 My name is James Pepper. I'm the chair of the Vermont cannabis control board. It's 11 o'clock on Friday, October 8th, 2021. And I'm calling this meeting to order. A few administrative details. We are going to have a full advisory committee meeting that will be live streamed next week. We're shooting for Wednesday the 13th and we're holding the time of 2 to 3 p.m. However, we're still waiting for a majority of the advisory committee to respond. So until we have a quorum, that time might change. However, the physical location starts at 11 o'clock. We'll be 89 Main Street in Montpelier and, you know, there will be a stream available for members of the public. There's no advisory subcommittee meetings this Monday in recognition of Indigenous People's Day. I think the social equity subcommittee will meet on Tuesday though and Thursday. Just a quick plug on Thursday next week, the 14th, Vermont PBS will be screening a NOVA documentary called The Cannabis Question. And following that screening, there'll be a Q&A panel featuring me, Dr. Levine, the Commissioner of Health and Representative Maxine Grad, who's the Chair of the House Judiciary Committee. The screening will start at 7.30. The panel will begin at 8.30. And if you'd like to participate, there'll be, you can request a link to the kind of Q&A panel at vermontpbs.org slash events. So only other thing before we turn to the agenda, we have to approve the minutes from September 24th, 2021, and October 1st, 2021. Julian and Kyle, have you had an opportunity to review those? Yes. Yes. I take a motion to approve the minutes from 9, 24, and 10, 1. I'd move to approve the minutes from 9, 24, and 10, 1. All second. All in favor? Aye. Great. Okay. Today, we are going to finalize our recommendations to the legislature on our market and fee structure, as well as our social equity applicant criteria. It didn't actually make it onto our agenda, but before we turn to that, I'd like to go around and do a very quick recap of this week's advisory subcommittee meetings. And I will start the medical program. The market structure subcommittee has adjourned indefinitely. So medical, there was conversation around the dispensaries maintaining minimum supplies of flour and biomass, a three-month supply for all Vermont patients at all times, just to ensure during this transition, particularly as we transition to adult rec, that patients will not be, they'll have continuity of services and products. We also reviewed recommendations about reconstituting the marijuana for symptom relief oversight committee. And then we also just reviewed all of the recommendations that that subcommittee has made to date. There was some conversation about the wording of some of them. So they're going to meet again next week and finalize their recommendations, which we can present to the full control board next week. So I led the compliance and enforcement subcommittee meeting on Thursday. The topic of conversation was outdoor security, specifically fencing and other security measures that might be able to take the place of fencing. Indoor security. Jen from BS strategies talked about what Massachusetts requires. And that was about it. There's a lot of good discussion, but no real kind of conclusions were made. Kyle, I'll turn it over to you for compliance and enforcement and sustainability. Yeah, thank you, Mr. Chairman. I will say that the conversation yesterday, thank you again for filling in for me and leading that discussion. It really was a continuation of our conversation on Monday. So nothing really new to report, just trying to understand where folks are from a subcommittee perspective and how other jurisdictions have approached outdoor, indoor, and we're starting to scratch the surface of retail security as well. In lieu of meeting twice this week, the sustainability subcommittee met for a 90 minute session on Wednesday. The topic was water, generally speaking, had a lot of technical experts, both from DEC, the Department of Environmental Conservation and the entity of Agriculture Water Quality Division coming to talk about everything from direct discharges, soil health, indirect discharges, municipal waste water, surface water, diversion, groundwater supply, and municipal supplies. Really trying to understand how this industry will slide into a lot of our existing environmental regulations, where gaps are, where we need to get more specific. We need to comply with the RAPs. Some subsections of those RAPs specifically mentioned in 164 are a little bit more applicable than others. So really just trying to mirror the way both agencies do something, recognizing that we're in a little bit of a gray area with this being not legally an agricultural product, but practically one in practice. So we're making good headway there and the focus next week will be on air quality. Great. Julie, could you do a quick update on public health and social equity? Yeah. So public health has gotten a primer on food manufacturing versus food processing. Sorry for tripping over my words there. And they are looking for experts to speak to to better understand the difference between the two and be able to make their recommendation. For social equity, as of the end of this week, that subcommittee has agreed on some recommendations for transferability of licenses, the basic structure of social equity applicant benefits and exclusive licenses. So related to transferability, they proposed a schedule of transferability of licenses that allows, let me just pull up my notes here, that when a license is transferred to a new social equity applicant within five years, that that new applicant would start over at the second year fee level unless it's a family member or a current business partner, and then that person would just take over the current fee level. And then when it's transferred to a non-social equity applicant within five years, the new licensee would repay any cost savings that that company has received as it relates to the social equity program. And then after five years, there's no penalty. So that was their recommendation on the transferability of licenses. As it relates to benefits for recommendations, they recommended that social equity applicants get priority licensing and processing, receive training and technical assistance throughout the licensing and application process, access to low interest loans, which is outlined in the legislation, and then exclusive licenses. And educational courses, particularly cannabis certificates or what I would call certificates of value, something that someone can obtain as an employee and then take with them and make them valuable as an employee as they move through the cannabis industry and hopefully up in the cannabis industry as a career. So those are the things that they discussed related to benefits. And then for exclusive licensing, their recommendation was to have exclusive delivery licensing, and they recommended that as an add-on to retail. And then they also proposed a cooperative license that would be a pooling of resources. And what was proposed was board or state purchased land and equipment, and then an opportunity for social equity candidates to learn the business there by cultivating processing and selling from the premises. So of course, now that they've made their recommendations, we will have to review the possibilities of all of those things. That's great. Thanks for that, Julie. So let's turn to the agenda. And I'd just like to say one programming note for the people watching is that what I would like to do, we haven't updated the proposal from VS Strategies based upon our conversation last week. I'd like to review that, get to a general consensus as the board about what we're going to approve, then review the social equity criteria, get to a general consensus and discussion, and then pause for public comment, and then after public comment, take a full vote on both of those aspects. So with that, Bryn, why don't you pull up the market and fee structure from VS? I'm going to start with the retail license, and you can go from there. So what do you want to walk through? Sure. So as the market structure subcommittee laid out, there's two proposals here, proposal A and proposal B for retail. So the storefront is 10,000 for proposal A, 5,000 for B, and then a smaller retail for seeds and clones only, and that would be 4,000 for A and 1,000 for B. Any discussion of that? And the reason for the difference in proposal A and proposal B is that proposal B budget-wise includes the portion of the excise tax, is that right? That's correct. So proposal A was designed to cover the board's operating fees and proposal B was designed to sort of stand up a more accessible market, but with our operating expenses partially covered by a portion of the excise tax. Can you remind me what data was used to come up with the two retail storefront numbers? Like is that based on other states? I'm sorry that I know we've discussed this a lot. I can't remember where those numbers specifically, what they're compared to. What I remember is yes. I mean the number, every one of these fees was trying to keep us somewhat proportional to our neighbors so that people wouldn't leave Vermont for Massachusetts or Maine or some other states. They're trying to keep us, and VS was trying to keep us in line with other states recognizing that not every state has to cover 100% of their operating budgets through fees. And so that's the justification. So I think actually proposal B would be kind of more in line with other states whereas A is probably a little bit slightly higher than other states. Thank you. Yeah, another number I'd add on this just quickly is that I think if we recall that a retail storefront would also be allowed to sell seeds and clones. So that license type would be kind of encompass both of those, but the seeds and clones one might be an attractive alternative for folks that just want to sell just seeds and clones. I have a question and I know we've got a lot to cover over the course of the next 45 minutes or so. In keeping us in line, proposal B is certainly more accessible. I'm curious and I can go back and look up this during our conversation. If nobody has the answer to other jurisdictions around us, do they typically have a flat fee for all sizes of retail establishments? I'd imagine we'd have some more craft retail focused license seekers in Vermont. That $5,000 may be appropriate for them. The bigger, more dispensary traditional looking dispensaries. Just wondering if we thought about tearing out any retail storefronts or how are other jurisdictions treating storefront license fees? Is it kind of like how much product you're allowed to have in the store or how many square feet your store is or how big of a population you're serving? Is that the kind of question? Yeah, I was thinking along those lines. That $5,000 fee or the $10,000 fee if the legislature chooses a proposal looking more like proposal A. I'm curious. That $5,000 is just going to mean something different for the larger stores than it would for the smaller ones. Yeah. I don't know if other states do that. I don't think we got specific testimony from VS on that. What I would say from my discussions is that the cost of a brick and mortar retail store, standalone store, is going to be significantly greater than $5,000. I know there's going to be a lot of other regulatory compliance costs, but that $5,000 or even $10,000 is not going to be the ultimate barrier for folks that are thinking about retail. While you could increase the retail fee for larger facilities, I don't think that we need to lower it any more than that for smaller facilities. We are going to allow, of course, potential fee reductions for social equity applicants and potentially for other folks that need a sliding scale. That all makes sense. Just making sure we are traveling the same direction. Is there general agreement about this? Do you think we can move on to product manufacturing? Yes. Okay. So these are your manufacturing license fees. You've got two tiers here again. If you remember, tier one would be that broader authority to conduct extractions and tier two would not have the authority to do extractions. So proposal A for tier one is $15,000. Proposal B is $7,500. And then the tier two, the smaller authority would be $5,000 for proposal A and $1,500 for B. Any discussion about these fees? Nothing substantively. I think recognizing fire and safety implications makes sense for tearing these out. And again, accessibility to all folks that want to seek this license is something that's important, I think, to me and to the board. So recognizing that certain numbers are more in line with our neighbor states is good. Yeah. I would say that product manufacturing is a critical piece of the kind of value-added chain, the supply chain, and keeping these fees reasonable is a really important piece if we actually want to get products, a diversity of products into the market. So I don't have any concerns with these two fees. Julie, do you have anything? Yeah, is our overall goal with our initial recommendation of licensing fees to keep the structure fairly simple and not tear out and have too much variety? And is that part of your thinking, Chair Pepper? I think so. I mean, essentially, having clear delineations between what these tiers mean so that one tier doesn't cannibalize another, I think is an important piece of this. And so again, the distinction here is there's an increased public safety risk, increased compliance and enforcement responsibility for solvent-based extractions, and that justifies the higher fee. And then the things that don't really implicate that public safety and compliance requirement, if you're making edibles, for instance, you could get that tier two and it'd be pretty clear what the distinction is. Okay. Is there a general consensus on this fee and structure? Yes. Okay. Can we go down to the kind of integrated wholesaler and testing? So these are the other fees, kind of a catch-all slide here. So you've got the integrated licensee, the wholesaler licensee, testing lab, and then we've got the employee registration fees and the local fees listed here. I'm not going to go through all of them because you can see them on the slide. Any discussion about these fees? Again, the kind of proposal A for integrated, the idea was kind of to do a summation of all the other license types and kind of present a fee that kind of encapsulated those other fees. The wholesaler, you can see testing, that's in line with what the testing facilities are currently paying for the hemp program, the employee registration fee, and then the local processing fee. This is the kind of local fee. And again, this is a recommendation from the advisory committee and their thinking on the $100 max was, is this purely an administrative cost to process an application? If so, then $100 seems reasonable to kind of review an application and either approve or deny it. If there's something more that this fee is supposed to address or to pay for, then they as a subcommittee and we as a board need to hear what those numbers are, what those expenses are so that we can justify this fee to the legislature because that's ultimately who's going to decide whether this is $100 or more. But based on statute, we need to say what this is going to pay for. And I think we've had a little bit, we had to move very quickly because of this deadline. But I haven't personally heard the justification. And I think, you know what, I've heard some of our other advisory committee members say that, well, there might be some increased patrols from the police if they have to kind of go to a cultivation site that wasn't on their routine patrol, or if there is a theft and they have to respond. But at this point, I just have not heard how much that increased patrol or even a police response call costs. So I don't have a problem leaving at this, leaving our recommendation at $100. You know, maybe there's some wiggle room there, but I think until we hear what those additional costs are, we have to treat this as a purely administrative fee. Can I ask a question about the employee registration fee? My assumption is that that is the $100 is what it actually costs to do that process. There's no additional benefit to the board or to our budget. This is really just a product, like this is the labor cost, the cost of producing the card, the cost of producing the background check that goes along with this. Is that $100 what the cost of that employee registration fee is? I think that would be a question for VS strategies who set that fee. But I think that that's about right. Just like the local processing fee, we estimate being about $100 to do the administrative work behind approving or denying an application. We think that the same similar amount of work would be in approving or denying and issuing a permit to an employee. Okay. I just, it seems a little high to me given that we already have the medical card requires processing. That's very similar, but is I think $50 a year, right? $50 over two years, $50 a year. So I just, in terms of the cost of hiring employees, I don't want to add anything to that for what is potentially very small employers who are going to have lots of expenses related to that anyway. Yeah. It's a good point and you're right about the $50. I guess we can, you know, what, again, this is a recommendation. I think what this, maybe it could potentially have been set higher to allow for kind of social equity fee waivers or kind of some kind of sliding scale based upon need, which we haven't defined in rule yet. But I hear what you're saying. And then in terms of considering the administrative costs for local processing fee, Chair Pepper, I agree with you. Like we haven't heard, you know, what is the cost of additional police response or anything solid related to that. But I think we might want to consider using as a benchmark the fee scale that's used for producing public records. So it's like 33 cents a minute for someone to produce public records beyond 30 minutes. And if we think for a non senior staff, so if we assume that, you know, 10 people touched the processing for, you know, 30 minutes, it's we're already more than $100 in administrative fees. So just, I mean, I think we can agree with this recommendation. But when we're really thinking about these fees in the future, we should probably use some of the benchmarks that are available to us. I think that's a good point. I mean, we do have a kind of time-based system for processing public records. It's adopted by the Secretary of State. So there's plenty of input on that. And maybe that's a better way to do it. I would only add that, yeah, so I agree with both of you that we haven't really heard any justification for this to be any higher than this $100 figure. And Julie, quite honestly, that's the best idea I've heard when it comes to local processing fees, you know, to this point in the process. Well, again, this is a recommendation that we need to have a justification for when we submit it to the legislature. We have to say this is reasonable because of this. I'm fine with saying follow and we could follow the fee schedule that's in the public records law or leaving it $100 in knowing that the league of cities and towns or individual municipalities could come to the legislature and say, no, this is our actual cost. And I'm fine with either approach. I mean, I think we can leave it as is, you know, because I know that this is not the last step in this process. Okay. Kyle? I want to have a discussion on the integrated license fees. And I'm just trying to keep all these numbers in my head. I know the proposal A kind of looks at a summation of every license type that would be included in an integrated license. And I'm wondering, I'm trying to do a quick look back at the napkin math. Is there any kind of, quote unquote, discount for that $50,000 in proposal B? You know, I don't know if integrated licenses holders would really need a discount. I like the summation. They're going to get likely a head start anyways via statute. So I'm curious how you both think about that $50,000 figure. If I were to guess, and I haven't done the math, is that the $50,000 represents the summation of all the proposal B other license types. And so they, my guess is they kept that same kind of thinking on proposal A and proposal B. So there is probably a justification for why it is $50,000. Okay. And I think the other thing that BS was considering also is the kind of $50,000 contribution that integrated license holders are going to be paying into the community development fund. I don't know if they, I don't know how much that factored into their proposal B figure, but I know that was in their contemplation when they were setting these fees. So that's how I look at it too, Kyle. When I look at proposal A, I think of it as, at least in the first year, $175,000 because they'd have that $50,000 and proposal B $100,000. That makes sense. Just wanted to make sure I understood. So do we have general consensus, Julie? Is there any movement you wanted on the local processing fee right now or does this seem about right for all these license types? I'm okay with this now. As long as we, I know that we're going to continue to review this. I know we're making a recommendation and that this is not the last step in the process. I guess my two key points are looking potentially at that, that I think is uniform service, uniform fee service, uniform fee schedule for local processing in the future and then also making sure that the employee registration fee actually represents the cost of producing that, that ID card. Okay. Maybe you could say under employee registration fee $100 max and we could, that would allow us to revisit it in the legislature, you know, not to exceed $100. Because we don't, we don't really know what the cost is yet. We haven't started to produce these, you know, so we don't know. Okay. Well then, can we go to retail cultivation? I mean, sorry, cultivation. Do you want to do, start with indoor? Let's start with indoor. Okay. So here are your indoor cultivation license fees and I'm just going to draw your attention to the changes in this version from the last version you looked at last week. You've got a new tier two indoor at 2,500 square feet for 10,000 under proposal A, 3,750 under proposal B and then another, another tier at 15,000 square feet, tier five, 60,000 for proposal A and 22,500 for proposal B. Quick question on this. I'm glad to see some more intermediate tiers entered in. I know in previous discussions we had asterisks next to the higher tiers to kind of hold them and let this market kind of grow small to big and I don't see those asterisks here. Just want to make sure that that's still something that we're considering. That is certainly what I'm considering. I don't think we need to have that incorporated into our fee proposal but it's something that we should continue to discuss and think about. You know, I think this is literally a, the legislature needs to approve these tier types and we get to decide whether we open them or not and when we open them. Okay, got that. Just wanted to make sure. Just because I feel like the difference between these gets thrown on a lot. This is 50,000 or the square footage rather is the square footage of the gross space, not the canopy. Is that right? So I think that's a conversation. So the idea between total canopy versus flowering canopy is something that's been, as you mentioned, Julie, kicked around a lot. What are these tiers actually? You know, I think what we need to do is to call in Kerry. I think we should decide today and then call in Kerry to see, you know, the thinking that VS put forward yesterday is total canopy is easier to regulate. You just go in and you measure out a thousand square feet and you can do whatever you want in that thousand square feet, but that's your parameters. When you bring in canopy, bring in concepts of aisles, bedroom, potentially stacking. And so I think what I would like to do before we make that determination is bring Kerry in to talk about how regulatory compliance might be impacted. His compliance might be impacted of course we go with ag on that question specifically. However we end up on that, I think that this fee structure, we should approve a fee structure today and then determine that question at a later date. I understand, Julie, I perceive these numbers to look at total canopy size, not necessarily the square footage of a building in alleyways and stuff like that. And I will say, I understand chairperson Pepper's point, I also just want to note that in statute canopy is defined as all living plant material. How would you all feel about eliminating the 50,000 square foot tier? I just don't think that that's the right size for Vermont, especially in year one. I would be more comfortable with this proposal if we did that. Yeah, again, I'd be comfortable with that. I know the work of the subcommittee, they tried to anticipate stuff to give us a recommendation no matter what we decide to do as a board without having to revisit this. I'm very comfortable with eliminating tier seven. That was why I asked about the asterisk or the holding off on certain tiers, at least initially. But if we feel comfortable eliminating tier seven and if we decide that that's the direction that this market needs to move at some point in the future, we can be flexible and do so. I'd be more than comfortable with eliminating tier seven. Great. Okay. So then there's general consensus around this tiering structure and this corresponding fee structure for indoor in eliminating tier seven. Yes. Yes. Great. We do outdoor. Yep. So this is also a slide that's going to look a little different. This is your outdoor license fees and a new mixed cultivation license fee. So the changes here, you'll see our tier two. You've added an intermediate tier for 2,500 square feet, which would cost $2,500 under proposal A and 1875 under proposal B. You've also got two new tiers, five and six at 20,000 square feet and 30,000 square feet, 20 and $30,000 respectively under proposal A, 15,000 and 225 respectively under proposal B. And then you'll notice that tier seven, that 37,500 looks a little different. That's dropped down a few hundreds feet from or a few thousand square feet from what it was originally, which was, I think, somewhere above 43,000 square feet. So we've dropped that a little bit lower. And then lastly, you've got a new mixed tier, which is 50 outdoor plant, plus up to a thousand square foot of indoor cultivation area. And that's that $4,500 under proposal A and 1750 under B. What was the reasoning for dropping below an acre? Because 43,000. I'm happy to answer that because that was some of my thinking. So we're wading through various Act 250 triggers that may present some challenges to some of our outdoor growers. We're having those conversations. There is some, I've been talking with folks, folks in the legal community, folks in the looking to advise or seek licenses and also folks at the NRV. Up to an acre could, in one acre towns right now, there is recent Vermont Supreme Court opinion that looks at one acre towns and projects up to an acre. What in trigger Act 250? And I thought that was some of the initial reasoning for going with that acre number. And the more I thought about it and talked and engaged with folks, Act 250 looks at the total acreage of your project. So roads, parking lots, so on and so forth, they're not going to look strictly at the total canopy size. They're going to look at alleys between rows, so on and so forth. So I didn't want folks to unintendedly trigger Act 250 because they were growing up to an acre, but needed a couple extra thousands square feet to just do the day to day stuff in and around the grow space. So my reasoning was simply that. So if we lowered it a little bit, folks would still have up to potentially an acre of impacted physically changed space within their cultivation site. And again, just didn't want folks to accidentally wander into 250 waters. Thank you. That's helpful. So I'm very comfortable with that. I would like to potentially just eliminate tier six. I feel like the jump between 30,000, 37,500 is, I just don't think that that's necessary. And we have seven, we have six tiers in the other one now. And so just for a little bit of parity, I don't know if that, I just don't, I don't think that there's going to be a major change between the 30,000 and 3700 or 3037,000. Yeah, this is up to right. So if you could grow between 20,000 and 37,000. Right. Okay. Yes, I'm fine with that. I have a question. You know, I like that. Oh, go ahead. Go ahead. No, I was just going to talk about the mixed tier. The thing I was thinking is that this could potentially be a tier of small cultivator. And so we know some of the, you know, benefits and priorities that have been given to small cultivators, this could be a small craft cultivator potentially licensed. And, you know, I saw you see, you have the thousand square foot indoor and then you have an outdoor plant allotment and the thinking there is, you know, edibles, distillates, concentrates, they don't really require the like fine indoor grown flower, you know, so allow kind of a small cultivator to do their indoor grow and then allow them an outdoor plant count to, you know, push towards the kind of edibles, etc. And with the 50 plants instead of a square footage, you know, that's just recognizing that it's a little bit easier to regulate or to comply with. You know, I talked a little bit to Kerry about this and he thought just 50 plants, you know, it allows you to kind of have a oddly shaped plot if that's what your backyard looks like. And, you know, it's just an easy number to count to and you don't have to worry about how big these things get. There's a lot of variation between how a plant, different strains of plants and different cultivation practices might look. You just don't want to have to kind of go out, measure a plot and then have a plant grow bigger and exceed that kind of cultivation area, just, you know, plant counts simple. I think that makes sense. I wanted to ask a question and it's kind of like the- I like that mixed here. I like that a lot. Yeah, I had a question and it's kind of like the inverse of the way this mixed here is functioning and not necessarily on the plant count harvesting indoor and outdoor conversation. But, and I'm thinking my question could be addressed through regulation and further public comment. I just want to talk about it here in case we need to add in something if the idea is salient. I want to make sure folks in the, especially the smaller outdoor tiers can preserve their genetics in the colder winter months. So being able to bring certain plants indoors, I don't necessarily have a fully fleshed out thought if they would be able to harvest indoors. Again, I think this is something we could pursue through regulation, not right now, unless we think there needs to be another fee associated with, you know, a small cottage style 500 square foot indoor part of your outdoor license that would just allow folks to some security over the winter months. Yeah, I think that actually probably would be just something we could clarify in regulations. I remember Jacob saying in your regs you got to build in some flexibility for that cold snap that, you know, is coming and then you can bring them inside. And I know it impacts kind of seed sale tracking and a few other implications, but I do think that that's something we can make a rule around as opposed to adding a license type. Okay, I agree. Just wanted to raise it here in case it was more appropriate to do so. All right, so is there, if we eliminate tier six, is there a general agreement about this? Yes. Yes. And the only other thing I think on the market structure is just to clarify for brand and for people watching that this is both the initial application fee as well as the renewal fee. Is that everyone's understanding? Yeah. Okay. Same here. Okay, is there anything else on market structure? Great. Okay, let's move to social equity. I'm sorry, I have one question though. Are we holding on the farmer retailer and the co-located? Are we pausing on that for now? I think so. I mean, essentially the way that I see that is they're currently prohibited. And if we need them to be a type of license, we'll need to get authorization from the legislature and they can authorize a fee at the same time. Okay. So can we move to the social equity criteria? So this is the, we'll go ahead. Sorry. So this slide isn't going to look really familiar to you. This is the slide that our consultant NACB put together to define what a social equity candidate is. And again, this is a requirement of our October 15th report to the legislature. So it's a recommendation of the kind of applicant that will qualify for certain benefits that we provide in our regulation. So they've got the definition here as an applicant that meets at least one of the following three criteria. So either the applicant lives in an opportunity zone, is a member of the BIPOC community, or of a minority race or ethnicity, or is convicted of a cannabis related offense. And that can mean two things. Either they, the applicant has personally been arrested, convicted or incarcerated for a cannabis related offense, either a misdemeanor or a felony, or their family member has been arrested, convicted or incarcerated for a cannabis related offense. And there is not a residency requirement that applies to any of these three criteria, as long as the applicant currently resides in Vermont when they apply. I just would like to make a few comments initially, if you don't mind. So we have to, I've been going back and forth about opportunity zones or any other socioeconomic criteria for social equity applicant. And essentially where I landed was that I went back to Act 62, which defines social equity. And it says, there's two criteria that we need to capture. One is individuals from communities that have been historically, or that historically have been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition, or individuals directly and personally impacted by cannabis prohibition. I think, you know, when we think about people of color, I think we have sufficient data in reports and white papers that demonstrate that selective policing and that disproportionate impact because of cannabis prohibition on communities of color. And then the, or the people who have been directly and personally impacted, this includes anyone, including non people of color who have been personally, personally have cannabis convictions, or they live with people or rely on people or have tried to support people in their households that have had cannabis convict, cannabis related convictions. And while I've been a fan and proponent of having separate criteria for low income Vermonters, I don't think that that is actually what was intended by Act 62. You know, I think when I saw this bill being voted, I think a lot of the representatives, the people that voted on it, thought this could be an economic development tool for the people that are struggling in their communities. And, you know, as a former prosecutor, also, I've seen how the criminal justice system really entrenched is poverty. You know, I think roughly 95% of the people who are arraigned are eligible for public defender services, meaning that they're, you know, within 125% of the federal poverty line. So there's a lot of intersectionality between poverty and race and disproportionate impact in our criminal justice system. But I don't think that it meets the Act 62 criteria that's been laid out for us that aren't already captured in those number two and number three. And, you know, from our conversations, Julie and Kyle, I know that we are all committed to supporting Vermonters who are struggling. And I think that there are ways to do that, that we have the authority to do. Certainly, we're going to make regulatory accommodations for small cultivators. We can, of course, you know, have sliding scales for sliding fee scales for people that can demonstrate harm or demonstrate need. And we can provide technical assistance and support throughout the application process and the renewal process. But I don't think that just purely socioeconomic criteria would achieve kind of the social equity definition that's been given to us. So that's, that's where I am on kind of removing opportunity zones and, and not having anything other than kind of either being a person of color or having a cannabis related offense or a family household member with a, or being part of an impacted family. So I've also put a lot of thought into this in the last week about Opportunity Zone. And I think that this criteria is largely taken from age 414, which was proposed last year. And I, I think that the Opportunity Zone language was originally intended actually more about community reinvestment and disproportionately impacted areas. And that was Opportunity Zone and several other criteria in age 414. I've gone back and forth about whether Opportunity Zone is the right, is the right, you know, criteria or using something that's along the lines of the federal free lunch and reduced lunch program income criteria. I think I'm comfortable taking out that first criteria and not having an income related criteria. So long as we have, as you were talking about before, Chair Pepper, about, you know, some sort of sliding scale for, based on income for the fees to still allow, you know, economic opportunity for people who are struggling, I think you're right that, that, you know, poverty is certainly entrenched in our, our, our judicial system. And I think there is overlap. And I'm fine with taking out that first one as long as we have some other criteria that we can allow more people into the market. Yeah, Kyle, do you have any thoughts on that? Yeah, thank you for your, thank you both for your comments and your overview. I agree with, with everything that's been said. And I think, you know, if we're thinking about these three criteria and they're all ors, not ants, the opportunity zones, it feels like there's, there's the most room there for folks to kind of take advantage in the wrong way of what we're trying to accomplish. So recognizing your both of your comments, I'm, I'm in support of, of what you're thinking. So what I would say then, if we're in general agreement is that this again is the starting point of this conversation. We as a board need to meet a statutorily imposed deadline, which means that we needed to come up with something. The advisory committee has been incredibly helpful. Our consultants have been incredibly helpful in showing us where we can go. This is, you know, criteria two is actually pushing a boundary that few states have ever done before. It's an important one. But I, I feel that this is kind of the starting line on this and that we really need to take this and have a plan for intensive public engagement on, on these criteria because there are a lot of folks out there that don't know what we're doing. They don't know that we're having meetings around this and need their voices to be part of this conversation. So while I think we should vote on this criteria, we have to vote on it to meet our deadlines. I think that we should just be very clear that this can change over time. This can be added to this can be kind of further refined. And, you know, whatever we do here again has to be legislatively approved because there is an impact on our overall fee structure and our budget. So I think that, you know, for anyone who's watching and for the benefit of our board members, we need to really think of this as the starting line on our social equity program and know that it will evolve. Yeah, absolutely agree. I was gonna, I was gonna say something similar, you know, a lot of work has been put into this, but we're still just scratching the surface of what we need to do. And I look forward to engaging with all interested folks in and around the state and the nation that was interested on understanding and unpacking what this definition will mean. Agreed. So it's 1152. I think we have general consensus on the market structure and the social equity criteria. Before we take a vote, I would like to open to public comment. And so, Brent, in the meantime, can you kind of incorporate our notes into a final draft that we can look at? Okay, but if you have a public comment, please feel free to raise your virtual hand and we'll call you in the order that the hands go up. First, we have Paul Shannon. Paul, if you want to unmute yourself and provide a public comment. Yeah, I have. As one who's genuinely skeptical of government, I'd like to say thank you to all the participants. I think the way you're handling this is spot on. I'm not up to date on what the other state's laws are and I'm very grateful that you take them into consideration. The fee structure, believe it or not, sounds fair. It doesn't seem crippling in any way and if somebody really wants to get into this, you can't open the store without having the dough. My gratitude is boundless for you folks. I think you're putting this together the right way. And I'd live in one of those probably opportunities zones and I don't mind not going out the window. The reason being is I agree with Kyle that it would be one of those places a lot of people would squeeze into and attempt to take advantage of. At 66, I'm old enough to have seen just about every program the government runs get taken advantage of and you people seem to be running this the right way. I would like at some future point to be able to ask some questions regarding co-ops, but I'll save that for another time as this is for public comment. And my most sincere thank you. Your folks seem to be working your tails off and I'm very grateful. Thank you. Thank you, Paul. Next we have Dave Silverman. Dave, feel free to unmute. Hey, thanks, James. Two quick hits. One is on the work permits, the work authorization fee. You know, I think something really important that I haven't heard discussed yet at any of the committee meetings, so I guess I haven't been to all of them, is kind of who owns that work authorization and whether it's transferable between employers. I think it's going to be quite valuable if you were to make that work authorization be owned by the employee so that they can move from employer to employer. That will just strengthen the bargaining power in the sort of labor economics perspective. Second, on local fees, you know, I really appreciate that you've limited the local fees. You know, the VLCT, the town representatives have yet to really express what the local costs are for regulating cannabis businesses at the local level that is separate and apart from the costs the towns incur with respect to any new business. And, you know, they say things like, well, there's traffic. You know, any successful business coming into the town will bring traffic. And when you have traffic coming into your downtown, that means you have customers coming into your downtown. That should be a good thing, not a bad thing. And so I really commend you for not bending to that pressure that's been an ongoing effort for years to increase the funding to municipalities to cover basic municipal costs that should be as applicable to cannabis as they are to any other business. And so thank you for that. I do think there's a benefit to encouraging municipalities to host these businesses, because I'm afraid that in an opt-in regime, if, you know, if it's not a border town or a ski town, we just might not see a lot of towns opting in without some sort of incentive. And that would be bad, I think, for just sort of the well-functioning, you know, the market functioning well. We really want to have stores everywhere. And so I would encourage the board as well as the town advocates to maybe think about a different approach to that problem and start talking to the legislature about allocating some tax revenues to encourage widespread retail distribution rather than talking about these costs that are that have never been quantified. Thank you very much. Thanks, Dave. Next is David Templeman. David, feel free to unmute. Hi there. So just three quick points. I wanted to, you know, my small part here, endorse the Vermont Cannabis Equity Coalition recommendations. I want to re-emphasize that flower, outdoor flower is a possibility. Not all outdoor cultivation is going to be for extract and other purposes. Outdoor flower is actually something that's possible in Vermont, albeit there are obstacles, but it's not completely cut off. It's not like you can't grow outdoor high end outdoor flower in Vermont. And then regarding the social equity chart that was just put up in the three points, I noticed that farmers or small farmers are no longer on that. And I'm wondering, have they been sort of grouped together in the Opportunity Zone concept or, you know, where did that go? That's all for now. Thank you. Thanks, David. Next is Junior. Junior, feel free to unmute yourself. All right. Hey, thanks, folks. Two quick questions, comments. One, I'm curious why the indoor licensing is so much more expensive than the outdoor licensing when the costs to build out an indoor facility is so much higher than outdoor. So that's just one thought that I had. My other one is regarding the canopy size and what's counted as canopy. You said that all living matter is considered canopy size. That doesn't make any sense as from somebody who's had indoor canopies over the years. The flowering room, the flowering canopy is what makes sense. How much space you use for mothers and cloning and your nursery room really has nothing to do with how much product you're producing. All that really matters is the canopy size of the flowering room itself. So thanks a lot. Keep up the good work and look forward to what happens next. Thank you. Next is Tito Byrne. Hi, guys. Thanks again for always having these great meetings. So just to build on what Dave Silverman was saying, you know, if there could be some funds that come from the legislature to help with the opt-in vote in a lot of these smaller towns, one of which I'm looking to set up in, which would be Ferrisburg, it would be great if that money could be used to fund special town meetings or just anything to get a vote going before town meeting day, which is all the way in March. And I've always been vocal about flowering canopy. I really, really just want to say again, I hope we can find a way to define canopy as referring to flowering canopy. And I really, really believe unlimited veg on all licenses. I feel like is really, really important. And lastly, I just want to point out that the marijuana symptom relief oversight committee is meeting on Wednesday. And so when you're planning the gathering of the full advisory board, if you could just keep that in mind so that the two don't overlap. Thank you. Thank you, Tito. Next is Bill. Bill, would you like to make a comment? Hey. Yes. Thank you for all your hard work. I want to quickly want to echo the previous comment about the canopy size and definition. And then also from Dave earlier, and I'm speaking as someone who is well positioned near a ski town with legitimate businesses and all of the resources and business experience that come with that. I think from what I've understood from your previous meetings, the goal is to bring as many growers into the light as possible. And if you end up with a large percentage of towns that opt out or fail to opt in, my concern is that you end up with an extremely unlevel playing ground where you have people who do not have all the expenses of the new legal market that they have to contend with. And I fear that you will end up with a lot of things either growers opting not to pursue a license or people that do pursue a license, sending things out the back door. And even for us who feel privileged as someone that has a more professional setup and operation and not in an opportunity zone, that's a real question mark that I think will be on a lot of people's minds. So I just wanted to stress that point. But thanks again for all your work and for making these meetings public. Thank you. All right. Next we've got Jeffrey. Jeffrey. Feel free to unmute. Thank you. Can you hear me okay? Yes. Good afternoon, everybody. So I appreciate your work on the modifications to the licensing that we just saw and your desire to thread the needle for outdoor cultivators and their ability to winter over plants. I will just add that the redefinition of the canopy to flower only helps bring simplification to that whole quagmire right there. So there are several reasons to be approaching the canopy size as flower only. One of them is for simplistic purposes and for accessibility for the cultivator. So please consider that when you guys are thinking about canopy. That will prevent those sorts of additional tiers that are needed to kind of thread that needle. I also want to say second point with regards to the fee for the integrated license type. And again, I appreciate you guys bringing this up. I would urge you the board that that fee should not be any less expensive than any other fee for Vermonters. So in other words, the integrated license type should be the most expensive license out there. Please keep that in mind. Thank you. Thanks, Jeffrey. Anyone else? We have one person who's raised their hand again. Do we have time to loop back or should we check phones first? So Paul, I think if you raise your hand again, we're on a little bit of a tight schedule here. If you'd like to, you know, we do have a public input forum on our website. And, you know, we all, all of those go to all of the board members. And so we will listen. Is anyone joined by the phone? We have three folks on the phone. Okay. If you join via the phone, you can and would like to make a public comment, please hit star six to unmute yourself. No one's unmuted. Okay. Then why don't we move back in and take take the votes on this? Just, you know, to Paul's point again, and a few points there, I just wanted to say that while we want to remove socioeconomic criteria specifically for social equity criteria, we do want to support small Vermont cultivators. And we do want to support people who have been struggling due to lack of public investment or from historic criminal justice and for engagement. So we are just going to have a separate category of privileges and benefits for, for those we're just not going to do it as part of our social equity program. So we're just going to pop back through these and I'll just highlight where you should see the changes here. So this is in our outdoor and mixed cultivation license fee slide. And you've removed that 30,000 square foot outdoor tier. So now you've got six holy outdoor tiers and then one mixed tier. Any discussion on this? Okay. Okay. And now we've got the indoor and you also removed a tier here, the last tier, which is the 50,000 square foot indoor cultivation area. So now you've got six indoor tiers as well as six outdoor. Okay. No changes to retail or manufacturing. And then in the other fee slide, we've just put a cap on that employee registration fee at $100. So this looks good to me. Considering we're already giving the legislature a menu of options, do we want to maybe have one more option under the local processing fee of follow the uniform fee schedule that's in, I don't have the cross site right now. But Julie Kyle, is that kind of one last tweak to that that we would want to see? Yes. The more that after we moved away from the slide, the more I thought about it as we were talking, yes, I'd like to see that as another option. Is that all right, Bryn? Sure. Okay. Do you want to see that before you vote on it? Are you comfortable? No, I'm comfortable. Okay. I'm going to move on to the last slide then. The social equity applicant slide. So you've removed the first criteria of losing an opportunity zone. And you've also reworded that first criteria. So now it would be a person of color or anybody who can demonstrate that they're from a community that has historically been disproportionately impacted by cannabis prohibition. Second criteria remains unchanged. That seems to me like something I can support. Any discussion? Okay. I would take a motion to approve our market structure and fee structure as well as our social equity candidate criteria as presented in this slideshow. However, the motion. Can I say one thing before we vote, Mr. Chairman, while we were just going through this, I tried to do and I'm not a math guy. So if I got this a little bit wrong, don't hold it against me. I tried to add up the different licenses for an integrated license as we were moving through those slides and that $50,000 integrated fee for proposal B seemed to be even a little bit higher than what adding them all up individually would be, which is in line with what I was thinking earlier. So I'm comfortable. Great. And of course there are benefits to being vertically integrated. So I think that makes sense to me as well. Okay. Is there a motion? We can do it separately too if you'd prefer market structure, fee structure, and then social equity. I think we can approve this as a package. I'm not quite sure how to move that. So I moved. Can we name this something? Why don't you could name it your October 15th report decisions? Okay. That's better than just saying yes to all of that. So I moved to approve the October 15th, 2021 decisions as presented. I will second. All in favor? Hi. Hi. Great work on this. Thank you, Bryn. Thank you to all of our advisory committee and everyone who showed up to those meetings and provided us public comment along the way. And again, I would just reiterate that these are recommendations that were kind of put on a very aggressive timeline for us to make. This is very much the beginning of the process. The next step on the market and fee report is to have a hearing on it in the legislature with our GOV OPS committees and our Ways and Means and Finance committees to really dig into whether or not the legislature is okay with what we've done. And there'd be plenty of opportunity for people to comment throughout that process. And as I mentioned on the social equity criteria, again, this is kind of the starting point of that conversation. We now intend to kind of actually go out and talk to disproportionately impacted communities, disproportionately impacted individuals and all of our volunteers to talk about what we missed on this, what we're missing, and what we got wrong and what we got right. So just want to have that in everyone's contemplation as we move forward. And with that, I would take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Seconded. All in favor? Hi. Hi. All right. Thank you.