City Council Meeting May 17, 2016

0:01:50i'm going to call to order the regular city council meeting of tuesday may 17th let the records show that council member jan bridges is uh has an excused absence and that all other council members are present we are now will do a pledge of allegiance to the flag or

0:02:10an observation of a moment of silence your choice i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all that brings us on to item two council and staff communications any staff

0:02:38communications seeing none council communications i have a list sorry um i'm gonna start with an event that occurred on sunday and i want to give a big hand to the trail trekkers for the hillside festival that was this last weekend the hillside festival was held

0:02:59in in our 100 acre hillside area with various events and and walks uh one of the ones that i attended uh was a poet kirk lumpkin an el cerrito resident and and poet uh and and it was wonderful to hear his live readings in the wilds of the wilds of our hillside national area

0:03:21and then that was followed by musicians ken hayes and tom klein who serenaded us with several ballads um and it was it was a very nice event and i want to thank the trail truckers for for that also on sunday we were in the newspaper uh for those that uh aren't familiar

0:03:43with the chronicle we were in the chronicle section uh john king wrote about el cerrito and this was not a surprise to us or to staff these architectural students had been working on these all semester and the city was aware that they were working on these it was the professor's chance to

0:04:01give these students an opportunity to ground themselves in in reality but not burden themselves with all of the details so some of these these uh ideas are not necessarily structurally worked out but it was fun to see el cerrito in the in the newspaper and i want to thank them uh

0:04:22for their efforts and they're actually coming to the city tomorrow to give a presentation to staff um later this week on may 19th the east bay economic uh east bay economic outlook is being presented at the oakland asian cultural center that's 9 a.m to 11 a.m may 19th uh

0:04:44oakland asian cultural center is located at 388 9th street in oakland uh this is a first-hand report on the current and future status of east bay econo economy christopher thornburn of beacon economics will be presenting uh in on july 16th and july 17th in cerrito vista park

0:05:07will be a 24 relay for life of el cerrito it's a american cancer society relay for life and they're currently building teams for people to walk and raise funds for this organization you can get more information at www dot relay for life and that's the word f o r

0:05:32dot org slash el cerrito ca so that's that if as you were coming in you may have noticed a very big banner with the american flag on it i am excited to announce that vote by mail ballots can be now dropped off here at city hall on the second floor we actually have a ballot box where you can

0:05:59deliver your vote by mail ballots so that's really exciting the next uh meeting may not occur before election day so i wanted to make sure that people are aware that there are some important items on the election that's coming up uh so that people should be getting information and making

0:06:19it a educated uh decision about measure a a uh it's titled uh what is the title clean and healthy bay is the title of that measure so i'm hoping that you will take the time to become educated on that matter and lastly but not leastly the city has printed a thousand

0:06:47signs for your window against hate and this is in response to the hate crime that occurred in february in our town and we are making them available free for people to pick up and display their their solidarity with our anti-crime position and i'm going to ask a member of the human relations

0:07:14commission to speak specifically about loving day which is a june 12th event that's coming up uh so that she can uh tell you more about that june 12th date and the details of that and that concludes apologize that concludes my list but so i'm ready to now move on to the

0:07:34agenda unless there's any new announcements seeing none we will move to oral communications from the public this is an opportunity for members of the public to speak on any item that's not on the regular uh agenda or on the um or on the consent calendar uh we allow

0:07:55up to three minutes per person there is the infamous hiding light board um that we use to to time you uh green light is go yellow is uh means that you have i can't remember it's a minute right and red i will i will begin to start asking you to wrap up your comments uh when the

0:08:16red light goes on um and with that um [Music] i should probably cover i mean i know i gave us a report out after our last closed session after we had it but i should do i need to do another report out on closed session at this time no if you made the report at the time of

0:08:36the at the conclusion of the closed session then no further report is required right so the report that we gave direction to our negotiators does not need to be repeated at this time well you just did but excellent we will move on to oral communications from the public at this

0:08:50time and we have two speaker slips for this item cordell hindler followed by rochelle pardue okamoto so uh mayor lyman and uh council members i am cordell handler i am have i belong to two organizations richmond excellent serving our community and and i'm a member of the park plaza

0:09:10neighborhood association what i just passed out is um i would like to invite the council to the 2016 west county youth summit it's pretty much self-explanatory so you just go to eventbrite.com just search for um west county youth summit uh to register for yourself so

0:09:28and there will be a free lunch uh provided so that's one good news and then the second good news is um let me see i have did some researching online and um and i and i and this is very uh interesting fact so i said oh this is amazing if you look out outside the city hall

0:09:45you'll find some vacant buildings uh that have been like not been purchased like in the last many years so i said oh no people will not come all the way from marin county to set up shop here no because first of all when i came two months ago about the about the minimum

0:10:04wage uh increase i said that's good we need something we need something like to boost the economy up for us for the city but if you look at some of these vacant properties it's it's terrible i mean so i said oh no people would not set up shop because um the rents getting more

0:10:21higher ev every day think about though 3 000 a month for a space no i mean nobody they are like on a fixed income so nobody can afford that so i do support the minimum wage increase so let's see um i will talk about other the other items on the agenda for later that's it

0:10:40thank you miss pardo comodo thank you i'll grab the sign again to show the audience is it all right if i face the audience or do i need to address the council i think they've got a camera angle back there for you okay hello everyone so as the mayor mentioned we made these signs in response to the

0:11:17hate crimes earlier spring late late winter and um and of course can is it on yeah okay and of course it was a great tragedy that we're all still dealing with and we will be going an ongoing effort not just signs but an ongoing effort to deal with hatred and discrimination within our

0:11:53town and every town what the human relations commission had been working on prior to this event was the loving day event to give you a brief history on loving day and el cerrito when i joined the human relations commission we were talking about how can we bring

0:12:13people together we have lots of days that celebrate different sorts of ethnicities or or gender groups or lgbt things like that but what's something that we could do that brings everyone together and i had asked if anyone had heard of loving day loving day was originally created

0:12:35by a young man named ken tanabe who's half belgian half japanese and he was very interested in the lovings case which was loving versus the commonwealth of virginia where they legalized interracial marriage so the day has come to has become more than just a celebration of interracial marriage and

0:12:57biracial multiracial people but it has been a celebration of multiculturalism in general and then last year the lovings case was used as precedent to legalize gay marriage so we really feel that this day is a day that's for everyone any any ethnicity any gender

0:13:19it's really an opportunity for us to all come together from our various backgrounds and celebrate how we're all different and how we're yet all the same so i invite everyone to please join us on loving day here at city hall june 12th from 12 to 3 30 pm there will be food and entertainment and

0:13:43activities for kids it'll be a family friendly event thank you thank you no other speakers at this time we'll move on to item 5 which is adoption of our consent calendar we have 10 items on the calendar for this evening approval of minutes those would be the minutes from our may 3rd meeting

0:14:055b is garden club's 60th anniversary proclamation recognizing the garden club for their 60th year state homeland security grant our fire chief has [Music] secured a grant i see him back there men contract with michael baker international 5e on-call planning and environmental

0:14:26planning services professional services with mig and others all way stop at intersection of norvell and donald avenues the borrowing funds from the municipal services corporation cal recycle grant program application 5i is to reschedule the june 7th council meeting to tuesday june 14th

0:14:50that is associated with the election that's on june 7th and finally 5j approve approval by the city council of acceptance of the former redevelopment agency properties in accordance with the successor agency's long-range property management plan and those are that that is if i remember

0:15:10correctly this is going to be a property associated with um the former the interim city hall is is the specific properties on this one and the properties future development properties would be the main fair block three parcels there and uh future development properties at the

0:15:35shore block three parcels there so that's the consent calendar any items to be discussed seeing none i move adoption to the consent calendar consisting of items 5a through 5j second motion by friedman seconded by quinto all those in favor please say aye aye let the record show at past

0:15:55four zero that concludes item five that brings us to item six which is uh public hearings we have two public three public hearings this evening item 6a is our master fee schedule revisions and we should have a presentation there she is good evening my name is stacy johnson and i'm an

0:16:33analyst in the finance department i'm here tonight to provide an update on the annual master fee schedule as you know the master fee schedule includes all of the city's user fees charges for services and business license tax rates and is revised annually adjustments to the fees are intended to

0:16:55cover changes in the city's cost of providing services the proposed fiscal year 2016-17 master fee schedule reflects a recommended 3 percent increase for most fees representing the city's increased cost of providing services some fees have been held constant while others are proposed for changes

0:17:20based on the demand for service and some new fees have been included in effort to trend with the current market and allow the city to be competitive with regard to the services that are provided also included is the update for the business license rates the municipal code dictates that this

0:17:40rate is calculated by the consumer price index change from the prior year the cpi change was 3.02 percent and it is recommended that the business license rates be increased by this amount the new rates will go into effect july first 1st 2016 and any additional revenue will be

0:18:03included in the fiscal year 2016-17 budget department directors are present from each of the city's departments tonight and are able to address any of the specific questions that you may have regarding the master fee schedule as it relates to their specific areas

0:18:25great thank you very much any questions any questions on the master fee schedule any public speakers on this item yes one cordell hindler mr hendler thanks dave so go to handler richmond um i i do like the present um the schedule i do like that so all i do all i can say is that uh

0:18:50please um pass this um the schedule and um that's that's the only thing thank you i'm going to bring it back to dyess for comments mr mayor i just wanted to make sure that that you remember this is a public hearing item oh that's right we need to move to close the public hearing that's

0:19:11correct can i get a motion to close public motion close the public hearing no no you first open it then you have the public testimony then we close it but we we i opened it i thought i heard you say that that you were opening the public hearing but i can i can reopen i can reopen the public

0:19:32hearing at this time does mr handle the handlers need to speak again i think we can take his comments right into the record great motion to close we have a motion to close it's been seconded uh motioned by friedman second by abelson all those in favor please say aye hi

0:19:51that closes our public hearing uh any additional questions or counsel deliberation um i i will make one comment and it's it's one that i've made before and it has to do with the building department um i certainly understand what our fee schedule is based on and and

0:20:09uh will support the fee structure that's being proposed tonight but it's certainly looking forward to in the upcoming budget a a comprehensive look at restructuring our building permit fees so after that study is done we'll have an opportunity to readjust our our fee

0:20:30schedule at that time do i have a motion to uh do i have a motion to uh accept the adopting the revisions to the master fee schedule move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito adopting revisions to the master fee schedule schedule for fiscal year 2016-17

0:20:57i'll second a motion by friedman seconded by quinto all those in favor please indicate by saying aye aye opposed extensions let the record show it passes unanimously that brings us on to the public hearing item 6b this is for the landscape lighting and assessment

0:21:16district engineers report and a levy list presented to the council and public on may 3rd and i understand there's a staff presentation good evening mayor and council members my name is yvette ortiz the city's public works director the item for your consideration tonight

0:21:37is setting of the annual lighting and lighting landscape and lighting assessment for fiscal year 1617 at a rate of 72 dollars per residential parcel and as noted in the engineer's report for other classes of properties the purpose of the landscape and lighting assessment district is to raise

0:21:57funds to support improvements and maintenance of the city's parks park area landscape areas and street lighting in order to impose this annual assessment the city council must annually authorize the engineer's report to identify the cost and general benefits to those processes within the

0:22:13district the city council authorized such a report on at its april 5th 2016 meeting and the engineer of record nbs local government solutions prepared the annual report and it was delivered before the may 3rd council meeting and accepted by council at that meeting which at that

0:22:32meeting city council also scheduled this public hearing as required staff estimates that the current rate of assessment will generate about 773 000 of revenue and this will be reflected in the city's fiscal year 1617 budget it should be noted that this is the same amount that's been collected

0:22:53since 1998.

0:22:55the purpose of this public hearing is to confirm the diagram and the assessment as appearing in the engineer's report and i'm here to answer any questions you may have any questions from the council at this time seeing none will uh open the public hearing are there any speaker cards i have no

0:23:14request to speak motion to close public hearing second i have a motion by friedman seconded by abelson to close the public hearing all those in favor please say aye proposed abstentions let the record show it passes unanimously and are there any written communications

0:23:35that have been received on this matter i've not received any thank you um and so any additional questions or counsel comments at this time i'll i'll you don't need to come to the podium because i already know the answer to this question um well you might have to confirm my the

0:23:50773 000 that's generated on an annual basis through the landscape lighting and assessment district is not adequate to cover our actual public uh needs and it's it's it falls short by a good percentage and we usually have to supplement that from other other sources general fund to make

0:24:10a good on our community commitment to parks and landscaping and around the city let the record show that i've got nods from the city manager with that i'll entertain a motion i move a resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito confirming the diagram and

0:24:30levying the assessment for fiscal year 2016-17 for the landscape and lighting assessment district number 1988-1 i'll second motion by ableton second by quinto all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions let the record show it passes unanimously moving right along to our third public

0:24:52hearing this evening this is item 6c which is with regards to our storm drain annual report and a method of collecting our storm drain fees hello again uh i the second item for your consideration is should i go ahead okay yes please um is approval of the fiscal year 1617

0:25:14storm drain annual report and directing the storm drain fees to be collected on the property tax rolls in 1993 the city council adopted ordinance 93 4 providing for the imposition and collection of storm dream fees to pay the debt service on the revenue bonds for reconstruction of the city's storm

0:25:34drain system the ordinance further provided that the storm drain fees are to be collected on the property tax roll based on the amount specified in the annual report the fiscal year 1617 storm drain annual report was included as an attachment to your staff report

0:25:51and was also prepared by nbs local government solutions the city must annually conduct a public hearing to consider the method of collecting the storm drain fees and not the amounts which were already set in the ordinance the annual storm drain fee will continue

0:26:06to be assessed at 58 for each single single-family residential unit and is expected to generate revenues of about 698 000 the last debt service payment on the storm drain revenue bonds was paid in fiscal year 1314 therefore the current proceeds of the of the storm drain fees are used for

0:26:28continued improvements and maintenance of the storm drain system and will be reflected in the fiscal year 1617 budget any questions of staff at this time um the 698 000 number that you just testified is slightly different than the number that's in the actual report which

0:26:52i think it's 2500 or something to that effect it's approximately 700 000 let me check on that let's see i'm on page 1-1 of the uh of the in the executive summary i see and just so everybody understands there's there's a ten thousand parcels in the city and this is an aggregation

0:27:24of uh calculations of a separate different fee for each parcel and so there there's opportunities for for uh you to have different numbers at the end of the day as as parcels change their use and and that might be 698 is the historical amount that we received the

0:27:442000 might be just a change that i wasn't reflected in the staff report yes because as parcels change from open space to developed they would generate revenue at this point right great so it's approximately seven hundred thousand dollars of revenue um okay and that will open the public hearing at

0:28:01this time i have no request to speak all right i move we close the public hearing a second a motion by friedman seconded by quinto to close the public hearing all those in favor say aye aye um that measure passes unanimously um any written comments on this particular

0:28:21one no mayor great thank you um any additional questions or comments on this item i'll use i'll use my time here to point out that that 700 thousand dollars with the new uh municipal storm water permit that's out there this is certainly not enough we recently had a presentation that we are

0:28:47putting a number of trash capture facilities in place in town to reduce the amount of trash that's leaving our town and making it to the bay and uh that is not um this fee is a general fee and does not specifically cover all of the costs that we're incurring to comply with the

0:29:05new laws that went into effect last fall with that i'll entertain a motion i move we adopt a resolution on approving the fiscal year 2016-17 storm drain annual report and directing that storm drain fees be collected on the property tax rolls second okay we've had a motion that's

0:29:29been seconded all those in favor please say aye aye opposed extensions the record pass unanimously all right um that concludes item six and brings us on to the item i think everyone's waiting for which is item seven a uh proposed medical marijuana facility and impact on our current medical

0:29:48marijuana prohibition um and i'm gonna ask councilmember friedman to lead us through part of this thank you very much and council member quinto will take part of our initial comments before we hear from the potential operator of a facility so the goal of this session is to learn more

0:30:10about medical the issue of medical marijuana and a potential operator of a medical marijuana facility and for the council to give direction on the following questions do we want to consider lifting our current moratorium do we want to develop a medical marijuana ordinance

0:30:28and are we comfortable moving forward on processing an application for a permit from the el srito wellness center who you'll be hearing from shortly note that council direction does not mean we are agreeing to lift a moratorium pass an ordinance or approve a permit if the direction from council

0:30:47is to move forward all of those actions will be vetted developed and presented to the city council for their deliberation as well as reaching out to the public to give them a chance to give input before we would take any step as outlined so the order of the study session will be opening

0:31:08comments by myself and council member quinto then a presentation by the el cerrito wellness center group then council questions then public testimony and then direction from council so just a few comments uh about the issue before i turn it over to council member quinto

0:31:29so medical marijuana has been legal in our state since the passage of proposition 2 215 in 1996.

0:31:37it's estimated there are anywhere from 500 to 1 000 medical marijuana dispensaries operating in the state there are none in el cerrito of course we have a moratorium there are four in berkeley and they just voted to add two more on last tuesday night and there are two in

0:31:57richmond one at the hilltop and one at the pacific east mall there are probably 30 to 40 places to legally purchase alcohol in el cerrito including bars liquor stores restaurants grocery and convenience stores it seems reasonable that we would permit at least one facility to sell medical marijuana

0:32:17which is a must much less harmful drug than alcohol our residents who have medical marijuana cards are going to other cities and or using delivery services even though our moratorium does not permit delivery services uh and we get no revenue from those sales so

0:32:36this is an opportunity by us moving forward on the medical marijuana issue to capture significant revenue for our city also the adult use of marijuana act initiative is all but assured to be on the ballot this november and has substantial financial support is curling currently polling at about 60

0:32:58percent and is very likely to pass that just requires a majority vote so there is no end to the potential uses of the revenue that we will receive from permitting a medical marijuana facility we could increase our currently very thin reserve fund which would allow us

0:33:16to ride out the ups and downs of property tax sales tax and revenue cycles that we're subject to we could definitely fund some of our many needs for defeared deferred maintenance and capital needs including our public safety building many parks and recreation facilities no end of

0:33:36things that we've always said and indeed when we do our budget next month we'll be presented with a list of unmet capital needs um we could work with community nonprofits if we had resources to do that currently we have very little to be able to work on potentially establishing

0:33:55a health clinic or other social services in town dealing with the tremendous impact of the housing crisis on our residents we could do creative things like fun fiber optic cable wi-fi for residents and businesses and i think very importantly if we go forward with this step is that we need

0:34:18funds to enforce our current tobacco ordinance and also to educate young people about the dangers of tobacco and drugs so we would have many options that we don't currently have because our margins are very thin um i think the the issue is bound to come up tonight why we would consider one

0:34:43operator and not open the process to all operators so i just want to address that up front because it's a legitimate question our city does not have the bandwidth to undertake a long rfp process also we don't have the time or the money in order to do that um for example city

0:35:03of san leandro and you'll see in the video presented the folks in the el srito wellness center are also very involved with san leandro their process took two years to grant a single dispensary permit it cost the city at least 160 thousand dollars plus for consultants lawyers etc and no end

0:35:24of staff time was spent on it and after a lot of lobbying and political infighting one dispensary was chosen i think close to a year ago and it's still not open so there's a lot of lost revenue you know several years there by that process taking so long i think those are all the comments i

0:35:47have at this time i'm really eager to hear from council member quinto and then from the folks proposing the facility and most importantly from the citizens who have come to comment tonight so take away council member king tim thank you council member friedman i have been

0:36:05looking at this pros and cons and and looking at this in a compassionate way to help a lot of people that are going through some difficult catastrophic illnesses and this is why i think and i truly believe that we should look at this with our eyes open and to learn about

0:36:29what therapies are available whether cancer patients and aids patients want to go through wasting threat syndrome and deal with narcotics or do they just want to have some marijuana to to help them with their pain and help them with their wasting syndrome so this

0:36:50is something that i believe residents here in el cerrito should look at and to keep their eyes open because we have so many people that are going through illnesses catastrophic illnesses glaucoma cancer breast cancer and this is a proven way and doctors truly believe this is

0:37:13another therapeutic way to take care of different illnesses so thank you for attending and i look forward and this evening and talking about this so uh el srido wellness center folks please step up good evening mayor greg lyman council member abelson quinto and mark friedman

0:37:50city manager and residents of el cerrito my name is rose johnson i'm the ceo of the davis street family resource center in san leandro also a member of the the san leandro wellness center with me is dr john orum right behind me and we are happy and pleased to present

0:38:08to you uh our our overview of what we would like to propose to the city of el cerrito we want to start off with a video that's going to give you context a picture's worth a thousand words and then we have a powerpoint and then we are open to questions so can we

0:38:26start that please [Music] and close it off and she's all done she got her medicine yay i'm gordon galvin uh president of the board of directors for the davis street family resource center i'm also a business owner here in san leandro my company galvin and associates provides

0:39:01government relations and project management i'm also a real estate investor and a member of the board of directors for the davis street wellness center so the davis street wellness center is a group of professionals with different backgrounds and expertises and

0:39:17different principles everything from non-profit management and growth to business development finance cannabis cultivation testing and we all came together to form this company the davis street wellness center and apply for the permit in the city of san leandro and we think

0:39:36we have a compelling story to tell so i'm rose johnson i'm the ceo of the david street family resource center i've been at the helm for the last 23 years taking davis street from a small ministry of the first christian church to the 10 million dollar operation that

0:39:53it is today i have to share my personal story seven years ago my eldest was diagnosed with lymphoma and at the end of her treatment it became clear that she could benefit from a form of cannabis her doctor at the time suggested it but wasn't able to go further so he said

0:40:12there are places that you can get medical cannabis i ended up going to two places and and they were not good experiences so much so that i came back in fact it got to the point i was prepared to to impersonate her because she was afraid to go in seriously this is my true story

0:40:30she was afraid to go into one of these places because of what it looked like on the outside we never even got through the door and at some point i you know i i reconsidered um and i thought to myself this is just wrong if me if rose cannot walk into a dispensary and feel

0:40:47comfortable and and feel confident and feel respected and safe and secure then there's probably thousands of people like me and i just came away thinking you know what i create programs all the time i've grown david street from this tiny little organization i know how to

0:41:01do this and so somewhere along the line in my career this has got to happen david street has got to be able to open a dispensary while i've been at the davis street wellness center we have had a good track record of projects primarily our most recent project in

0:41:18november we renovated this site took over the building repurposed it brought a lot of economic development to this four acre property in a dilapidated part of oakland by an extension of us being there we've made the community nicer we have improved the surrounding area

0:41:38we have created 25 new high paying jobs at the facility what is going on in the bay area is what's taking form is what i like to call the silicon valley of cannabis san leandro the city of san leandro has a very real opportunity to pick a operator that is going to embody you

0:42:00know the vision of this industry i came to the board at that time and i said guess what this is what i think we should be doing in the next three years at that time the board said uh this is that's a great idea rose but it's never gonna happen we're never gonna be able

0:42:13to do that fast forward this uh this january an opportunity became available and and it was introduced to me by the president of our board gordon galvin and it was exactly what i had envisioned and what i was thinking and that was a dispensary an environment that was going to look clinical be

0:42:34clinical with the intention that it was going to provide the medicine that people need i'm dr john orm president and ceo of davis street wellness center in 2008 i co-founded one of the nation's first analytical laboratories focused on cannabis science and focused on ensuring

0:42:49the safety and quality of cannabis products cw analytical is now recognized as california's most trusted cannabis specific analytical laboratories and has informed public policy nationwide san leandro uh our group consists of people from san leandro i was born and raised here rose

0:43:07johnson's from here and john oram's father practiced medicine here in san leandro for a number of years nico ania the ania family is from san leandro so this is a san leandro based group coming together to put a proposal inside of this business we have phds and

0:43:26doctors that take this very seriously one asp at the davis street wellness center and davis street and it's like this every person who comes in and buys medical cannabis will in essence be supporting davis street indirectly because some of that i'll just finish it up and you can hear

0:44:05from me directly from my mouth so i think what's important for us to just disclose up front is clearly this presentation was made for the san leandro city council it's a san leandro focused endeavor it's a san leandro focused video but we wanted to share it with you

0:44:26because essentially it's the same concept and the concept is this we propose introducing an environment a clinical model for a cannabis dispensary in el cerrito we believe that it's a model that can work in your community like we believe it can work in san leandro so

0:44:45that's what we wanted to illustrate to you in this video and really our personal stories because like council member quinto many of us have a personal connection and a personal story someone who has a chronic illness someone who has um a severe illness and and so there are all

0:45:01of those properties that we want to talk about um but that was kind of and you know we were going to wrap it up with with that video so i want to now take us through the powerpoint presentation because that's where we're going to illustrate to you some of the more uh scientific

0:45:17elements of the dispensary some of the environmental elements of the dispensary including safety product safety labeling and and what it could look like here in el cerrito so if you will allow us to can we make it all big screen all right so dr orem and i are gonna do

0:45:42this together and um and here we go okay mayor lyman council member staff thank you for the time uh it's going to be maybe a little difficult to see some of this but we'll do the best we can first first slide here is really just laying the ground work uh let's be honest people are consuming

0:46:05cannabis in el cerrito right now uh they can drive to neighboring cities and they can can bring it home and they can consume cannabis in el cerrito and they can also order through delivery services and how to have it delivered to their doors which is all fine and well i don't think

0:46:21anybody nobody's judging that those facts the issue is that the city of el cerrito is not receiving any tax revenue any revenue what so whatsoever from those transactions also we're in a climate now where you know there's evolving state regulations and in fact involving national

0:46:39regulations and national conversation around cannabis so the timing is right people are ready for this and people are speaking with their voices and with their votes and cannabis medical or adult use is coming so el cerrito has an opportunity in front of it to to take control of the environment and

0:47:01the situation at hand the state regulations will uh you know will give deference to el cerrito into cities municipalities to write their own regulations but it is certainly to the advantage of el cerrito to grab the bull by the horns so to speak and put regulations on paper

0:47:23before anything happens too seriously at the state level so the opportunities at hand right now are really for for el cerrito to consider an ordinance that would align el cerrito with the california's medical marijuana regulation and safety act commonly known as mrsa

0:47:43also there's an opportunity to ensure that el cerrito residents have safe access to metal cook cannabis without having to commute out of town there's also an opportunity to create jobs local jobs for local residents and also to to create new revenue for the city of

0:48:04el cerrito through a business licensing structure so about the el cerrito wellness center we are a group of individuals with with backgrounds in in science and technology and finance and social services and government relations and we have combined expertise of over a

0:48:24decade of combined expertise in these fields and also in in cannabis in the cannabis industry's specific expertise as well so we've collaborated to put together a vision of a respectful medical clinic medical cannabis clinic so uh let me we're going to go to the next one

0:48:46so just go to me real quick um why not i i get to talk about myself so that's that's a good thing uh i i started in the cannon century a little over 10 years ago one of my first businesses i started was an analytical laboratory i'm a phd chemist an environmental scientist by training i

0:49:05formed an analytical laboratory because i saw the need at that time to develop quality standards quality specifications for products and labeling practices for for products in the cannabis industry um that has been a very successful business model and it has brought a lot of

0:49:22innovation to the industry and new products and very tightly controlled and very specific products to the market through through that effort my next effort was to to move into the actual production of these products i saw that there was a need to develop teams and develop infrastructure to

0:49:41create products of medical quality high high quality medical cannabis products and so i i went into that endeavor endeavor and for about the last seven eight years i've employed over 50 people on the production side of the cannabis industry all all of those businesses are in oakland

0:50:02so the the next endeavor for for me personally is to move into retail i am not a retail specialist although i have consulted and advised on retail establishments but i certainly see retail as the next uh benchmark for me and for my my my group we can bring the expertise and the level

0:50:21of professionalism and the the business acumen that we have developed in other fields and in the cannabis industry to the retail environment so we're very excited about bringing those components to el cerrito with us here tonight is gordon galvin the director of

0:50:38community relations and i want to point him out because he's in the audience and also nico and mia our treasurer and cfo also in the audience and so later if you have questions that are more appropriately answered by either of them they're they're here to support us

0:50:55so just a few highlights of of our proposal we gave a we gave some of this to the to the council in writing uh just a couple bullet points here uh our our model implements a robust security plan that has transactional security around persons and property and cash management

0:51:15so we those kind of details would be shared with the council under under a full application and in consultation with with the police department the proposal will create about 20 22 local jobs we have we have a goal of hiring a minimum of 50 local uh hopefully we can do more than that

0:51:40all of our jobs pay above living wages are are currently our our lowest wage is 18 an hour we have identified and actually secured a property at the north end of el cerrito and we have a significant budget to revitalize that property the we will be encouraging alternative modes

0:52:03of transport we will be encouraging bicycle uses of bicycles bart of ac transit and we will do that through basically sales discounts and other other incentive incentive programs we have rose will talk much more about the community education program and i think that's it for now yeah

0:52:31please um two things that we wanna that we wanna focus on with respect to community education is this we we believe that the entire community every resident of el cerrito uh ought to engage with us to help inform what kind of giving you want to to invest your your funds in

0:52:50the funds that are going to come from from a dispensary we also want to engage in dialogue around educating people on the uses and needs for medicinal cannabis and that's you know what we're talking about tonight uh clearly we intend to adhere and to and into the enforcement of your smoking

0:53:09ordinance um a challenge but but that's our intention and because we understand the constraints of of a city like yours and the bandwidth that that council member friedman referred to earlier we intend to cover the cost of processing the application all right so moving on to community

0:53:29involvement i want to underscore what's unique about this model is that we have essentially flipped the model dispensaries medicinal dispensaries exist and have existed for many years in the surrounding communities and those models are business models that that essentially exist to deliver a

0:53:49product and there's a small group of stakeholders who benefit this model is flipped so that the community your community would benefit from the fees that we would offer to you to to to spend wisely and in the way in your needs based on on your strategic planning and your outcomes

0:54:11some of those we've put out there that we've heard from just in the research that we've done that are important to to residents of of el cerrito so we not only intend to support financially but participate through residence and what's not on here but i want to start off with that is through

0:54:28an advisory board so in san leandro we've created an advisory board we want to use the same model here the advisory board for us includes not only um the scientists and people that are are um producing the the products but also your residents people who are members you

0:54:47know your social service network your faith-based network your human services commissions and people that are involved in in activities that are important to to people uh who live in el cerrito so see these are just some of the the events that we've identified your mlk

0:55:03celebration earth day the fourth of july your friends of your library we understand that that's that's a project that's that is uh something that you've been working towards and to make sure that that happens we also intend to assign from our end a community liaison

0:55:19someone that will work closely with you in your community to make sure that that all of our uh intentions are carried out and so here we go so i'll walk you through the site just a little bit the proposed site this site is at the north end of el cerrito on san pablo boulevard it's the

0:55:38former taco bell location just uh just one block north of home depot that's okay well the picture doesn't really say much but the the properties is vacant and uh and dilapidated and uh occupied by by homeless currently uh we do have a plan to revitalize the property i'll say we

0:56:02have a couple renderings let's say a few things key points about the property first though the property is holy in el cerrito there is a drive a shared driveway through richmond but there is the ability to to redevelop the way the traffic flows so that the site maintain remains wholly in el

0:56:25cerrito um if i had a better view i could walk you through some of our our policies about cash management about security and safety and i'm happy to do that at a later date or one on one-on-one if need be but i'll move on to the next slide we we did a rendering of the of the

0:56:46facility so this is actually the same architectural footprint uh of the site we've done some modifications digital modifications to the roof line and into the structure i've done some landscaping again this is just a rendering and a conceptual but what we're looking at

0:57:02here is we would like to beautify the site we like to bring vegetation to the site and make it really make it a welcoming site and and something that the residents of el cerrito can be proud of um it's a modern modern design natural tones vertical vegetation lots of vegetation

0:57:21very welcoming very well lit here again is the same same uh rendering or rendering from a different angle again just showing clean lines modern lines um very you know neutral tones and in a welcoming environment um now these are uh less rendered just showing we're going to walk around the

0:57:46building a little bit just to show you the structure um we again would just keep with the modern and clean lines all the way around nothing uh too out of the ordinary nothing in your face no big pot leaves on any of the of the windows no you know overwhelming neon lights or anything

0:58:05like that something just very clean something very respectful and something that we could be proud of okay hard to see so i'm gonna i'll talk you through this patient volume there's a a good metric to understand patient volume or to try to predict patient volume is to look at

0:58:28the number of residents in approximately a 30-minute drive that should represent the potential patient pool there's approximately uh you know there's a there's about 1 million patients i'm sorry residents individuals within 30 minutes of el cerrito and another good metric is three percent in

0:58:50california roughly three percent of the general population are medical card holders or consumers of medical cannabis uh so three percent of a million is uh what thirty thousand so there's approximately 30 000 individual uh patients in in the area that we see as

0:59:08the direct market share now that the direct market now that doesn't uh i'm not talking about there's competition there are other opportunities but we have a different model we want to provide a different model a different type of service and a different type of

0:59:22product and different experience to go after those individuals what we're showing here is a curve a growth curve of how and i can share this later but this is a curve showing our projected patient count numbers through the dispensary uh quarterly um and i'll go this way

0:59:41we'll go back these aren't even worth talking about they're they're they're too small so maybe we got another one let's see okay this is a little bit better as part of our business model this is integrated into our business model this is not just shooting from the hip

0:59:55as part of our business model we're proposing a 9 receipts uh business licensing fee to the city of el cerrito to give you a little bit of perspective of a surrounding neighborhood or surrounding cities um san jose has authorized up to ten percent they're currently at seven

1:00:13percent they're one of the highest in the state uh sacramento is at four percent they're considering it ten percent uh for cultivation these are gross receipts tax uh los angeles is at six percent more locally oakland is at five oakland and richmond are at five

1:00:27percent berkeley's at two and a half percent and in uh san francisco does not have a gross receipts tax so again we are proposing a nine percent gross receipts licensing uh or business tax um which would put el cerrito at the high and if not the highest in the state

1:00:47contributions will be made directly to the el cerritos just discretionary fund we not we don't want to presume to know how to spend your money uh we just would like to provide you with the funds again nine percent of the gross receipts business licensing fee uh other other

1:01:05items in our proposal would be a one-time 65 000 dollar permit fee that's to help with uh the processing of the application that's to help you know open the doors and sort of get the process moving uh and then in terms of an annual renewal fee where we're we're looking at

1:01:21a fifteen thousand dollar annual renewal fee so we'll go back to the chart here uh based on our projections i didn't get to get into the population and how we run our model and how we under you know how we can make these kind of projections but let's just assume that we know what

1:01:36we're doing on that if we look here i'm showing gross revenue in year one um these are these would be full years so let's give us you know give a couple quarters to ramp up and let's call it a full fiscal year we estimate approximately eight and a half million in gross receipts in our first year with

1:01:54growth up to 11 million after the third year so at nine percent we're ranging between 700 and a million dollars of gross receipts licensing fees going to the city of el cerrito on top of that is a california's state sales tax through the board of equalization the current rate in el

1:02:18cerrito is 10 percent that's not included in our model it's it's a it really has a net zero effect for our cash flow model uh but it's i listed here because it is a benefit to the city a portion of that 10 sales tax does come back to el cerrito um too much reading um

1:02:36too much reading but i'll just real quickly say that as part of the new regulations that are coming down from the state level there there will most likely be additional excise taxes on the sale of cannabis um so just uh i think in in summary um what what we're urging the city to do is

1:02:57to consider amending the ordinance to the current ordinance that bans dispensaries in el cerrito we're urging you to reconsider that and to allow for the issuance of a medical uh the issuance of a medical cannabis dispensary permit in doing so would align el cerrito with

1:03:17with california's newly enacted uh regulations and it would promote the safety and well-being of residents and and medical cannabis users in el cerrito thank you great thank you lights please thank you thank you for the presentation i'm now going to turn it over to the

1:03:41mayor to take questions from the council and then public testimony great thank you i'm going to at this time ask for any questions from council before i go to the public comment i have one for the police chief um i know you're becoming more educated in this issue

1:04:04do you have any security concerns about having a medical marijuana facility in town thank you councilwoman friedman so the police department views medical marijuana dispensaries in a similar way that we view other high cash locations such as banks so some of our expectations for site

1:04:25security would be site security considerations that we would have for institutions like banks we'd expect surveillance systems security on site and then also methods inside that promote internal security for to reduce the likelihood of things like armed robberies

1:04:44thank you that's our main consideration as far as site security yeah thank you right i've got a couple questions i'm not certain if mr freeman if you're ready to answer these and i don't think the proponents are either if we were to uh reconsider the the ordinance banning marijuana what areas

1:05:02of the city would be able to host dispensaries i mean wouldn't it wouldn't the ordinance that's been that we would consider um potentially identify multiple locations for for dispensaries uh as i understand it we have and the city attorney can help on this if we pass an ordinance we can designate

1:05:23the number of facilities that we want to permit is that correct um so the under the city's police power there's a fair degree of latitude in terms of controlling the number and regulatory aspects of any dispensary like this additionally similar with other kinds of uses the

1:05:45city council could consider requiring a series of of buffers around sensitive uses that would ultimately limit the number of spaces that could be made available in the city um yeah i mean i there are a number of approaches basically to control the number of of um

1:06:01even if we said one if this particular location doesn't pan out for whatever reason circulation uh day laborers whatever and another location is sought by the same applicant you know that we would have to have some guidance as to where dispensaries would be permitted

1:06:19and that's something that would come out in the evaluation i'm assuming to the proposers uh you know what about the current misuse of the area you talked about the homeless at the at the current facility but certainly there's day laborers on the on the sidewalks um

1:06:37you know this this how would you address this issue at this location how would you improve it or or how would your business model mean you have 15 annual growth that's pretty significant how would your business model be affected if you can't make the the upgrades and changes at these of

1:06:58people's behavior in this location um our security plan would help with with a lot of that first i believe that just revitalizing the the site just making it more well-lit making it more welcoming just would then you know people have some respect and appreciation for the area and may

1:07:22not uh frequent it for you know for for wrong uses essentially uh so that's what's one aspect the other is as part of our security plan we have cameras and we have lighting and cameras exterior cameras everywhere and we have 24 7 offsite monitoring so we would be with

1:07:40with real-time response we would be able to to monitor and respond to any incidents on the site and we would minimize any sort of uh impact on the police department as much as possible police department would only be called in as necessary hopefully these are just

1:07:57you know it's a matter of bringing the security guard on site and asking people to move on i wish i could say that we would we would use all the data laborers to help us redevelop a site but our insurance and our lawyers would never let us let that happen but maybe

1:08:11there is something that we can do to help the people who are there currently uh to move along or maybe give them uh you know development opportunities um and a more specific question i mean you you have identified medical marijuana you've identified three percent of a

1:08:30million people which is roughly 30 000 you have very generous penetration of numbers of getting twenty percent twenty thousand of those thirty thousand that's a really high uh success rate of of building patients um the numbers the eight and a half million you threw out is roughly fifty dollars

1:08:51per patient per month i'm assuming that that's a reasonable revenue projection per patient yeah the the so some of those numbers uh the drug main drivers of the model are patients per day average uh price and return return what the return frequency is is part of that

1:09:11we start our model at approximately 250 patients per day so of the those larger numbers of the total patient population we can make some assumptions about how frequently they come back if we call them monthly users uh so they they purchase monthly at sixty five dollars a month there's

1:09:28actually our penetration is not very great but if we look at them saying they're you know they only come once every two or three or four months then certainly we would have to have a larger market penetration i'd be happy to share the the model with you and go over some

1:09:41of those details but the basis for that the building that background is to ask the following question how will your model change with the passing of the ama i mean what you in here in the model ordinance you have in here you talk about controls will ensure that limitations on number

1:09:56of patients is adhered to but you never give us a you never recommend a maximum number of patients so it the the you know will you will you talk about 250 a day over if i remember correctly you're talking about a 12-hour day so that that certainly seems reasonable over 12 hours

1:10:16but how will your model change with the passage of ama good question in in general the market size is expected to increase drastically under an adult use scenario to get to the patients per day issue there are uh there are dispensaries in in i use oakland as example the larger

1:10:34dispensaries in oakland can see 800 up to a thousand up to 1200 patients a day some of them have very very limited parking and do not have the type of site that were proposed that we're looking at here in el cerrito uh it is my belief that this site would handle the patient

1:10:51flow the parking and the general traffic much greater than some of the these situations in in oakland and and and i don't you know the the dispensaries in oakland manage it very well by having security guards in the parking lots that help move cars in and out help park

1:11:10people uh help you know just basically to create a good flow of of patients in and out the door so there are ways that we can manage the patient flow is there a limit uh certainly there will be a limit i think we'll have to look at parking we'll have to look at the you know the

1:11:26number of parking spaces and the frequency of visits and and that sort of thing but i certainly believe that we are well below in our estimates well below the limits of that site um the business license fee that you talk about nine percent um is that unique to the property or is that unique to you

1:11:46because there is provisions in the ordinance for resale and and uh if you guys go to sell your business does the next purchaser have to live by that business license fee or can they contest it that's a very that's a good question i um i would imagine that it would live with

1:12:05the corporation but that would be a question for the attorney um okay and then on a lighter note what's a cannabis shallot shallot yeah it's uh on page seven under consumption restrictions cannabis shallot be consumed on the premises i won't know what account sorry there's a lot of typos that one

1:12:33was just the most humorous one thank you um so i i i will move on to uh yield to other people who have questions mayor before we move on i want to come back to uh to speaking about the patients because this didn't come across in the in our presentation because it was at

1:12:51the very end of the the video and that is the the wellness center's intention to not only offer medicinal cannabis to people who are sick but to make it reasonably priced and affordable for people who are poor and are sick and that is unique to this group and this

1:13:09model so what we've adopted is using the federal poverty guideline as a sliding fee scale for people who are poor and are sick and i think that that's really important that all the residents and particularly the people that are here tonight here so it's a where it's a

1:13:24socially justice um centered uh center thank you as long as i've got the floor still um the ordinance that you guys proposed um with many interesting typos in it does talk about 18 years but that you're would be selling medical marijuana to 18 year olds and the adult marijuana act

1:13:47uses 21.

1:13:50how will that uh how will you manage that difference if if at that time there is uh the deal marijuana act passes the so the ordinance uh the the draft language that we've we've given to you is has been put together by our attorney and it pulls from other municipalities in northern

1:14:10california i do apologize for the typos um we would absolutely follow the the the the law the the highest law you know um if the state says it's 21. for us it's 21. okay if the city and frankly if this if the state says 18 but the city says 21 it's 21.

1:14:36okay great thank you any other questions from council i i had a follow-up question on the number of people who would be visiting the uh establishment and i calculated if i did it correctly that it would be um 60 an hour based on coming once a month i forget what the 20 000 was

1:15:08representing but um 30 days in a month did you say 20 000 a month at some level yeah there was that was on one of their slides okay so then 30 days in a month so you divide 30 into 20 000 and you get six hundred uh per day that would be per day and i heard ten hours per day

1:15:30um maybe twelve to thirteen but you're on the right track okay just vaguely uh okay and that would mean vaguely um 60 an hour that site doesn't look to me like it would be that's a good question the numbers you're starting with represent the the potential market so

1:15:53a good point so that doesn't you need to downgrade that because you got to think of our our market share so a lot of those those potential people are going to be going to those potential buyers are also going to be going to richmond are also going to be going to berkeley

1:16:07are also going to be going to oakland those are potential customers within 30 minutes drive of san leandro so i'm sorry of el cerrito so the the better way to look at that number is we are looking at start at a starting volume of approximately 250 patients per day um it's probably an eight hour day

1:16:29for round numbers let's just call it an eight a ten hour day that's 25 patients per hour so even so that's one every about every two minutes correct i did that one correctly i i don't remember that site being quite capable of that volume i i wonder i wonder what taco bell's numbers were

1:16:58apparently not good enough uh whatever they were sure um medical marijuana facility next to a taco bell taco bell's numbers would yeah maybe maybe they're going to want to come back yeah um but um and i'm i don't i mean i don't specifically remember that taco bell the way i think things

1:17:21flow through there but i would envision if it's like the one in albany for example is that there's a drive-through lane and there is was a little bit of room for parking but there wasn't a whole i mean that's this other one i'm thinking of but um the um so it looks to me like it's kind

1:17:43of full at that rate if it's this the volume and it might use the volume to what you think is the part that might come to this particular facility it is my belief looking at the market and and my understanding of other facilities the place is appropriately parked and is

1:18:04appropriately sized and appropriately parked for well over 250 patients today per day i would estimate it could handle probably seven 800 patients a day but that that that's not neither here nor there the the short of it is these types of issues can be worked out

1:18:23in conjunction with your planning department and with your traffic department and these are things and and the city has every power to say you know what at the end of the day that's not the right site but like you know i guess what i'm saying is it will be a process and we will go

1:18:39through those studies and through the engineering planning with your appropriate departments the other thing and i guess i don't quite i've just thought of this at the moment but there's you it's um it's one direction the traffic flow into that location would be

1:19:04southbound correct not northbound correct i went by yesterday there's actually a left-turn pocket together so i guess i'm wondering what that would do to traffic flow and whether or not that's been analyzed i don't know but the um but offhand it seems like a high

1:19:24traffic flow but the other curious thing about it is elsarita only has a population of 24 000.

1:19:33so to talk about a population going into here of 20 000 is like every single person and a lot of our residents in fact are children for example so this is talking anyway there's it's just i'm not quite clear that these numbers correspond to um to this location um

1:19:59but i you know i don't know i just was looking at the math of it um i guess that at the moment that's the only question great thank you yeah i know there's quite a few speakers here on the matter um so at this time we'll okay go ahead yeah i didn't fully respond to your question the more i

1:20:19thought about it about multiple sites um we don't want to i'll speak for myself i don't want to have oakster damn north and else rita it would totally change the character of our town and i i don't think we need to do that so the other problem if we have multiple sites

1:20:36is it will drive up rental and property sale values tremendously like it's done in colorado and some of the other states and we have a hard enough time filling some of our vacant properties with a mix of services that our residents want that if we drive up the price by having

1:20:56wholesale marijuana dispensaries and related businesses it would be too big a change to the character of the city and limit some of our economic development opportunities so that's just my personal feeling about that right thank you i have a question about that comment the area in oakland that i

1:21:18think you're referring to which is vaguely around 17th in broadway is that correct i go too frequently i would not say uh and i don't know what the prices there are but i would say there's a a lot of property that's not in is underutilized right now so i'm not sure that that's the right

1:21:41well sometimes it's underutilized because the landlords want a higher price than other businesses are willing to pay is what my point is okay it's not i i would wonder we would need an analysis right i'm just expressing my opinion and i would look for staff and whatever

1:22:01consultants we hard to find a place to eat down there now okay um so i i don't i'm not sure that it's appeared that way on the surface having to find lunch there frequently um but anyway why don't we proceed with public comment i'd like to hear what the public has to say

1:22:23great at this time we'll move on to public comment how many speaker cards do we have we have 11 mayor lyman levins we will allow the full three minutes per speaker card if you are saying something that someone else has said i'm hoping that you will make your comments briefer by

1:22:42acknowledging that the comments have been previously stated we will be calling out three names at a time so we hopefully can get you to the dyess or to the speaker podium as quickly as possible so we can move through this well and allow everyone time to speak so if you could call out the first three

1:23:03names please cordell hindler followed by tom panas and al miller i keep getting i'm lucky one so mayor lyman um council members i am cartel handler with the park plaza neighborhood association i did had a couple of correspondents um um from the neighborhood association that i spoken with um

1:23:24i got a letter from from richmond heights uh they said that they ended up because they passed through the um that old taco bell site on frequently and they said oh this is like it's something that is going to look good for the city and i said they said that when they thought of a

1:23:40miracle a cannabis club they said oh because i mean they like the idea but some but uh but there's a lot of you know a lot of activity goes on around that um that perimeter and i said okay i'm in for support of of a cannabis club because because like like some of the others um

1:23:59like councilman quinto was saying about them about we needed for like to help with the aids aids patients and other things so i said we need a cannabis club because it'll like you know generate some money for the city so i said so hopefully somebody hopefully uh the council will

1:24:15approve this and um and going from there next speaker thank you sir good evening mayor lyman members of the council and city staff my name is tom panis now live at [address removed] el cerrito the talk before the council is very interesting and quite complex reading

1:24:42the staff report i worked on a number of questions not knowing which of these questions would be answered during the study session this evening i'm submitting them all and hope that as part of the ongoing process they will all be addressed thank you for your time this evening

1:24:56thank you and while mr miller is coming if you could read the next three names al miller followed by rochelle pardue okamoto kip crosby and hilary crosby good evening mayor lyman council members and staff i have no problem with the medical marijuana facility in this city

1:25:19quite probably many of us some of us one of us in this room will be happy that it's available in our future my concerns are about having a medical marijuana facility in el cerrito of the kind proposed or outlined in the draft ordinance was reflected as attachment 2 on the

1:25:44agenda item 7a bill i recognize that this is just a proposal and that if you so direct the staff actions would correct the errors in the proposal but i want to share the reasons this document causes me concern i also realize that three minutes is very short that's why you see the list of the

1:26:04individual examples uh attached my first and primary concern is that the obvious experience education professionalism and desire to do a good thing in the right way that i saw in the applicant's presentation was not reflected in the draft ordinance that was attached to the agenda bill

1:26:31so i would have thought that someone who is proposing such a drastic revision of our code would ensure that the suggested method by which that change happened that they present to you would have taken great care that it was done in a complete sen in a complete way

1:26:52and that it was consistent it made sense it was readable and even those of us that aren't lawyers or aren't doctors or aren't experts in medical marijuana or any kind of marijuana could read it and get a comforting feel that yeah they've been through this and this looks pretty good

1:27:13uh one example that surprised me and at the time you know and i guess i'm still not aware whether from there what i read maybe i didn't read it right that they're propos are they a non-profit organization because one of the things is ensuring connect cannabis is not purchased or

1:27:33sold by the dispensary in a manner that would generate a profit well it seems that even a non-profit has to have a revenue that covers their expenses and i would have him i would have worded that a little differently also i ask that as you consider whatever you do

1:27:53that whatever change you make in our ordinance consider the impact that the now considered probable passage of the adult marijuana provision on the november ballot is compatible with the actions that you're considering taking there i would not want to see a monopoly of

1:28:13marijuana in the city if it didn't have some way of exposing that large retailer to the free market pressures from quality of service and price levels thank you for your time oh thank you so it's uh rochelle pardue okamoto hello my name is rochelle pardue okimoto

1:28:40i live at [address removed] here in el cerrito when i was a senior in college i did my senior project on medical marijuana and i will say now what i said then is about patience patients need to have any and all treatment modalities available to them patients that have that suffer from pain

1:29:10and nausea have difficulties with their appetite marijuana can drastically improve all of these things furthermore i would like to say that currently the pharmaceutical industry has a stranglehold on patients that are in pain they are making billions of dollars in profits

1:29:38all the while we all know that opioids are very addictive and often deadly whereas marijuana is not patients need a respectable clinic for them to be able to be seen and to be able to obtain their medicine i believe that el cerrito should be that place where patients are able

1:30:11to find what they need to be well thank you can you read uh it's kip crosby hillary cosby can you read two more names john sucher transwestern and adam peterson great thank you we have a handheld mike kip [Music] kip let's get you a handheld mike thanks thank you

1:30:43my name is kip crosby i speak from [Music] personal experience with a close relative who needed marijuana as a mood stabilizer and i have also been a graduate student in psychopharmacology marijuana is for the purposes it serves a terrific drug it is for example

1:31:16a better mood stabilizer for people with bipolar disorder than a lot of the expensive medications created by big pharma it is um a much better and much less habituating painkiller than things like oxycontin and vicodin whose side effects are well known and marijuana is also

1:31:53one of the most effective drugs known for promoting sleep and will compete with drugs like ambien the hypnotic state of ambien can make people do things like order livestock online when they have no place to put it no lie that happened um we need a source a reliable responsible source

1:32:25of medical marijuana to serve its purposes in el cerrito and i am wholly behind this proposition thank you great next speaker is hillary crosby followed by john such sucher i think it's how you pronounce it cecher i'm hillary crosby i live at [address removed] in el cerrito i'm also a certified

1:32:50public accountant and i have seen in oakland how the medical marijuana dispensaries have contributed a great deal of money to the city's revenue streams from the sales tax and the business tax so i think that for el cerrito it's a great idea because one of the things about the taxes generated on

1:33:15the sale of cannabis is when you legalize when you make a legal environment for a previously illegal uh merchandise you actually lower the price enough that you can add a sales tax to it and it's still less expensive whereas in other kinds of taxes that get added onto the price

1:33:39you're you're making a commodity more expensive and you can depress sales or you can depress retail activity but putting a tax on marijuana has opposite effect the one thing about this that bothers me is the way the uh the vendor the choice of the vendor has been

1:34:02conflated with the discussion of whether or not to have a dispensary and i certainly as an accountant understand what council member friedman was referring to and he said the cost of the research and doing the uh proposal requests could be prohibited prohibit i'm sorry could be very high

1:34:26um but i don't i still don't think that uh by moving forward with this to automatically award the the location to a specific vendor as part of this deliberation is really appropriate thank you great thank you can you read the next three speakers please certainly john sasha followed by

1:34:48adam peterson shawn donohoe and carl mulligan good evening mayor lyman council members ladies and gentlemen my name is john sexer i'm the director of retail properties for transwestern at awana creek and i am representing the ownership of the former taco bell at 11965 san pablo avenue

1:35:16and i'm actually the second brokerage firm in line marketing this property and as you can imagine with vacant properties along comes various adverse adversity to overcome uh with this vacant property we've had uh you know the homeless some crime a lot of garbage

1:35:38which attracts rodents gatherings of transients police activity thank god and blight um and so we urge uh and uh okay so i think that the city is also prohibited here recently um drive-throughs drive through restaurants this was the highest and best use for this site it was intended for that

1:36:07the property is now rendered almost functionally absolute obsolete for that intended use we uh we feel that you know there were times i was marking the property i had to walk up and you know there's a couple individuals sleeping at the door front with a pit bull so i had to had to remove that very

1:36:26uh politically correct and uh your uh police service was fantastic and a lot of that so as we've marketed this property we've had several different uh parties look at it and and pass for various reasons as representative of the ownership we're very excited about the el cerrito

1:36:46wellness center and their interest in this site they have tied the site up it is in escrow we believe they are fully capable of closing us and fully capable of improving the site by permitting this medical wellness center i and i urge you do you will be able to exercise control

1:37:04finance much needed services throughout the city and revitalize this site i also believe that it and i can answer a lot of your questions relative to the gross sales of typical fast food restaurants the type of traffic that they generate and if you like i'll go

1:37:22into that just for a second but ironically enough i've actually over the years in the business and real estate i've known some of the principals employees of this organization of this wellness center and i've found them to be extremely ethical and extremely professional in all their

1:37:38business dealings i believe they're the right vendor on the traffic counts the rule of thumb for fast food restaurants here with typical fast food restaurant does 1.2 to 1.5 million on the low side obviously if it was in in and out you'd see it three million mcdonald's three million plus

1:37:55based upon that a 10 check average the average per day would be somewhere between 400 and 500 people at that particular site which is about 40 per hour and upwards of 50 per hour if it was doing well during its peak times so i think you can see that what's proposed here uh with the wellness

1:38:15center is it's well below that traffic count so i think that um and those are just averages um if you had 1.5 again which would be an average you'd see about a 50 50 hour 50 per hour yeah i've allowed you to go over time because you were answering some questions for us but if i'm hoping you

1:38:32can wrap up at this time okay thank you um i again urge you we have had several uh potential inquiries i've shown the site several times we've looked at various different uses and again i think this is a fantastic service of the community and we urge for you to approve it thank you very much

1:38:50great thank you council members thank you for your time i come here tonight i actually work for the individuals that presented in front of you this evening my background was in commercial real estate and i spent the previous eight years as a commercial real estate broker

1:39:06which is how i got to know the individuals that presented here today and in my dealings with a lot of them were cannabis related with my business based in oakland this was the most professional group that i that i came across eight years ago i would have never expected that i would be on the other

1:39:20side of the table and involved in this industry but through learning about what this group was about and getting to know the people involved my opinion completely changed what i'd like to articulate to you is just my personal experience is the first time in 10 years of my working career

1:39:38that i've actually believed in what i'm doing and like the people that i'm working with and i feel like i'm actually a part of something special and i know the rest of our employees feel the same way and i urge you to strongly consider this ordinance and this group

1:39:52you know i think we can do great things here in el cerrito thank you before you go if you could just say your name for the adam peterson great thanks and we'll read three names sean donahoe followed by carl mulligan and paul fideli good evening mayor council members and

1:40:11city staff my name is sean donahoe and i represent the best medical cannabis operator for the city i'm a resident of the city of oakland where i also serve on our cannabis regulatory commission and tonight we're passing after 16 months a comprehensive medical cannabis

1:40:24ordinance and so any assistance that i can offer i do this for cities throughout the state i'd be glad to be of service my background is in academia and public affairs followed by politically organizing representing responsible cannabis and industry operators since

1:40:372012. familiar with local politics since running field operations for john garamendi for congress here in 2009 and was the featured guest speaker at the el cerrito democratic club delivering a capital insider perspective on the mmrsa last summer the well capitalized client wish to be

1:40:52considered by the city represents two crucial fields in today's and tomorrow's medical cannabis industry advanced consistent retail operations in heavily retail jurisdictions and advanced product development formulation one of the prospective partners has been resident of the city of el cerrito for

1:41:07over two years and has invested in raising a family in this town my clients have developed proprietary standardized medical cannabis formulations that have already undergone clinical formulations in a variety of medical products including water soluble and aerosolized delivery mechanisms that

1:41:21represent the future of the medical and adult use cannabis industry these products benefit from long-term working relationships with the leading nutraceutical and cannabis testing professionals in the world many of whom will serve on our advisory board they also have background in news media

1:41:35advanced extraction methods cannabis genetics and supply chain management they have well-established well-established retail and cultivation operations in multiple parts of the state and nevada these retail operations have been secured after both conditional use permits as well as competitive

1:41:52merit-based practices the proposed operators wish to partner with the city to provide comprehensive approach to providing continuity of care to patients in el cerrito and the surrounding area the proposed operators have excellent existing community benefits program including organizing

1:42:07historic industry support for youth centers contact with the real estate broker representing the property in question this evening and understand that the other applicant's escrow is contingent upon licensure for this usage by the city at this point the city i wish to

1:42:22profoundly congratulate the city for moving forward on this important issue and humbly request that the best operators be considered to provide world-class medicine solid medical cannabis retail operations and proven community benefits for the city of saint el cerrito

1:42:37almost said san leandro we heard it so many times sorry i have copies in this letter right thank you carl mulligan followed by paul fideli and howdy gowdy evening council my name is carl mulligan i'm at [address removed] el cerrito i don't even know where to begin here if

1:43:00you guys were interested in collecting money you should have thought about that in 2006. you made a ban and you stuck with it until just a couple of months ago i was into the city council a couple of times or city hall i spoke with sean moss i suggested that the city should move

1:43:20forward with this i also suggested that it be open to the public and that the residents of el cerrito should have uh some say in this and i want to i want you to carefully consider the ordinance written here this is written by a private company which creates a monopoly for themselves

1:43:39it's i mean it's astonishing truly the city may not grant or cause to be granted more than one permit for medical cannabis dispensary and compliance with the provisions of this chapter a single medical cannabis dispensary permit known as type 10 all other cannabis related activities

1:43:59and license types set forth in mmrsa shall remain banned and these are people that are writing this for yourselves because you don't have the time or energy to do it yourselves and that's not acceptable it really isn't like i said since 2006 you've had a moratorium in this and even up until

1:44:18march you decided that there was no way that you were going to go forward with this you actually passed something that violated the will of the california voters you made a zoning ordinance that for a couple of weeks allowed or made it illegal for medical cannabis

1:44:38users people with doctor's recommendations and everything you made it illegal for them to grow it themselves you're compelling people to buy at a commercial price when they could grow it themselves and that that also is not acceptable the ab21 nics that and whether you guys know it or not

1:44:57people can grow a hundred square feet and if they exceed that then the police powers comes into effect if they sell or distribute or give it away or any of those other things as well so these are things that i mean i can't believe that you guys went from one extreme to the complete opposite

1:45:15extreme you're like no no no no no and then someone slips you what five grand and a proposal under your door and within weeks you want to fast track it i find that unacceptable and i believe that you should be having public meetings berkeley has spent years doing it obviously san

1:45:32leandro spent years doing i've seen these people at berkeley at the berkeley meetings i don't know if they've been applying for permits there but um they're also setting themselves up for a highly profitable business it's non-profit now but it won't be in the fall if that's

1:45:49what happens so i mean i have so much to say when i read through this thing i could just go on and on about it about the cost five thousand dollars non-refundable fee for an application well if they're the only ones applying they can make it whatever they want because they're buying their way in

1:46:08thank you for your comments can i just clarify something that i should have clarified earlier you made some good points and in no way if we move forward are we adopting their ordinance we will write our own ordinance they gave this to us as a sample and i should have clarified

1:46:25that we will have our own attorneys drafting an ordinance and if we go forward to this operator they will pay for our attorney's fees to do that and we will certainly have a public process to get public input every step of the way from here on out so i appreciate

1:46:40your points they're very well taken and i'm sorry i didn't clarify that earlier thank you good evening mayor and city council my name is paul fideli i live on arbor drive in el cerrito i want to thank you and the council for uh taking this timely and necessary step in this

1:47:04direction i have friends who use cannabis to relieve themselves in difficult situations i've seen that firsthand and it would be very convenient to have an outlet here it's a worthy goal and you have a lot of issues before you which i think will go on one of them being how many outlets i

1:47:24personally person of one monopoly monopoly issues aside think el cerrito only one is necessary in el cerrito um so good luck to you i've heard the two points i want to make tonight is just on the placement of that's before you um you know the city of el cerrito has

1:47:42worked a long time on its identity and improving its identity that is exactly in the in the in front of our gateway it's the gateway to our city it's where it says welcome to el cerrito and we're talking about lots of cars going through a welcome to el cerrito sign right next

1:48:00to this lots of lights i think there needs to be a sensitivity about how we approach el cerrito from the north and the south i'm sorry there isn't something a little less conspicuous but if that's what it is i'm i'm hoping the the council will be sensitive to that that gateway and and the hard work

1:48:19that the city council has put forward to build an identity for el cerrito and secondly if there is in fact revenue that comes about from this i'm hoping in addition to the various places to spend money that was put up on the powerpoint that since we're allowing

1:48:36people to to get easier access to cannabis that we the city the city itself have an effort to educate our youth under 18 not to use cannabis that needs to be a city effort that we use we we can't have one without the other and together that makes a good program

1:48:53in el cerrito thank you very much howdy gowdy followed by nicholas arzio good evening mayor leyman council members my name is howdy gowdy i live at [address removed] um so i appreciate the discussion here i mean i came partly to learn and i think i have more to learn as

1:49:16you know all of us do in this discussion moving forward you know i do support decriminalization i think medical marijuana is a worthy thing that should be available in in a responsible way that said i don't think we're there yet in terms of developing how it would you know work

1:49:37in el cerrito and i i do have reservations about you know things that people have brought up about sort of the sole source you know streamlining of this um clearly this is an industry with a lot of money and yes the city is you know strapped for resources to analyze these kinds of

1:49:55things but if if the industry wants to play here i think they they will provide that money and give us the open public forum to you know really develop what we need to make this work best for this community and that's not you know giving it out to one entity right away i think you know this

1:50:16is the beginning of a bigger conversation so um and and you know that whole you know dichotomy of of you know the tax revenue and and you know the medical benefits it's it's a it's a strange thing you know as far as i know i mean most you know prescription medicines are not

1:50:38taxed you know we don't pay tax for prescription drugs mostly um and so this is a strange thing i don't actually feel very good about the idea that we're taxing medicine for people if they need it that's medicine that's not how a city should be getting revenue right it's

1:50:56just an artifact of this strange um evolution where you know it's a federal schedule one drug and you know all the history that goes along with that so i think we have kind of a broken system that's emerging into a different reality and and the upcoming you know ballot

1:51:14initiative is part of that and so it's it's sort of premature to think that we're going to understand how this is all going to play out i think we need to be a little bit more deliberate and careful about you know envisioning how this is actually going to work in a

1:51:30a very effective way for the city so i i second the the idea about the gateway i mean this is participated in the urban or you know urban greening plan which envisioned these gateways to the city and so that's a consideration we should also be thinking about so

1:51:48um yeah i think we just have to be thoughtful about this i mean as it was said a few months ago you had a very restrictive you know policy put in place including delivery which it's not clear to me whether that would continue to be prohibited or if this dispensary would deliver and so there's

1:52:11a lot of questions that need to be answered in a nice open public forum for everyone to participate thank you thank you that concludes the request to speak great thank you um yeah i'll i'm gonna is this the one i think it is it was it was a little longer than unnecessary so i'll try and paraphrase

1:52:33it um there's at least one uh we've got several uh written ones i want to thank mr uh miller and and mr panus for their their written comments and i actually intend to ask some of those questions at some point uh mr miller your review certainly echoes a lot of my review and

1:52:53certainly mr mulligan uh i have many issues with the current uh ordinance as written um one of the uh written things that we got today was from molly hazen and uh it's longer than three minutes for me to read it but i will do my best to paraphrase it essentially everyone has their personal

1:53:20stories over the years she's certainly personally witnessed those who she loves and cares to go through intolerable pain and suffering her husband was diagnosed with stage four cancer several years ago made the decision to forego the opiates and instead turn to medical marijuana

1:53:36and by the way she introduces a term cannabinoids or cbd which is essentially an extract of marijuana and so he used cbd for his severe constant pain initially her skepticism turned to great relief as she witnessed his immediate relief from nausea and pain from the ravages of

1:53:56chemo and radiation treatment surprising with the help of cbd without using other pharmaceutical drugs he was able to continue his clients up until just two weeks before he died and she goes on to say that cbd side effects are limited and she poses this information to us

1:54:17i believe it's time for our city to approve a medical cannabis dispensary for two main reasons from a business perspective having this professional licensed business in el cerrito will create the city's revenue will increase the city's revenue and two medical cannabis dispensing collectives serve as

1:54:33a community-based response in computer experience and being of service to those who are most ill most seriously ill when the patient may be facing a terminal illness maintaining human dignity and suffering loss in the compassionate way all individuals have the right to choose

1:54:54what they believe to do be the best treatment for them after all it's their body and their precious life we also received a comments from we also received comments from there was [Applause] george mcrae george mcrae uh basically says he wants to nip this outrageous proposal in its

1:55:22bud uh and he meant the pud intentionally um as usual the worst ideas are destined for the north end of town had any of you paid any attention to the people who populate this area currently it is a haven for multitude of homeless encampments stretching from behind the taco belt and along the

1:55:40ohlone greenway it's a notorious place for rampant drinking and abusive behavior how cynical to think that you see this as a revenue source for the city coffers fattening the coffers for civic from civic misery how little you all know about drug addiction and to think that

1:55:57you would do this out of greed is appalling but at the same time completely expected there are plenty of resources for medical marijuana already in east bay as tom butt mentioned when pot cubs have been discussed in richmond if you actually do the math as to how many

1:56:12people these clubs are serving the numbers add up to twice the population of richmond being sick enough to require medical marijuana please revisit former chief kirkland's many arguments and concerns about this issue and four and finally all you are doing is encouraging and supporting the

1:56:29expansion of population already not participating in the democratic policy process stone drunk or otherwise impaired people do not vote and do not participate in government redress which may also be what you want the fewer people who show up to counter hair brained ideas out of city hall the more

1:56:45city hall likes it so i just wanted to to make sure that you knew about some of the things that some of the written correspondence we received seeing no other speakers we'll bring it back to council for discussion at the sun um so the three questions that were posed at the beginning of the session i

1:57:07think are still relevant after the public comment and the first two questions are related to one another do we want to consider lifting our current moratorium and do we want to develop a medical marijuana ordinance that would permit one or more facilities the third question was about moving

1:57:28forward on this particular application and i just want to say that we did not go looking for a provider they came to us they saw that el cerrito was a territory that would be in need of medical marijuana facility and also would work with their business model so we're being responsive to their

1:57:51approach to us so i'm not saying that if we had more time and there wasn't a ballot initiative that maybe we wouldn't want to go through a much longer rfp process but i'm just telling you how it got here it wasn't that we're trying to you know serve something up on a t for a group

1:58:12they came to us so i think we should probably talk about the first few questions and there's pretty much consensus on those from people speaking in terms of the moratorium and the uh importance of medical marijuana for those patients who need it for a variety of conditions

1:58:32so maybe that discussion will have some consensus the third i think is quite a bit trickier you have any comments or thoughts um i'm i'm i'm having a i'm having a little bit of trouble with understanding what you just said okay so i'm gonna break it down i'm gonna break

1:58:56it down to just two issues yeah one is the ban and the other is the proposal and and so what councilmember friedman is saying is he would love to have a discussion on those two separately as many speakers agree you know pointed out that they they should be handled differently and

1:59:16they and they should there is a reason why they are related however um we cannot even take the permit the permit to make the improvements at that facility because the proposed use is illegal so they're related in that you have to change the ordinance in order to even

1:59:39entertain the per the permit application for the improvements at that property however that's where they join for now i agree that they should be discussed separately the the use of staff time to evaluate the matter of of our current ordinance that bans medical marijuana

2:00:02and that's one topic that we should be discussing and then we should have a separate topic that talks about the proposal and is that proposal you know as some testified if we should only have one is that the proposal we want to move forward with that that's a separate discussion for me

2:00:18and at the one i want to focus the next few minutes on is is whether or not we take uh staff resources and put them towards crafting and evaluating an ordinance to a change in the ordinance that bans medical marijuana that's that's the discussion at this point and the just for the record we

2:00:40haven't already been considering it um you know there's an there's kind of an implication that we've been there's something that's been ongoing there we did take some we did take some local control uh positions earlier this year with regards to cultivation and delivery

2:01:01um so that that that we did do to this earlier this year but in terms of this particular proposal the council has not that's correct not since not since 2006.

2:01:11so if somebody looked at our record they would not see um anything here so i just want to be clear in case somebody is confused about that the um i i'm concerned about the idea that we give somebody an exclusive right to to do something that um the need for an exclusive right as far

2:01:46as i can tell is based the request for it is based on the concept that if we wait until after the november election and one of the ballot measures passes that we won't be able to do um get the money out of out of this um so it's it's it becomes a money thing i first i have a question a varsity

2:02:15attorney who i guess has looked into this somewhat before this was brought to us tonight is that true for has have you looked into this at all sky um i guess i just i'm going to say yes but i'm asking you to clarify what you mean by this um the whole issue of this particular

2:02:38dispensary and all of the conditions anything related to it well let me go let me let me backtrack because you okay since before asking me you mentioned the question about about the ability to um charge a fee for an applicant who wanted to come won't bring a dispensary to the

2:02:57city of one of the if one of the proposed statewide measures passes in november i have reviewed the adult use of marijuana act i don't believe that a dispensary has to be operating prior to september 1st of this year or any other date for the city to be able to

2:03:15require the payment of a gross receipts based fee or to put a measure on the ballot to require the payment of gross receipts tax for a business license i didn't find anything in the proposed initiative that would limit a local a local jurisdiction's ability to impose

2:03:36those kinds of things which are fairly standard powers of a city um subject to voter approval in the case of a tax measure okay so that would mean that we can take time to it it would not have to be a we can put it out for an open bid for example should we so choose

2:03:58i i as i don't believe that the i don't if the issue is the ability to retain um the power to consider all of the cities available means of require of generating revenue from the use if it were allowed i don't believe that there's a time constraint on doing that

2:04:18if the city wanted to pursue a more open proposal process i believe it could without without endangering that ability okay thank you to to go down that line of discussion a little bit further and it's on page 42 of attachment 3 which is the marijuana tax the sales and use tax imposed by part

2:04:38one of this division shall not apply to retail sales of medical cannabis medical cannabis concentrates edible medical cannabis products or topical cannabis but as far as i can tell part one is that they're gonna issue a tax of 15 percent on what i'll call recreational cannabis

2:05:00and and that 15 percent doesn't apply to medical marijuana that's the way i read read that section but what i really why it caught my eye is that it it doesn't it would allow us if you go on i think was in here that in that same section it does allow us to do whatever we need

2:05:23to do and i want to make sure that the excise tax imposed by this section shall be in in addition to sales and use tax imposed by the state and local governments so we we can still continue to do our use tax but this business license fee that's proposed would we

2:05:44would we still be able to do a business license fee under the future conditions so so this is what i found in my review and this was only of the adult use of marijuana act so there are two new state taxes one is an excise tax on purchasers and one is a tax on cultivation

2:06:05existing sales and use tax including the city's local transactions and use taxes would apply to the sale of non-medical marijuana so you're right that's that's correct so so far like just to be clear there are two new state taxes one on one is an excise tax on purchases

2:06:23one is on cultivation existing sales and use tax including the local transactions and use tax applies to non-medical purchases as you just read those taxes are in addition to any other tax imposed by a city so if the city were to follow the route of proposing a business license

2:06:43tax on marijuana dispensaries whether recreational or medical and that measure was approved that attacks would be that tax would be allowed under under this provision then additionally um the act states that portions of the business and professions code which can

2:07:03already contain some provisions related to taxation of of medical marijuana dispensaries shall be interpreted um shall not be interpreted to supersede or limit the authority of a local jurisdiction to adopt and enforce local ordinances to regulate business licensed

2:07:21under the act so to the extent that the city instead of pursuing a business license tax adopted an ordinance that regulated marijuana dispensaries whether medical or recreational and required the payment of a fee for regulatory purposes that would also not be prohibited by the

2:07:39existing provisions of the business and professions code finally there's a provision that says that state licensing authorities shall not approve an application for a state license if it would violate a local ordinance or regulation so so the city still retains the control to

2:07:58decide whether or not to actually permit the licensing in the operation of these facilities so i mean my read of that weaving all these different provisions together is that the city retains the ability to to propose a business license tax to impose regulatory fees on these businesses and

2:08:17to require the payment of any other fees pursuant to its police power um or to reach an agreement with an operator for the collection of a fee that they're willing to pay based on gross receipts great thank you um i asked a related question so how does sales tax enter into this

2:08:37so this is again right now we're only speaking about um the provisions of the adult use of marijuana act which is one of the two state statewide initiatives that's proposed the way it would work is that the existing sales and use tax um and the way that they've defined it as i and as

2:08:55i understand it that would include um local transactions and use taxes like the ones that the city has has obtained voter approval for that that that the sales and use tax would apply to purchases of non-medical marijuana so if somebody um if there were a dispensary

2:09:12in el cerrito somebody purchas and if this date white initiative passes a dispensary were allowed to open an el cerrito somebody went there and purchased marijuana for non-medical purposes that purchase would be subject to sales tax which means that the one and a half percent that the city

2:09:30currently levies would apply to that transaction so just just because i'm kind of ignorant on the topic if i went and bought some tylenol which is over the counter would i be charged sales tax those taxes i actually don't know the answer i for if if you went to if you went to a

2:09:51pharmacy and purchased a prescription medication sales tax would not the sales tax would not apply to that i'm honestly not certain about over-the-counter aspirin i don't know okay i'm just wondering if it's parallel is there a tax for probably you guys know better is medical

2:10:15marijuana taxed is there a sales tax on medical marijuana yes the board of equalization has ruled that that retail sales of medical cannabis are taxed and and it's considered even though it's called medical marijuana it's considered retail correct so great so so the word medical marijuana

2:10:38is not really part of the state's consideration in taxation sounds like it's just if if your retail is the issue i mean we're talk the problem i mean if there's confusion i think it partly stems from what we're sort of co-mingling discussion of of different laws

2:10:59partly we're talking about a proposed statewide initiative versus existing board of equalization regulations interpreting existing sales tax law so these proposed regulations wouldn't would would they change the state law on sales tax i don't think anybody knows yet

2:11:20until the board of people and nobody's the board of equalization i don't i doubt is going to look at what you know at least for at least officially and publicly um re you know issue a determination about what the adult use of marijuana act would mean for um for it

2:11:36under the existing rules so um regulation so what i'm saying is board of equalization regulations might have to be reviewed if the state law changed so we don't really know for sure right yeah i do have the answer on tylenol and on the board of equalization web

2:11:54site to be exempt from tax the items sold must qualify as a medicine and be sold as such sales of over-the-counter medicines are taxable unless prescribed by a pre-pre physician this includes aspirin cough service cough jobs etc so if there's a prescription then it's not taxable apparently

2:12:19i mean that's the i mean that's the word that is definition sounds like yes okay which is perhaps the answer to the question yeah well i don't think that answers any questions as to as to medical marijuana or non-medical marijuana because because the applicable law is

2:12:39going to be different i mean i think that you should think about pharmaceuticals and over-the-counter medications that are available currently in pharmacies differently from marijuana of any kind under existing law okay to the to the question of whether staff should spend time

2:13:03crafting a new ordinance um i would love to have people speak to that matter because that that's really the crux of what we're discussing this evening and and maybe we need to ask staff who's in the back of the room intently listening or the city manager you know what what does that mean

2:13:23um what is what is the in hours or in dollars or whatever metric you guys want to present uh time what does it mean for us to sit here and say bring us an ordinance i think in talking about this amongst a number of different departments and divisions i mean we we have no idea at this point um it's

2:13:50certainly well above what we have right now i mean we're in the middle of budget as you as you know we're trying to prepare budget for you um and in addition the staff we have is also focusing on the smoking ordinance the minimum wage and the other other policy things so um

2:14:09we would i would say with almost 100 certainly need to look for some consultant support and help to essentially run the process under our purview um you know based on the direction we get from the council right through um well we would probably take the lead at least

2:14:28organizing community input and all of that because we think we we know how to do that we would look for experts in the field to to support us in that and write initial drafts and things because we we honestly don't have the bandwidth to start from scratch ourselves nor the

2:14:44in-house expertise frankly yeah and i heard offers several offers tonight but uh what i'm mostly what i hear is consultant which is a selection process i hear community uh involvement which is to me that all adds up to time part of the questions that the council

2:15:07member abelson and myself have asked is does the meta you know the adult marijuana act if it passes in november does it compel us to move quickly um the september one deadline and i did believe it and i ruined a perfectly good weekend reading a lot of this uh text um

2:15:31and it is in here that the the september one date the the you know the effect of it is it does allow a licensing authority shall give priority in issuing licenses under this division to applicants that can demonstrate to the authority satisfaction that the applicant operated

2:15:50in compliance with the compassionate use act and its implementing laws before september 1 2016.

2:15:56so all the september one deadline is is is preference to to do licensing if we choose to license one whether it's the wellness center or somebody else they're going to have preference because they're the only one so i'm not i'm not compelled by that but i am compelled by the fact

2:16:17that we do have a piece of property that is vacant and not generating any sales tax revenue that you know some somebody wants to purchase and do a permit application on to improve and you know if we were to say oh a year from now we'll we'll pass an ordinance if i were in their shoes i'm not certain

2:16:38that they could sustain a option to purchase for a year so there is there is a there is a real compelling project out there that that on the face of it may or may not stand the merits and and it may not be a good location as several have testified it's at our gateway it's on the ohlone

2:16:59greenway it has it has many uh components that have to be assessed whether it's the left turn pocket sustaining the traffic that comes from the all those bart commuters they're driving to vacaville stopping off for their their drive home there are many things about the proposal that have

2:17:22to be evaluated what i'm trying to focus on is the desire the the intent to start an ordinance to start the process of outreach and that's that's where i am and i will say that the testimony tonight was was quite compelling to that so i'll start this by saying that if if we as a group tonight

2:17:45to decide to move forward with an ordinance the ordinance needs to evaluate and assess crime associated with dispensaries there's a lot of mis conceptions or or true belief that dispensaries are areas with with lots of crime um we would need to make sure that we are

2:18:10evaluating and looking at the benefits of medical marijuana we've had a lot of people testify about the benefits of medical marijuana tonight and i would certainly want to make sure that that whatever uh the basis of our decision to move forward with an ordinance if we choose

2:18:28to craft one uh is is based on uh you know real reasons for the real benefits from medical marijuana the evaluation of an ordinance should look at financial revenue what what does the ordinance generate even this proposal aside it it should be give us you know some

2:18:50sort of feasibility of the revenue and and what uh it could come in and it should definitely identify places in the city based on distribution the adult marijuana act uses both 1 000 feet and 600 feet from various uh sensitive rep receptors so it's not clear to me what

2:19:12the right distance is and you know we whatever evaluation if we move forward with an ordinance the ordinance should identify the locations uh where um you know where we are permitting it and the current proposal may or may not fit inside any ordinance we draft so

2:19:35you know i know that the proposers don't necessarily want to hear that but if if as a group we decide to move to invest staff time invest consultant resources in in traffic in drafting an ordinance those to me are some of the things that would have to be evaluated and answered

2:19:53in any agenda bill that came forward with an ordinance i think those are good points to me the advantage of moving forward with this group and i agree that it doesn't necessarily mean that we want to give them a monopoly you know we've had no facilities for ever

2:20:18since 1996 when uh the act passed so i wouldn't want to all of a sudden have a bunch but you know if we have one and it works and it serves a need for those in our community who use medical marijuana and surrounding facilities then maybe down the road we can amend an

2:20:39ordinance or we can allow for that in an ordinance the advantage of going with this group is they took the initiative and tied up a property and did their due diligence to move forward and came to us proactively now in a more perfect world with a year or two ago we had anticipated what was

2:21:00coming and entertain more proposals probably but the the main advantage of tying an ordinance to a specific group is it makes it a lot less theoretical and they're going to pay for it which is not an inconsiderable consideration whatever consultants and lawyers we need they

2:21:23will pay for it and i reiterate i would not accept their ordinance typos included we would draft our own and they would pay for it so to me it makes sense to move forward in what's an important opportunity that september first date is not necessarily all important for the

2:21:42city because if the act passes in november we still have a degree of local control but it's important for any operator to get in under that deadline and then you know there's benefits if the adult use of marijuana act passes so you could conclude as council member abelson did

2:22:02is we're likely to get a better deal from an operator who thinks they're going to be able to get in before the september 1st deadline so those are my thoughts i think there's a lot to consider here in that if we decide to go forward we're making no commitments we're not taking a vote

2:22:21to on any ordinance or even lifting the moratorium or even on this provider we need to do due diligence and we need to hire people to help us do that due diligence so that if we come back to council ready to approve something we've got more information than we have tonight

2:22:41i agree with councilmember friedman and this is an important part to know that you know it would be wonderful to have local control and local control uh means that uh we have a say before the november election so um i believe we should move forward as well and i hope we can do that

2:23:09i could uh it the the challenge for me is is moving forward with a specific applicant and crafting an ordinance for a specific applicant um i have no problem having this this clinical style be uh the the the end product that we're trying to look i'm going to use form based code

2:23:36i'm going to use the the san pablo avenue specific plan as an as the reference we looked at all sorts of of images that we said oh if we can get to that image let's find let's find the ordinance that gets us to that image i have no problem using this proposal as

2:23:52the image that we're trying to get to i have a problem saying we are writing an ordinance for one piece of property and one operator and i can't support i cannot support doing an ordinance that has that one parcel and that one operator as the end target i wasn't

2:24:09proposing that if you're saying that that you want an ordinance that delivers high quality clinical level marijuana user and it could be any number of properties based on that on building an ordinance that's that's factually based then that i can understand basically yes right

2:24:30i agree with you with mayor lyman i'm i can think on any number of opportunities to develop a property where we wanted to give somebody an exclusive right and there were a lot of there were many head of citations about that and this is doing the same thing on this issue to me

2:24:57i also remember when um when chief kirkland was here and we looked at um deciding where we would put dispensaries i think it was dispensaries is the right word and people came out of the woodwork because nobody wanted it near them where they were um so i think it's a more complicated issue

2:25:30than than is actually being presented because why is we you know we haven't actually gone through a process and decided that that's the spot in town the one uh dispensary should be or or it isn't the one spot you know uh i think that putting it at our gateway is a rather odd use of

2:25:56our gateway um and um certainly not i think when we ever intended i think our gateway should be our gateway not a business opportunity of any sort actually so i'm i'm concerned about that i'm also really concerned about what's going on otherwise in our city right now and that has to do with our

2:26:24budget and it has to do with timing and it has to do with the fact we don't that we don't unless i don't know something we don't currently have a finance director do we or do we but that would be you otherwise known as the city manager so i have a lot of concern about that

2:26:44and our ability to function in the bigger sense as a city so it's i'm not i'm not i'm not happy about the timing to look at it and the um the thing that concerns me more than anything is we don't have a finance director which theoretically is not related except that it is

2:27:08and we need to get through [Music] the next period of time what period of time is that by the way that we need to get through with the budget when will that be done the end of the fiscal year by by the second meeting in june we need to adopt a budget that's about a month from now correct okay

2:27:32and that will be done so those are the things that concern me right now that we can't just always do things like that and um and it doesn't sound to me like it's an issue the timing is not particularly an issue from what i heard our city attorney say um feel free to correct me if you think

2:27:56i'm wrong i don't think it's problematic for the city along certain issues i think what i heard councilmember friedman say is it's potentially beneficial to the applicant the proposer however you want to refer to them to have something in place by september 1st

2:28:16so that they can receive priority and permitting and that that may make them more may change may alter the the parameters of what they're willing to offer the city in terms of um financial compensation for for the use so it's not a it's not a direct issue for the city but but it has implications for

2:28:36the overall package that's being proposed and i think if it's a medical thing it bothers me that we would see it as a business opportunity to make money you know to do something it's just not to me the right connect right thing to connect to say that it provides people with

2:29:04medicine that they need to feel better i can understand that we would make a lot of money off of it bothers me actually so if i hear you correctly you understand the compassionate nature of a medical marijuana dispensary and you would like to have staff begin looking at an ordinance

2:29:26that would allow one or more medical dispensaries in el cerrito but you want to take that in context of all the other things that are going on in the city do you is there a timeline you know that you want to put on it by october by september the timeline i think that it's reasonable to put on it

2:29:46is one that staff would provide to us about their workload because i don't think i know the answer to how how much time they have in their work you know available to work on this so i would leave that to staff personally i've got a couple comments and then a question for the applicant

2:30:10in terms of the gateway issue right now we have a blighted property that is uh and thank you to testimony from the real realtor about that that certainly is not the message we want to send about our city and i think you're thinking of medical marijuana as something negative

2:30:31is kind of old war on drugs thinking we have alcohol outlets on the gateways to our city and you've never led a campaign to stop those because they're sending and i'm exaggerating here i have never let anything that would promote alcohol i'm not saying that you do but

2:30:51we have a lot of alcohol outlets so having a marijuana dispensary does not send a message to me that is necessarily negative especially if it's a medical very well-run clinic as they're proposing so that's just one comment on the gateway issue but my question for

2:31:09the applicant is hearing what you've heard tonight and knowing that there's not unanimity on the council but there is an openness to moving forward would you be willing to fund the city to do its due diligence and come forward with uh hey please be quiet sir please feel free to

2:31:36chief can you please escort him out so my question is would you still be willing to finance the city staff time going to this knowing that the ordinance that may be development may or may not give you uh exactly what you're looking for at least in terms of your draft ordinance

2:31:59and and to build on that question it the final ordinance may not even cover the property that you have an investment in that's i mean that that's it if we do this process correctly uh we're going to come up with an ordinance that fits our city with proper uh public input and as

2:32:16council member abelson went through in 2006 there was a lot of people who came out in opposing uh you know the the dispensaries in all over town even though they might have been in appropriate distance from uh from a a youth facility so the question is with an uncertain outcome would you be

2:32:38willing to fund our work to move this forward it's a tough question i don't have uh i don't know if i can give you the the firm answer you want the short answer is we're absolutely willing to work with the city i'm not quite sure of all the intricacies and what you know the details but

2:33:02we are willing to work with the city and to talk about what to talk about what it means uh what is needed and then i can talk to my partners and my financiers and and discuss that so i i would say the option is there i cannot give you a firm answer right now yeah i

2:33:21i think that's fair and probably what we would need to do is city staff and the city attorney would need to kind of scope out uh a scope of work of what they would think would be necessary for us to do our proper due diligence and drafting of a potential ordinance and then maybe

2:33:40you would have a better idea what the price tag might be and if it's worth your more or less rolling the dice if it's gonna work in your favor i would i can respond in that way i would say that rolling that we we would be willing to roll the dice if we understood

2:33:57the size of the dice i guess right right thank you so what what i propose is in terms of giving direction that i sense that there is an openness on the council to moving forward for developing of a medical marijuana ordinance that would include lifting the moratorium

2:34:18and that we need more information in terms of what it would entail for the city to develop that ordinance and that the city staff will work with the current applicant and see if that fits into the direction that we're going in and if it doesn't then you know we go back to the drawing board

2:34:41and think if we want to go through an rfp process or slow things down until after november the urgency is for that september first deadline if we can meet it great if we can't then you know we have to do what's in the best interest of this city i've got a question for the

2:34:58applicant um if if our medical marijuana ordinance if one's created and it passes and this you can answer this as if it's your business or somebody else's business and it passes and then we decide that that's really the only product that we want to be sold out of that

2:35:19facility um in other words the ordinance doesn't is it possible that we can restrict restrict re you know recreational sales from the same facility and if we do restrict recreational sales from the facility is that still a business you know is is your business model still

2:35:38viable we are still viable under under medical under the medical business scenario certainly we have been and would continue to be um so yes i the short answer there is yes yeah i mean certainly some of the testimony we had today about the um excellent extraction methods and and uh

2:36:02vaporizing and water soluble it seems that they were going to go more and more to delivery mechanisms that are very looking a lot like medical medical marijuana and less less of smoking and potentially you know a facility a high-end facility that is very clinical in nature will draw a

2:36:26completely different market segment even after the recreational you know the adult marijuana act passes in november agreed although there is the risk that if you restrict or overburden the adult use segment of the market those people would go and get cards and be and participate

2:36:48in the medical side of the market right so um that that doesn't serve anyone quite right i'm sure that happens today so of course of course can i speak real quickly on on this september the the issue you mentioned that the there is no priority if you're only concerning one applicant in el cerrito

2:37:07but the the priority is at the state level so permit holders prior to that date are given priority review at the state level for a state license so that does have repercussions for the municipality in that a operation that is able to get a state license sooner has a market advantage

2:37:31uh one one more comment and uh the the angry person from the rear there is precedent for uh when we do an exclusive negotiating rights agreement on a real estate development which we did a couple years ago on the del norte bart station the developer picks up costs that are

2:37:52involved with examining that and that's very true on a sql basis they pay for the environmental review document so there are different ways that the city passes on the burden of of a development project to to the developer you know as i said earlier the only way

2:38:12this development project goes forward is with an ordinance so if they want their development project to go forward they should be paying for the ordinance um so that's to me there's there is nexus uh for there to be in a sequa like agreement uh around this cost

2:38:32um [Music] they still have to decide if they want to make that investment so uh so that that is their prerogative because it is their project um i um believe that there is uh the i'm gonna try and summarize the consensus the consensus i've heard is that uh the council would like um

2:38:57the city staff within their capabilities or as supplemented through some sort of development agreement to move forward with an ordinance um i did i that's not the way i was thinking of it i was concerned about the draining of our staff resources and what you said did not address that

2:39:23at all i'm open i i am very concerned about draining our resources which is why to me i wanted to make sure that there was uh the the capacity to supplement it with a development agreement that would fund a consultant if our staff does it it may be a year before we see it

2:39:46i didn't put a timeline on it so if if it's not supplemented with a outside development agreement it will be as staff gets to it okay and the other issue i think is that until we do that study how do we know what we want or if we really even if we want to presuppose that we're doing it

2:40:10before studying it is um is a bit backwards to me in terms of you know what i'm saying i i do but i don't agree you know i think that there's you may not agree with us but i think there's consensus that medical marijuana is a potential public good for our community and we need to

2:40:33go forward and examine it either in the context of this specific development proposal or a broader rfp that way i i think you heard me say that i did agree okay great okay the idea that it's a money maker you know that's why that that's why we're doing it and that we somehow have all the

2:40:53resources necessary to do that at this time is not something i believe i mean i could be a money maker but i don't ethically feel like it's a good reason to do this and i'm very concerned about the staff resources um but the reality of the market is that all of our surrounding communities that

2:41:18have medical marijuana facilities are making money off it and the market is said in that way so and i don't know i don't have a problem making money on it certainly we make money from alcohol sales you know i don't have a problem with particularly given the financial state of the city

2:41:40both now and in the future i don't think it's a moral issue to me the moral issues that you're making uh i i don't find it necessary to make money off people the adversity that people face for example the example from molly that her husband well i agree with that but remember they

2:42:04said they would have a sliding scale so that you know those of less means would pay less for the product but he wasn't i don't believe a person of less means he was he um well anyway i don't know medical marijuana can often be less than the co-pays that somebody is paying for very

2:42:24expensive opiates and other drugs too well i'm not saying but but we're not getting all of these people are not getting all these charges i'm just saying that the basis for do it ought to be the good that it does people i guess other things i guess the question for me councilmember abelson is

2:42:42if we were to and i'm just going to use berkeley as an example if we were to just take berkeley's ordinance and bring it over and consider it should we consider that an an ordinance that allows for for medical marijuana in our community that's that's and then if the answer to

2:43:01that is yes then we should be having staff start a process to bring that ordinance to us and what what you and i are agreeing on is that process may not be as timely as everybody else is looking for because of our sensitivity to staff resources being limited and and that's why you're not

2:43:23hearing me put a time timeline on it um you know the other thing is why berkeley why not um fine take oakland they passed theirs just last week in richmond voting tonight go ahead and come to go ahead and come to the mic since you you have represented yourself as an expert on the

2:43:47topic right and reintroduce yourself please sure my name is sean donahoe and over the last several years i've been told i'm an expert and and i um think about this night and day and that you were i've drafted quite a lot of ordinances throughout the state i would

2:43:59note that um the city of berkeley presently um has a very convoluted application process linked very much to a medical cannabis commission that routes it through there and so adopting that ordinance whole hog is going to be incompatible with the with present form

2:44:15of city government and city commissions okay but in relation to medicine for not only those that are economically disadvantaged but also those that are ill frankly there is a component of the berkeley city ordinance for medical cannabis that does dedicate a certain percentage of

2:44:33sales of of medical product of equal equal quality they're not given schwag so to speak they're giving the full full medical medically beneficial cannabis that's available to other um full paying customers to a certain percentage of of their of their patient base that option is

2:44:54presently being considered by the city of santa monica they found it amenable as an option to complement both an existing sales tax as well as an additional tax as well as um provide some sort of relief for those that need it most mr you have you've definitely demonstrated your

2:45:11understanding of various ordinances and i would say we're getting into the weed of the matter the question is council member abelson is do we want staff over some period of time to spend time on an ordinance um it i would not want it to be like one ordinance i would want to look at if we

2:45:33were to do this it would be our ordinance it would be our ordinance but i want to look at several not any particular cities i don't it's an example it was an example to make it so simple that we could vote on it that we would uh want to look at several of them and see

2:45:48what works for us i'm certain that our staff will do that do you want staff to spend time doing it not in the next month uh certainly and but we could figure out and i would ask the city as i said before would ask the city manager and his staff to tell us what is a reasonable amount of time

2:46:10given their current um heavy workload so that's a yes that you want to go forward with the ordinance but time timeline not specified right i guess that that you could say it that way and and i can support that as well you can mr donahue you're done you can you no okay sorry we're not in public

2:46:33comment you were you were asked to come to answer a question i trust city staff to know and we're going to hear from a minute to know what they can and cannot do and come back to us with a timeline and you know uh if there's a consultant that they already know of that could help us maybe

2:46:53somebody in the audience here would qualify for that you know i think that then we can do what we can do and then they will be talking with the applicant to see about funding for that but we won't start spending money until we know where the money's coming from is what i

2:47:10would like to do and and i can support that caveat as well general city manager sorry yes i guess i want to be i want to to be very clear direction from the council so uh we fully are in agreement on what our marching orders are in thinking about this a little bit

2:47:34um with the staff and the city attorney and i trying to go through this in our heads on the fly right now um i think if the direction is to evaluate this specific proposal to see if it's possible to process and approve a permit that would be in effect by september 1st

2:47:55that in itself is a real long shot but might not be impossible i don't believe that's what council i want to be clear no i know that's not what you and councilmember abelson said i want to hear that that's what the four of you said i'm working on consensus okay

2:48:12but i just want to be clear that if that's not the direction there is no way we're going september 1st or anywhere probably close to that i'm going in incremental steps so so far we did have i just want to be clear because the questions are coming about keep coming up about staff time the

2:48:29council has budget two budget sessions maybe three in june we don't meet again until mid-july in mid-july god willing we're gonna be talking about putting a library on the ballot we don't meet again until mid-august if we consider an ordinance putting aside whether or not it's these folks or not

2:48:46we have first reading we have second reading you've already brought up the need to do a sql analysis of the impacts of this and as it relates to the specific plan and what impacts this project will have on our ability to develop other things on the north end of town so we need to

2:49:02do all of that um september is effectively two meetings from now two council meetings from now if we've also heard about the need to do a public process where does that fit in so again i'm always happy to do whatever the council asks but the practical reality is unless

2:49:19directed to evaluate this proposal the best i could say is we would come back in july or august with a timeline and cost for doing this and if that's okay then i think we could commit to that and and uh council member friedman with respect to cost are you suggesting

2:49:38that they should not put it in the budget that we should only be moving forward if it's funded by a developer that's my preference um you know i don't know what the budget situation is but i assume there's not any extra money for you know a hundred thousand dollar process or

2:49:56whatever it might cost so um you know i'm also willing to meet more than once in july and august and september if it's nested well july and august if we can meet that september first deadline if we don't then we've got more time i don't mind scheduling an extra

2:50:16meeting according to people's vacation schedules or whatever this is a pretty important issue and has a lot of repercussions both medically for those who need medical marijuana and fiscally for the future of city finances so i don't know i i want to see staff give a realistic estimate of what it's

2:50:40going to take with the different scenarios and then they can talk to the applicant and see if they're comfortable with that or not so i don't want staff to go and hire a consultant tomorrow i want them to sit down and say given everything that we have to do what kind of help would we need to move

2:50:57this either in a september first timeline or a next year timeline because i don't think we have that information right now so your your request is that i'm going to use a specific date the date we selected for our next meeting that by june 14th you would like a

2:51:15calendar and a cost estimate yeah that would be great to make the september one date if it's possible if it's not possible then we set a different calendar again i'm not i'm just trying to be realistic we have eight days to approve to hear the budget and approve it

2:51:40oh i not only do i do change the meeting on the consent calendar right not only do i share your pain with the calendar i share your i know your pain with perspective getting that budget to us in a timely manner um my point again all i'm saying is the timeline and the cost and all that is

2:51:58next council meeting um we need to find the expertise in time to be able to we i mean i don't think we have the capability in-house to prepare a reasonable cost estimate and timeline and all the steps we need to take to give you a reasonable estimate i mean effectively it's two weeks

2:52:20no i understand so and and i mean i mean the best i can say is we can we will put our heads together as we always do and sit down and see what we can do and report back and the next meeting is the week after that it's july 21st um you know so so june 21st sorry june 21st

2:52:39um you know so unless we you know move to have a the regular meeting we haven't adopted our summer schedule yet so right now we do have a july 5th meeting do we did we move our summer schedule yet yeah i don't think we had so currently we still have a july 5th meeting on the schedule um

2:53:02so it it you know i share your pain and right now i i don't believe that you were going to come back with this calendar that gets us by september 1.

2:53:16so but okay so the i guess the direction to come back with a calendar and whatever we can do with costs on the 14th to discuss correct the the the direction as i hear it tonight is that we want staff to consider an ordinance time not specified but we would like to

2:53:38see a schedule and budget as soon as possible impossible the ordinance would be the ordinance would be when possible the timeline would be as possible because the ordinance if it's outside when possible or as soon as possible to mean means drop pretty much everything and do

2:54:07that which isn't to me reasonable this month okay um then for the for the first july meeting it may be the only thing on the meeting we may be able to do a 20-minute meeting i don't know i mean what's your what's your proposal no he's talking about you're talking

2:54:25about we're not going to do the summer calendar i don't know i'm asking for the councilmember ableton's proposal i i my proposal would be that staff would looks at it and thinks about it and talks to each other and figures out what they can reasonably do sure what's the

2:54:44timeline for that i don't know that's what they're asking them to do okay i'm saying if if it's creating a timeline we will sit down and try to have that for you on the 14th my concern is it's 10 o'clock we've been at this for two hours and um we're presenting the budget on the 14th so

2:55:03if you make a motion to extend the meeting now on the 14th then we'll do the best we can to have it for you on the 14th but we we really do need to make some progress on the budget on the 14. that's correct the budget would be first in the agenda if we have to continue the this

2:55:18item we would continue it so we we can do our best to try to get that for you yeah and i'm not looking for a detailed budget i'm looking for a range of we estimate based on people we've talked to that understand these things and could be an attorney in our city attorney's firm as expert in

2:55:40marijuana we don't have to look far for an attorney to help us and there's plenty of consultants so you know we should be able to get some rough estimates how much legal expense would be there and how much consultant could be there so it's not a budget that i would hold you

2:55:56to it's just something to give us and give the applicant if they decide to go forward under these um constraints constraints so i don't want you to spend 20 hours on it you don't have 20 hours to spend that he's got about two at most yeah um with respect to the proposal uh i i am

2:56:21not prepared to give you any direction with regards to the proposal at this point because outside of and i will acknowledge that the video [Music] and your presentation is indeed what looks like a high-end clinical facility that that people would be very comfortable to go into so i i have to

2:56:42commend you on the on the product that you've represented um as part of the preparation for this meeting i went to the one of the dispensaries that in berkeley uh near near university um it it has trailers as part of its operation you know it doesn't have a building

2:57:04that's that's got great architecture so what what you are proposing is definitely uh a different product than than what i've seen in downtown san francisco it's different the product that i've seen in parts of berkeley that said i'm not prepared to to be married to a

2:57:24specific uh proposal at this time uh and uh you know do believe that our ordinance should incorporate uh the high standards that you guys are are putting in your proposal but it for me it's premature to be uh looking at a single application or a single location

2:57:44uh without doing some of the outreach community outreach which you've experienced in san leandro around an ordinance and the and the aspects of the ordinance so i thank you for coming tonight and and you know giving us the vision that we probably will uphold during our

2:58:02ordinance process that i believe that i believe uh council member freedom and that concludes your two items uh or the consider lifting i think we've said yes to that develop an ordinance within certain uh sideboards um and this proposal uh it's i'm not saying no to it

2:58:22i'm just saying it's it's premature so if we can agree that's i know i shorthanded it quick very much our overall direction but that's uh the only consensus we're likely to get tonight and i think it gives staff and the community a lot to think about and i'm glad our representative

2:58:43the press is here i'm sure we'll get even more feedback from the community uh in days to come and i i welcome that and and one last thing that i want to make sure that that all the other council members are aware of because uh i've not had conversations with anyone

2:58:57here i have had conversations not recently but i have had conversations with council member abelson councilmember bridges on this matter so i just wanted to make sure that that's uh disclosed at this point um that concludes item 7a i'm looking for i'm looking for nods yes

2:59:21i'm going to move on to item 7b uh 7b is um in recognition of uh actually as part of 7b i want to acknowledge that mr hannan has served our city for 15 years his anniversary was a about a month ago and we really appreciate scott everything you've done for the city uh

2:59:44there were several public speakers who spoke uh in your stead um last month and and their words were well regarded um so i just wanted to uh you know bring bring that forward as part of the introduction of this item um and i don't know if you are you expecting me to

3:00:06president we didn't talk is there a presentation on this i mean maybe sky should no presentation is necessary that's correct so it's it would be from gabe and i um so so this uh resolution tonight uh restates our agreement with the city manager as i said he has served us for 15 years

3:00:27this restates our agreement with the city manager and provides compensation it changes some of the aspects one of the things that i want to acknowledge it changes uh is it reduces the car allowance which is a disa it's a hopefully a disincentive to him using the car and maybe he'll be

3:00:50walking more around town it also acknowledges that it changes him from us being a special class where he was getting contributions towards his deferred compensation he's now treated the same as all other employees so those were the significant changes his compensation did

3:01:15was modified to increase him to median so he he is now at median compensation within our reference cities which our reference cities include cities in both contra costa and alameda counties and that's that concludes my report on our uh our performance evaluation as well as uh

3:01:44compensation evaluation any questions seeing none any speakers yes mr handler okay so cardinal handler richmond i i did look at the minutes from the from the from the may 3rd meeting and everything it that tom and al said is absolutely true i mean scott hadn't been with the city

3:02:1215 years and nobody has not acknowledged acknowledged him so i say that's a good thing but i mean he's like the um the piece uh to the city i mean he comes to the meetings and everything and i say that's a good thing so our city had his face too uh we had our city manager we i mean he we extended

3:02:32his contract so so i figured hey at least at least city of el cerrito and richard are starting to look better so i figured he he's going to stay around for a long time so hopefully that the council will um will like exceed his compensation and uh a little bit more so

3:02:51that's it thank you sir any other speakers yes ma'am state your name for the record please i will my name is patricia durham and i am here to learn about the subject at hand and i know and realize that we have moved on the agenda and i i am very very happy to know that um

3:03:21uh that we are being more uh innovative and creative in improving our city i would like to say that the love of money is the root of all evil i love the fact that this is a great opportunity i'm changing the subject mr mayor i'm still on the clock and you're still

3:03:49on the clock okay and i'm very happy that we are talking about it but i hope and pray that we are not letting the love of money change the culture of this beautiful city we have a very very special uh city that stands out among all and i hope that we are not at that point

3:04:19of letting the love of money change who we are thank you thank you see no other speakers on this matter i'm bring it back to council for comment and emotion i'll move the resolution of the city council of the city of el cerrito amending the city manager's employment

3:04:40agreement second it's been moved by uh friedman seconded by abelson all those in favor please say aye aye opposed abstentions let the record show that it passed unanimously thank you very much with that we do have item 8 which is council liaison reports unfortunately i wrote out a very long

3:05:01one which i'm going to have to decide whether i want to report or not so i'm going to ask others if they want if they have i have a very brief one um you may remember i was at the last meeting i mentioned that the contractor transportation authority is considering whether or not to put a

3:05:19measure on the ballot a half cent sales tax and we're getting closer and closer and it is thought although i wouldn't be able to guarantee it that we will at our next meeting which is tomorrow actually come to a consensus on what that measure would contain at that point it will come to each of

3:05:43the cities of the county and the county for concurrence and it has to i believe be passed by a majority of the cities and a majority of the population of the county to go forward and if that if it goes forward from that it goes to the board of supervisors um so that's the process all of which

3:06:07has to get done this summer so that's another thing we will have theoretically on our calendar in the immediate future that had that does have a significant uh deadline um and uh which is in june or july i'm not sure probably june i see mr hannon's head dipping

3:06:34no about more big topics on our agendas anything else that's enough i do that every week on a related matter actually at the mayor's conference this last uh month randy ekasala iwasaki iwasaki came and presented about autonomous vehicles and susan benitez stood up

3:06:55afterwards and um you know spoke that she's got a couple of pieces of legislation that would uh you know support autonomous vehicles in our state for various purposes and and uh she was asking for resolutions of support and i was wondering if there was any interest in bringing forward a uh

3:07:17resolution uh so associated with autonomously i think that would be a great idea and i will try to get the wording how's that excellent and take that uh burden away from staff excellent thank you uh senator desogne was there and uh he senator congressman desonia was there

3:07:36and he actually did a presentation a brief presentation on uh port chicago uh and it's uh um the the event of port chicago and and recognizing it and so i will be bringing forward a resolution of support of the of port chicago at a future meeting go ahead okay i forgot one thing on the

3:07:59transportation authority it's been picked as the transportation agency of the year in the state of california by the california [Music] transportation foundation i believe that's the right wording for it so that's a real major honor for ccta as we're known to to to receive but

3:08:26we did cheryl can you throw up two minutes on the clock for me i'm gonna try and do this report in two minutes thank you west county integrated waste management authority as your representative there i need to report we're working through a new joint exercise power agreement

3:08:44i talked about this a little bit last time with respect to the voting memberships and right now all of the cities agree that the county should have a voting membership however and with the vote the county voting would come the issues of you know how many seats how many votes et cetera

3:09:03what we are doing now though is uh we discussed means for future revenue and we gave direction to staff and and council to to to incorporate into the new jepa language a lot of flexibility for a multitude of revenue methods including tipping fees energy sales any all those sorts of things

3:09:29we also discussed with not as much unanimity a policy on disbursements staff had recommended no policy on disbursements therefore no text in the jepa language dealing with disbursements the board was mixed and the ultimate direction was to have options uh on an approval process for

3:09:53uh disbursement to be incorporated into the language so either by resolution or amendment super majority or the same process that amendments go through and we had a workshop on the budget and the main thing from there is most cities don't want to use any of our

3:10:13reserves to close a budget gap and finally the el cerrito household hazardous waste which i've talked about coming is delayed and it's being delayed as a result of insurance provisions that are trying to protect the city and the waste authority and so that's my report from west county

3:10:35you did it on purpose with that uh as we discussed in our consent calendar uh any other reports sorry um did you you go tomorrow or when or thursday to the association of bay area governments i will be there uh and this is regarding the merger of mtc and abag and and so you'll report that at your

3:11:02next meeting um and and uh therefore item nine adjourn our regular city council meeting uh we as a result of our consent calendar we will be uh reconvening at seven p.m on tuesday june 14th flag day somewhere you