 Hello everyone. If I could have your attention. Thank you all for coming. It's a big crowd. We appreciate you being here. My name is Jason Tarmina and I'm the chairman of the board of the Davis Chamber. Again, thank you for being here. Christina Blackman is our CEO sitting here. We're starting a bit early before everyone has sat down just in the interest of time with a big crowd like this. We have to be efficient and effective with our controls here. Today's sponsor is Sierra Energy. And before I introduce Rob White, I wanted to, as our tradition, is to ask everyone to stand for the flag salute. I pledge allegiance. Thank you. And with that, I'd like to ask Rob White to come forward from Sierra Energy. I'll take my two minute commercial and actually tell you less about Sierra Energy because you're going to go to SierraEnergy.com to find out what we really do. And it's not solar. I'll tease you with that. And instead give you a pitch as to why you should continue to be involved in chamber functions. As you can see from this crowd, this is a great meeting. We're always looking for opportunities to bring new topics to the community. But more importantly, getting actively involved in the chamber, as I have, actually does a lot for not only your business, but also a lot to actually expand your network. So I would pitch in my very short commercial, if you're not already actively engaged in the chamber, reach out, find out what it's like to be an ambassador, find out what it's like to be more engaged in a committee, or maybe even stretch really hard and try to figure out how to get on the board. So I'll leave you with that. Thank you very much, Rob. And now I'd like to introduce our mayor, Rob Davis, who is going to take it from here. Well, thanks for coming and thanks for your interest in this topic. The process is going to work like this. I'm just going to give a brief introduction, name, and just, you know, where the people work or their affiliation. Then I'm going to ask them to give us a three minute sort of introduction to how, from where I sit, from where I work, how am I approaching this, what are the issues before us. I'm going to time that fairly strictly. Then I'm going to allow them whoever wants to, if there's a gap or an additional comment that something that someone else on the panel has said that's spurred, I'll give them just a few minutes to sort of update or add whatever they want at that point. And then immediately we're going to turn it over to you for questions. And Christina is going to have the microphone, she's going to rove around, and we'd like you, it's being recorded, so we'd like you to ask your questions into the mic and wait for the mic to come. We're not going to take cards. We'll get as many questions in as we can. If you would address, if it makes sense to address your question to an individual, that's fine. We're going to allow other people to add points if they want to. And if it's just a general question, we'll see who decides they want to jump in and answer it. And then at the end, just as we're wrapping up, I'm going to give each person a phrase or two to tell you what they think the take home question or message should be from their perspective. So that's the way we're going to run it today. So continue eating, listen up. And let me just introduce really quickly who we have lined up here. First, I'll just go down the line. This is Lauren Silverstein, Integrate Cal Community Partners. He's the Chief Executive Officer of that. Next in line is Dave Delaney, City of Davis Deputy Police Chief. Next in line is Ash Ashley Feeney, City of Davis. He's the Assistant Director for Community and Sustainability, Community Development and Sustainability. Next, we have Keith Pitts from Marrone Bio. After Keith, we have Heidi... I'm sorry, April's next. I just met them. April Menegetti. April's with the County of Yolo's Supervising Environmental Health Specialist. And now we have Heidi Dagostino, County of Yolo Cannabis Task Force Manager. And at the very end, we have our County Agricultural Commissioner, John Young, who's also obviously with Yolo County. So we aren't going to do this in a random way. I'm going to let the person whose name starts at the top of the alphabet. That would be April. Go first. And we're going to ask them during this three minutes to please use the microphone and stand. That way we can make sure that it's captured well and and then you can have a seat. So without further ado, we'll ask you to go ahead. Hi, everybody. My name is April Menegetti and I am a Supervising Environmental Health Specialist with Yolo County Environmental Health. And the unit that I supervise is the Consumer Protection Unit. And we are the ones that come out and do your restaurant inspections and your pool inspections and body art inspections. So I'm looking at this issue more from from that perspective. How do we protect the consumer that's going to be consuming these cannabis products? And one thing that a lot of people don't realize right now is that the cannabis market is unregulated. So the dispensaries that are already existing, the edibles that you may have seen, there and there's a lot of them out there. There's gummies, there's cookies, there's brownies, there's there's all kinds of there's oils. All of that is currently not regulated at all. And just so you guys kind of know what the plan is. So coming up is that the state is planning on being the regulatory agency for for the edible market and for the products. But also at a county level, we're having discussions whether or not we want to be involved in regulating that also like we would regulate a restaurant or a market or something like that. So that's just kind of the the overview of what what what I'm looking at from my perspective. Dangerous with these cords and these glasses of water. This on all right. Ashley Feeney. I'm assistant community development director here at the city of Davis. And I operate in this space from a staff standpoint. I'm working with a larger team includes Dave here to my right, as well as other team members within the city of Davis. And we're really developing local regulation. And that comes out of some of the state laws that passed. We have the MCRSA, which stands for the Medical Cannabis Regulatory and Safety Act, which was passed in 2016. And then we now have the Adult Use of Marijuana Act. And within both of those state laws, there's a personal use provisions. But there's also a whole host of I'd say commercial cannabis regulatory framework that local jurisdictions need to look to to say, okay, how do we enact some regulations? What's right for our community? You know, to to bring forward for, you know, local consideration. So the city council directed our team to go ahead and bring forward some regulations that would deal with both the commercial cannabis side of things as well as the personal use. And we've been working as a team to go ahead and bring some ordinance forward. And one of the things that will actually be going to the Planning Commission tomorrow night is a personal use ordinance that would allow for indoor and outdoor cultivation consistent with the Adult Use of Marijuana Act. And then there's also a land use matrix that's for discussion purposes on the commercial cannabis side of things with a associated map. So we're starting those conversations. The ordinance would actually be for personal use that get an actual recommendation from the Planning Commission for City Council consideration. And then the land use matrix is there for discussion purposes for the Planning Commission. And we'll be taking the Planning Commission's comments to the City Council on March 21st for a workshop so we can report back what those results were. And also report back on the outreach that we've done to date, which includes a meeting that was on February 1st that had over 80 participants there talking about cannabis. And we also have some polls that are currently underway, some questionnaires to the community. So we'll be reporting those results, reporting the results of the Planning Commission and getting further direction from Council on March 21st about personal use ordinances and also development of a commercial cannabis ordinance as well. Perfect. Thank you, Ash. We're going to go next to Dave Delaney. Again, this is just by alphabet first name. So go ahead, Dave. So the police departments, we're working with the other city staff and providing recommendations as staff. Oh, I'm sorry. I always think I have a lot of voice than I do. All right. Sorry. So the police department's working with other city staff in the hopes of giving Council our opinions, professional opinions in regards to the implementation of the ordinance that Ash just discussed. Police Department working in this area, you know, obviously we're concerned with public safety and we're concerned about public annoyances for lack of a better word for it as we also deal with code enforcement. So from anything to having our officers deal with driving under the influence with people under the using marijuana with people growing in their backyards and neighbors complaining about odors from the plants and stuff like that. So that's how law enforcement we're basically providing our input as to our experience and dealing with the area. These guys are very efficient. We have more time for questions. Our next speaker is going to be Heidi D'Agostino from the County of Yolo who has a kind of told me has kind of a unique foot in two worlds on this one. So she's going to take some time to explain that to us. Sure. Thanks for inviting us. I'm Heidi D'Agostino. I actually work for the Yolo County District Attorney's Office. I work in the Consumer and Environmental Protection Division. When this position opened up, when the Yolo County, pardon me, voters made the decision. I don't know what it could be. It's me. In November, John Young proposed this idea to Jeff Rye that you are to combine forces and make the cannabis task force with participants from the Sheriff's Department, Environmental Health, the Consumer Unit, Ag Department, Planning, Building. It's a whole group that comes together and kind of vets all these individual applications as they go through the process. Jeff's mindset from the outside when he lent me here was make it transparent. If it's going to, if the folks have decided to make it legal, make it transparent and make it safe. So I kind of wear the hat of both helping folks that want to be regulated come into the regulated, come out of the shadow, so to speak, into the regulated world of cannabis. And we invite you to join us. For folks that don't want to join and prefer to stay in the dark shadows of cannabis, we'll find you. Okay. Thank you. We're going to have to shift that microphone around. Our next speaker is going to be. Okay, so so this all changed for me really March 2016. Really, I was put in charge with developing kind of the cannabis program for Yolo County. We really started out to determine well, what are the needs of the residents around cannabis? What are the needs of the patients and what are the needs of the cultivators? And like Heidi had mentioned, it was it was put together to be kind of an enforcement based program to encourage people to come into the regulatory framework. We chose to do things a little differently. We didn't put together a massive ordinance package. What we chose is to put together a framework so that we could learn what the cultivators were doing, how they operated and using that to inform our decision making process. So that's kind of the model that we used. We're now in the process of developing a comprehensive regulatory package, really for the entire scope of the industry, its cultivation, its manufacturing dispensing really every licensing category, we're looking to put something together for. One of the pieces I will caution anybody that's developing an ordinance, you need to cap the numbers. If you don't, you will have a massive land rush on your hands. Properties were turned over quickly. Monterey found that they actually had people kicked out of traditional greenhouses because cannabis growers can pay more money. So just be aware as you roll forward to make sure you pay attention to the law of unintended consequences here. Thank you very much. John, our next speaker is going to be Keith and Keith, why don't you just stand out front there? And then I'll give you this one. I'm Keith Pitts with Merone Bioinnovations, we're a Davis based biopesticide company, mainly focused on plant extract and microbial based pesticides. They tend to be all of our organics were certified, they tend to be tolerance exempt as a class of pesticides, which means USEPA is determined, there's no residue limits for the products that would be of concern. They also tend to be workers safe. So we have many minimum reentry intervals and pre harvest intervals for the products as well. So all very much reduced risk of pesticides. How we got involved with the industry as of late is we do have to get all of our products approved by the USEPA. Obviously, cannabis is not a legal crop in the eyes of the federal government. So we're not allowed to put that use on our label. So a lot of states that have either medical or adult use tend to look for specific crops on the label and use patterns that will allow them to be eligible for cannabis. We in the course of being a small company, we divvy up our label sometimes to other distributors to take a portion of it and inadvertently at times we've removed the use that basically caused us to be dropped from the approved list that a state may have. We weren't really paying attention to it, but we all of a sudden would get calls from cannabis growers. What happened to your product? Why did it get dropped? Is there a safety issue here? Do you just not like the cannabis industry? So and we got a lot of those calls. So that got us just wondering, well, you know, what kind of customer base do we have here? They tended to be work behind the scenes for a number of years up until legalization has kicked in a high gear. So as you know, our CEO is an exuberant and interject voter of the Davis and UC. So we have a longstanding relationship with the Graduate School of Management to do studies for most of the time. So we did ask them this past year to do one on the cannabis industry, mainly for us to start getting our brain around the industry. Now, just gonna throw out a couple of numbers that were kind of interesting to us. You know, as a crop in 2014, the kind of sales revenue value is 4.6 billion. And in 2020, it's expected to be $22.8 billion in as far as US in 2014, 92% of the sales were in medical marijuana and 8% into the adult market. 2020, it's expected to be 53% in the adult market, and 40% 47% in the medical. If I believe the numbers, the California growers say about 80% of what sold in the United States comes from California. If you look at the crop in 2006, if it were illegal, the tie, it would be the top cash crop in 12 states, the top three and 30 states in the top five and 39 states. And we look at California, the 2012 kind of estimated revenue values were cannabis about 14 billion milk, about 7 billion grapes, about four and a half billion and almonds, about four and a half billion. So we're, we're talking a significant economic impact here. And it's, I think it's just getting interesting time. There are about six or seven states with a value of the crop is over $1 billion annually. So that got us paying attention to this customer base and mainly why we're paying attention to it is a lot of illegal pesticide use is going on within the crop. Our, our particular products are compatible with where this industry needs to head. And, you know, in addition to legal residue issues, there are flip side issues dealing with microbial and fungal contaminants on these particular products that quite frankly, some of the biopesticides being alive microbes get wrapped up into kind of the chemical the microbial contaminant testing. So we're currently trying to work with the industry to develop labels that are going to work better for them. Our labels tend to be for ag commodities, large scale. So we're looking at more home garden type labels that can work with the industry a lot better. Great. Thank you very much. And our last speaker in this round will be Lauren. Great. Thank you, Mayor. Really, this is it's amazing. The city ran a workshop a while ago that was really well attended. But this this is amazing. So big, big thanks to the chamber today. And to our local and local Davis and Yolo County governmental officials. One of the things I want to point out to the folks that are here today is one of the really great things that's happened in Yolo County, especially is the local community and the government, you know, the people sitting here, I have really gotten out in front of this, not behind it, to be proactive as something that is coming in and wrapping their heads around how to work with it and do a good job with it. I came on to integrate a little less than half a year ago as the CEO and joined two gentlemen that are here today that worked very hard in the public policy and advocacy space to provide good information to the city of Davis and other jurisdictions in regards to what actually has been happening historically in the state of California and actually in other municipalities and states around the country. What we try to do it integrate Cal community partners and we just refer to ourselves as integrate is simply that is teaching the cannabis community how to integrate themselves into the existing community. The way we do that is we develop programs and we work with existing cannabis entities that are now embarking upon the brave new world as of January one, which is the brave new world of regulation of legality at the state level and the local level. Our job is to make sure that we erase a lot of the baggage that has come along with the terms that are thrown out in the industry to describe this plant and you'll notice that I'll only refer to it as cannabis or medicine. And that's for a reason because that's what we're dealing with now. We're dealing with the medical side of this. What we do it integrate is we try to get those existing entities that have really been operating a little bit in the shadows, even though it is a regulated industry, there's a lot of things that go to the side and new entities and people that are looking to enter into the space either substantively or in what I call the picks and shovels area of the ancillary services that surround the cannabis industry. In doing so, what we do is we work with folks and we show them how to give back monetarily to their communities. For instance, in Davis to assign a certain percentage of profits to say maybe the Davis schools foundation through educational programs, through wellness programs. And that's basically to offer those services for free to the community so that the cannabis folks are plugged into the community as vibrant members of the community, tax paying members of the community, people that are employing folks within the community and providing opportunities but not taking away from the community itself. So thank you very much for having me today. Appreciate your time. Thank you. And I'm going to just walk up and down here. Is there anybody now that you've heard everything that's been said in introductory way, anything that anybody wants to add as a brief comment at this point, whatever it might be. Okay, so then we have a microphone. We have plenty of time for Q&A now. We can go for probably about 40 minutes. And so what I'd like you to do if you have a question, put your hand up and try to seek you out. And again, if you can address it to one of the members, please do. And we'll allow each person, you know, to respond if they'd like to the question. So are you afraid to ask a question? My name is Dan Carson. I'm the C Finance and Budget Commission. And I'm rarely afraid of asking questions. The and I'll direct this to whoever really feels they could answer it. We're in an interesting situation in that this is a college town sitting side by side with our city. And my understanding from talking to a campus official or two in the past is that it's highly unlikely for many, many years that they will be providing retail sales or anything of that kind on the campus. What are the implications for us as the town in the town gown relationship of having this large market sitting next to us, but also perhaps interesting complications for public safety. I'll go to John. So anybody that hasn't heard of the website, Meadmapper.com, I suggest you go there because right now the university has almost the entire scope of delivery services happened on the UC Davis campus. So what that means for the dispensary world is all that tax money and potential revenue is going to Sacramento or to other entities. So it already happened. So my suggestion is take a look at what already occurs. And if it makes a good business case, put a dispensary in Davis to capture the revenue. Others who would like to address the issue of university city relationship and the market. Yeah, go ahead. The only thing I think that I can add that that would be helpful is that the one thing that is going to happen is this this industry is now going to become regulated. So it's actually going to become safer for the students because there will be there will be ways now to properly make sure that all the testing is done so there aren't pesticides and fungicides and molds and anything. So this will now go to it will raise to a little bit more of that level. And what John said is exactly right. That said that's happening now in this town. Thank you. Anybody else on this one? Okay. Other questions. See one over there. And I am going to ask you all while she's going over there to think about the question that has been raised. I think by Keith of federal versus local federal versus state and local and what the implications that are. I'll have a comment about that at the end in relation to a large proportion of our population in the city. Go ahead. I don't have a question. Could you stand up please. By the way if you're if you're happy to say your name say it. You don't have to. My name is Liz. This is not specifically for any of you but maybe one of you or all of you would like to address it. It would be nice to have a snapshot of exactly what cannabis retail is like for anyone in California right now for a consumer. And when is the what is the next date when that jumps ahead like when that retail. Situation changes. Looking at you ask. Yeah it's a good question. Right now there are a number of dispensaries that operate in different communities throughout the state. And those are medical cannabis dispensaries. And so in order to obtain cannabis or cannabis products from one of those dispensaries you have to be a medical card holder. I'd say the next time that's going to change would be in January of 2018 when the state starts accepting applications for for actual dispensaries. Well actually let me back up. There's the medical cannabis dispensaries. The actual state licenses will be issued starting next year. And so there's active dispensaries right now that are operating but they're operating under local land use authority. And so you'll see a change in that the state's going to be getting involved next year. So you'll you'll may see some of how those dispensaries operate potentially change because they'll be regulated by the state and not just local authority now. As far as the recreational dispensaries the state hasn't announced exactly to my knowledge what the timeline is going to be for starting to look at those applications for a adult use dispensary that's non-medical. Could you just continue on for a minute and talk about the difference between state permitting and local permitting. And maybe some others want to discuss that because you mentioned both. What's the interface. So currently under state law it allows for local jurisdictions to have cannabis related businesses operate subject to local regulation. And that's happening throughout the state mainly in the dispensary world. One of the things that is going to change is the state's going to get more involved with that. But this the state law does allow for local regulation of cannabis businesses and allows for those businesses to continue to operate until such time the state issues those licenses. And so there's there's nothing that precludes a local jurisdiction from adopting regulations for cannabis businesses and allows those businesses to operate ahead of the state accepting applications. And the state actually I would say is going to be looking to local jurisdictions to adopt regulations that make sense for those local jurisdictions. And then the state would go ahead and handle those applications as they come in. But for the state to review the applications one of the things we're going to be looking at is do you have a local approval in place. Does your local jurisdiction allow for your business to operate. And are you really in good standing with that local jurisdiction as they consider the state application. Anybody else want to add to that. Yeah. Go ahead. So for the county on the county side Yolo County Board of Supervisors has not made any decisions yet and dispensaries or retail on that discussion is happening among a smaller group of the steering committee members. I do want everybody here to get a real sense when you buy cannabis now if you buy an edible if you smoke in hail. Have a gummy bear have a brownie. You have to know there's no lab certification out there. There is no lab stamp of approval on that product. The state has been way behind the curve on this and it's been up to the locals. People like John and April and these agencies to kind of say we're not waiting for you state. This is coming. We're not waiting for January 18. We're talking with labs now we're saying what are the best management practices. You really we went to a cannabis class a two day summit in Sacramento the three of us and it was shocking how out of sorts the state seems to be on this and how behind I mean here in Yolo County. I'm surprised how progressive we are. I listened to county after county. I mean big counties Ventura you know Fresno large counties there nowhere near ordinance writing or or even addressing this issue and it's coming at you. And if locals don't make a decision by January you're gonna you're gonna take what the state gives you if the state gives you anything by January 18 and they've shown us no indication that they've got their act together and in particular when it comes to the labs that's the component we need the bet the most so April can say that food is safe. You don't even know how many calories the damn product has. I mean you can't go to the store and buy a product like that. We'll come over here to learn. Laps are hard to follow. No Heidi is very right but I want to point out something. It's true. There are regulations. I think that the problem is is in enforcing the regulations but I will tell you and there are people in this room now. There are people that are dispensary owners and delivery owners that are doing really good jobs and are making sure that their product is lab tested as an overall as an overall generalization true. There's a lot of people that aren't paying attention to it but there are some really really progressive and good actors in this space especially the people that very much wrap their philosophy and ideals around the actual true nature cannabis and that is for medicine. And there are a really amazing caregivers in this state that are doing great jobs with people working with people with cancer and Parkinson's and all kinds of seizures disorders and lots of those dispensaries have actually gratis programs free programs for veterans that have PTSD and things of that nature. So I want to make sure that you do understand that there are some really great actors in this space but as a general rule Heidi is right and that's why we are looking forward to the regulated land as of January 1. Thanks. Good so I think you're starting to see the issues and maybe it helped frame some questions. You've got a retail space current retail space coming. You've got regulations related to food safety labeling growing pesticide use and then you've got land use issues related to retail which we could get into more. So starting to see some of the the variety of issues that that will be addressed in these local and state ordinances. Who else has. Go ahead. Typically with food safety related issues that the federal government tends to take the lead on it and they're absent and I don't see that changing anytime soon and really about California is the only state I'm aware of that even has infrastructure remotely resembling what FDA has with the US government. So I think that a lot of people are going to be looking to California to sort through these issues. Future job opportunities in the food safety space is what you need to be thinking about here. All right. We have a question over here. OK. We'll have one back there and then there's one up here towards the front. Go ahead. Yeah. Mark Thompson first of all thanks for opening up the conversation for our community. I remember as a kid going to school and learning for drugs including alcohol that's a glass of wine is approximately equivalent to a shot of whiskey which is equivalent to about a beer. And I remember as a general rule even in my adult life this is kind of how I manage myself. But when we're talking about marijuana and cannabis is there a way to measure at this point what it is that these people are consuming. And if so how are we going to be displaying that. And then as a police officer how are you going to be able to differentiate what it is to be able to a breathalyzer or a lipless test or what is that you guys are thinking about that we have in place to be able to have for safety. Sounds like he's calling you out here Dave. Well in regards to potency per dosage units and things of that nature that's something that would come with the with regulations and lab testing and and would probably be better sorted out when it comes into the legitimate market because you'll have people with testing and I would assume and not just for molds but also for THC potency because that's that's Colorado has been experienced is that you know you have a gummy bear but you don't necessarily know how many nanograms of THC you're in each one of the dosage units. I'm sorry. I'm sorry I'm just answering from the law enforcement standpoint so I'm just interested in intoxication things that cause public safety problems but but I understand that there's all is like you know however many chemicals in marijuana or cannabis sorry old habits die hard and I don't know that I'll be able to change that my apologies. So that and of course from a public safety concern as far as driving you know DUI and stuff like that yeah that's to come up with a way to measure intoxication I mean we always have the field sobriety test so you watch people's balance and coordination but as far as having something like for alcohol we can say hey you know zero eight you know blood alcohol percentage so to come up with a specific nanogram content in the blood that we say hey that's your intoxicated you can't drive past that level is something that would have to be determined and then the other problem is how do you figure out how much is actually still in there because as I understand it it's fat soluble and so it can be in the blood even when you're not under the influence so there's a lot of complexity and as far as dealing with it. Yeah just and on that last point I mean even in situations where people are drug and alcohol tested for programs various programs even in this community there are THC waivers for that very reason and because it does stay in the bloodstream for extended periods of time and is not impairing so these are definitely some challenges. Did anybody else want to address the question of assessing impairment or or anything of that nature. Okay then we'll go to a question over here. Good afternoon my name is Spencer Manners I want to thank the chamber for for this opportunity to listen to this really interesting subject. My question has to do with it just came to my mind we're talking about dispensaries and cultivation and manufacturing etc. etc. here in Davis there are so many restaurants and bars and things like that that don't fall into that category but I'm just wondering at some point is some enterprising business person going to decide to have a cannabis section to their restaurant or or or their bar or whatever and who would regulate that how would that happen. Go ahead. If it starts pounding again. Then I'll turn it off. That's a really good question and I can totally see some entrepreneur doing that. So right now you would not be able to do that under your food permit. So you would have to separate that business from your rush say we'll talk about a restaurant. So that they cannabis section would need to be totally separate from the restaurant. You couldn't be serving any cannabis infused foods because canvas is not considered a food and therefore can't be in foods that you sell under a health permit in a restaurant currently. So right now the state is saying that they're going to inspect all the dispensaries and they're going to inspect all the the manufacturing or any kind of making of products that contain cannabis. But like I mentioned you know at a county level we're having discussions now to determine do do we want to inspect that also. Do we want to permit that and inspect that which is what some counties have already made the decision to do like Sonoma County. They've written an ordinance giving environmental health the jurisdiction to make those inspections. So that's so as of right now no a restaurant or a bar they couldn't serve any kind of cannabis under their food permit and the state is the agency currently that would be doing the regulating starting in 2018. It's actually it's a really good question and actually this has been brought up in the Davis City Council meetings before actually brought up by the City Council itself in regards to having a place where people who wanted to ingest or smoke cannabis could be. As it stands now if you're a student and you're living in the dorms or you're living in apartments usually no smoking clause in your lease but you can't go outside and smoke it legally either. So where do you go? What do you do with that? So you can see there's a little bit of a conundrum and we're we're figuring out that way. So that has been discussed and there are there are couple jurisdictions in the country that have opened up what are quote unquote being called smoking lounges so to speak. So that that is something that I imagine is going to continue to mature and we'll continue to look at some of those issues to see how to deal with those. Just one minor correction to something you said the City Council I think our current ordinance does not allow ambulatory smoking of cannabis or stationary in public. However there are exceptions made for those that have medical cannabis cards that would allow actually someone to go outside of their apartment if they're not allowed to smoke inside and consume it outside. So I just want to draw that's our current as our current ordinance stands related to smoking. We have a couple questions. Yeah. My name is Lori Lagrisham and just sort of to follow up on Mark's question. I was just wondering if Mr. Delaney has seen an increase in disturbances or since January and do you anticipate an increase or decrease how what effect do you think it will have on public safety. And then this is another question but I'll just for those of us who would like to be more educated on the medical benefits of the product. Where would you recommend that we go because I feel like I you know I don't know about everybody else but I feel like there's a huge educational gap here that I would like to say. So let's start with a question on expectations in terms of impairment and public safety issues. And then I think there are some folks here that can talk at least give some general updates on you know evidence of medical benefit. So we'll start with you again. OK. So concerns regarding impairment from a public safety standpoint. It's really hard to predict. I guess logically one would think that if you increase the availability of an intoxicant in an environment that you're going to have more people intoxicated because more people will be able to use it and have the and have the access to it. So so that's a concern as far as you know driving and stuff like that. As far as our we don't we haven't kept statistics since January as far as the change. Anecdotally I could just say last picnic day. We there was a lot of marijuana smoke in the city. Pretty much everywhere you went it smelled like it smelled like weed. So but we noticed that there was less. We had less violence calls. So maybe that contribute to it. Maybe it didn't. I don't know. So I wish. Yeah. One of the things that in law enforcement will like in any business I would imagine as well is that you always forecasting right. I mean because you're already where you are and you want to know where everything's going. And so we're looking and we're trying we're trying to see what trends and how things affect. But frankly I can't give a really good solid answer and as far as the medical education portion that's not me. Anybody else first on the the any impairment issues. Anybody want to give a testimonial about what they were doing on picnic day. You want to talk about actually it's interesting to back up our officer up here meeting with Chief Pytel a little while ago. He told us that he recognized certain things over over really about the last year. One of the things that he recognized is in an uptake of the intake of cannabis either through smoking or ingesting. He has noticed less people in our bars in Davis over the last year. In addition to the fact he also shared with me that he's noticed less of the vibrant house parties that have been fueled by alcohol. So both of those things have been reduced over about the last year's period of time. And that's something that Chief Pytel had shared with us as well. I can probably segue at this point time into the next question if that works for everybody. And the answer is there is a lot of information on the benefits of medical cannabis. If you want to NIH is one of the leading research facilities in the country. The federal government has issued permits down to Mississippi for cannabis to be tested. I also think most recently in North Carolina. In addition, if you want to one of the easiest things you could do is Google Charlotte's web like the movie and the word cannabis. And read the story of the little girl that used to suffer from over 34 seizures a day. Who is now down to about one a day I think. But there are some amazing amazing case studies that you can find just by doing a little bit of research and I can pass this on to anybody else who might have some information. Anything else on any of these two questions that were raised at this point. Okay. We have another question over here. Then we have then we have one up here to a couple over here. Hi, I'm Phil Kitchen. I was wondering whether you could address banking and the fact that there are federally insured banks can't take ill gotten gains and how taxes are paid in the in the state. You can't write a check out of a bank for something that you've done that's that's against the law according to the feds. Okay. We have somebody ready to answer over here. All right. So so banks are always going to be controlled by the feds and the cash nature of this business is a big, big problem. So Yolo County's experience. We had to actually get a cash counting machine. We had to create a special process because these clients come in with 100 grand and they have to run it through the cash counting machine. You have to make special appointments. So the cash nature of this business is a big problem. It will not be solved in the near future. Did anybody else want to speak to that? Okay. I know we had one. Yeah, we're going to go here and then there. We're just jogging back and forth here. I know she was next question as well. Okay. Go ahead. Great. Thank you, Eric Goods. Also, thank you very much for our panelists for taking some time out of the day. One thing I was going to mention real quick before I asked my two questions was that the banking thing is actually a curious topic for the Board of Equalization. Right now, they're actually pioneering a few programs where they're looking at the possibility of credit unions and other localized, smaller decentralized banks to provide additional steps and measures in between the federal and the local. And so that's something that's happening right now, specifically up in Northern California. So if you're interested, I encourage you to check that out. The questions I have for all of you here is two part. One, I'm curious to know what the various agencies that you all represent will be doing with the very exciting information that's going to be coming out in a few weeks from our Bureau of Medical Cannabis Regulation. There's some guidance that's going to be issued in the next three or four weeks, approximately on the timelines and relative progress that the state is doing on its regulation programs launching for next year. So I'm curious to know what each of the departments are kind of gearing up to do with that information and how they wish to kind of incorporate that within their existing policy plans. And then second, can we just do one of the other? Are they related at all? They're very different. We can do one at a time. Okay, let's do that. Any upcoming, this is in the medical space, is that right Eric? You said in the medical the regulations are going to be coming out. It will be medical initially to start, but then those guidelines will also be kind of including non-medical as well. For those of you that don't know the state through the Department of Consumer Affairs Bureau of Cannabis, something or other, they're doing their own regulatory framework and you can log in and check on the progress that they're making as they go through these same type of growing pains the county has gone through. So I know I personally check in on that and see if the state seems to be leaning a certain way, that Yolo County doesn't happen to be leaning. I haven't seen that yet, but I do encourage you all before January 18 to make your voices heard. No other reactions to those upcoming regulations? Go ahead with your quick second question. We want to give a chance for other people as well. Sure. So the second question has to do with some of the complexities that come about within cannabis policy that we're seeing. So we're seeing a lot of intersections between land use, transportation issues, distribution, research, testing, retail, all these things. It's creating a very interconnected and dynamic system that is quickly seeing as like really growing outside of the county boundaries even. So I'm curious to know this is an excellent example of opportunities where we have city officials and county officials coming together to solve these complex dynamic system problems. But I'm curious to know what opportunities we have in the future that any of you can tell right now where we can sort of keep continuing those conversations for that interconnectedness. Because we've got a lot of city policy that's coming out very quickly and it's not quite at the pace. It's a little bit faster than the county policy and you've got other cities in the county that are still far behind. So I'm kind of curious on the strategies from everybody on how to connect. So this is city county, city county interface who can talk about what's currently going on and then where things might be going. Start with Ash. Yeah, actually we've been interfacing quite a bit just even from staff to staff. But then we also haven't organized multi jurisdictional meeting, you know, cities, the county, various agencies of school district within Yolo County to talk about what each agency is doing, challenges they may have, where they're headed with certain regulations, certain topics. So we're talking quite a bit and we're going to keep that dialogue going as we work through this. I just want to talk about that collaboration. For me, the component that I see that would be the best component for everybody working together at a state from the state agency or all counties and all cities is the one we haven't spoke of today, which is transportation. Because as John said, whether you like it or not, this cannabis is trafficking through your counties, a uniform, you know, transportation, regulation, minimum bonding, life-scanning, whatever. I mean, but we all have to be on the same page in transportation. Yolo can't make its own rule and Davis can't make their own rule. It needs to be won. So those of you looking to get into the cannabis business or emerging markets, I'd say look at that transportation because we're nowhere near talking about that yet. So one of the pieces for the collaboration aspect of things that we try to understand where our cities are at because Yolo County has all the cultivators. Traditionally, that's been our role is we have the farmers. Most of the processing happens in the cities. So as I have an understanding of what the city of Davis and what Sacramento wants is I understand clients come, I want manufacturing, I want dispensary. Well, then I push them to contacts like Ash from the city to say, hey, they're ahead of us. So I suggest based on your timeline, you may want to have a conversation with the city. So that's what we do is try to understand where everybody's at so that when clients come forward that we can get them in contact with the right people. Thank you. From the standpoint of the private sector and we do consulting and in addition to a public policy and advocacy work, we work with with cannabis entities and people looking to enter into the space in business. They're also looking for information. They need to know what's happening, how things are moving, what the regulations are and what we do and what you can turn to other people for is there are folks like us that are out aggregating information and figuring out, working with going to the Yolo County Board of Supervisors meetings and city council meetings and all the workshops and seeing what's going on with the state. So our job that we embark on is to stay current on all of these different agencies that are all making decisions that are working together. But for you, for lots of folks to just go to the city as opposed to Yolo County, there are different things going on and then you have things at the state level. So look to some of those folks. If you have any questions, you're more than welcome to contact us at any time to ask about that. We issue papers all the time to go over those regulations and basically aggregate the information so that it's in one place for everybody. Thank you. We have a question right here. And my name is Brenda. Knowing that the state is going to regular the cannabis industry, I know I will also get its hands on the revenue. And although I am concerned with the safety of the product, I know much of it will go to bureaucratic procedures. And it's important to know that so far there haven't been any overdoses in marijuana. I'm more concerned about the billions of revenue that it's going to bring. How much of that is going to go into educational programs to inform our community, knowing that a lot of questions that people ask, we are very uninformed about the cannabis industry. So I think I'm a little bit curious as to who would be in charge of diverting those funds into the educational programs. OK. So this is about use of revenue generated by the retail or, well, sale at any level, wholesale retail or from revenue generated through production. Any sense of where that, how that decisions about how revenue is used, what's mandated by the state, is there a required educational component, anything you can say about that? Well, I don't know this one like the back of my hand here, but I do know that there is within the state law there are certain revenues that are expected to be generated and that there's funds that if you are a community that allows for a cannabis industry to exist within within your community and you also allow for the personal cultivation that you would be in line to get some of those potential revenues coming from the state. So there'll be a pot of money that I think there's some priorities first to go ahead and meet some state needs and things of that nature. But then ultimately some of those dollars will be going to the local jurisdictions to be used for programs like education, also to deal with substance abuse, things of that nature. I can just tell you from Davis, just so you know, we currently, though we don't allow sale of recreational cannabis in the city, we did and you did citizens approve a potential tax should we decide to permit it, not on medical, on adult use. It was a general tax, meaning we could not specify in the tax language the specific uses of the revenues. And that's going to be an issue, any additional taxes that are imposed beyond what the state would have, basically additional sales taxes or other taxes, it's really going to be up to each jurisdiction to define how it's going to use those revenues. And there's no, I'm not aware of any requirement from the state that local additional revenues generated by sales have to go to education. So it's a question you should be asking of your local officials, what is their plan for use even though again in the taxation language that all voters would have to vote on for additional taxes on any product, if it's a general tax they cannot specify it. So it's really going to be a policy decision that's going to happen community by community if and when they decide to tax. And from our perspective, I can say we put the tax on as a placeholder, but we have not at all. I think I'm correct in saying that. I don't remember us discussing at all the potential uses of that tax. But we are a really revenue starved state. Every jurisdiction is trying to figure out how to fix roads. I just put that out there. We have a question here and then one in the front. Good afternoon. My name is Rob Reed and I have a question about the 17 different kind of license types for cannabis cultivation to the extraction to the dispensing. If Yolo County, which they already have and Davis decides to allow for a certain number of those licenses to be permitted to operate within the county or the city, what mechanisms are being put in place to make sure that local stakeholders are the ones who benefit and not the deep pockets of people from outside of Davis or Yolo County. I do know right now many lobbying efforts are taking place and there are individuals in this room today who do not live in Yolo County, do not live in Davis, but are looking at our town and our county is a place to make money and take it out of Yolo County. So will there be mechanisms in place or through the vetting process that allows for local stakeholders to get a first shot at these opportunities? Sounds like a political question to me, but John's going to grab it. You know, it's actually more than a political question. It's a constitutional question. You know, we approached that. We initially tried to put in some residence requirements, but we rapidly found out that when you own a piece of property, you have rights with that property and it doesn't go with how long you've been there or who you are or your local. You have property rights. So that becomes very much a challenge for locals to do just that because that's what we want, right? We want to support our local community. But the way the Constitution is written, that's really, really a tough challenge to do that. That's really, it's a private property right. So there's rights that are given to property holders. Go ahead. Corporation requirements for someone who had a permit. Out of my bailiwick, but I do wonder about, as part of a permit, whether you had to be incorporated in the state to be, to hold the permit. You know, I think right now, I think John speaking to the property rights, that's a whole subject area that you're accurate. I mean, that's, there's a lot of constitutional requirements there, but one of the things that, from the city of Davis speaking to where we're headed, we're going to council on the 21st with the workshop. Tomorrow night, we'll be at the planning commission. We're looking to land use matrix that speaks to land use. It doesn't necessarily speak to an application process. So at that workshop, we'll probably learn more from where the council's thinking on the various license types that we're going to be bringing forward, where they're located, suggested regulations related to land use, but then there's this whole separate, like say licensing and taxation considerations that we'll learn more about where the council's thinking. And I'm not going to tell you what I'm thinking right now. Because I don't really know what I'm thinking. Good, other, do we have a few other questions? Yeah, I think we're going to take maybe three to four more questions. I think we'll have time and then we'll have a wrap up. Davis has a reputation for being a green city and it's commendable that you're considering outdoor cultivation along with indoor cultivation. Indoor cultivation leaves a huge carbon footprint. It's unsustainable and it also creates pesticide problems because indoor demands more pesticides because it's just conducive to spider mites and other pests. One of the reasons why cities and counties ban it outdoor is because of the odor. And with education, growers can switch to varieties and strains that smell pleasant. The growers that I consult with, I've convinced them to grow varieties that smell like strawberries, that smell like lemon, that smell like citrus, that smell like bazooka bubblegum. And people, their neighbors have stopped complaining about it because it's a pleasant odor. So with education, growers can switch from the skunky smell to more pleasant smells. But I commend Davis for considering both indoor and outdoor and not just going indoor. So I didn't hear a question there. Does anybody want to talk about bubblegum or strawberries? Okay, I see one right here. And then one in the back. My name is Terilyn Gray. I'm with the president of Metro Black Chamber of Commerce and what a fabulous event this is today. My question is digging a little bit deeper on taxation. And I'm just curious as to how all of the folks involved in the industry will pay their taxes? Are they required to pay their taxes? Is the franchise tax board prepared to receive cash payments? Do they have a cash counting machine? Are those that do file their taxes in attempt to be above board? As you suggested, they be. What will be their repercussions on the federal level? You can't exactly file a tax return for illicit activities. So is anybody dealing with that? And is anybody dealing with the corporation code and how to determine those to answer that gentleman's question back there? Who's local? Who has Nexus? Where and how do we get a piece of that? Who's working on that? Oops. Okay, Ash is gonna, he's gonna take a chance. I think, you know, federal, I'm sure there's a lot of creative accountants that are working through that. So I do understand that people in this space do file federal tax returns. Don't know all the nuances associated with that. I do know the state regularly accepts payments. Some of the dispensaries that I've talked to make monthly payments for equalization, things of that nature. Here locally, as Mayor Davis mentioned, we have a up to a 10% local tax on all cannabis products, except for those that are sold at a medical dispensary. So if somebody was manufacturing or cultivating or otherwise, one of the other license types that there would be, they would be subject to a tax up to 10%, those tax rates haven't been set yet for the various license types at this time. So. But the reality is we haven't discussed at the city level collection issues. I can say that for a fact, we haven't discussed that. Well, John put together a very progressive, I think permit fee schedule based on the canopy and whether you're growing THC strain or CBD. You know, trying to offer some alleviation financially for folks that are growing 100% for medicinal. There's also a one time, there's a fee, depends on how often you cultivate your product, but we're learning at the county level, I'm sure just like the city is, I have no idea what the feds are gonna do. We have no idea really what BOE is gonna come down and do. I believe 100% of my heart that you have as many people anxious to go out into the world and be embraced as cannabis growers and wanna pay their taxes and wanted to send their kids to school with some pride at what they do. And I think they wanna be a part of our community. So to that extent, the ones that I've seen seem very willing to come into the sun as they say. Maybe just another point. This is not a taxation response, but as we're on the federal side, I just wanted to mention that, you know, we have, I'm gonna say 6,000 to 7,000 international students or scholars in this community. They're here on a variety of short-term visas. They're non-immigrant. The federal government does consider consumption of cannabis to be, I think it's a misdemeanor. It would be grounds for them losing their status. At this point, and it could be as simple as a customs and border patrol officer asking them, have you consumed? And of course, lying to a federal officer could lead to other problems. We're having a workshop on this in San Francisco or just a session on it to help advisors of international students on these various visa types, J and F, particularly, to understand the risks that they would take in consuming an estate that allows it at the state level, but in the context of a federal government that's given indications that it's going to continue to restrict use among international students. So if you know international students or scholars, encourage them to be prudent. I hate to say that, but they have to be prudent, especially in these days. I think Lauren had something you wanted to respond to in terms of the tax question. I also wanted to thank you for using the word immigrant today. That being said, Tara, it's a really good question and I think that it's a very difficult question to answer, which is why I stood up because I like to answer the unanswerables. I think no matter what, there's a lot of really hard work that's being done in Yonla County, especially right now and across the state in regards to the taxing and the permitting and licensing fees and there's all these matrices that everybody's reviewing and giving feedback on. I think no matter what happens is what you're gonna find is this is gonna be a very taxed industry, permitting fees, licensing fees. There's a lot that's coming at people and I think what you're finding is the entities that are in this space and coming into this space are very professional in the way they're approaching this. They're working with the county government and city and the state to really formulate a really good system but I think no matter what gets formulated, this is gonna be a system that's gonna be, I think prone to some trial and error and to see is this our, for instance, our cultivators in Yonla County going to be overtaxed and overpermitted and licensed, is that gonna create failure for them in their own businesses? So I think what's gonna happen and what I've seen is a very, a really good working together, very, an excellent system here set up to get that feedback and I think that we're going to continue to look at this both privately and from the governmental level to make sure that this is going to be fair not only to the county and where the taxes are coming from but also who's paying them to make sure that that system works because it won't be who anybody for cultivators or dispensary owners or delivery folks or processors to fail. So I think that that's what's gonna take place. Okay, Rob, why don't I do the last question and then we can go to your wrap up, does that work for you? Okay, so the question I have is if we allow outdoor cultivation, maybe this is a question for a DHS grad, are we gonna see a lot of issues at our schools with supply going through the roof and anyone can walk into their backyard and is that going to be something that you foresee as a problem? Okay, we'll stick with this one. Okay, so this is gonna be the code enforcement issue. You definitely, it's not the commercial guys, it's not the commercial entities that are gonna cause the diversion to kids. It's that six plants outdoor and indoor. So here's our experience in Yolo County, what we found just with the medical card. So the old medical card used to allow you to have 99 plants as an individual. We found that we had to create a thousand foot buffer around our schools because it was a pathway directly to the kids. You could follow the high school kids to the medical card holder's house. The same thing's gonna occur with adult use. So that six plants that you're gonna allow is going to be an issue. You have to be able to fund that because to have your law enforcement chase all those down for very, very small fine structures, it's gonna be a problem because already cities and counties don't have enough funding for our public safety folks and now we've just created another burden. So absolutely it is going to happen. It already has. We're just gonna repeat it with adult use. Good, well we're gonna wrap up in the following way. I'm gonna just go down the line here. I think we'll just start here and go. And just what's a take home message that you would like people to go away from from your perspective. Could be a question that you want them to ponder. Could be an issue that you want them to think about as we move forward. And just try to keep your comments as brief as possible. Wow, you said that before you handed the mic to me. All right, great. I will be brief. Number one, just thank you. I very much appreciate the attendance and the chamber for holding this event. It's, I think it's fantastic. All I'm gonna say is this. Whatever you heard here, continue to do your research. Continue to show up to the meetings. The city, council, Sacramento. There's a huge policy conference going on in Sacramento today that when I leave here I go there. These things are happening almost every day. They're happening in every city and every county. They're happening with minority groups. They're happening with all kinds of chambers across the state. Stay engaged, ask the question, show up. There's something you like, let people know. There's something you don't like, let them know as well. Our job here, all of us together I think. Everybody in this room is to make sure we do a good job. We're good stewards of what's coming. Let's do a good job with it. And so the more attentive you are, the more aware you are, the better this is gonna be for us now and in the future. So thank you. Thank you. I'll be real brief. Just two things I'd like everybody to walk away from and this meeting with to think about from a code enforcement standpoint is just that do you want a marijuana dispensary in the shopping mart across the street from your home? Do you want your neighbor to be growing marijuana in their backyard with the odor or whatever? Maybe it's bubble memory. That's it. So just think about it and realize that if you don't speak to counsel, they don't know what the constituents want. And so we just wanna make sure that at the end of the day, everybody's happy and we don't have a billion and six code enforcement calls to go out and deal with. Thanks, Dave. Just kind of echoing what Dave says. I mean, now's the time to engage. If you have thoughts on how to locally regulate cannabis industry here in Davis, if you think great thumbs up, I can't wait to see it. I wanna see all license types or maybe these license types and these we should think more about or if you just have general thoughts about it. And then also on the personal use to indoor and outdoor cultivation. I mean, now's the time to engage. Now's the time to get your comments to certainly me staff as we draft these and then ultimately to your planning commission and your city council members. And Ash, can I just get a commitment that in your staff report that you bring to council that you'll actually enumerate the different license types that are potential? Absolutely, it's gonna be a longer report. There's quite a few, so. Great. And thank you everyone for setting up the event. Well, what I'm taking from this is there's a lot of threads out there that we need to weave into a whole cloth and we're all just gonna have to be patient because it's gonna feel like a game of whack-a-mole for a while. I think where we push one thing down and it pops up elsewhere, but I guess the word's communication and we can work our way through this. What I see is this industry's already been a large part of our lives, but it's been in the shadows and I think we've got a good opportunity here to do right by a lot of people. Thank you. For my point of view, the thing that I would like you guys to think about is protecting public health and I'm gonna harp on edibles again, but just the next time you're at the grocery store and you're looking at your packages, trying to figure out what you wanna get, imagine if you didn't know what the ingredients were, what the potency of it was, if it was made in a safe facility with safe food handling going on. So that's just the message I want you guys to kind of think about is, where's your food coming from? Let's go with this one. So folks, whether you're for cannabis or against cannabis, make it safe. You may not ingest it or inhale it, but make it safe for those that do. Support your labs, support their work, make it safe. So I'm gonna jump on what Heidi just said. So we already know in this industry that pesticides, biological contamination and heavy metals are just endemic in this industry and most of the cannabis out there is contaminated. So again, make it safe. How are you gonna put together a program that does that and how are you gonna guarantee to law enforcement that this product does not leave the state of California? The worst thing you could ever happen is the city of Davis, County of Yolo have a facility that traffics marijuana to Colorado, to any other state. So we need to make sure we have that guarantee for our law enforcement. Well, I think it's time to give a big hand and thanks to the folks. So again, just some timelines. When will next discussions at the county level with supervisors on any element of this be coming forward? We talking in the next month? Tuesday the 21st. Tuesday the 21st, and that will be? Nine o'clock at the board chambers. And the topic? It's gonna be on manufacturing, dispensaries, labs, kind of the whole gambit. So we plan on the last Tuesday of every month, it's gonna be a different topic for cannabis. So it's gonna be coming back to the board on a continuous basis. We're in that public outreach process. We'll probably use some of the tools that Davis used to get that actually resident input. So that's kind of our process. So over the next year, we're gonna be working on our comprehensive regulatory package. All the while we have about 98 folks that we have licensed that we are getting up and running. So we will be able to inform our own ordinance with what we find. So that's the 21st and tomorrow night at our planning commission will be the first pass on discussion of some of these issues with our planning commission, with a workshop at the Davis City Council the same day in the evening, the 21st of March. So you're all welcome to come, listen in, it's on TV. I think the soups are also televised. So these are opportunities to learn more as you have time. So thanks again to all of you for being here and for being very frank and really concise with your answers as well. I think it's very helpful and I'll turn it back over to you. So yes, thank each of you for coming and being so willing to just share your knowledge. It is a timely topic and the Chamber is really trying to engage with the community to find out what's on your mind in concerning regarding cannabis. So we're gonna, we have time for the raffle. We're gonna go ahead and jump into that. If you have not put your card in the bowl, Raul's walking around with it. Feel free to do that real quick.