 Great. I'll get started. My name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Vermont Cannabis Control Board. Today is July 6th, 2022, and I call this meeting to order. Let's see. I wanted to give just a brief update on licensing. Last week we announced that we had completed the review of all Tier 1 outdoor cultivators. This week we can announce that we've now made it through all outdoor cultivators at all tiers. This is a major achievement, of course. I have no business taking credit for it. It's really been just incredible determination of our licensing team. And of course, you know, from the get-go, we've said that outdoor sungrown cannabis is going to be a major part of this market and really what makes the Vermont market unique. So I'm really thrilled of all the entrepreneurial interests in outdoor cultivation, and I'm really excited to get through these applications. But of course, just to be clear, if you have a pending application for an outdoor cultivation license, we are either going to license you today or you have an incomplete letter waiting for you in your inbox. So if you fall into this second category, the ball is in your court. We really can't do anything more to move you along until you resubmit the portions of your application that are incomplete. So please keep an eye out for these emails. Try to resubmit them as soon as possible. If it's a bank account issue, you know, we are willing to consider a cash management plan as an alternative. When it comes to insurance, just want to reiterate that our legislature wrote it into the law that every licensee have commercial general liability insurance. You know, we know that this is a hardship. We know this probably better than the legislatures that wrote this into the law, but it is there and we can't ignore it. So if you are seeking a waiver to our insurance requirement, please keep in mind that the board will not waive this requirement in its entirety. If your risk of injury to third parties or property is low, you can describe that why that is to us and propose an amount of money that you can keep an escrow to cover claims against your business, but your risk is never going to be zero. So please don't propose zero as your kind of alternative to insurance. Next, we're going to move on to our mixed tier cultivators as our next top priority. I think there's about 50 that are still pending review. That really is not an insurmountable number to get to get through and get you operating this year, but you need to work with us and you need to get issues dealt with quickly. Our staff here as I mentioned really is tireless, but I wanted to just take a moment today to thank our counterparts at the agency of digital services, our business analysts and MTX who's the company building our licensing portal. No one has taken our deadlines as seriously as this team. Every new licensing window that opens to the public on our portal represents hundreds of hours of collective work on the back end, building the code, testing it, fixing the bugs, and then retesting it. And it's really always a photo finish as to whether or not we'll be able to launch a new licensing window by our statutory deadlines. And the only reason that we have not missed a go live date is because of the determination of this team and they very rarely get the recognition they deserve. So thank you to them. Speaking of licensing windows, just a reminder that our applications for product manufacturers, that's all three tiers and whole sailors are live. So if you're looking to apply for one of these license types, you can go to our website at ccb.vermont.gov slash forms and click on the link that says license application portal. And then just a little reminder that through the legislative process, our tier one and tier three product manufacturers got flipped. So just to be absolutely clear, the tier one product manufacturer is for the kind of home based food products or tier. Our tier two is more just a more general kind of commercial kitchen. And then our tier three is the one that's permitted to use any legal methods of extraction, including kind of some of the more explosive solvent based extraction. So I hope that's clear. It should be clear when you when you apply, but just wanted to put that out on the record one last time. Other than that, just need to approve the minutes from our last meeting June 29. Is there a motion to do so? So moved. Seconded. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Great. Well, Julia, Kyle's anything you wanted to mention before we move on to the agenda? I would just echo all your statements about the dedication of the staff and the folks who are building application process. I was fortunate to be part of some of the testing and I'm very impressed with their dedication and answering questions late into the evening to get things rolling for us. And it's very much appreciated. Likewise. I mean, I know that those folks are in different time zones working pretty much around the clock to make sure that those application windows open on time and are functional. That doesn't mean that some folks will encounter encounter small glitches as they move through the application process. But you know, when we get those, it's easy to to find a path forward. So that's it. All right. Well, then, Brynn, next on the agenda is to review the staff recommendations for licensure and social equity status. Great. Okay. So I'm going to start as always with our pre qualification applications. These are really winding down. As I've mentioned in the past few weeks today, we only have one up for board review. The window closed back at the end of May and we're just sort of dealing with some final stragglers that are coming in. So this may be the last week that we have any for the board to approve, at least for this particular pre qualification window. So we have submission number 601, which staff is recommending for pre qualification as this applicant has demonstrated suitability for pre qualification and compliance with board rules. And the license type for 601 is retail. Moving on to our license application numbers. These numbers are up to date as of the fifth, which was yesterday. So we have for board review today nine, nine applicants up for approval. And we have just under 50 licenses that the board has approved at this point. I'll move on to our list. So starting with number one. This is our list of applicants that have demonstrated that they have complied with all of the requirements for a license that are contained in board rule or in statute. So we have Rebel East Vermont, which is a mixed year five cultivator. We have Rising Sunsense LLC, year one outdoor cultivator. We have I'm going to skip reading the titles of the businesses actually, because I'm not sure how to pronounce all of them. So I'm just going to go through them by their number. So we have number three, which is an outdoor tier one cultivator. Number four is an indoor tier one cultivator. Number five is an outdoor tier one cultivator. Number six, outdoor tier one cultivator. Seven outdoor tier one cultivator. Eight is an indoor tier two cultivator. And nine is an indoor tier one cultivator. So each of these applicants has demonstrated compliance with all of the requirements of our application and staff is recommending them for a license. We'll move on now to our social equity license application numbers. We have four social equity applicants that are up for a license this week. And we have four that are being recommended for social equity status. So we have submission number 829 up for a tier two outdoor cultivation license. And staff are recommending social equity status for this applicant, since they meet the criteria for a social equity business applicant as defined in rule. Submission number 388 up for a mixed tier one cultivation license. And staff are recommending this applicant for social equity status since they meet the criteria for social equity business applicant as defined in rule. Submission 646 up for a tier one indoor cultivation license. And staff are recommending social equity status for this applicant as they also meet the criteria for social equity business applicant as defined in rule. And lastly, submission number 592 up for a mixed use tier one cultivation license. And again, staff are recommending social equity status for this applicant because they also meet the criteria for social equity business applicant as defined in rule. And we don't have any applicants on the list for social equity status denial this week. So that is that is your register for the week for your consideration. That's great. Any any questions for brand about any of these? All right. Well, then is there a motion to approve these? I move that the board accept each of the recommendations for pre qualification social equity status and licensing approval as presented by took by us just by staff in this meeting. I will second. All in favor. Hi. Hi. Great. All right. Well, I guess short meeting today, which is totally fine. You know, I did one thing that we've asked VS strategies to do once we have kind of more of a critical mass of data sets here is to update our market analysis and plug in actually, you know, the our licensees so we can get a picture of kind of how this early market really is developing. So, you know, when we have that kind of updated, we'll be posting that reviewing it maybe with our advisory committee or something along those lines. But just figure I'd throw that out there and why don't we just move on to public comment. And so we'll handle this the same way we always do. If you join via the link, please, you know, raise your virtual hand if you'd like to make a public comment. We'll start with those folks in the order that they raise their hands. And then we will move to everyone who's joined via phone afterwards. So Nelly, if you wouldn't mind maybe just helping us with the order. Absolutely. Dan is up first. Hey, everybody. All I really wanted to say is I just wanted to thank you guys and the CCB in the state of Vermont. You know, licensing cannabis in a new market is a really challenging thing. And I just wanted to recognize the effort. And, you know, there's going to be a learning curve. Nobody's expecting it to be perfect for everybody right off the bat. But this is really something that's for the people and I just want to commend all the efforts. Thank you. Thanks a lot, Dan. Bb. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you. Well, I guess I had a question for you, Mr Pepper. Maybe not get an answer. Maybe today, maybe tomorrow, maybe never. I remember several weeks back, you stated that a CSI background check, which was essentially the last stage in the process could be could be completed in a matter of hours. Well, apparently to the one person that they have working on that, who at least in the last two weeks has taken four day weekend, she states this could take a few weeks. I was just wondering, you know, maybe if we could get something done maybe a little faster, you know, a few weeks is, you know, a long time right about now, especially given, well, given the time of the year, I just wondered maybe I could get, you know, a comment and answer something on that. Thanks. Thank you. Anyone else who is would like to make a public comment, again, please just raise your virtual hands. And if you've joined via phone and would like to make a comment, feel free to hit star six to unmute yourself. I'm not seeing anyone. All right. There aren't any other public comments, then I will close the public comment window. You know, CSI, as far as I know, actually can turn these around relatively quickly. If there's a non complicated issue, you know, non complicated application, that's been our experience. I don't know if every experience for everyone is going to be the exact same. And, you know, it's an unfortunate place to be in honestly, you know, we did not we got rejected by the FBI to do fingerprint supported background checks for these. That also is a somewhat, you know, long process or it can be. But, you know, this is where we find ourselves. And hopefully, you know, we might be able to get this turned around later. I know CSI is the same contracting service that the Massachusetts uses for this purpose. And so they do a good job. They do a thorough job. And I apologize if you know, there's some snags for some people. But, you know, we are getting through a decent number of them. And, you know, it's not going to be 100%. I suppose. But, is there anything else that you wanted to mention about CSI? I think you captured it just that because of the like individual nature of the searches that they're doing, depending on how many places an applicant has lived in the last seven years, the turnaround time from the courts and the various vendors can take a little bit of time. So just as you mentioned, some applications are simpler than others. So I do think that the more complex applications can can take several days. Yeah. Great. Well, that's it for our agenda today. Julia, Kyle or David, is there anything you needed to add before we adjourn for the week? No, I think so, not this time. All right. Well, then I will adjourn this meeting and, you know, we'll be back with hopefully some new applications to approve next Wednesday at one o'clock. Thank you all.