a notice of application was sent to surrounding property owners. September 25th, a notification of staff issues was sent to the applicant. On October 31st, updated plans and project description were received by staff. The general plan land use designation is retail and business service, as well as medium high resident, medium density residential, apologies. So it allows for both uses for the site. The zoning is general commercial, which allows cannabis retail dispensaries to be allowed in this zoning with approval of a conditional use permit. Here's the site entitlement plan. The project was approved as shown, except this application comes in and divides building B into two locations where this still utilizes the drive-through, but the cannabis dispensary is separate from that business. And on the plans we don't, it's not a part of this application. The floor layout, as you see, you come and check in with the lobby and then you come and then after you're vetted with your ID or physician's recommendation and your ID as well, you're allowed into the retail area. There's no on-site consumption proposal with this project, so it's just retail with delivery. There's some secured access areas where the general public is not allowed, except as escorted by staff, usually that's with for wholesale delivery to the site or distributor delivery. Here's some elevations for reference, and this was part of the designer view approved in January of 2016 and some landscape plans for free reference as well. Some of the issues with this project, the security plan included an entrance on the east elevation for employees and receiving distributor deliveries. However, the plans did not show the entrance on the east elevation. There was some conversation between staff and the applicant where the applicant decided to go with one entrance to the site. However, with the site visit, there are two existing doors on the east elevation to the site, which were not a part of the original design approval, but is not unprecedented to have after it's built. So some solutions to that. At first, the applicant updated their security plan, which was distributed as a late correspondence to the planning commission that included one entrance for both customers and delivery from distributors. But after the two entrances were discovered, more conversation was had with the applicant where they would prefer to go with their original security plan, which has two entrances, one being separate from where retail customers come in. And I'll show you a graphic on the next slide to give you a visual image for that. So with that, the original security plan submitted with the application is correct, whereas the updated one is no longer true. But it's just a small portion of the security plan, so it's not a large correction to it. So with the elevations, there's a door, what's actually built is there's a door here, and there's a door where this window is. Now, what is being proposed for this project is keep this door for the secured access entrance, whether it's abandoned this door or replace it with a wall. Again, that is an option. So again, so you'd come in through the front elevation here. This is where the lobby is, check in, where you're vetted for your AHA and or prescription. And right here is a door for the secured access entrance for employees and deliveries for product to the dispensary only. Public comments for the neighborhood meeting, five guests attended the neighborhood meeting. Concerns were on site consumption, what goes on outside the building, and the proposed use of yogurt time within that commercial area. One of the concerns was it's a little bit they foresee children going with their families and the close proximity to the dispensary itself. Itself is what they were concerned about. And what happens after hours and then the cost of the products. There were also 26 public comments as this presentation was given to you. However, I provided an additional one. So there are actually 27 public comments for this. Two are in favor, the rest in opposition. Some things that came up were traffic, proximity to schools, over concentration in the northwest Santa Rosa City of Santa Rosa, close proximity to neighborhoods, close proximity to yogurt time, safety and security. So some of the responses to public comments is one is no on-site consumption is proposed. The security plan was reviewed and vetted by staff and it was deemed adequate and sufficient for the site. And now with the additional entrance that's secured for just the distributors, there's less of an issue there. The security staff is on-site at all times. No one under 21 is allowed unless 18 with a valid physician's recommendation. Costs are always subject to market conditions. The traffic study indicated that the original project was originally approved for the site would be a more intense use for the dispensary itself. And the location is in a commercially zoned zoning district. As you know, it allows cannabis dispensaries with delivery with approval of a conditional use permit. The ordinance itself, the cannabis ordinance does not restrict the amount of cannabis dispensaries in the city. And the setback for schools required is 600 feet. The nearest school is my notes here. The nearest school is approximately 2,600 feet away, which is North Valley School. The others are more than half a mile, 4,800 feet away as the crow flies. And the cannabis business itself and in the project narrative goes over some of the staff training to make sure that there is no on-site consumption or outside of the building and that no one solicits around the property. And in the security plan, one of the measures that they take is that after the business is closed for the day and everyone goes home, there are motion sensor cameras on site. So when they're set off, they're turned on and a live stream is sent to management staff who can review that via email and determine is it just an animal triggering it? Is it someone trying to commit a crime on the property and that way they can determine whether to notify police or not? And I wanted to share this land use chart. Some of the public comments also included, it's a little bit hard to see so I apologize, but some of the public comments were concerned with those, the amount of cannabis businesses in Northwest Santa Rosa and why it was allowed in a neighborhood or that we would accept an application. And this just goes over the retail dispensary zoning districts, which includes industrial and so we see business park, light industrial and general industrial as well as commercial neighborhood, commercial office and general commercial land uses that are approved with the conditional use permit. The project qualifies for a class one categorical exemption in that the project proposes minor alterations to an existing building involving negligible expansion of use where there will be minor modifications to an existing facility and no expansion of use is proposed of the site in a class three exemption under a secret guideline section 15303 in that the project is a conversion of an existing small structure from one use to another where the project is going from one approved use to a similar use and it does not exceed 2,500 square feet of building and the traffic study with that also indicated that the use proposed is less significant than what was originally proposed for that drive-through location as far as the size of the location goes. And these are the required findings again with the conditional use permit and that it complies with finding A, B, C are all within the zoning code and in the staff report and resolution where it complies with all applicable provisions of the zoning code. It's consistent with the general plan and it's compatible with the existing and future land uses. It's physically suitable for the type density and intensity of use. It would not constitute a nuisance and it's compliance with the California Environmental Quality Act. The Planning and Economic Development Department recommends that the Planning Commission approve resolution CUP 18-060 to allow the medical and adult use cannabis retail dispensary with delivery located at 1954 Piner road sweep B in Santa Rosa and that's it for my presentation and I'm staff is also welcome to any questions you may have. The applicant is also here as well as the representative of the applicant to answer any other questions you may have. Okay, thanks very much. Commissioner, any questions at this time for staff? Commissioner Peterson? If you could, can you discuss sort of the current rules for cannabis businesses as it pertains to signage, sort of what they can put on the outside of the building? So it's the same standard as normal businesses except that you have a 1000 foot setback for signs for the cannabis business 1000 feet from any schools and as this project is outside of that 1000 foot setback these signs were looked at and deemed compliant with that. And that's true. I just want to do one supplemental fact that it's not the advertising of the dispensary, you cannot advertise marijuana on your sign. Okay, thank you. Commissioner, is anything else at this time? Okay, I'll invite the applicant and the applicant's representative to make some comments at this time. If you'll just walk to the top of the room, state your name for the record and I'll see if the mic is on for you. There we go. It's on my icon. There we go. Are you there? My name's Lailani Brewster and I've been writing the Appletree Neighborhood Newsletter. It's a monthly newsletter for the last... I'm sorry, let me interrupt you. I apologize. We're at this time asking the applicant and I'll open the public hearing right after we hear from the applicant. I don't know if you are the applicant or not, the individual whose project it is and you very well may be. I just want to verify that the applicants are over at that podium and everyone else who is here and wishes to speak about this project is going to have the opportunity to do that in very little time when I open the public hearing. Okay, please feel free to start. Thank you, Commissioner. First of all, we want to thank the staff, Adam and Claire, who have worked very hard with us. My name is Dan Beck. I'm principal attorney and shareholder of Beck Law and its cannabis practice group, Cantalegal. And what I'd like to do is introduce the applicant, our staff here that has been working very hard and also address some of the issues that we anticipate are going to be made today. First of all, I would like to introduce the managing member of Alona Aina. His name is Marvin Otsui. Marvin here is from Kauai, Hawaii. He is the owner and operator for the last 30 years of sea sports. It's a deep diving and deep sea fishing and deep diving operation that has been in existence for at least three decades. He is a father, a husband, a business owner, and also very concerned about safety and operations. Also, as part of the management team, I'd like to introduce Greg Solomon. Mr. Solomon has 15 years experience in retail and marketing. He was the senior vice president of retail for Quicksilver clothing stores, with some of you may be familiar with as well as Roxy. In addition, Steve Guerrero, Mr. Guerrero has owned and operated the top three retail facilities, dispensaries in the state of Washington. Its name was Green2Go. He also has been responsible for eight store openings in Oregon and Washington. In addition, the support staff that has been assisting in this, I'd like to introduce Josh Abrams. Josh Abrams is our cannabis compliance manager, and Delia Ramirez, who is our corporate governance attorney, if you have any questions about the structure of the LLC. I want to give Marvin a chance to speak, but most importantly, what we want to stress is that this project started literally over a year ago, and it took a lot of effort to get our application in the window that the commission and the city had in April, and here we are in December, and you can see from the number of submittals and revisions that this has not been something that is overnight. Additionally, this project qualifies as an exemption under CEQA, which has been presented for Class 1 CEQA, as well as Class 3 categorical exemption under CEQA, but also I think that what needs to be stressed is that this project would not constitute a nuisance, and I think that's a lot of what is being of concern here, that somehow this project is going to entice, attract, be detrimental to the neighborhood. We want to stress, and our staff is here to answer any questions, that you will not be able to enter this facility unless you are an adult, and the only exception under the new state law is that you have a state ID, which is issued by the state of California if you're under 18, along with the doctor's recommendation. In other words, you will not be able to have any access to this project unless those requirements are fulfilled. For example, you could go to Mary's Pizza across the street, be under the age of 18 where they sell alcohol. You can go to the sports bar across the street where they sell alcohol, and you will not be carted at the entrance. You can go to the Japanese restaurant across the street where they sell sake, and other alcoholic beverages, and be under the age of 18. You will not be able to access this facility unless you are an adult. This facility will have displayed the name of Aloha Aina, which Mr. Otsui will explain its significance of. It will bring with it no other signage that will attract anybody to the location other than those that are qualified to enter it. It will have security during its entire operation, if it's 9 to 9, by personnel, and after that with streaming videos and security cameras. It will bring with it also a culture of Hawaii that Mr. Otsui will expand on, that will have as its entrance, as its design, those type of pictures and depictions. I believe that the staff provided the commission with samples of that kind of attachment for. With that, I would like to introduce Marvin, who will possibly be here to answer some of the questions, but also Josh Abrams, who can address some of the specifics in terms of what the security plan, what the older mitigation plan, and other types of studies that have been done to ensure the safety of this project and the protection of the neighborhood. Marvin? I want to thank you for your time. I can tell you probably a year ago, I wouldn't vision myself being here talking with you, and Robbie, 10 years ago, maybe I might be on the other side, to be honest with you, but the culture has changed dramatically, I think, in particular in this area that I've noticed even throughout the United States, but in California, that the Northern California community has embraced this culture. I really wasn't involved in Hawaii, but I've been around it. I've got some actually diver friends of mine that started a genealogy of Hawaii-based cannabis, which we just kind of thought they were kids out, you know, doing the deal. But it started making some sense to me as we started talking with them about some of the good stuff that it can do. So my overall view of this has been kind of more medicinal, and the growing demographics of all the people here in the upper end of it now are people that are my age, getting older, hurting, looking for alternative pathways to making their life a little better, and that would be away from the opiate thing that's going on right now. So I kind of envision that as a possibility of bringing this culture, which is from the earth, Hawaii to me is a place that I'm not sure is kind of like Disneyland, it's people enjoy this culture. We have plans of having pictures of the landscape of the ocean, with something that means a lot to me, and not just this dark culture that I've envisioned. I've been to probably 50 different dispensaries, and I'll tell you, some of them I can see where the concern is, because I really didn't know it was safe to get out, to get in. I was not from the area and looking around, but I've noticed a couple that are really awesome. My hats off to the guys that put it together. It's the culture, there's a change in the culture, and that's why I really want to be a part of that. I want to have this open-air feeling, this building kind of a standalone. I have a family, I have a kid, and I can see where the concern is for that, but we're not the demographics for that, for your family to go to, it's you have to be of age to get there, you can't get in the door, there's nothing, there's no odor, there's no product being displayed, it's for people that are consenting, wanting to, for whatever reason they're there. The kids are going to get this from this black market that exists here, it's a big black market, that's where they're going to get stuff that you're concerned with. We're really concerned with the safety, we have these cameras that can be 24 hours surveillance. We have doors that you're going to have to try to get into, like three different doors that will be locked and gated and guarded, and to be able to get to it. My vision of this whole project would be eventually to go to cashless, would it be Vimno, Apple Pay, debit card, credit card, to be able to not have that element of people thinking that there's this cash to be, to be had. Our plan right now is to have armed cars, you know, cars to come get their deposits. There is a changing culture, we're trying to work in their company, I think it's Hyper that has put together some banking institutions and, you know, Brinks would be the guys that come get the money. So we're trying to follow those rules and regulations, we'll pay all our taxes. I'm involved in my community back home. Gosh, for years, I've started junior programs for probably the last 15 years. I donate so much money to the community, and that's kind of what my goal was to be involved here if I can. So I don't know, that's kind of my story. I'm pretty much all in here. I'm going to make this this team be a team that's got a different culture that brings something different to than this dark feeling that some of the things have in the past. Any questions that I... Well, commissioners, any questions for the applicant at this time before we open the public hearing? Commissioner Siscoe. Yeah, would you mind just going over how off-site deliveries are handled to patients, how you manage that? To patients or to customers, patients or whatever, but just sort of describe that, how did you go about making those deliveries to homes? We're talking about... You want to... We have it actually, I've got a plan written down, I think he's for privilege to like just a line out and actually to be honest with you. So deliveries, deliveries are detailed in your packet and in the narrative for the project. I don't have that in front of me, but it's a very strict protocol that's followed based on the regulations that are developed by the state. So deliveries commence once an order is received. There are requirements for checking to make sure that the person who's placed the delivery is the person who is being delivered to. So there's age and identity verification. You leave the dispensary with products for to fill the order that was placed and then the delivery driver returns to the dispensary in order to restock for additional deliveries. Is there a specific question beyond that? I think we just like looking at the new vehicles. There are... Thank you. There are vehicle requirements and protocols that need to be followed and those are all detailed within the state regulations and supported by the local ordinance. So vehicles are required to have security features. Any deliveries or products that are in the vehicle are required to be in a locked locks. The vehicles themselves have GPS tracking so that they could be tracked throughout their delivery throughout that route. Is there... I'd like to ask if there are other details that you'd like to know? No, I'm happy for the description. Mainly I'm looking for... The person has to be there. You're not just dropping anything off. You're identifying that person as the person who called and that's really what I'm looking for. Yes, and I'm sorry that I don't have the regulations in front of me to flip through, but yes, the delivery is commenced by an order. That order is filled at the dispensary. It's delivered to a physical address. You're not allowed to meet somebody in the street or at a random location. There's age and identity verification before the delivery occurs. The delivery is recorded. Every delivery is recorded in the manifest and then reported back to the system to the point of sale system and available for the Bureau of Cannabis Control to review. That information is uploaded to the state every 14 days. All that information is rectified and verified with the Bureau of Cannabis Control. So it's a very strict and tight control measures that are provided for deliverers. Great, thank you. If I could... Commissioner, also what should be stressed is that there's no consumption allowed in the facility or around the facility. So you're not going to have this picture of loitering or open containers or anything else that's going to expose the members of the non-buying community, that is those that actually physically go inside, qualify and enter. And if the picture is that somehow there's going to be this haze of smoke emanating from this facility, I can assure you that this facility is going to have odor controls, non-consumption, non-use. And the only thing you're going to see are people who are qualified entering and leaving. So the fear that like somehow there's going to be drivers that are dropping things off on corners can be dispensed with. If there's a fear that children are going to be exposed to an element of the community that's out there inviting, that can be disposed of. If there's a fear that their children are somehow going to be able to enter this facility or buy it out of a car that's leaving the facility, that can be disposed. In fact, there's going to be more security in that area than there has been before. What pizza parlor, what liquor store, what restaurant that serves both hard and liquor and wine has a security guard and a regiment that essentially prevents the buying public from entering other than this highly regulated and quite frankly very, very sophisticated type of business. So I just wanted to maybe expand on that. Great. Thank you. You know, I wanted to add too that each page when they come into the store itself will have to sign an agreement stating exactly that that there is no consumption, they won't open the containers for to get to the cars, that I think any of the worries that that may be surrounding that will be mitigated through just before they even enter. They have an agreement with us to do that and say is some reason that does them through our security measures that they'll be not allowed to come to the dispenser anymore. So. Vice Chair Weeks. I have a couple questions regarding the delivery also that were not covered in the project description. Or at least I didn't see it. The vehicles are those going to be owned by the driver or will the company own the vehicles? Or has that been determined yet? It could be both ways. I mean legally you could either way. That was that for discussion right now to be honest with you. Not knowing which way to go. We'd like to try to protect everybody involved and the drivers to their own vehicles to our own vehicles in itself. So. I just want to interrupt when you speak if you'll just get closer to the microphone for the video recording for the public who are watching on video. Thanks. So with all small businesses this is going to be a soft start and the exact ownership of the vehicles is yet to be vetted or determined. But the state regulations do allow for the use of private vehicles and regardless whether it's a private vehicle or whether it's owned by aloha aina ink. There will be no advertising on the vehicle. It'll be discreet. There's nothing that's going to say this is a cannabis delivery vehicle or this is associated with the dispensary. That's the way the regulations are set up that it can be a private vehicle. It can be company owned but there's no advertising to alert somebody that you know this would be a target for or an advertisement for or something associated with the business itself. Okay I have two more questions. You know under state law that there is I don't know if it's a requirement or the possibility that the that the vehicles can be inspected. Is that something that will occur before a vehicle is put into service? Yes. Okay and then my last question is can someone be a customer only by delivery? Yes indeed. So how do you prove who you are before you would get the delivery? Right so so again that's part of the vetting process for the delivery. So an order is placed that information is received by the person taking the order and entered into the system and then verified by the delivery driver before the transaction commences. So somebody who calls has to be 21 years old or 18 with a valid recommendation and state identification card for medical purposes and then the delivery driver would verify that before the transaction is completed. Thank you. And you know I'll add to that if I may and the purpose for that delivery is to service people who may not be able to make it to the dispensary for health or other reasons. Commissioner Ronnega. Just a quick follow-up to Commissioner Sisko's questions. I'm not certain you may have had it in your report but I don't recall what your plans or projections may be as to what percentage of your business will be by delivery versus percentage walk-in. That's tough to project at this point and the market is really wide open. You know there are few dispensaries in the Santa Rosa area or in the surrounding county area down on Santa Rosa Avenue and really the market is going to drive that and it's sort of unknown at this point for everybody. We would like to anticipate that there's going to be you know up to 30 or 40 deliveries per day but it's really difficult to make that determination at this point. Thank you. Commissioner Peterson. I also have just a handful of questions for the applicant. Can you tell me about the and I'm referencing page 15 of your project narrative the community awareness officer? Is that a dedicated role? How do you envision that role functioning and the sort of the outreach to the neighborhood? So that's actually really important to the applicant and to the business. We would like to make sure that there's a public face that people can consistently reach somebody at the dispensary to address any concerns or issues that may arise or just to be able to perform outreach and know that there's a human that they can connect with. The role is basically the manager on site and somebody that will be dedicated to responding to questions concerns and inquiries. Another question. Again in the project narrative there's you spend a lot of time I think in great detail and it's very valuable describing the recruitment and training of employees and my question is related to that in sort of what do you anticipate sort of paying these employees what kind of benefits are they going to be receiving if any and what I'm trying to get at is Sina Rosa's got quite a housing shortage and what we don't need are low quality you know part-time jobs so can you kind of speak to that? Yeah you know that's that's a good question we were our team was discussing some of that and I over the actually 40 years in business I've had some employees that have worked to me with 17, 18, 19, 22 years so and I've had up to 50 at one point of which still I have a majority of them that are still there so to understand that you know what you're saying the cost of living here is can't be anywhere what is the cost of living in Hawaii so I want to make sure that the employees survive we're going to try to pay them an upper level hourly wage to try to give them maybe some medical benefits and to incentivize that for them to be able to make a better living I my goal here is to have every other employee at every other dispensary or not even the dispensary but want to work there not only have the culture be a very positive one but also economically so they they actually can survive I don't like seeing people having two or three jobs and I do know that you have a housing issues all these fires have gone on there's a burden on you guys to make that happen I don't foresee anybody moving here for the job but I think the people that are here that we can make that position a better position for them and I want to keep employees there I don't want them leaving I'm going to try to find a way to make the quality of lifestyle better and if the if the businesses is is successful then by all means the community will succeed and so will the people around us I really truly believe that Jim any numbers you could give me for hourly you know I don't know my guess my guess of the average would be 15 to 20 hours an hour you know I don't know I mean managers will that I'm looking at what compliance officers get and you know the upper management there there it's you know six figures and above you know I but I'll tell you that that this is no like no other business that I've been involved in and I've been in a few that you mentioned cannabis and the rent doubles you anything to do this the you know 31 percent I think at the top is is already to the city into the state then trying to figure out a way of you know the compliance here my whole life has been about with the Coast Guard and the counties and and this is no different but a lot more complicated so on one hand the struggle to get where you need to get to be successful and then the other end of it if you are then what do you do so it's it's like no other business that I've seen and I do see the culture changing I do see that down the road that there was going to be some major changes to the whole industry and I can see people's mindset being a little more I'm not sure open minded but at least expanding upon maybe there are some other benefits and just you know people out there just trying to get high that's I've never been like that's never been really been one of my thoughts about why I got involved in this business thank you yeah commissioners any other questions at this time I have a couple could you describe the public outreach that you conducted up until this point there's the neighborhood meeting of course but could you describe everything that you would characterize as public outreach in a succinct way we've been tracking the city process from inception and working with the cannabis advisor group or subcommittee as they've gone through all of the regulations the ordinance updates and preparation and such so been actively participating in the city's development of the ordinance and bringing these projects forward there's been demographic research around the community and tracking the other applicants to see the status of those projects and how they're interacting with the public we've participated in some of the other neighborhood public meetings or neighborhood meetings in order to determine the types of input that is being received the concerns that are being put forward by the public and the community and the neighborhoods and there's been extensive research on the market in northern california we've been working and following along with the state regulations and some of the business expositions and conferences that are going on with cannabis and are generally aware of and have our finger on the pulse of planning and design issues in and around santa rosa I think that that's all good information I was hoping for more of a description about outreach to individuals businesses and residents who would be around the project obviously the legal requirements are what they are but i'm curious if you went beyond those canvassing outreach to property owners to see you know what their thoughts were business proprietors in the area and then residents um can you describe any efforts like that there is specific to that question there hasn't been a whole lot of direct contact or outreach to the immediate neighbors other than the fact that the buildings and development themselves are still vacant so these are shell buildings located on the property that are still searching for tenants the closest one would be wallgreens which is occupied and no we haven't we haven't made a significant effort to engage immediate neighbors in in this the neighbor jason to the the property the the shopping center there um what is the name um let me let me let aloney we did have discussion with him um and um of course um uh hasan uh um causumini um about the the impact possibly impact that would might have um and with them um but specific to outreach to the to the the neighborhood um no not really i wasn't aware that was really um actually i really didn't know what way of doing it how i how i um got out there and really did that um i thought through me a little more um public um correspondence during the the one meeting we did have so um and i think that was through to you um i mean i think i don't what it was how it was put up through the news paper or or signage or something to to make that happen with us and we we came through that so um but but you know i i guess to answer that you know um should this be able to go successfully um i will i i have i i have a few talents that i that i that i have um in the community um and just trying to find that right what group that we can we can really make it in fact with it's kind of hard if this is if this is back home i could tell you exactly and i would have been a lot more involved here but but um i will okay thanks uh i'd like to also um and i know that we got some good um biographies of the the team um if if there could just be quick uh comments on the experience of the the people who are you know going to be involved in an ongoing way with the business what kind of experience there is in the cannabis industry specifically uh obviously this is only a an industry that's recently been made state legal so many of the people who have extensive experience in the industry uh entered the industry before that was the case but um if if i could just get some brief uh comments uh on the experience of the team hello my name is steve grito and i'm a resident of washington state us in colorado we're the first two states to go recreational and i was fortunate enough to open uh dispensary that started out medically it was uh a really big challenge because there was no historical data in this field it was a whole new frontier we started off medically and then we transitioned over to recreational um retail after that i opened up to processing and growing facilities and then after that we expanded out into organ and opened retail operations throughout organ under the brand name relief so it's been doing it about five years um i've also owned two different restaurants and dealt with the liquor board that way as well so i'm pretty familiar with with uh dealing with our cannabis control board officers in my neck of the woods um and staying up to compliance and making sure that all the guidelines are met and pretty much learning the business you know as it goes because it's a brand new business i know you guys just went legal but uh california is world-renowned for their cannabis products so i'm excited to be here and help marvin kind of get launched and do things the right way make sure that things are launched smoothly there's no problems and um hopefully avoid some of the pitfalls we we went through when we opened because there was no uh there was no pathway to do it you just kind of had to learn as you went can i uh just i apologize if it's already been said i'm sure it has what your title is and whether you're going to be an ongoing uh member of the uh team that's running the business yeah i would see myself as an ongoing member of the team and just basically consulting you know for marvin remotely but being here uh quite a bit as well to oversee the the operations and making sure everything's running smoothly as far as compliance okay thanks we're we're actually we're partners in another Hawaiian seed company which is another um it's organ based but Hawaii based um that's kind of one of the reasons how i got in this so we're kind of joining the hip so um as he will consult he might be even deeper into the the project here one of one of the the pitfalls of this is to um this hearing is a big journey to see how all goes forward there's a lot of time and economic hardship at this point um so moving forward we'll be accelerating into um you know submitting this team together the other person here is uh Greg Solomon uh he's not involved in in the cannabis world but he is with retail with SOPs and i'll let him he can tell you some stuff about him too as well yeah and i'm just going to i know we're we're toward the end of the questioning but the public's been awfully patient this has been a long exchange with a lot of good information but if if we can move to the public hearing relatively quickly thanks all right do you want to do that now uh we i would like to hear your comments about yeah no i've uh i've been in retail my whole life and from the restaurant business to clothing business and the cannabis business is just another former retail although it's much more restrictive than any other business i've ever been involved in and there's many more rules to follow and i'm about putting a team together about creating opportunities for people um to work in a in a great atmosphere and creating teams and uh i did it for 15 years for a company and i think that we're going to create a really great store that everybody here will be proud of thanks very much commissioners any other questions at this time okay this is a public hearing this is a time uh for any member of the public who's here wishing to uh comment on this project to to do so uh at one of the podiums at the top of the room if you'll begin by stating your name for the record everybody will have three minutes uh i'm going to read names off of the cards that i've received i have a number of cards up here for people wishing to speak on the item you don't need to have filled out a card to speak you're welcome to fill out cards at this time and drop them off in the box up here if you so choose but you can also just wait until i have called the cards and uh there will be opportunities for everybody else who wants to speak to do so um so with that i'm going to open the public hearing and the first card i have is from jim mangles and followed by carol mangles and if i mispronounce anybody's name which i'm sure i will i do apologize uh thank you planning commission for the opportunity to speak today um i am a neighbor of the uh facility that's being proposed i live fairly close to it and i wanted you to give you my comments that i am opposed to the approval of this permit to allow aloha aina to have a retail can of dispensary and delivery service at 1954 piner road i live in this area i think it's a poor location for this type your approval means and this would be located in a neighborhood with housing on three sides adjacent to a coffee shop a yogurt store and about a hundred yards or so from walgreens this location may fit your criteria but you are not looking at the big picture i realized that the city has arbitrarily decided that this location is considered retail medium residential but a retail cannabis dispensary and delivery service at this location does not make sense i believe the purpose of a city planning department is to protect residential property and make wise decisions on the best use of land in the city is this really the best use of this site a retail store with a wide range of appeal to the community and to the neighborhood be a better fit a bakery a sandwich store a mom and pop store or even a fast food restaurant would make more sense than a cannabis dispensary santa rosa can and may approve this permit application but in my view that decision would be short-sighted and a bad choice for our neighborhood according to the city of santa rosa cannabis website and then site of cannabis retail applications as of october 1st 2018 our area northwest santa rosa has already six cannabis retail applications one on gurnville road and marlowe the one that we're talking about one off a coffee lane two off of hardy's and butler one off a russell and now this one further our area of northwest santa rosa already has an existing approval of a cannabis dispensary off of cleland how is this fair to the residents of northwest santa rosa and how does this business add to our neighborhood and that does mean your time is up but if you just want to take a second or two to wrap it up i would like to finish if i could if it can be done relatively quickly in the interest of fairness thank you why are there no cannabis dispensaries and fountain grove this would be a perfect time as you know to designate that why are there no in oakmont why are no mcgumbry village or bennett valley you are not a plan applying planning criteria and zoning practices equally yes i am aware that different zoning practices of different zoning practices but these can be changed to allow more equal distribution of cannabis operations throughout santa rosa i think that should be one of your goals in time because of time i'll stop and i submitted my comments to the to adam and if you wish to read them further please do so thank you very much and i ask them i'm gonna ask members of the public if you agree with a point that a speaker is making if you'll please raise your hands because that is good information for us but in terms thank you in terms of vocalizing or making sounds we ask that you keep that to a minimum or a minimum of zero thank you very much next i have carol mangles followed by sonia remiras hi my name is carol mangles i live at 2311 tucker court in santa rosa i'm probably as the crow flies about half a mile to a mile away from the proposed cannabis dispensary um husband and i go to wall greens quite a bit we eat at mary's pizza shack we're up in that area often um i was pretty shocked a couple minutes ago to see on the screen that there was a neighborhood meeting june 6th i never heard about it i don't know what the rules are for the planning commission letting us know what's going to happen in our neighborhood but i'm really sorry not to have known about the meeting and i think there might be other people here who agree with that i have some actually when the owners and the prospective owners of the dispensary we're talking what struck me the most is there was a lot of discussion about security and i just ask you as a planning commission why would you want to place a business in my neighborhood that needs so much security if a bakery was going in if a sandwich shop was going in we're not going to hear that we have to have a security guard and clearances to get into the building i i don't understand why we need that kind of a business in our neighborhood i have some actual questions about security number one will the security guard on your premises be armed number two who is going to deliver the cannabis products to your store and will that vehicle driver be armed are you bringing armed people into our neighborhood and if you're not then who's protecting that really expensive product in that building because if someone is not protecting it you're going to get broken into number three how will the substantial amount of cash in the store be protected from theft it's a cash business i know that you mentioned that on the future in the horizon in the in the future on the horizon our apple pay all the rest of that i'm sorry my voice is shaking because i'm so nervous but that's not where we are right now we don't have the ability to buy cannabis with a credit card it's illegal the banks cannot handle your money it's illegal it's a schedule one drug and it's not legal so thank you next we have sonia ramirez followed by valerie kaznick my name is sonia ramirez and i live on atasha court which is a light away from where this dispensary is going to be and i agree with the couple that just spoke on basically everything why isn't it in this is going into you know the other side of town rink and valley oakmont all that kind of stuff i feel like our community especially in the northwest area has came together so tightly especially after the fires where this is not going to bring our community any closer this dispensary doesn't need to go here i am also the vice president at my daughter's school which is a school district in this area piner all of that school district and there's eight different schools around this area granted your 26 i don't know what number it was up there um 2600 square feet away whatever it who cares all these schools that are around this neighborhood they're all walking schools all the kids walk to school junior high elementary school and middle school and it now we're gonna have to explain to them what's going on in our neighborhood i mean it's just ridiculous and i oppose this thank you thank you valerie casnick followed by craig gaylord hi my name is valerie casnick and thank you for opening this up to the public i am very much opposed for a little bit different reason than has been mentioned my husband was a security officer at a very large cannabis facility in the sonoma county area and during his time working there he did have to check ids he did have to touch people from time to time because he was taking their driver's license from them to verify and he came down with a virus that in the lining of his heart that caused him to go code blue in the hospital he was in the hospital for three weeks recovering and the doctor said it is very likely that some of the unsavory characters that he did have to be in contact with were was the cause of it didn't verify that it was but said it's possible that that was how he contracted this virus so i am very unhappy with the whole idea of having this so close right in a neighborhood where there are a lot of children i'm sure after school kids frequent the wallgreens for their candy bars and whatnot this is not a good location for this cannabis facility i'm sure it's beautiful we've heard a lot about how pretty the facility is the decorations i'm sure it'll be beautiful but unfortunately a percentage of people who frequent this place will be unsavory and not so beautiful and i'm not disparaging the people because a lot of them you know have medical problems and what and whatever and they do have problems i sympathize with that but i don't like the idea of drawing all of those people into our neighborhood where there's so many children and we don't need this thank you very much thank you craig gaylord followed by monica harrison actually i should clarify miss harrison your card says item 10 is the one you want to speak on so i'm not clear but if you'd like to speak on this one my name is craig gaylord and i live at 2355 wicket avenue about a 12 minute walk because i know my wife and i walk down there all the time um it's funny i i just actually found uh something online that was actually an article that was actually saying that the crime around the cannabis dispensaries is actually very low because of the high security but it actually said that in denver there's an 84 percent rise in crime about three blocks away from it because of this high security the everyone doesn't want to smoke there but they'll go down to the park and they'll be walking around and stuff like that um again as it's been stated over and over we have uh you know it is walking distance it might be uh technically you know not far enough away from schools and stuff but um i i drive by there every day there's always kids walking down there right there in front of it and um just you know the biggest thing is i know i know that uh you know the people are going to go there they're going to be you know buying it but they're not going to be using it right there that's that's great i think in ways it would almost be better if they were using it inside because then they wouldn't be wanting to go down the street or something but um i just feel you know i would actually be even okay with it if it was down by the freeway i mean uh piner has a huge industrial area and if you want to put in an industrial area fine i mean i'd rather not have these at all but um this is literally across the street from houses and you have houses everywhere around there and uh it's the same reason we don't have bars there it's the same reason we don't have strip clubs it's the same reason we don't have you know i mean you don't want that stuff in your neighborhood and um and i'm not saying that i was hoping for those things uh i'm just saying that it's none of our business right so i'm just saying that it's just it's just not a really good location and i was absolutely shocked and also um i also would like to say yeah i had no idea about any neighborhood uh meeting and i certainly would have come i'm i'm really glad that that sign was posted and that's what made me come here today so um i just hope you guys can just really hear our concerns it's just not a good location i'm i'm okay with it being in a more industrial area but this is not a good place this is a place for a restaurant fast food place and i guess it's not going to have a drive through that was one of my concerns i thought great so we're going to drive through but i guess the drive through is not part of it right all right so um i'm happy to hear that but uh anyways thank you for your time thank you um miss harrison followed by leilani burster thank you very much um my name is monica harrison and i live on the corner of piner and Kirk Hill i purchased that house a little under a year ago and not six months later i was in a very serious accident um not one block away from my home on piner um one of my my primary concern that i'd like to bring to the planning commission's attention has to do with traffic but before i do so i would like to acknowledge the tremendous amount of work and effort that has gone into bringing this proposal before the committee um the applicant is obviously very thoughtful in his approach and um i appreciated hearing the remarks from the applicant and also to the planning commission claire and adam thank you very much for the work that's gone in to preparing these details for us and the committee for hearing all of our concerns my primary concern as i said before has to do with traffic this location is on the west side of marlowe and as you come down piner going in the west direction you have two lanes that cross the intersection that merge immediately into one lane as they merge there are driveways that turn right into an apartment complex there are two of them on the right hand side many people are not aware of how this merge takes place in fact my accident involved a visitor from out of state that was visiting for high school graduation it was may 31st it was quite a devastating accident for me that i am still um recovering from my concern has to do with non-neighborhood related traffic and i challenge the findings of the traffic study that indicate that the original project would have higher use than this and the aspect that i challenge of it has to do with neighborhood traffic neighbors visiting the wallgreens going to mary's pizza um that would be driving through that intersection anyway versus people coming from other parts of town that are less familiar with this very precarious and tenuous intersection again was there was some comments made about the mary's pizza and the bar that are on the east side of marlowe for which the the comings and goings into the shopping center are much more directed and controlled as opposed to on the west side the location where the yogurt time um building complex is so i do challenge the traffic study i and i don't want to come across as if anyone has not done their job i would just ask you to take a much closer look at the west side of piner on the intersection of marlowe and piner and how traffic is handled there and i do realize that there was a public meeting earlier in june i was not able to attend i did not know about it um i would have been it would have been immediately after my accident which was on may 31st so i probably would not have been able to attend but i was not notified and i literally live two blocks two blocks from um this installation uh that's all i have at this time thank you very much thank you we have leilani booster followed by uh steven fisher hi i'm leilani ross booster and i was born in hanlou hawaii and i would like to say i'm say no to loha ink and but i want to say something nice to the planning commission um i'm the editor of apple tree neighborhood newsletter and i've been writing uh our neighborhood newsletter monthly for uh since january 2007 so in a couple of weeks that's 12 years and we've been a very active community we've been doing a lot of good things uh we've been removing graffiti the mangles have been very super duper couple uh doing that and and all sorts of good things we um just some good things about helping a baby born with a hole in its heart and we had a yard sale and did $2,500 to help with medical care and the planning commission uh repaved two streets in our neighborhood cunningham and fairbanks and i'm telling you the neighbors have been thrilled ever since now we're asking you to do uh valdez and nightingale that really need it but we want to thank you the neighbors keep talking about how great and how smooth the neighborhood streets are so thank you for that want to talk about how many homes our uh neighborhood newsletter go to 481 homes from marlowe to folton road from uh from around munrow school towards finer high school i wanted to ask you guys a question is there anybody on this panel that lives on the northwest side of town and if you do would you give me a nod in general we uh aren't asked questions or questions but i suppose uh council members or excuse me commissioners uh those of you who live in the northwest part of town okay that's uh that sort of answers a question uh we're really active community and we've suffered a lot on this side of town uh we went through the tubs fire and the fire stopped right at piner road i don't know if you remember that but we were evacuated we had fire falling down on us we had neighbors putting out fire with hoses on our houses ash is falling on us the fire is stopping at piner road and we lost uh wall greens for a couple of weeks so wall greens is very important to us we love all wall greens and that whole little area we felt very lost for a long time we lost walmart and trader joes so that side of town is beloved to us and we have really rejoiced lately with trader joes coming back you don't know how happy we are we're just jumping up and down with trader joes anyway wall greens is a very prominent shopping center and the high school kids walk after school right down piner road may i have a couple more minutes because i have some petitions that i need to tell you about i'm gonna ask that you take about 15 more seconds and i'm gonna be pretty strict about it we just we just found out thursday about this planning commission and within three days we got over 65 petitions signed and i want to talk to you about the latino community how they're concerned about their kids uh 95 percent of comstock junior high kids go over to wall greens 95 percent of the kids that are going to the junior high and and the Monroe school and the kids from uh the piner high school the parents from the latino families are concerned and so are the rest of the community the kids hang out at wall greens and the people at wall greens are telling me the kids come in there for snacks and wall greens has a drive through pharmacy okay i'm gonna ask you to uh to conclude your comments and i'm gonna actually ask you to let the next person speak please and wall greens has a drive through pharmacy it's a very small park okay ma'am i think it's unfair to the rest of the people here to keep speaking so i'm going to ask you to stop please uh you're welcome to communicate anything that you'd like uh by email and can i ask a question of the city attorney uh miss casagranda with regard to those petitions what would the way of handling those be well jose i was talking with miss hartman can you please um the the woman uh who just um made some comments uh has a number of petitions that she feels are relevant excuse me that she feels are relevant to the proceedings we don't have time to consider those so i just am interested in the proper way of moving forward does she have them with her it appears that she does yes that she should submit them to the mr maloney and he'll put those in the record okay um ma'am uh if you would uh feel like you want to enter those into the record there's a drop box here and the city clerk mr maloney will handle those and you were given plenty of time over the limit and you're being inconsiderate to the other people here and thank you for your comments we've considered we'll consider them equally with everyone else's yes ma'am there's a drop box right here on the other side of the railing thank you next we have uh steven fischer it's mr fischer great thank you i'm sorry we need to turn the mic back on to feel just bear with us thank you is it back on uh yeah the yes thank you so i also want to recognize uh the group over there they did an outstanding job of putting together a very strong case and a strong package uh but like the other presenters here i also agree with the residents i am a resident over there i also think this is more um suited for an industrial area rather than a neighborhood area i agree with a other residents saying why are we bringing a business in that requires more security we don't need a business that requires more security we need more businesses that uh introduce families or bring families further together the gentleman down here below was saying that there's a lot of crime happening outside of that area well we have a lot of creeks that walk or that follow the area we have piner creek and we have paulin creek we do not want to see people out on our creeks enjoying themselves in that type of manner these are walking creeks for families and dogs and children on bicycles um you know so if i would have known about that june 6 meeting i i'm sure there was one but it seems like a lot of us neighbors weren't aware of that uh again it's just a matter of um keeping it for families it's a business area uh suited more for gatherings one question that did come to mind it's not that i need to ask anybody but uh the gentleman down here on the commissioner was asking about staffing over there and they were saying that they're having a high training or putting a lot of training into their staff to make sure it's going to be well cared for but how is that going to help with turnover of your staff is there going to be a lot of training for a lot of the turnover so i'm just it's just something i'm not uh approving thank you thank you uh next michael bruster followed by marie piazza my name is michael bruster i live in on nightingale drive in the apple tree subdivision um i wanted to um acknowledge the fact that the my wife and my neighbors are very passionate thank you about our neighborhood we live there it's our home we love it uh wall greens and mary's and those shopping centers are very integral to our home our neighborhood what goes on there is very important to us we feel safe we shop there we spend money there and it's safety for us so i just want to acknowledge what my wife is trying to say earlier in my mind the the issue of this is not just this one dispensary but it's a potential of having up to six dispensaries in northwest santa rosa that's a hell of a lot when you consider that downtown gets a special privilege of none none at all and you've got a good three six seven eight commercial vacancies right downtown on third street old courthouse square fourth street fifth street in mendel right downtown the bank building just up the street so i'm not sure how that privilege works out so yeah found grove doesn't get one then it valley doesn't get one rink and valley doesn't get one but we get six we get up to 11 total facilities when you go with grows and distributors and processors it doesn't make sense i think you're you're making the error of looking at one but not looking at the total and that's a flaw it's a fatal flaw you're drowning us in facilities that's not fair it simply isn't right so the applicant wants to do things the right way our chairman asked what did you do for outreach he said i didn't well guess what i did my wife did my neighbor miss dory did we went on canvas neighborhoods when we found out about this we have a flaw in our system too where only people within 400 300 feet get noticed but this is our neighborhood kids in school don't go to pot dispensaries kids after school live in our neighborhood they go to wall greens and mary's in the dollar store and hang out outside the pot dispensary which is next to bad-ass coffee or whatever coffee's come going in there or yogurt time in our beloved neighborhood so i really think you're being very short-sighted you're using numbers and colorful maps and rules just to shoehorn somebody in for what i think is a tax grab and you know taxes are important government is important i believe in it but not just for the sake of a thank you thank you mary piazza followed by janine freeman hi i want to strenuously object to the cannabis dispensary going up in our neighborhood i live off a piner crest my husband and i have lived there in that area in northwest for over 30 years we raised our three kids there we are very invested in the community we didn't know anything about this until the sign went up in front of the new building which by the way is not sitting vacant because it isn't even done yet so none of us knew about this putting all these dispensaries in one quadrant of the city is just wrong you can't saturate our area like this i mean and then next to yogurt time really all right what are you trying to do to the northwest here um put it somewhere else these don't belong in these locations as far as what some of the speakers mentioned uh yes i also lived in hawaii it's very beautiful way back when when i live there but that's doesn't mean that having a nice building is the reason to put a cannabis dispensary in our neighborhood okay i'm also seeing a lot of air out of area people that are running this and i just wonder i mean are any of them going to live here are they going to live in northwest i doubt it all right i'm nothing against cannabis dispensaries as a state we pass the law they're allowed i have a serious serious problem with this being approved in northwest sienna rosa and on piner road especially when the high school kids from piner higher walking by the middle school kids from comstock are walking by the younger elementary kids they're in cars i'm not so worried about that all right so um again the other issue too as someone else mentioned is with consuming it offsite i mean we walk around here we go to the restaurants we drive here all the time um please don't do not do this to northwest sienna rosa and especially you're looking tonight at three different ones going up in that short quadrant of marlowe piner 101 and gernville road this is wrong thank you jenine freeman followed by jerry rossi de givara oh my name is jenine freeman i live about two blocks from the proposed location i also did not receive any notification either through the city or through the dispensary one of my neighbors called me about this two days ago so this is kind of new to me i didn't even see the sign in front of the building um a couple of concerns that i have have been reiterated in um other comments from our neighbors here but i also see what looks to be outsiders coming into our community i don't know how invested you are in our community but you're coming from out of state at least two of you are i don't know where the third gentleman is from but it concerns me that you bring you want to bring the spirit of aloha aina which i googled while we were sitting here means love of the land ecological and cultural understanding so i don't know if you understand our neighborhood culture and i don't think that you do there's a lot of people here that would prefer that you find a different location i think an industrial area would be a great option but not in the middle of a residential neighborhood i think your your business plan is well thought out and i can see that there's a lot of work that has gone into it but again not for this particular location um excuse me i'm nervous as well um some of the concerns that i have with your security i think it's great that getting in is really difficult getting out is not walking a couple blocks down to where my neighborhood is the creek that backs up um where i walk my dog that's where i'm afraid that i'm going to see the people that are coming from your dispensary and smoking and i really don't want that in my neighborhood i understand that this is you know legal in california i don't agree with it um and it is here to stay but i would ask you to consider a different location thank you thank you jerry rossie de guvara followed by sharon doherty my name is jerry rossie de guvara i am a registered nurse of 45 years i retired from a regulatory agency for the state of california i am also a medical marijuana patient i have a prescription for my physician i also have a state issued id card for medical marijuana i look forward to a dispensary in my neighborhood i have lived in the coffee park northwest area for over 30 years i know that what i get from the legal cannabis industry helps me with my autoimmune disorder and my anxiety and especially since the fire i do not smoke marijuana but i do cbd cbn thca all non-psychoactive this has helped me more than any drug a physician has given me for my conditions i know how hard it is for these dispensaries to come on board and pass all the hurdles that the state and local governments have placed on them i am more concerned about the illegal drug cartels operating in this community and that's where attention needs to go this community receives taxes from this business which are exorbitant in my mind i would like to see our community benefit from those taxes and the support of legal cannabis dispensaries thank you thank you we have sharon doherty yes my name is sharon doherty i live at 2162 night and gale drive good evening everyone good evening to the people that are trying to put this dispensary in i am totally unequivocally against it and i'll give you the reasons why we moved in november 7th 1978 we're in the same house that we've been in um marlowe road was a two lane country road now it gets over 5 000 cars a day we've got children that go to monroe comstock piner we've got people across gernville but by ella layman anyway there's a lot of schools there okay so here's the scoop a lot of traffic one of the other things that's a problem as far as i'm concerned i don't want to lose my train of thought um okay so apple valley is very close by i'm sure you know that name apple valley we now have a substation for the police there and thank god for that uh the norteños the serenios they all live in that area okay whenever there's a killing and i can name several that happened in that area uh you have the potential especially since it's a cash only business especially since people are going to have to guard this business um you have the potential for some serious problems let me say one other thing i'm late to this i only knew about this meeting thursday i went ahead and photocopied and passed out myself walking around for three days over 600 flyers uh telling people that this was going to be happening i didn't speak with 600 homeowners however the ones that i did speak with not one knew about this happening at all not one doesn't seem right if you look at a number of of pot related businesses in the northwest part of town especially since you guys don't live in this part of town so you're not really invested in this part of town you have to really look at the fairness of it and the fact of the matter is if this was the only building available in all of santa rosa i get it that's fine it's not so please do something about this do not whitewash it it will be the source oh by the way i was shopping wall greens i was in there none of the people that work at wall greens knew anything about this meeting at all nobody and when there's going to be a robbery which there will be okay someone's going to get killed now my house backs up to the creek pine a creek okay it's a very easy access it goes to sabastopol if somebody's going to rob they can easily slip down the area and get away i've seen it before anyway thank you thank you that's all the cards i have on this uh item but you don't need to have filled out a card to speak anybody else who is here who hasn't spoken and wishes to speak i invite them to go to the podium and i'm not seeing anybody else so i'm going to close the public hearing and turn it back to the commission for questions i think i'll begin you know i think actually will take a very tight five minutes i do appreciate the patience of everybody here but it's been about an hour and 45 minutes and i think we'll just take a really brief break to accommodate for the remainder of the discussion and how long that might take so we are in we're in recess for five minutes okay we're not going to get started this second but i just wanted to give fair warning once the commissioners who are still using the restroom are back at the dais and prepared we will resume the hearing okay commission's no longer in recess we're going to resume here and i think we have some questions for staff and perhaps for the applicant as well and i'm just going to start with a few of my own based on my notes as a matter of fact i'm going to start with one that commissioner dronega suggested i'm wondering if we could get a sort of rough breakdown or as detailed as is available right now of the locations of the approved dispensary uses and by location i mean maybe the quadrants of the city northwest northeast etc and and applications as well that the city's tracking so comment on that if you can as adam had put up a land use chart that shows i don't know six or seven zoning districts that allow cannabis retail in the city of santa rosa it's not by quadrants by zoning district those zoning districts take place throughout the city they're not in any particular quadrant and cannabis retail was placed in these commercial and industrial because it is a commercial retail enterprise it's not industrial industrial cannabis is restricted to just the industrial districts and commercial cannabis is allowed in commercial districts as well as the industrial districts so that's the policy basis for allowing the consideration of this type of land use we do have a city website srcity.org slash cannabis that tracks monitors and presents the cannabis program for the city the process we went through to get there and ultimately adopting a comprehensive ordinance in early this year and as part of that process allowing cannabis retail without a cap without a limited number for the city but really to treat them and disperse them throughout the city in these appropriate zoning districts because the purpose of that was to get commercial cannabis out of our residential communities where it was happening in the black market and provide a legal compliance path so that was kind of the impetus of why it was distributed throughout the city and why these zoning districts so on this website srcity.org slash cannabis on the front page you can track there's a matrix of the applications that have come into date particularly of the retail we had a two-week window application period in april we restricted it to that because as we were building our ordinance we anticipated quite a bit of interest and we knew that they have to be 600 feet from each other to address over concentration and we wanted to make sure that we had an intake process that could address ones that were right next to each other the one that's before you right now is what we consider non-competitive in terms of there's no other proposed within 600 feet but as noted in the public comments certainly in that side of town but we received 38 applications they are throughout the city we did have one proposed in oakmont we have some in the northwest and we have them in the southeast and this and I don't know the numbers but we have a map that shows where they're all proposed and again they correspond to the fact that these zoning districts are throughout the city they're not one quadrant is that suffice yeah thank you so you covered over concentration just now if you could discuss the the neighborhood meeting and noticing regulations that the city has who is told about these applications and at what time not just the the signs that go up for this public hearing but throughout the process yes the neighborhood meeting is for all discretionary projects in the city of santa rosa a budding residential neighborhoods and that's to get an idea of what the neighborhood is is feeling towards a project as on a preliminary basis all of the cannabis retail dispensaries have had had a neighborhood meeting this one had one while the code calls for a 300 foot radius for all owners within buffer for the site the city usually does 400 foot radius for the site for noticing okay great thanks many questions regarding safety most of them having to do with operations some having to do with traffic i'm going to start with the operations aspect of it there was a you know lengthy discussion in the project materials about the security plan many comments here about the security plan i don't want to necessarily go back over every detail of that but when it comes to the opinion of the police department can we hear a little bit about what role if any they play in in weighing in on security plans and appropriateness of location or anything that they're asked their opinions of and and what that process might be like yes so all cannabis retail dispensary applications are sent for comments to the police department in this particular case no comment was received by the police and just a supplement that so the police department obviously has been a big part of the process to develop the city's draft policy which ultimately got adopted so they weighed in quite frequently through that process and one of the things that they required and it's in our zoning code that address not just cannabis retail frankly but all cannabis businesses there's very specific requirements in terms of operational standards so that's why these applications are coming forward with security plans that demonstrate certain frequency of video recording and retention there's a specific limit set in the code that they they must do they can do more but they you know there's a limit to what they have to do and and the alarm systems also compliance with the state law so the state has number of requirements and we heard tonight from the comments of the applicant a lot of that is delivery is regulated by the state so the city's intent with our policy was not to try to be redundant but wherever the state is quiet or we want to be more restrictive we've put it in our zoning code so we have very specific requirements for security and they presented that in their narrative okay thank you a member of the public asked questions about whether security and delivery personnel and I believe that means delivery personnel of product to this location whether they would be armed this is probably a question for the applicant and shaking your head so you're indicating that they won't neither of those people will be armed okay you know I'm sorry just because you're going to go into more elaboration I would ask you to do it into the microphone and not from your seat okay thank you commissioners any questions for staff if I share weeks Claire could you elaborate on the oversaturation and the 600 foot distance between dispensaries so we um sorry so the ordinance does set some additional limits besides you have to locate in a commercial industrial district you have to be considered and and you are eligible but you are considered through a conditional use permit process which has a public hearing and and the opportunity for the public to be invited in comment participate in this process and then in addition there are two other limiting factors and that is they must comply with a 600 foot parcel boundary the parcel boundary set back to ak to 12 school and that's similar as with the state of california and then in addition it's a local setback that we have applied in our ordinance and that's 600 feet to another dispensary the idea of that is um there was definitely an interest in the manner in which the ordinance was crafted that it be dispute sort of evenly distributed or as distributed as we could um and and really um force prohibit them piling up on each other and so we didn't want any one neighborhood or one block or one commercial center frankly to have um several in a row and some some cities have that problem so but one of the things that's we'll prevent that in santa rosa is this 600 foot setback requirement between each other um now when we opened up the application process and we got 38 a handful of them were kind of on top of each other within their 600 feet and those are those have been going through a competitive process that the the council has a subcommittee made up of three council members um and they they've spent uh the last six months going through those applications and breaking the tie if you will and so as they break those only one of them will move forward to the use permit hearing process uh just want to ask a couple more the um idea of a cannabis use adjacent to a residential zone even across the street let's you know that would be considered adjacent in many cases um that was explicitly considered when we were putting together the comprehensive cannabis policy with with public input and that the council passed and our policy does not have any enhanced review for a use that abuts residential it is the conditional use permit review that we're doing right now which in which were required to um in order to vote in favor of a project to make those specific findings that have to do with um a lack of nuisance effects among other findings um if you could if you could just comment on whether that's a a fair description and uh whether yeah that's an accurate characterization of how the commission and the council um consider uh differences uh from the existing policy that ended up being passed and a hypothetical policy where there would have been heightened review for those kind of projects yeah so the the way the ordinance is set up the the differences to the public review process which we're participating in right now and and the differences having a um being open to considering these dispensaries in these locations and that consideration is framed around the six findings use three and then the next slide has the other three there's six findings that each of these um they they all six must be made in order to grant this use permit um and these these six findings are the same six findings for any major use permit and the whole purpose of the use permit is is to look at maybe the land use is eligible in this case cannabis retail for this zoning district but does it meet these findings is it um does it comply with our does it further general plan goals is it is it comply with our zoning code um does it isn't compatible is uh in terms of the specifics of this particular site because these are site specific and so these are the considerations that are the coordinates um puts its weight into is this public process of site by site individual considerations of each proposal okay thank you um there were comments about traffic and the roadway network traffic study um could you comment on staff's review of the traffic study and um how the determination was made in staff's opinion that it was adequate in terms of analyzing the uh volume of traffic and the way the traffic would operate in the the roadway network right there so upon receiving the focus traffic study or or more of an update to what was originally approved with the site uh planning staff uh refers out the traffic study to traffic engineering city traffic engineering where they provided comments and there was uh back and forth with um with questions about the the uh the memo the traffic the focus traffic study i should say um and upon final review uh traffic engineering agreed that it was less intense than the original proposed and approved use for the site uh where planning staff um um i looked at it and read it and agreed with that same um finding however i in some cases like this i i do a lot of deference to or um uh or uh let really rely on the expertise of traffic engineering because they have the expertise to um review it and and give me um their 100 yes this is this is acceptable and uh do you have any idea of traffic and engineering specifically took into account the uh presence of driveways there was a comment about a uh emerge and the presence of several driveways um the city takes into account the um general safety of the entire roadway network but in in connection with the review of this project what did they look at if you if you know uh i don't know uh for sure okay and there was a an interesting comment about the difference between out of neighborhood traffic versus in neighborhood traffic and it's related to that about awareness of the quirks of our neighborhoods and i think all of us even though they do say that we're likely to get into accidents near our house uh all of us do feel probably more comfortable driving in our own neighborhoods than than elsewhere um it does a traffic study ever distinguish between those two things or is that more of a matter for the commission to um apply in the conditional use permit process whether we think something like that could create a public safety hazard or a nuisance and whether that is significant enough to keep us from making one of those findings really know how to respond to that that's uh something that i mean in terms of traffic consideration i'm sorry we defer we refer these and work with our city traffic engineer and they review the studies that come in make sure they're proper they have the right methodology the right scope and then they can question the findings until they're accepting they're accepting of the report so in this case all that took place that's what we can tell you um and then uh supplement to that uh this is a sort of approved commercial development site as it was it was approved for fast food they tend to be a lot higher in trip generation so when you're looking at the the change of what was studied um this is somewhere in between general retail and fast food retail in terms of trip generation and so um just in terms of uh trying to imagine the change that has been reviewed and sort of approved for this site as a commercial site it fits within that and so no further analysis was was triggered as part of the review process okay thanks thank you commissioners any questions for staff of the applicant okay we have one resolution the conditional use permit uh would anybody like to move a resolution for purposes of discussion i'll move a resolution of the planning commission of the city of san aroza approving a conditional use permit for aloha aina incorporated medical and adult use retail cannabis dispensary with delivery in 2134 square feet of an existing 2500 square foot building located at 1954 piner road suite b apn 036-011-059 file number c up18-060 and wait for the reading of the text i'll second okay the resolution was moved by commissioner sisco and seconded by commissioner dug in uh commissioner peterson do you like to start sure um and i'd like to sort of preface my remarks with uh the fact that i well i no longer live in northwest i did used to live in northwest san aroza on on jennings so i'm very familiar with the area i used to shop at the safeway there on marlowe i've been in the walgreens many times um so while i no longer live there i am familiar with the area and uh looking back just one meeting i did vote to approve a conditional use permit um in my neck of the woods on sonoma avenue um thinking back over the the time that we spent um as the commission uh not to mention the enormous amount of time that staff and city council spent developing the canada's ordinance i think that um the work that went into it was was thoughtful it was well considered and a lot of um you know these issues were debated at the time um so i'm looking at as i examine a project like this is you know what are the rules what are the the findings that we've got to make based on um the ordinance that we have and i think the applicant's representative point about alcohol is is well taken for me um this is a county this is a city that's a wash in alcohol you can buy it at the grocery store you can buy it at you know virtually every corner store kids see it everywhere um and while cannabis is new i think in comparison to something like alcohol it is um a less addictive less harmful substance that does have a lot of medical benefits as one of the public commenters pointed out um and along those lines i think that my my guess is that there's a lot of cannabis users in that neighborhood um i think there's a lot of people that uh will use this dispensary and um will probably be glad to have the option to maybe walk there i think that as we look at these projects and we hear the input on traffic and zoning i think that these types of projects that are near residential areas are are better than if they were in an industrial area i think the more that we can get people out of their cars the less risk we have of these kinds of you know devastating accidents that were experienced by one of the public commenters i think it's it's better for the community i think that this is a service that um you know the community will use locally not just out of town um my only concern at this point is is sort of um when it comes to the types of jobs and the types of economic development that we're creating with these dispensaries and um i do have to hesitate a bit when the types of jobs don't necessarily sound like the the greatest um you know these are this is an area that as i as i mentioned already has a serious housing shortage has a very high cost living and what we don't need are um relatively low paying jobs that may be insecure that don't offer benefits um and whose profits flow to out of town owners um so uh with that i'm i'm interested in in hearing from my my fellow commissioners i i'm leaning towards uh being able to make all the necessary findings but um would like additional comment commissioner groeninga yes uh i'll work my way to my position in a moment but uh in listening especially to the public comments which i thought were uh good in the sense of uh stating your concerns uh about such a facility in uh be at the northwest quadrant uh or um in your more immediate to your neighborhood uh however i've thought about it and that we over the course of the last what 18 months or so here we have approved a number of cannabis facilities throughout the city um um and of course by uh the zoning district in essence but they are as uh commissioner peterson just said we have approved them in other quadrants um and i expect we will be doing that more so in the future too so i'm not at all certain whether the northwest quadrant is say cannabis facility have here however you say that i just don't know but uh i do recall in the early conversations that kind of the pre-planning of uh for um cannabis ramp up to the cannabis ordinance and so on we were taken through uh a process of really a learning process about how the city was going to try and in essence have an equitable uh process in terms of location of various types and there are different types of cannabis facilities throughout the town and i think the city uh has adhered to that as best they can they're dependent upon who applies from uh and the location where that application may be that's how we end up dealing with these also on this particular site and intersection my recollection this is probably the third time we've gone through uh projects or various reviews of this particular uh development um and uh we've had a couple of traffic studies before and i tend to watch traffic studies because uh i had a fair amount of experience in it and we are knowledgeable i believe the commission as well as the city of issues because they've come up in previous proposals to north southeast and west of that intersection about volumes of traffic turning so on and so forth and i think there probably does need to be some work done there but i don't think this proposal in relationship to other proposals around town is of at least to myself as of concern uh on uh how you blend in essence the type uses to the traffic and the trip generation if there's an issue at this site i believe it would be with the coffee shop the drive-through coffee shop whatever and we took a look at that i believe uh some time ago and approved it uh after a fair amount of discussion the also taking a look at the findings of the requirements that we need to find the whether this project is compliant with the ordinances and various actions that are required of the city uh first of all they're pretty stringent uh both the state and the city requirements and i would assume the county as well and that from my perspective and i've been a skeptic at times that uh this particular project meets those findings in other words we can find in favor given the uh the requirements to show proof or evidence in essence by the applicant that this is a worthy project and uh i have uh voted against a few uh cannabis facilities primarily because i'm still an issue for me is the locations to schools this particular project and dispensary is more than double than the distance i would like to see which is a thousand feet uh distance so i'm feeling okay there uh there was a lot of discussion on both sides i guess the applicant and some of the public comments about the culture and the changes in the culture here in santa rosa was it relates to these sorts of uh activities say that i think the culture changed in terms of how much control and where you can cannot place uh facilities that um dispense alcohol in this case now cannabis medical commercial whatever it may be changed when the state allowed alcohol sales at gas stations gas station markets that changed everything at least from my perspective and that given the requirements on the applicants here and the city's code enforcement ability um i think that this project meets it and i will vote in favor of vice chair weeks well um i am also going to be supporting the project um i feel i can make the required findings i would have liked to have seen the applicant do some outreach to the neighborhood beyond what's required i think for cannabis facilities that's really important so people can be educated as to what the restrictions are for the applicant as far as licensing as well as the um this both on the fit on the state and the local level but i am supportive of the project commissioner callia thank you um i will keep my comments brief but i kind of as my fellow commissioners have i share a lot of the comments that you've that you've already stated especially commissioner um i i can make all of the necessary findings and i will be supporting this project commissioner doggen okay um first i'd like to thank the public for coming out and and giving us their input good because um reviewing these applications is a new thing for us and we really haven't had that many that we've gone through already so it's important to know what what the public thinks and also i just wanted to point out that um as far as feeling like your neighborhood is a target of all these um applications we've got a list of four upcoming meetings and there's something like 14 dispensary applications coming up in our next four meetings and 11 of those are not on the west or not on the east side of the freeway they're all on the west side so um yeah there's a bunch that are going to be considered coming up in our next few meetings that are on the on the on the east side sorry i'm confused there's only a few on the on the west side the most are on the east side they're coming up so we are going to be seeing a dispense race throughout the city once we've all they've all been considered and we're saturated hopefully um but beyond that um i too can make the findings that are required um it does comply with our zoning code it is consistent with general plan it's compatible with land uses the site i think is suitable i like the fact that this is a standalone building that all four sides of the building are visible from the street and the parking lot and it's not surrounded by you know tall fences and heavy foliage that people can hide in and um you know lay in weight essentially for um for people carrying cannabis products and out of the building and it does comply with cqa and i don't think it's going to constitute a nuisance so i am in favor of the project commissioner sysco well i also can make the findings on this project and um i think commissioner peterson summarized it really well this has been a really long evolving process to to develop the cannabis ordinance for retail use to even get it to this point where we can have conditional use permits proposed under that ordinance um and so things like you know setbacks from each use and schools and all of that uh that that's been a long evolving process to get us to the point where we we have these particular criteria in place that we're weighing projects against and um i think that uh this project has come in um with a very defined security plan i definitely appreciate your going through the delivery process to help educate us even though it's in writing it's always really helpful to have you uh describe that orally so i appreciate you taking the time to do that um one of the things that i appreciate about about this project is the fact that they will be um uh creating a community awareness officer so what they lacked in if not coming out to the neighborhood and i always support applicants making sure they do their outreach ahead of time but the fact that they they are creating an outreach officer that you will have the ability to communicate with if there are any issues or or problems that you have a person to go to um i appreciate appreciate that um and um i also appreciate the way that santa rosa's ordinance is dealing with signage you know keeping it very tame and um um considerate of the surroundings so um i appreciate how our ordinance has been developed one of the things that isn't in an ordinance is we're not regulating pay and um so i think we have to weigh it against the findings uh in the in the ordinance that we actually have there are plenty of businesses that come in by right and we don't regulate those jobs so i understand your concern but it's just it's not i don't think what we're we're weighing the project against so um i can make the findings and i'll be voting in favor of this project i'm gonna begin with uh the aspects of the project that i think are uh positive and and well supported everybody who um addresses us and gives us information on the cannabis projects that have come before us and now i would estimate it's it's probably over 20 of them and several have been dispensaries have all the concerns that anybody would have with any brand new use that comes into their neighborhood especially where there's been news reports for many many years about safety problems and it is a psychoactive drug although not necessarily every product is many many in fact are not psychoactive at all but um psychoactive products will be offered and uh the evidence is mixed about the health effects of it so it's natural and proper to be concerned about the safety uh and health effects of land uses like this um but i have been persuaded in the other instances that the surveillance the active use of the space the fact that people will be there enhances the safety of a neighborhood far greater than any speculation about the danger of it and that there's a major qualitative difference between the black market and the legal regulated market that it's frankly unsupported and not a reasonable conclusion to draw that the lack of safety in garage drug deals and garage labs is the same as these regulated uses that have been professionally engineered that have been reviewed by competent staff it's it's just not a comparison that's proper to make and i also don't think that we can take a product that 15 or 20 000 people in this city use on a regular basis and limit it to extremely few areas where the they're far flung areas where people are going to be driving it's it's it's where traffic comes from every time we make a decision like that it puts more cars on the road for longer we're all sitting in uh pollution longer because of every decision like that that we make and these 40 mile an hour cars are driving past five schools on the way to the dispensary instead of somebody being able to walk down the street cars are far and away the biggest safety danger in the city so to have these land uses scattered around where they're going to serve 15 or 20 000 people makes a lot of sense i couldn't agree more with the need to disperse these uses in the city we have an over concentration requirement in the code that helps us do that but when we were doing this policy i strongly supported and spoke out in favor of putting a lot of east side and uh traditionally quite um neighborhoods treated with kid gloves for policy purposes that they should be welcoming cannabis dispensaries as well and uh speaking for myself uh no matter where i lived i would be glad to uh invite a well um a well considered cannabis project into my neighborhood and i don't agree that we can um slander 15 or 20 000 people with the idea that they're cd people or that they're intrinsically negative to a neighborhood or that it's that it's comparable to an alcohol sales liquor business it's just apples and oranges what i don't like about the project is that i am am not persuaded that the the testimony that i've heard and that the materials that i've seen um reflect uh a kind of deep understanding of what it what goes into operating a business like this and uh quite frankly i uh thought that i would have i would have wanted to hear a lot more certainty in the uh answers to questions we had detailed materials but reading between the lines i i am less comfortable with this than i am with any of the applications that have been before us when it comes to my confidence in the ability of the operators to uh make sure that this complies strictly with all the city requirements conditions of approval state regulations it's extremely complicated and uh the thing that allows me to make peace with that fear is that the requirements are so incredibly strict and are enforced especially strictly now in the early days that a mistake even a minor one you know detectable odor outside the building for instance is illegal and could give rise to revocation i'm glad for that level of oversight because i think it's warranted and i would encourage um the applicant to um very very uh assiduously obey all of the conditions and all of the legal requirements of the state uh and also i just want to echo something that a couple of other commissioners uh mentioned and it's not a legal requirement so there's no basis to to um vote down a project on on this ground but uh the the failure to to reach out to the neighborhood was you know it's a it's a pretty basic thing and i think that speaking with other people in the cannabis industry um it's practically done on a 100 basis and it's in it's a great way to um avoid a situation where there is a lot of uncertainty and a lot of dissatisfaction about the process because we have a very limited noticing requirement in the city it's 500 feet it's only property owners oftentimes we hear that it's insufficient to give the interested residents notice of projects like this uh so it's not the applicant's job to make up for the city's shortcomings but um it you can't necessarily put together a project that's per that's best for the neighborhood without doing it because nobody knows more about the neighborhood than the people who live there and so uh on the basis of the record before me i think that the the plan and the location are very suitable for it and that these cannabis land uses have been determined by the majority of the people of the city expressed through the council who many of whom have been reelected and uh the state votes to legalize cannabis that a very popular product we need to be offering it in many different places when the plans are proper and i believe that this one is and uh nevertheless just want to express sympathy and agreement with the public comments that expressed surprise and dissatisfaction at the process uh commissioners any discussion or comment before we ask for your votes commissioner peterson just briefly i want to acknowledge that commissioner cisco's point is is well taken and and then i share a lot of the uh the concerns expressed by uh chair edmondson um but what we're making a decision on is is the record in front of us and uh the ordinance that we've got so um in light of that i i can make all necessary findings okay commissioners uh the resolution was moved by commissioner cisco and seconded by commissioner dug in your votes please and that passes with seven eyes that concludes item 10.1 and we'll move to item 10.2 yeah i'm gonna bring that up to people just a few more seconds to get gathered and get where they're going and i would uh ask that in a few moments anybody who wants to speak about anything uh move the conversation to the exterior of the building okay we're moving on to item 10.2 uh public hearing for the uh jiva conditional use permit at 1831 gurrenville road and uh we will be hearing a staff presentation from erin holster thank you thank you you know what and did it again uh it's this is an exparte disclosure commissioner calia anything to disclose i need to get a tattoo of that on my hand yeah um i visited the site no nothing further to disclose i visited the site and have nothing further to disclose i also visited the site and have nothing new to disclose i also visited the site and have nothing further to disclose and i visited the site and have nothing to disclose i also visited the site and have no new information to disclose and i visited the site and have no new information to disclose and Mr. Hollister begin when you're ready please okay thank you Chair Edmondson members of the Commission Erin Hollister contract staff here with the planning division today you're considering a conditional use permit for medicinal and adult use a retail dispenser and delivery for business that's going to be known as Jiva they're proposing a type 10 state license in this project is located in an existing commercial retail building it's about 6,000 square feet of that 6,000 square feet the proposed tenant space is about 2,917 square feet no on-site consumption is proposed at this time delivery service is proposed in the proposed hours of operation are from 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily for the retail and retail delivery component the project's been conditioned as in front of you to limit inventory and product delivery from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. daily the project is in Northwest Santa Rosa more specifically it's at the northeast corner of intersection of Greenville Road and Marlowe Road right now the site as I mentioned developed with the 6,000 square foot commercial retail building and surface parking uses in the area include convenience store and gas station on three of the corners of the Marlowe and Greenville Road intersection there's a neighborhood shopping center at the southwest corner with a safeway anchor tenant there's residential uses immediately adjacent to the site as well just to the east is an attached dwelling unit project and just to the north is detached single family residences this is a view from the street the green isn't showing up that while on the side but is the right-hand side the other part of the building is currently occupied by a pawn shop a brief project history the application was submitted back in April along with in that two-week time period the neighborhood meeting was held on May 16th of this year no members of the public attendant we do not receive any comments at that time notice the application was sent out in July and subsequent to that we sent out a notice of application on the conditional use of permit and at that time we didn't receive any public comments either the projects located in the retail and business service general plan land use district designation in staff has generally found that the project is consistent with the general plan particularly economic policies as far as the zoning goes this is in the neighborhood commercial zoning district conditional use permit does allow the proposed cannabis dispensary in this zoning district this is the basic site plan with the retail building located in we'll call the upper left corner the parking forms an L around the building and right now there are two existing access site access points along Greenville Road for vehicular access and egress and those have been determined to be adequate in terms of site distance by consultation with our traffic engineering staff here's a basic floor plan of the proposed retail space the main entrance would be at the front the product delivery area would be at the back the secure storage areas in the north part of the tenant space while back-of-house items such as management office lounge etc located on the east side of the tenant space the remainder just over 2100 square feet would be devoted to the retail component this in looking at the separation requirements as you've heard about already this evening this site is not in an area of what we consider over concentration in that there's not another dispensary within 600 feet in fact the close dispensaries the item you just heard and that's located just under a mile away about 4,700 feet away the next closest after that the next would be a proposed one is just over a mile away there are some schools in the general area there's one there's the middle school 940 feet to the northeast of the project site there's another school located approximately just over a thousand square feet to the north northwest and to the southwest is another school that's about 1500 feet away as part of their application and was part of your packet the proposed business operators have put forward a project narrative that outlines compliance with the operational requirements of the code this includes security measures order control parking lighting hours of operation and other similar considerations I won't go into these in great detail because the applicant is looking at going into these a little bit further one the couple things I'd like to note the order control was reviewed in a certified engineer did stamp the order control with they'll be utilizing carbon filtration and I just want to bring this point up given the proximity of the residential next door also with the residential next door I wanted to touch on the lighting all lighting will be downcast and will not be allowed to seep on to other properties at the billing permit stage we would verify any sort of lighting standard with lighting spec sheets in our analysis of the findings required for the conditional use permit authorization we have found that the project is that the findings can be made for the project and that it's applicable with the provisions of the zoning code it's consistent with the general plan it's compatible as conditioned with the existing and future of land uses in the area found that the fight the site's physically suitable and that is in existing retail and this would be another retail use that's located in it and they would not constitute a nuisance or be injurious based on compliance with operational requirements of the zoning code by meeting those as well as good neighbor policies the project has been reviewed in compliance with sequel and it's been found that's consistent with sequel with three categorical exemptions that can apply class 13 and 32 since your materials were distributed we have received some comment letters one was just distributed to you right now that came in today within the last week we have received two other letters the express concerned with the proposed cannabis dispensary in relation to the other one that you considered earlier this evening on Marlowe road also there was some concerns about our neighbor in the area with the proximity of the use to residential uses in the area as I mentioned staff has been able to make the findings for this project and we'd recommend approval wrap up my presentation for now and I'll be available for questions thank you thank you commissioners any questions for staff right now and is the applicant here and wishing to speak you certainly are not required to but if you would like to give you the opportunity and if so begin by stating your name please not yet there we go thank you mr. Hollister for your correspondence and diligence thus far in this presentation good evening commissioners and city staff my name is Raj and I'm the managing director for Jiva I'm accompanied with Guillermo Bravo who is local to Santa Rosa and grew up in coffee park in the coffee park neighborhood he's Jiva's local enterprise if you will and we'll have direct oversight on the Jiva Santa Rosa group management team his sister miss Monica Bravo locally resides here in Santa Rosa and is slated to be our community benefits coordinator industry experience entrepreneurial vision and community-driven spirit will allow Jiva to develop a premium retail experience that will resonate within Santa Rosa Jiva was assembled with the focus on creating a diverse and accomplished group of professionals to develop a boutique commercial cannabis business brand the organizational structure features four levels executive management an advisory board a consultant council and local third-party consultants this team includes cannabis retail operators medical doctors a pharmacist finance analysts a technology engineer an attorney a community benefits coordinator a veteran that works for the state for labor and employment practices and a former police lieutenant and various other professionals we are committed and look forward to providing employment opportunities to residents and prosperity economically to the city of Santa Rosa and through our community benefits package Jiva has over 20 years of collective management experience in the retail cannabis space our COO and retail strategy advisors our seasoned operators respectively in Los Angeles and Seattle I myself have active licenses in the state of Washington we have in-depth knowledge of how to successfully operate a cannibal cannabis retail dispensary Jiva is dedicated in its mission to ensure that the sale of cannabis is conducted in a safe and secure manner to protect the welfare of the community while debt while demonstrating transparency with the city of Santa Rosa and the state in alignment with that vision we understand that compliance is paramount our compliance advisor will certify that we are kept a prize of any new local or state regulations affecting operations and monitor its adoption into our standard operating procedures our practices excuse me our plans and policies are derived from our experience and we will deliver on maintaining a compliant cannabis retail operation trying to get to the next slide I'm sorry oh there we go excuse me here we have we feature in integrated software system dedicated to maintaining employee accountability and constant compliance these are some general employee protocols that we want to instill rapid customer intake it starts with the electronic identification scan and digital registration this allows us to implement analytics to look at key data patterns in every aspect of our business the digital registration also includes a disclaimer that they will follow and abide our rules that we're in that we're instituting with our practice we have modern commerce features and the chairman asked a question to the other group about sales specific to online pickup orders and delivery our goal is that 40% of sales are through express online order pickups and delivery and our site plan has station specific for that we'll feature I'm sorry customer engagement our CRM management system leads to customer loyalty programs a common question that was asked that's asked often in other cities that we've applied to and successfully been permitted at the bottom there you will see a cash management protocol from a company called hardware a sorry hard car that currently provides cash management solutions and armored car vehicle services to the Federal Reserve Bank and a credit union we've went ahead and submitted that application and have been successful you can see there that essentially that every week generally every week is what we would recommend is that cash is picked up strapped and bundled instructed deposit ticket it's deposited and ticketed and bagged picked up in armored vehicle services that are driven by us veterans and or agents to a secure location for a recount of cash to be deposited to the Federal Reserve Bank again by armored vehicle transportation where funds are then deposited to the credit unions account and finally credited to our account with that credit union here are some just general standard operating procedures that we want to provide all employees will go through a comprehensive background check and we will maintain a current register of the names of all employees to disclose for inspection by any city official all customers must possess a valid government issued photo ID that will be scanned medical patients must have a valid physicians recommendation a copy of our permit will be on display in a conspicuous space so that it can be readily seen by anyone entering the facility the entrance will also have a notice indicating that consumption of cannabis is prohibited on site or in the vicinity we are dedicated to operate in a manner to private to prevent diversion and comply with metric which is the state's approved track and trace system a functional account with metric will be established prior to engaging any commercial cannabis activity to report all identifying information for products and inventory sorry products sold and inventory intake record of sales shall be accessible through a pos system which can be ordered by the city at any time cannabis goods for sale will be displayed within the retail floor area and will only be visible from the interior of the premises packaged products will not be accessible to patients or customers without assistance or staff from staff excuse me all cannabis goods for sale will be purchased from a licensed cultivator manufacturer and or micro business that is authorized for distribution as per the bcc our intent is to comply with the Bureau of cannabis control product safety regulatory requirements with that we're dedicated to sourcing the highest quality products and thus plan to carry a variety of lab tested products cannabis goods will not leave the premises unless the items are placed in opaque exit packaging upon exiting customer relations a customer relations host will politely reiterate that no consumption or ingestion of cannabis can occur on the premises including outdoor areas in the parking lot a point that i'd want to stress about child safety and concerns about visibility again people cannot view product from the outside nor can they view product through the exit packaging our hours will be 9 a.m to 9 p.m seven days a week below we have i have noted notated some some product safety guidelines we have a salaried position that'll be a quality assurance specialist that will ensure that all cannabis goods maintain appropriate labels for safety and protection of all customers products will be stored in the temperature controlled environment that will prevent the entry of any contaminants park to purchase is the experience that we want to deliver to our customers and seamless reporting for us as jiva equals efficiency just a few things regarding reporting and monitoring all commercial cannabis activity will report in the track and trace system including a manifest verifying compliant receipt of prepackaged cannabis goods and the source sale of cannabis goods transportation of cannabis goods as part of inventory intake return of any cannabis goods at destruction and disposal of cannabis goods laboratory testing results purchase limits and customer profile restrictions just to elaborate on that if a customer is given a warning they will be in our system a second time they will be banned from entrance to our facility and obviously city and state tax reporting our commitment to safety and security at below at the three points that i mentioned are generally the most common concerns and misconceptions from the public quickly we'll go over the security that we plan to implement there's three levels of preliminary security checks that i that i want to propose and implement plans from the security equipment installation company and the onsite security guard company both of which are local will be the first step those are then verified by jiva security consultant who happens to have been a former san jose police lieutenant and then confirmation of plans by a san aroza police department representative in the cities of hayward and union city and san francisco where we recently were given the opportunity to operate in those cities we wanted to meet with a representative from the police department to go over our plans just to make sure that they if they had any suggestions to that to add the overall operational and facility security will consist of electronic alarms surveillance system security guards limited access areas and a vault slash safe room our security goal is simple ensure the public safety secure staff and employees within the facility and to protect the premises from theft the entire premises indoor and outdoor will be under 24 hours 24 hours surveillance with motion detectors video surveillance of all exterior access points all interior areas the entry vestibule inventory of payment inventory and payment and the path of travel surveillance will also be 24 hours camera quality will provide clear and certain identification of any of anyone within those areas just and with that our surveillance system will be able to support any criminal investigations that shall be maintained for 60 days this also includes sensors to detect entry and exit from all secure areas and all windows we will provide an alarm permit and our headers and the head of security contact for the Santa Rosa police department dispatch database cannabis products shall be stored and secured in a manner that prevents diversion theft loss hazards and nuisance the facility shall be designed to prevent unauthorized entrance into areas containing cannabis products limited access areas are only for authorized personnel cannabis products that are not used for display purposes for immediate sale shall be stored in a secured product safe within the secured product storage area on our site on our proposed floor plan touching base a little bit more on security regarding the install the burglar alarm will be yule certified door contacts motion detectors safe contacts wireless panic buttons the system will be monitored by our preferred local security company which is bail arm and a gentleman named mr mark cook who did our plan there'll be a high decibel point of entry detection on all doors and exterior access points the panic buttons there'll be three or more door and window contacts and our vault room will all have will all be secure our security guard service and here's a little bit of a letter of support from a company called american veteran security who's local to the county jiva's head of security which will be a local hire in a full-time position will contract with abs who are military grade security guard service provider here locally and again there's a letter of support from them fire safety is imperative and we will obtain all annual operating fire permits with inspections prior to operation our goal is to comply with all applicable california fire codes fire safety measures are designed to ensure prevention training and emergency access and our goal is to obviously be in satisfaction with the santa rosa fire department standards access with with a fire department lockbox for keys to gates and doors shall be provided if requested as a common concern we have taken preventative and proactive action which jiva's air quality consultant mr trentheel as seen in his conclusion um of the order control and air quality plan cannabis odor will not emit outdoors additionally we have outsourced a local licensed mechanical engineering firm to implement filtration and odor mitigation as provided in the memo as you see above uh that was shared with the city we want to share that all of our cannabis products for sale are pre-packaged and sealed and at this time we will not offer on-site consumption community benefits is very important to jiva our goal is to establish a generative relationship within the community at the core of our company ethos is a relationship between jiva and the community the city and their constituents are best situated to understand the community's mission and values due to having a personal stake in the safety and success of santa rosa thus we will be good listeners and proactively implement our community benefits plan we want to we're going to establish a community benefits coordinator we would like to focus on youth awareness initiatives our desires to work with the with local santa rosa organizations potentially uh kids off chemicals to collaborate and strategize the most effective means of supporting the mission to reduce substance abuse and improve the overall health of santa rosa's youth we want to service economically disadvantaged community patients we will be offering reduced pricing plans for qualified low-income patients customers sorry low-income patients and or customers and military veterans we want to champion the city's most important goals we want to support santa rosa's priorities such as affordable housing homelessness and community development jiva will look for ways to support santa rosa's the partnership program towards a strategic goal to strengthen youth and families and build safe communities by leading mobilizing and aligning aligning community resources jiva will commit funds towards maintaining the measure o choice grant program we believe in the choice grants in the past that provide a variety of youth and parenting programs which focus on gang and anti-violence education prevention and intervention community safety and social services in high in high needs neighborhoods one important thing that's that that we pride ourselves on is is to annually contribute and volunteer competent professional service volunteering i feel like is a valuable resource that we can provide and help with to the city in addition to the previous community benefits and part of community engagement is a medical first approach that will safely introduce consumers to the evolving and revolutionary cannabis industry our retail facility strives to enrich the community through strategic partnerships with established local organizations our community endeavors will be focused on advancing educational opportunities in santa rosa santa rosa residents will benefit from informational seminars supportive initiatives and charitable contributions we want to provide exceptional service and access to cannabis for the elderly adults with disabilities and terminal clients through our delivery service just to go over a few of the local economic incentives uh stimulate the economic prosperity in santa rosa with the commercial cannabis business tax create 20 plus full-time jobs within the first five years of operation provide employees with generous compensation and benefits provide charitable contributions and funding towards recommended santa rosa nonprofits we want employee retention and with other retailers that we've spoken to in this industry or others dealing with employees is is a major issue our goal is to compensate them well so we can have them long term our commitment is to contribute two percent of profits annually to local organizations collaboratively with the recommendations of the city's community service committee we review the city's affordable family housing development program and recognize its desire to allocate funding for local nonprofits for example cap sonoma our projected five-year allocation would exceed approximately 75 000 by the third year of operations we strive to exceed recommendations and to diversify within various local nonprofits in alignment with the city our objective is to create an open line of communication that instills confidence in our business and our commitment to our neighborhood as of may um earlier this uh this summer we have delivered an introductory letter you'll see a snippet of the as seen above of the bottom and we hosted an open house as well that was distributed to i believe residents and property owners and businesses within 500 feet of our proposed location as i mentioned before we'll establish a community benefits coordinator but more importantly specific to the neighborhood will be a dedicated position as a neighborhood liaison that will work directly with our community benefits coordinator our good neighbor policy that's in our operations plan and our community benefits plan in our proposal to the city will be a focus of our neighborhood integration our staff will take proact a proactive approach to assimilation and our existence will increase general security in the surrounding area as mr holister indicated about the lighting interior and exterior lighting shall utilize best management practices and technologies to reduce glare any light pollution and illuminated at an intensity compatible with the neighborhood we will discourage and correct objectionable conditions that constitute a nuisance in parking areas sidewalks alleys and areas surrounding the premises and adjacent properties during business hours finally we want to provide an enhanced retail experience our facilities comprises slightly over 3200 square feet um jiva's proposed location offers a generous retail floor area the expansive layout provides dedicated secure product storage id ver and id verification podium reception and concierge station in the center of the facility a dedicated medical product pos counter and an express an online order station and seven point of sale systems jiva's fundamental ethos starts and finishes with the professional quality of service by employees we will encourage and enable employees to think creatively and divergently while maintaining a compliant facility jiva will feature hospitality driven customer engagement with an aesthetically pleasing storefront that will utilize premium materials for interior improvements and with that here are a couple of renderings of conceptual design showcasing a general showcasing the general retail floor area and the dedicated medical product counter jiva is committed to working with santa rosa and values the opportunity to serve its residents as a meticulous operator jiva will deliver on its commitments we're greatly appreciative for your consideration and valuable feedback jiva looks forward to honoring and upholding the values of santa rosa and its residents thank you i'm going to pass it on here to our local kid mr gearmo bravo my name is my name is gearmo bravo and i was um born here in santa rosa actually in northwest santa rosa copy park you know being a part of the community growing up here myself i actually went to schaefer school i went to comp stock i went to piner high school i went to sonoma state i'm an alumni there and uh have been you know have been uh involved in the community on several levels playing competitive sports and also through education um you know i've been in the cannabis space for about six years now i have a technology and marketing agency that i started and serviced retail dispensaries across different states in regards to technology and marketing um you know i grew up about a mile and a half from this location uh that's what really brought this to my attention and he's out you know i've you know the experience is that everyone has uh been through over the last few years in regards to the fires i wanted to do something to contribute to the community uh my sister who is part of this project lost her home uh in northwest santa rosa and she you know wants to lead the community outreach and be a part of this uh in the community and just contribute and uplift the community any way that we can and you know that's all i really i really had to say uh you know but my goal is to just be present here uh and add value in anything any way i can to the community great thanks very much uh commissioners any questions for the applicant at this time commissioner rascisco yeah just a quick question um you know beautiful interior improvements can you describe what exterior improvements you're going to make specifically are you going to paint the rear of the building yeah um good question currently we we may do a green wall um but our exterior improvements are going to be minimal um for the most part but you are going to paint the rear part of the building yes yes yes yes yes and we'll we want we want to beautify the facade um it's going to be much nicer than it looks right now okay good thanks sure commissioners uh any other questions mr weeks um can you expand on the advisory board that you mentioned yes yes absolutely so the advisory board consists of two doctors uh pharmacist uh two retail strategy advisors uh in the second slide you may have noticed two brands that were from washington uh they're part of that and the reason that we did that is a not only to to kind of stack the merit that myself and rco has but to have a level and a system where people can use multiple different consultants and advisors if as needed and some of the advisory board folks are also financial interest holders one more question um you talked about some of the neighborhood outreach did you get any response to that we did not um our letter really was focused on having them reach out to us uh to if they wanted to talk to us to have a meeting uh also that letter included the invite for the open house um we're going to do another round just as the chairman had said in the other um with the other applicant this is common knowledge uh when you're applying you must reach out to the neighborhood and the community prior to getting here commissioners any other questions okay this is a public hearing um I have a number of cards that requested to comment on items 10.1 10.2 and 10.3 or or some combination of those I suspect most if not all of those people who filled out a card are I have left the building that I am going to read all of them first and uh for those of you might not have been here if you are here and wishing to make a comment about this item uh you may go to one of the podiums at the top of the room and begin by stating your name for the record and you'll have three minutes uh in which to make your comments I'm sorry uh chairman I think your mic is your microphone on I'm sorry would you like to open the hearing uh yeah I was just explaining the the procedure before I did that thank you okay I'm going to open the public hearing and I'm going to start with uh Michael Brewster thank you my name is Michael Brewster I live on Nightingale Drive about um halfway between this proposed project in the the former proposed project um I was going to present to you that it looks from your information that's subjected online that there's um significant overlap with the two schools uh Monroe and Comstock but from the presentation tonight um that appears to be not so so I'm confused I don't know which is correct um so I would encourage you to please update the online information so the public has correct information when we're looking from our homes for example the spreadsheet is not correct in either of the reports so we don't have current information out in the real world um with that said I'd like to say that that that little commercial district is very cleverly nestled in between three schools three schools so that's what I'd like to say there addressing a comment by a previous speaker about crime being a little further out than the security area respectfully mr chairman I disagree with you I believe that in the area that I live in where we already have crime um that we're in the crosshairs of potentially two facilities and the crime will be right in my neighborhood where people will be looking to steal things um cash them in and and go by their recreational marijuana so that is my opinion and my feelings regarding crime because I won't be in the immediate facility of this great security I'll be farther out and I'll kind of be right in between um thirdly there's traffic issues you can only approach this facility from westbound gernville road you cannot you turn you can't come out and turn left and go east on gernville road it is a mess I tried to turn on the ravello way to go talk to my neighbors and I had to go down and really make a very unsafe turn in front of the community church a little further east so I believe there really is a real traffic issue here um that is not being addressed I know in the report it says it's been addressed but as a practical matter just like over on piner road heading east if you try to turn into the wall greens you're not going to be able to do it unless you use the lights so we know the idiosyncrasies of our roads um and uh I think it needs to be addressed in some way um so that's kind of what I'd like to say about those things um and I'd also like to say to our planning department you know if you approve the three dispensaries tonight and add them to the one on dutton in college and the one on cleveland already exists that's five that's five in northwest santa rosa you're really condensing them I don't care what you say about approving one on sonoma you're going to approve some on the east side you're approving five in our neighborhood with three new ones and two existing so um that's what I have to say thank you thank you I'm going to uh read these cards in case any of these members of the public are still in attendance uh leilani bruster okay marie piazza janine freeman jerry rossi de guvara sharon doherty and Stephen fisher and unless I see uh other people enter the chamber I won't read those for item 10.3 unless that's a legal requirement so okay uh is any other member of the public here wishing to speak doesn't look like it I'm going to close the public hearing commissioners any questions for staff or the applicant would any commissioner like to move the single resolution I'll move a resolution of the planning commission of the city of santa rosa approving a conditional use permit for jiva life LLC's medical and adult use retail cannabis dispensary with delivery in an existing 2917 square foot commercial tenant space on a 14810 square foot parcel located at 1831 gernvill road suite a apn 036-101-036 file number c up 18-075 and wave for the reading second the resolution was moved by commissioner duggin and seconded by commissioner cisco commissioner cisco would you like to start sure this is a very tight application very tight presentation so thank you for that and um appreciate the fact that you have at least made an attempt to do neighborhood outreach from the start that's a good thing and I can make all of the findings on this project and we'll be happy to support it commissioner duggin I also can make all the findings and am in support of the project commissioner calio I actually think this presentation has probably been one of the best ones that I've seen on the planning commission so I thank you for that I can make all of the appropriate findings to support this project and I really appreciate the thought that you've put into the community benefit aspect of the proposal and the employee benefits as well thank you vice chair weeks I also am going to be supportive of the project reiterate what my fellow commissioners said about the tightness and the completeness of the application and the project description and the community benefits proposal I think is fabulous in your whole kind of holistic approach to this new business for us and I also can make all the findings thank you commissioner chronica I have nothing further to add I find can make all the findings on this project and I support it commissioner Peterson I echo my fellow commissioners comments I think this is a really um excellently prepared presentation in particular I appreciate the the specification of these sort of types of jobs the types of economic benefits that that will hopefully come to Santa Rosa as a result of this project being mindful that that's not the sort of determining factor in this type of decision-making again I think the outreach is good things like an open house or I think a good way to deal with a lot of the public comments we've seen at both this meeting and other meetings and in particular I also like the the community benefits not only is sort of the ethically correct thing to do but also again it's I think it's a good business decision it's good as this new industry kind of comes into its own and becomes more normalized throughout the city with that the location isn't great I think that the public commenter is is correct that's a it's a pretty tough location to deal with very car dependent but that's not the fault of the applicant for sort of historic design decisions made by the city so with that I'll be able to make all necessary findings to support this project and I'm strongly in support of this project I completely agree that it was excellent excellent application it I think is is going to stand a good chance of having ripple effects and improving the area around it in particular you know if there are you know attentive and thoughtful exterior modifications as commissioner sisco discussed earlier the interior looks like an apple store quite frankly except except it's a place where I might actually be able to afford something so anyway a very very good project and I can completely support it and make all the findings the resolution was moved by commissioner dug in and seconded by commissioner sisco commissioners who votes please and that passes with seven eyes and that concludes item 10.2 and we'll move to item 10.3 public hearing for the hook dispensary conditional use permit for 817 russell avenue sweet sea and I'll wait just a second for everybody to get where they're going well you might as well do it now commissioners this is an ex parte disclosure commissioner calia anything to disclose I visited the site and have nothing further to disclose commissioner dug in I also visited the site and have nothing further to disclose okay commissioner sisco I visited the site and have nothing new to disclose best your weeks I also visited the site and have nothing further to disclose commissioner groiniga and I visited the site and have nothing further to disclose commissioner peterson I visited the site and have nothing further to disclose and I visited the site and have nothing further to disclose and with that the staff presentation will be by Gary Brod. Thank you Chair Edmondson and planning commissioners. Gary Brod I'm a planning consultant and the project planner for this application and this is an application for the hook conditional use permit at 817 Russell Avenue in suite C sorry it's it's moving on my screen but it's not that doesn't do us any good yeah I'm sorry we have it on the iPads as well but the public will be denied the benefit because we have too many we have too many open there we go this is conditional use permit CUP 18-041 which has been filed by our ex-boys incorporated slash Eddie Alvarez which proposes to operate a retail medical and adult use cannabis dispensary with delivery at 817 Russell Avenue in suite C this proposed dispensary is on the smaller size with 1350 square feet of gross floor area of which just under a thousand nine hundred ninety eight will be involved in the retail operation and additionally there'll be a hundred seventeen square feet of office space and a hundred twenty five of stock room and a hundred ten square feet of break room and bathroom and the proposed hours of operation are daily from noon to 7 p.m. which is compliant with the permitted hours by the cannabis ordinance this application started with the neighborhood meeting back in April of 2018 there were no members of the public attending that meeting the CUP application was filed approximately two weeks later and in August the department mailed out a notice of application to neighbors and to interested parties you can see the project location it's on Russell Avenue just off of Cleveland Avenue and the aerial shows a little more clearly it's within a complex that is known as the Russell Square Russell Square which has 11,700 square feet of commercial space within the two buildings as shown highlighted within that rectangle the zoning for the property is general commercial the property surrounded by commercial uses to the east which are restaurant uses there's the Motel 6 to the north of the property to the south of the property is Sonoma County law family law structure and just south of that the heat is an empire college or healed college for Empire College thank you and to the west on the same side of the street are three contiguous apartment buildings and also to the south and to the west is a low income housing development and you can see in this slide that the zoning and general plan the property is within the band of commercial general commercial zoning and the general plan is retail and business services and then there's medium residential zoning and general plan designation to the west of the property and PD development to the south of the property sorry you can see the site plan for the property the proposed suite C is just to the left of building a building a is an existing grocery store there's an architect's office to the west which is to the left of the proposed suite a and building be in the back has a hair salon a Mexican restaurant and additionally has a laundromat in it the proposed cannabis dispensary is going into a space that previously was used as a tanning salon this is a picture of the front facade of the building and the applicants indicated that essentially the only change they would make to the facade would be to replace the tanning salon with a sign for the dispensary which would be compliant with the overall sign plan for the development as previously mentioned there was a neighborhood meeting on April 4th the only public input that the city has received related to this project is we received letters from all three of the adjacent property owners to the west of the project site which the Commission received and all three of those letters articulated concerns with the impacts of a cannabis dispensary in this neighborhood and a feeling that it was an inappropriate use for this neighborhood which contains as previously mentioned a number of apartment buildings and also low-income housing and the Commission received the fourth letter this week which was again from one of the adjacent property owners I should have given you one more slide of while it's covered within the staff report is the compliance of the project with the city's cannabis ordinance the project does comply with the many requirements that are required under the cannabis ordinance as was covered in the staff report the project is compliant in terms of the parking requirements in that it is within the required the necessary parkings within the required 52 spaces provided on site for the shopping center the centers compliant with other mandates including the odor requirements lighting requirements the staff report discusses the applicant's proposed security proposals related to the application additionally the staff report discusses the appropriateness in staff's opinion of the proposed dispensary in terms of the relationship with surrounding land uses as shown in the previous slide the proposed dispensary is central to the existing commercial area there is no lot-to-lot passage permissible from the shopping center to the adjacent adjacent land land uses it's either blocked off by building or by six foot secured fencing and so the only access from the street to the cannabis dispenser would be through the main driveway into the shopping center and the staff believes that the necessary six findings for use permit approval can be made for this application one of the necessary findings is the environmental review finding and staff has determined that the project's categorically exempt from CEQA under exemptions class one which is existing structures class three which relates to a proposed change in use and finally the infill development categorical exemption which is class 32 and that all six of those necessary findings can be made for the project staff is recommending or the planning and economic development department is recommending that the commission approve the proposed CUP for dispensary at 8 17 Russell Avenue for retail medical and adult use cannabis and in doing so approve the resolution including the findings and conditions provided to the commission and I the applicant is present to make a presentation to the commission which will delve into more the operational characteristics of the proposal and I'd be happy to answer any questions from commission members thank you commissioners any questions for staff right now the applicants here and wishing to make a presentation if you'll state your name for the record place yes good evening my name is Joe Rogaway I'm an attorney here representing the applicant our ex-boys ain't for the hook mr. Eddie Alvarez is here in the audience as well he seated here gentlemen wearing a tie and we did actually have a PowerPoint presentation that I believe is included in the agenda and perhaps we can we can go through that briefly I believe that mr. Broad's presentation sufficiently covers a lot of the materials as relates to the general applicability of the ordinance to this particular project as well as the application materials which I think provide significant detail into not just the the local ordinance requirements but also the state regulatory considerations for both the storefront as well as the delivery okay so I got so let's see if this works okay so this is thank you very much so as has been noted the proposal is for suite C at 817 Russell Avenue this is more or less adjacent to highway 101 it's I think one parcel over and about essentially across the street from the civil courthouse as mr. Broad noted there is just one method of ingress and egress to and from this facility in the shopping center and the the parking in the center meets requirements percent of the ordinance also noted here and noted previously is the very limited changes to the exterior of the building as as noted just the word tanning for the prior business I was there will be replaced with the name of the current business and is going to comport in all ways with the city's ordinance as has been noted the location is in all ways compliant with both the city's ordinance as well as state law and is situated as you can see on the right hand slide in the center of this portion of the shopping center the school setback is met here as has been noted in prior presentations the city has a setback requirement of 600 feet which comports with California state law and that is met here there is transit nearby there is a bus stop for the closest one being at Cleveland and State Farm and it's fairly walkable from the bus stop to this proposed retail establishment here is just a another photograph demonstrating where this is it sounds like everyone has already gone to the facility and seen it firsthand but just for clarity in this presentation everyone can see it again here neighborhood impact there is no members from the public here this evening voicing any concerns about this particular use that is consistent with our experience at the neighborhood meeting which also do not include any concerned neighbors there were a few letters that were received from owners of the apartment buildings that are next door to this use but there are no statements of any kind from any of the the tenants of any of those apartment buildings importantly no one objecting to this particular use about the applicant mr. Alvarez is a local member of our community has demonstrated not just the the centrality of the importance of the community to him but also has demonstrated leadership here in fact mr. Alvarez has run for city council for the city of Santa Rosa I believe also ran for board supervisors for the county of Sonoma is well respected member of the community his family owns a business in Santa Rosa on Sebastopol Road and he is also in the process of developing other non-canvas businesses here in Roseland which I know is an important part of the city and what the city is looking towards in terms of future opportunities and development for that community there and mr. Alvarez is in the process of developing a food truck park down in Roseland on Sebastopol Road and has been working with other noble members of the community mr. Marco Suarez who some of you may know is someone who mr. Alvarez has been working with pretty closely furthermore mr. Alvarez has served as a board member for the Hispanic Chamber of Commerce has served as a member of the community advisory board for the city of Santa Rosa has served as a president of other local business organizations and has been on member of the board of directors for one of Santa Rosa's community banks so so all in all a very strong member of the community that is looking to continue to support the community through this business here at 817 Russell I believe that the neighborhood concerns have been addressed through the application itself but just to ensure clarity for this particular presentation we as the applicants are not concerned that there is going to be loud intoxicated people outside of this establishment the comments that I believe were received from the owners of the apartment buildings in my mind were somewhat of a conflation of general sort of property crimes or vagrancy issues or issues related to use of alcohol I believe one of the letters addressed concerns over purported drug addicts that would be at Motel 6 which is nearby and somehow this would contribute to what was happening at Motel 6 I in my opinion I don't believe that those concerns are particularly well-founded I think as has been noted for prior presentation having a well-regulated outlet retail outlet in the transparency of all of the local and state laws is a far cry from the illegal world of the black market and the criminality that is a part of that and there are just things as a matter of state law which really serve to mitigate those types of concerns in particular bullet point number two on this slide there is a state requirement for 24-hour security at the site in addition to the the non-personneled security and that's just a matter of law and is going to of course be incorporated I'm here at this facility and and all in all it's important not just in terms of compliance with the the law as it exists about the state local level but also it's important just intrinsically to Mr. Alvarez to be a good neighbor and to be a responsible business owner for for the hook here is some information for your consideration related to odor and noise mitigation this information is contained within the materials that you already have as a part of our application very standardized forms for example of odor mitigation with the canned filtration we also have a stamp certified odor mitigation document in the application materials as well traffic is another issue that has been addressed here this evening for other applications and again for this application the the traffic will have a slight the there will be a slight increase in trips to the site but it's going to be acceptable within the confines of the traffic engineers and again this is very close to 101 so ideally there'll be mitigation of people driving across town to to get to and from this location on the surface roads just given its proximity to 101 there is a local hiring plan and it's very important to be hiring from the local labor pool and there the plan is and this is delineated as well in the application materials that we would have full-time employees eligible for for benefits and you know there is again other other matters of state law for example that limit the availability of 1099 independent contractors is a recent ruling from the Supreme Court of California that really diminishes the ability for employers to hire independent contractors for types of jobs that are court to the functionality of the business and of course mr. Alvarez and and his business will comport in all ways with California state and federal labor laws and the facility design from the exterior it's very limited we're just talking about just the change as mentioned previously in the signage from removing the word tanning and inserting the name of the business here but other than that there isn't going to be large-scale exterior modifications here is the site plan and this is already incorporated in the materials that you have before you as well in the application as you can see it's a it's a modest size retail outlet and it's simplified in the layout in so far as the public consumer-facing section is at the front of the facility where you can see that that large almost 50% of the the layout is dedicated to that portion of it the back portion of the premise is the non-public-facing section of that and all of this comports with both local and state law as well there is I think for any business that comes before the city a real need for the utilization of green business practices and to the extent that we can here in this particular business the hook will be employing those as relates with energy efficient lighting water efficient fixtures and just limitation of the the other types of things that can happen inside of the facility that can just add the consumption of energy and so all of those things are taken into consideration for this design and so that is essentially all I have for you by way of the presentation but of course I am available to answer any questions that you may have and Mr. Alvarez is staying next to me if you wish to ask any questions of him as well thank you very much commissioners any questions right now for the applicant or as representative commissioner Duncan yeah I've got a couple of questions how are deliveries of wholesale product going to be handled will they happen during normal business hours or before opening or after closing so as relates to distributors distributors are not going to be coming in during normal business hours they are going to be coming in through the the front door of the premise and that will be outside of the court business hours as have been delineated to you in the application okay and also as far as the security plan are there going to be security personnel on on site during the business hours yes okay and can you say anything more about the security plans I don't remember seeing much yes actually in detail in the in the packet so there is a security plan that has been submitted for your consideration I have an extra copy here if you haven't had chance to to review that but the so there are state regulations that dictate issues related to security personnel and as is delineated on page one item number two under the heading security personnel there's a citation to the regulatory provision for the BCC regulations which is section 5045 which controls how the security personnel will be there and so essentially there's a state mandate that for all retail facilities there is on site 24 hours a day security personnel and so there's not a particular station for them they will be throughout the city and there's a state certificate for the BCC regulations and that's what the city has to look like it has to do with the security personnel premise which is a relatively small premise. Thank you. Mr. Weeks. I have a couple questions. Other applicants applications we've seen have had a community days on for lack of a better term. Do you plan on having a position like that? There isn't an official title that we whereas it has spent a significant portion of his life reaching out to the community and being not just a member of various organizations but also being a leader in those organizations as well. And so there isn't a particular position. I think part of it is because this is relatively small facility and there's gonna just be a limited number of staff. This isn't a large scale operation like what we may see with other projects where there is these kind of large corporate infrastructure and this just happens to be like one of many outlets for a larger corporate apparatus. This is essentially a business that is being owned, run and operated by Mr. Alvarez, employing local members of the community without some of those fixtures that can be accoutrements of a much larger business model. So then my assumption would be that if there was an issue that Mr. Alvarez would directly respond personally or have one of his small staff do that. And that people in the neighborhood would know that. Yes, I mean, Mr. Alvarez is, for what it's worth, a very personable individual and from my experiences with him, has been very willing and able to accommodate members of the community as relates to issues that come up in the realm of the cannabis industry. So to answer your question, yes. He is available to them if there was a complaint, if there was an issue. The buck stops here, so to speak. And so that would be the way to accommodate that. And of course there is the mechanisms that the city has to address any problems as well and Mr. Alvarez would be responsive to those considerations. Good, personally I think it's important for the neighbors to know that there's somebody that they could talk to or if there's an issue, especially the people in the apartment complexes around there. So thank you. Absolutely. Commissioner, is there any other questions? I just have one quick one. The hours of operation are very interesting, different than any of the other applications we've seen more limited starting later in the day. Could you comment on the decision-making about that? Yeah, my assumption is just a matter of preference. But yeah, okay. So Mr. Alvarez will address that point. Good evening, my name is Eddie Alvarez, the applicant. The reason for the hours are actually that I'm giving a chance to all the other competitors to have a chance. Well, I need to hear that all the time, do you? But in all seriousness, with the hours of 12 to seven I've seen, I've witnessed that most of our business traffic happens after hours. And I mean that through our jewelry store or grocery store. So in regards to the earlier part of the day we'll be dedicated to the stocking of the shelves, so to speak, the inventory intake. I find that the hours can be most efficient and effective between the hours of 12 to seven. That also allows for the smaller amount of employees to two shifts. I just have to have one shift, which I'm a part of. So that's really the reason behind the 12 to seven. Now, can that change in the future? That depends on the traffic in the business that we receive. Thank you. Okay, thanks very much. That was indeed a personable comment. Any other questions at this time? Vice Chair Weis? So this is a question for Gary or Claire. If the hours were to change, would that need to come back to the commission? Well, the hours would be locked in with this use permit. So we'd have to evaluate what's the correct process as it come back to the planning commission or does it come back to the zoning administrator? There is a section that talks about changes to an approved project. So to be conservative, I would say yes, we'd come back to the, I mean, if I was to tell you tonight, I always go conservative. If I don't have a lot of time to look at it and I would say to have to come back to the planning commission to amend their use permit. Thank you. Can I follow up on that? Would it be possible if it were the pleasure, desire of the commission to make it clear in the permit that the zoning administrator could be the review authority for that modification? Yes, the planning commission could add that condition that if the applicant chose to modify the hours but still in compliance with the limited hours that are set forth in the code, that that amendment could be acted on by the zoning administrator, that would be fine. And that would be our request as well. It's not necessarily anticipated, but just to save us from having to come back before the commission for maybe a slight modification to hours at some point in the future. Okay, thank you. Any other questions for staff of the applicant at this time? Okay, this is a public hearing. Anybody who's here wishing to speak is invited to go to one of the podiums and have up to three minutes to make your comments. And I am going to open the public hearing. And I am not seeing anyone approach the podium, so I'm going to close the public hearing and ask a member of the commission to move the single resolution. I'll move a resolution of the planning commission of the city of Santa Rosa, approving a conditional use permit for the hook dispensary, a medical and adult use retail cannabis dispensary with delivery in an existing 1350 square foot tenant space located at 817 Russell Avenue, suite C, APN 015-101-027, file number CUP18-041 and waive for the reading. Second, but I'm wondering if we wanted to include that condition now, as opposed to doing it from the amendment style. And if so, where would it be placed? We don't have to specify what number it would be called, but you can make that as part of your motion to add a condition directing that the zoning administrator would have authority to evaluate amendments to hours of operation compliance with zoning code. Okay, so I have to say adding a condition that the zoning administrator would be able to modify the open hours without having to come back to the commission. Because I don't think the hours are written in the resolution. Yeah, I can't find them. That's why I was questioning. See them under the description for one of the findings, finding C on page two. Is it under C? Oh, there it is. Yeah, okay. But that may not necessarily be where we would put this content. Yeah, I just was looking for it too. Okay. It's 14B. So you could amend that. That's where we could place that new language. And it would be that any amendments to these hours could be acted on by the zoning administrator. Okay, so that would be under 14B. Okay. So with the amendment, it's late and I'm tired. With the amendment to allow the zoning administrator to act on any requested change of hours. And we have further reading. Second. Resolution as amended was moved by Commissioner Duggan and seconded by Commissioner Cisco, Commissioner Collier. I can make all the necessary findings to support this project. And I think it's going to be good one. Commissioner Duggan. I can also make all necessary findings and I'm in support of the project. Commissioner Cisco. And I am also in support of the project and can make all the findings. Vice Chair Weeks. I also am supportive of the project and I would like to say I appreciate that you're working with the Economic Development Board on the local hiring plan. I think that's a great addition. And I can make all the findings. Commissioner Moranaga. I support the project. Commissioner Peterson. I also support the project as you've heard in the other presentations. I like to see the local hiring and the benefits and the pay in the presentation itself. I think it's good use of the space. I think it has a good chance of improving the security of the area. And I want to take a moment since this is going to be the last meeting of the year to just thank staff for all their, the tremendous amount of work they've done in the recovery from the tubs fire and just in sort of the general day-to-day operations of the planning commission. It's really greatly appreciated. And I think planning and economic development does an incredible job. So with that, I'm in favor of the project. And I'm in favor of the project. And I'm not happy that Julian took my idea to thank staff, but he's absolutely right. And I can speak for everybody up here and we all are in fantastic hands with all of you. I'm in support of the project. It is a really, really quality application, yet another one well thought out the exact kind of business that we want in the city run by the exact kind of proprietor that we want in the city. Couldn't agree more. And I like that it's near the courthouse, whether you're a judge or a lawyer, a staffer, or a member of the public. Anytime you spent an appreciable amount of time in that building, you are looking to frequent this place when you're leaving. Well said. Okay, the resolution as amended was moved by Commissioner Duggan, seconded by Commissioner Sisko, your votes, please. That passes with seven ayes. And that concludes this meeting of the planning commission.