Regular City Council and Special City Council Meetings October 3, 2017

0:01:25tonight's meeting of the el cerrito city council we will start out with um pledge of allegiance to the flag or an observation of a moment of silence led by council member rochelle pardue okimoto i pledge allegiance to the flag of the united states of america and to the republic for which it stands

0:01:52one nation under god indivisible with liberty and justice for all thank you all for coming the next item on the agenda is council and staff communications are there any yes okay hi i'm the council liaison for the arts and culture commission and this is arts month in the city of el

0:02:21cerrito and we have a lot of celebrations going on we have our one city one book there's a they're handing out this book at the library and i was able to get a copy of the book and actually started the book it's very interesting so far on tuesday october 10th at 6 30 at the library there will be a

0:02:49group discussion and a reading and signing of the book at the library on october 24th at 6 30 p.m also this month we have the el cerrito free folk festival which is from noon to 10 p.m saturday october 28th at el cerrito high school and then a big celebration that we're

0:03:18doing as well in the city of el cerrito here is um at the el cerrito community center on saturday october 21st from 2 to 5 p.m there will be several different bands and it is free admission so we hope that you can come out and celebrate these cultural events here in

0:03:40el cerrito with us also on this flyer which is available here at city hall you can find additional things going on this month in addition to that i just wanted to give a brief update from the keep ultibates open subcommittee that i am on um as i mentioned in the last council

0:04:07meeting senate bill 687 passed the assembly and the senate which is a bill that nancy skinner had put forward that could potentially help to save alta bates hospital it would make it more difficult for an emergency room to be closed in an acute care hospital it would it would

0:04:32require the attorney general to approve the closure before the emergency room of the hospital could be closed it is now on the governor's desk and if you would like to call and support this bill the governor's number is 916-445-2841 also the task force is looking at

0:04:59a health impact assessment which would look at not only how it would affect berkeley but all of the surrounding areas in regards to how the closure of the hospital would affect us here in el cerrito and the rest of west county we had a report from the berkeley fire

0:05:19department which reported that um summit hospital is the second busiest hospital in alameda county and their fire department reported that they estimated an additional 12 minutes to and from summit hospital in addition to long waits or what they call wall time at the hospital

0:05:42which could cost the city of berkeley a lot of extra money in terms of lost manpower or woman power from the berkeley fire department being missing during these times and that would most likely translate very well to our own fire department in terms of the extended wait periods in

0:06:06transporting patients finally there will be community forums planned for the new year and we're hoping to have a community forum in west county in regards to how the community feels that the closure of alta bates hospital would affect them thank you thank you mayor

0:06:28last week i had the pleasure to attend a groundbreaking ceremony for the el cerrito del norte bart station uh the modernization project and uh so along with my colleagues here and and our honorable mayor uh who is responsible and making sure that we get this project rolling i'm very

0:06:52proud of art directors rebecca saltzman and latifah simon were there as well and hopefully by 2019 we will uh have this new bart station i mentioned to the audience last wednesday that i took that first bart ride 44 years ago at the el cerrito plaza station as a fairmont school kid so

0:07:20i'm excited that we're going to work on this modernization project that and at 2019 we'll have a better safer more modern elsewhere del norte bart station i also attended the league of cities with mayor abelson and attended a a talk from the daylight justice group on implicit

0:07:49bias training so i have information on that that i can give to folks and also i wanted to thank the neighbors on the 500 block of norval street i appreciate their invitation and i attended their sunday afternoon um it was a great event uh unfortunately there was an accident that

0:08:16uh happened after the event and my heart goes out to the senior that got hurt and i hope uh he is uh feeling better and i wish him a speedy speedy recovery uh it's unfortunate that it happened but uh our public uh services here in el cerrito fire department and police were there in less

0:08:39than five minutes i'm very proud of our public safety team to take care of them thank you thank you greg sure um i i along with several of the council members went to the rotary club sip and saver on sunday so i want to give a special thanks to the rotary club for hosting

0:08:59that event and it's a great event where we get to taste local wares from restaurants and wineries that are nearby and it's fundraising for great causes additionally we we should be all receiving our news and views the fall edition and i want to call special attention to

0:09:22the proper disposal of household hazardous waste at the recycling center now on tuesdays between 9 a.m and 4 p.m it is closed for lunch between noon and 12 30 and it's a service that is part of our participation in the west con west contra costa county integrated waste

0:09:40management board and you can get rid of all sorts of things at the recycling center on tuesdays thank you oh yes thank you yes was pleased to join the rest of the council to bart groundbreaking that was very exciting and overdue along with the mayor and councilman lyman attended the west

0:10:05county school district annual report last week down in richmond with the superintendent giving a brief description of the year ahead and how he sees where we're headed um and as the liaison for the economic development committee i wanted to say that restaurant week is october 16th and

0:10:24working with the chamber of commerce here in town we're hopeful that folks will get out and eat our food at our restaurants and there's some new ones out there along san pablo avenue in petraro also attended the stage board of directors meeting last week on sewer expansion needs along

0:10:42san pablo avenue which are critically important for economic growth in this city so you'll be hearing more about that in the future thank you very much thank you i'll try to wrap up here let's i'll just briefly mention that i attended a performance the first weekend of

0:11:01cabaret with my daughter actually and found it to be a very interesting movie and well done of as usual by the contra costa civic theater it's really nice to live in a city where we have a diversity of offerings both live and on the motion picture screen for people to

0:11:30see the another thing that i did was attend several programs produced by the senior center in el cerrito i wanted to get a better flavor of what it was like to go to these programs and what i saw was a great need for the information that was being provided at those programs and i also saw a lot of

0:11:56attendance and um so i actually attended a couple of programs on fall prevention and one of them included exercises on how to better prepare your body for a fall and what to do if you did have a fall how to react properly properly so that you don't break something significant

0:12:26and i think they were both well done and they are held i think the two i went to were held on a friday at the senior center i don't know if they all are or not but stay tuned and i'll let you know as i find out um i also went as was stated to the training on implicit bias that was held

0:12:52by the league of california cities and i found that especially interesting to to participate in i think it probably could be said that we are all guilty of uh of some sort of bias what you know it might be one thing for one of us and another thing for another one of us but i think we can all learn

0:13:17uh something from this type of training and it almost seemed natural to me that this could be just like we have to do an ethics training for example and sexual harassment training now this is another type of training that i think could benefit our both our elected staff and and perhaps our

0:13:46regular paid staff because it it makes one stop and think about um [Music] not i mean you can say yeah that person is biased about something but then if you stop and say but am i balance biased about something then you might find out and i think if you we really look deep enough that we

0:14:08could all find out that we're all guilty of it in some way and by uh acknowledging that we have that bias we can then help to correct it so i think that's what the real value of this type of a training is it was done very well i thought and so anyway it was well worth

0:14:31attending um everyone else mentioned that we had uh an opening at the bart station i'll mention how it was paid for one of the things we did at the last wic tac meeting and oops i don't have it here is appropriate some money to help pay for that project and i think if you look at the details

0:15:02what you'll see and i didn't bring it all with me today but the it takes many funding sources to put together one of these programs or projects that we do even next door i don't know how many it seems to me there's five i don't know am i right does anyone remember

0:15:20five different funding sources we think so and i i know even that little project at fairmont and the greenway i believe had about five too so it takes a lot of work most of which i think is done by our staff and the people that they interact with and so i think we owe them all a round

0:15:46of thanks for putting together these projects that make such an improvement in our lives like the one that's going in at the del norte bart station which people who use the elevator will especially benefit from because they will be able to use the elevator inside the paid area

0:16:11and that may sound fairly trivial but it means that you don't worry about fair evasion occurring on top of you literally as you're trying to get in and out of the bart station and therefore you can feel a lot safer and so this is really a tremendous project from that point of view but the other

0:16:34thing that it will do is to help to reduce the crowding that's ever increasing because of the number of people that are riding barred and so this is a fantastic project and i was so glad to see i believe all of us went all of my fellow council members and i were there and thank you all for

0:16:58coming and we look forward to the completion of that project do you know when that's going to be completed paul as a former bart a little less than two years a little less than two years thank you we'll see okay i also attended the west county mayor's association where there was a

0:17:21the main thing handled there of interest was a presentation by the pg e public affairs team on resources and contacts for local government including pg e's division leadership service planning public works coordination and public affairs in other words the variety of

0:17:45programs and services that are provided by that agency then let's see here i also um i think that may be it or at least as much as you're interested in hearing about for one session so um anyway with that are there any staff communications or announcements okay not hearing any we'll move on to

0:18:22the next item on the agenda which is oral communications from the public so just as a reminder this can be on items not on the agenda it can be on items on the consent calendar but if somebody wants to speak on the closed session item they can also do so at this time or

0:18:42at the beginning of the closed session which is immediately following this meeting do we have any slips yes mayor we want to speak now should fill out a slip yes and bring it up i have three requests to speak right now two for the closed session and one for general comment

0:19:02so melanie proctor followed by al miller and mike cunningham and the speakers are allotted three minutes per speaker and there's a speaker light that tracks the time right on this little podium here good evening thank you mayor and council members and city staff members

0:19:26i want to diverge from what i was about to say i just want to say to mayor abelson and council member quinto how glad i am to hear that you attended the implicit bias training i think that is very important i hope every employee of the city it is incorporated into annual training

0:19:44having been through it is incredibly interesting and very important for all government employees i'm here tonight to talk about the closed item agenda concerning 6500 stockton the senior center it gives me concern that the city is apparently continuing to discuss making an offer of some kind the

0:20:07school district for this property rather than focusing on relocating services which would not be something that would be on the closed item agenda as you know the fairmont community is drastically overcrowded we had an overflow classroom of kindergartners this year

0:20:28that families who want to be at fairmont who had to be relocated from their preferred school and the fence had to be moved to accommodate the state rules for playground space so we are moving forward with our plans for the senior center and figuring out once it's brought back into the fairmont

0:20:50property what use can be made of it in phases and i hope that the city will not use this time solely focused on retaining the property and will work to find alternative space for the seniors so that they can continue to have the services they need and deserve while at the same time the

0:21:09fairmont families can have the space that our teachers and our staff and our students need and deserve so i hope you'll take that into consideration thank you al miller good evening mayor abelson council and staff al miller i live in el cerrito i wanted to thank the centennial

0:21:35planning committee for the outstanding parade they arranged for us and while i was enjoying myself carrying on mark friedman's cat in the hat tradition in the parade the librarian asked everyone in the library community that's elsewhere library foundation friends of

0:21:56the cerrito library and the staff and patrons of the library to march in one unit she encouraged us to dress as a book character she dressed as heidi which i was not familiar with and i was a cat and a half but anyway it was a wonderful parade uh as you know because you were all in

0:22:19it and i tried to figure out what was the difference between that parade and the martin luther king day parade and in my observation it was the route uh the centennial parade marched more through the community and i was very happy to the number of people that were lining

0:22:40the streets watching the parade especially the ones cheering for a library but you know a lot of the groups in the parade got it cheered uh marching down san pablo avenue and then up moser until ashbury you know i enjoy that parade too but it didn't have the same

0:23:00kind of community participation but anyway i just wanted to thank him for a great parade the other thing i wanted to remind people of our community is that tomorrow morning i think or tomorrow i think it's from like nine to one following on mayor abelson's comments on

0:23:18the senior center it's a el cerrito senior resources fair at the community center where community activities both commercial and other organizations that provide services or want to provide services to the senior community assemble in the community center and the seniors come and walk

0:23:42around and we talk to them and they talk to us and we try to share each other what they want and what we are able to give them so that's a hope we see a lot of seniors there tomorrow thank you finals mike cunningham uh good evening mayors and council members i'm mike cunningham i live in el

0:24:02cerrito i'm here to speak on the closed session item on negotiation of price in terms of payment for 6500 stockton avenue as ms proctor indicated it's a somewhat mysterious item there's no negotiation going on that the school district district is aware of the city currently has a one-year lease

0:24:27on the property and the school district has been very clear that it needs the property back at the end of that one-year extension to accommodate severe overcrowding that is directly and negatively impacting students and their educational outcomes at fairmont it's also been very clear that it has no

0:24:45interest in selling the property so i i don't know what is the price in terms negotiation that's going to happen in closed session qualifying for an exemption under the brown act i do know that that there is a very important discussion that you need to have about 6500 stockton

0:25:03that can't be in closed session and more importantly it shouldn't be in closed session because it's one that involves the community and that's the conversation about how and where the city will relocate and accommodate senior programs after the expiration of the one-year extension

0:25:22we're currently in the fourth month of that one-year extension and as far as the community can tell there isn't any ongoing process to identify and prepare for a move to a new location that's very concerning for seniors it's very concerning for the fairmont community

0:25:41is very concerning for the entire community that wants to be part of the decision-making process that wants to support public education and senior programs so let's get started on that let's have a conversation in open session among yourselves about how you are going to accommodate the

0:26:03move to a new location and let's begin engaging engaging the community so that seniors are not left high and dry at the end of the one-year extension with no place to house their programs thank you those uh i have no more requests to speak for general comment thank you

0:26:24the next item on the agenda is the adoption of the consent calendar and that would be items 4a through 4f 4a is approval of minutes 4b is the national arts and humanities month proclamation c is freedom from bullies weak proclamation d is unity and bulleting bullying prevention

0:26:49awareness day proclamation e is to amend the fiscal year 2017-18 budget and capital improvement program to incorporate a list of projects and appropriate funding from senate bill 1 the road repair and accountability act f is to increase the city manager's spending authority

0:27:15i have a correction on the minutes okay so you want to pull a 4a yes okay any others is there a motion sure i'll move items 4b through f second two seconds there's a motion uh by paul fideli or no greg lyman right and uh seconded by rochelle and also by gabe all in favor please say aye

0:27:58in the opposition in the abstentions motion carries unanimously that takes us back to item four hey rochelle um just one a small correction under my comments that i made talking again are previously about senate bill 687 it's noted as 87.

0:28:19i just wanted to make sure that was clear that it was sb 687 thank you okay do you want to make a motion uh i moved to uh move item a as corrected or a as corrected the second that okay motioned by uh pardoo okimoto seconded by fideli all in favor please say aye aye

0:28:47any objections any abstentions motion carries unanimously there are no presentations there are no public hearings that brings us to item number seven which is to review the draft cannabis businesses ordinance so this is a study session not a session where we will make decisions as

0:29:10i understand it so is there a staff report yes good evening mayor abelson council members i'm sean moss senior planner so tonight um as the mayor correct correctly stated this is a study session on a draft commercial cannabis ordinance so first a little bit of background

0:29:49so going back to 1996 that's when the compassionate use act was adopted by voters in california that was the act that permitted medicinal use of marijuana and then later in 2013 the marijuana program act was passed by the legislature and that act further defined

0:30:07the scope of prop 215 that was the act that allowed patient collectives to cultivate and distribute marijuana in 2006 the el cerrito city council prohibited medical marijuana dispensaries throughout the city and then in 2015 the legislature passed the medical cannabis regulation and safety act

0:30:36which established the bureau of medical cannabis regulation which is the the state agency that that oversees um or that did at that time oversaw medical cannabis then um as a result of that act that was passed uh the city council in december of 2015 prohibited commercial

0:30:55cultivation and delivery of cannabis as a way to maintain the status quo in el cerrito until the existing regulations could be evaluated further and in may of last year the council heard a presentation from a group who wished to operate a dispensary and at that time

0:31:17directed staff to develop a schedule to lift the existing ban on dispensaries so staff did develop that schedule and did commence a public process to get public input and and craft regulations to lift that dispensary ban but in november of 2016 there were some intervening events

0:31:42proposition 64 the adult use of marijuana act or the auma passed and that permitted recreational use and cultivation of cannabis in california and also council members fidelity and pardue okamoto were elected in the midst of this public process that the the city

0:32:01was conducting so therefore in may staff came back to the council with an update related to this topic um and at that time the the council directed staff to draft regulations to permit both medicinal and recreational cannabis retail businesses so and then in june of uh 2016 um senate bill 94 or the

0:32:32medicinal and adult use of cannabis and regula regulatory and safety act was adopted and that act essentially merged the regulatory structures for medicinal and recreational cannabis at the state level and then just last month on september 13th the city hosted a community meeting

0:32:56to gather public input on draft regulations that are similar to what i will walk you through in the draft ordinance so just to give you a kind of a overall summary of the ordinance i will say that recreational cannabis businesses are a new type of business they're not yet

0:33:22most of them are not yet licensed by the state so we do have at this time the model of medicinal medicinal cannabis dispensaries and and other businesses to look to but there are there's a little bit of uncertainty about exactly how recreational businesses will operate

0:33:42um so in drafting these regulations um at the council's direction we wanted to come up with you know responsible regulations that would accomplish the the council's goals but also um we wanted to exercise an appropriate amount of of caution um as um in order to allow us to you know

0:34:02evaluate things as as the permitting the permitting structure at a state level gets underway and the industry really develops so in general we crafted a series of regulations that require operating permits for cannabis businesses in el cerrito cannabis businesses would be limited to

0:34:24retail and deliveries no more than two operating permits would be issued so no more than two retail businesses um there would be a a permit window during which the city would accept applications and then all of those applications would be evaluated against each other

0:34:42um and the city manager would issue permits with input from the police chief and other relevant staff there are there would be performance standards for retail and deliveries which i'll walk you through in the next series of slides and there would also be locational

0:34:58requirements for those businesses and procedures for non-renewal suspension and revocation of permits if there were issues with any of the the businesses that had received permits so the way the operating permit process would work there would be a series of things that would have to be submitted

0:35:18with the operating permit and as i said all of those permits would be compared to each other and evaluated um once they you know once they were all received during the application window so some of the things that would be required would be an operations plan that would describe how the business

0:35:37plan to operate a security plan there would be there are several minimum requirements for the security plan among them there would have to be secure areas that were for storage of of products there would need to be video surveillance and things of that nature there would be background checks

0:35:58required for business owners and operators uh there would be um demonstration of compliance with the san pablo avenue specific plan so the specific plan contains things like transparency standards for businesses and signage standards and things like that uh there would be a three-year pro forma

0:36:16required so that we could assess the viability of businesses and how you know how well capitalized and things like that they were and this is an important one there would be a requirement for businesses to describe the community benefits that they would provide

0:36:35so this would be an opportunity for businesses to propose you know for example contributions to the city or um various community elements really there's um there's this is a pretty broad category so businesses would be free to to propose a variety of things and

0:36:57the applications would that's one of the criteria on which the applications would be evaluated and then in addition to that there would be information required regarding air quality greenhouse gas emissions and hazardous materials so there would be a series of performance standards as well for for

0:37:19retail businesses among those operators would be required to be over 21 years of it or 21 years of age or over operators would be subject to background checks hours of operation would be limited from 8 am to 8 pm odor control would be required so voters would have to be controlled to the

0:37:38would have to be limited to the property where the business is located securities as i said security systems and video surveillance would be required there would be minimum insurance requirements and businesses would have to maintain a ledger for three years that would be

0:37:54available for inspection by the city also inspections would be permitted as needed on-site consumption of cannabis would be prohibited so that is um on-site consumption of i'm sorry on-site smoking of cannabis would already be prohibited by the city's smoke pollution

0:38:18and prevention ordinance or smoke pollution prevention ordinance sorry and so we felt that it would also be prudent to prohibit other methods of consumption on site businesses would be required to notify the police department of criminal of criminal activity or if they received a notice of

0:38:39violation from the state businesses would also be required to notify the police chief of a change in staff that would require a background check for that new staff member display storage and sales would be prohibited outside of the building where the business was located

0:38:57and quarterly meetings would be required with the city manager and the police chief so for deliveries there would also be a series of standards deliveries would be limited to deliveries by retail establishments that were licensed in el cerrito delivery vehicles

0:39:17would need to have a would need to carry a copy of their license cash on delivery would be prohibited un delivery vehicles would be required to be unmarked deliveries would only be allowed to the customer's residence or business address and delivery hours would also be limited to

0:39:388 am to 8 pm so i also uh mentioned previous that there would be location requirements um so there would be required to be a 600 foot separation between cannabis businesses and parks um except for the alone greenway which is consistent also with the tobacco retailers ordinance

0:40:01schools both public and private and youth centers such as the swim center the community center et cetera library [Applause] there would be a required distance of 1000 feet between retail cannabis businesses they would only be permitted on san pablo avenue and restricted to upper floors in the

0:40:23theater overlay block so the theater overlay block is the the few blocks that surround the cerrito theater and the san pablo avenue specific plan really tries to focus more active uses in those blocks uses that are going to attract and encourage pedestrian activity on the street um you know such

0:40:45as restaurants and sidewalk cafes and other retail businesses and and things like that we already restrict um perfect business and professional offices to only being on the uh only being on upper floors in that zoning district um and given that the examples of medicinal cannabis dispensaries that we

0:41:05have in surrounding cities tend to be more auto oriented type businesses and in more auto oriented type use type areas we thought that it would be prudent to limit those to upper floors in the theater overlay district as you know as i said because we're trying to to encourage pedestrian

0:41:26activity so these are what those land use buffers look like 600 feet from parks and schools anyway so this is broken up into north and south so you can see this is san pablo avenue running right here so the buffers you see kind of on the north side of town this is um st john's

0:41:51school right here this buffer and this is although uh we did exclude the ohlone greenway there is a small playground uh play structure here at on the greenway at manila and so that was included as a as a park so that's this buffer here uh then going to the the southern side

0:42:11so you see they overlap a little bit so this is that play structure again and then here this is kind of the largest section of san pablo avenue that would be excluded this is fairmont school in fairmount park and so that basically would exclude the section of san pablo

0:42:30almost from lincoln to a little bit south of waldo so that's about probably about two blocks there maybe a little bit more um and then also this is creekside park so that uh that excludes a little bit um at the very south end of on the city limits there um so sort of anticipated timeline

0:42:59would be we would anticipate accepting permits in the early part of 2018.

0:43:06the state is poised to start accepting slash issuing licenses at starting january 2nd 2018 it remains to be seen how how ready they're actually going to be to start issuing those licenses right away so i think in reality we would probably not be too far behind the state if if at all

0:43:34in issuing licenses to to operate in el cerrito but we would anticipate the beginning part of the year accepting um permits um if the if the council assuming that the council were to adopt the the first reading of the ordinance when it comes back to you in november

0:43:53and then we would evaluate and issue permits after the close of that application period so estimated to be in the spring of 2018.

0:44:04and initial we anticipate that initially the permits uh would be issued for one year the ordinance as written would allow the permits to be granted for a maximum of three years so we anticipate as the businesses get established if they're operating well and without issues then the permits may

0:44:25be issued for for longer periods of time either two or three years so that concludes my presentation happy to answer any questions that the council members may have and then at the conclusion of uh public comment and your discussion we would just be looking for direction from the council

0:44:47to finalize the ordinance and return with a finalized version on november 21st questions um i have a question about deliveries so the ordinance would allow the cannabis uh institutions here to deliver correct correct but then but it doesn't allow them to uh do cash deliveries

0:45:15correct um so there are um so at the community meeting on uh september 13th um there were some concerns raised about um limiting cashless deliveries um there it is somewhat of an obstacle for the industry due to the um federal nature um the the illegal nature of cannabis at a federal level

0:45:43um there are obstacles um to traditional banking instruments for much of the industry um however there there are um we've done a little bit of research and um it's my understanding there are some players in the industry that are you know finding ways around this and

0:46:01finding ways to to accept cashless deliveries um so the you know it was a concern of the police department that the vehicles not be carrying large amounts of cash as they drive through el cerrito um and therefore you know reducing the um the target for them as you know reducing their

0:46:24desirability as targets of of crime criminal activity um so you know we tried to craft um some regulations that addressed that um and you know as as we've looked into it they do you know there do appear to be people in the industry and um outfits in the industry that are trying

0:46:45to resolve the issue of of accepting cashless payments do you know what kind of cashless payments they would be possibly accepting well so it appears that there are some third-party operators that will accept a payment and transmit the payment to the to the delivery service um and you know

0:47:10i i don't know the details of how that all happens um but you know it appears that there are there are folks that are doing that okay just from um when we were at the league of cities and that we were getting some feedback on it it sounded like you know one of the one of the big issues with

0:47:28having uh cannabis retail is the the cash right and so i was just curious as to if you were allowing deliveries but then not allowing cash how that would even occur does paul have something to say good evening council i'm paul keith your chief of police if you don't mind if i step in for a

0:47:50second sean so the idea behind cashless deliveries is it can be handled a couple ways it can be handled at the dispensary with a paying advance style program or an account with the dispensary there are a number of services that are developing out there where the

0:48:06transaction is done with a third party company and then the customer is given a code to give to the delivery driver so that once the delivery is complete that company completes the transaction with the dispensary in a way that apparently satisfies federal regulators

0:48:22at least that's the company's contention so there are a number of um at both app-based programs and then also kind of web-based companies that are in the market to provide that service because it is an area where some dispensaries are having problems thank you and i have one more question

0:48:39while you're while you're standing there i thought you might so what about um collecting of taxes or other payments that would go to the city with this you know large cash industry do we have something set up in terms of how we would accept those payments and then how we would get those payments

0:49:00also to our financial institutions um or is that divulging too much information well i think that uh sean do you want to handle this one or maybe i think that's still in development exactly how we would collect taxes it's not that these companies don't have bank accounts it's just a matter of how

0:49:22they what they use their bank accounts for so if they're taking transactions that are directly related to marijuana they have to they have to have something worked out so they can pay all their bills and they're not paying all their bills with cash so um certainly that's something we

0:49:37have to figure out i don't know if the city is set up to take you know some thousands of dollars in cash every month and payments so um yeah i'll just add um you know once we are able to evaluate what community benefits are being proposed um you know if any of them involve

0:49:56payments to the city um then we would work with the city attorney to make sure that those payments happen in a you know in a legal way that doesn't jeopardize the city okay thank you sure my pleasure and i'm going to stay close just in case somebody has another question

0:50:11if i could just add and we do this with our bank now we could arrange directly with our bank for cash drops at the bank into our account so it's so it would be safe and wouldn't be necessarily transacted at city hall necessarily i mean but there are options that we can

0:50:29work with from wireless transfers to you know working through mechanics bank to come up with a way to way to do it that way so i i don't think we're too worried about that okay and and the that any cannabis business is going to have to make multiple payments to the

0:50:45state both the board of equalization and others to pay the excise taxes and so they they will have to figure out a way to make payments that the state will accept if the state will accept it i suspect we would also accept it but we can work out that operational detail as part of the

0:51:00permitting process thank you thank you mayor i have a couple questions regarding delivery service so for delivery service would that be for just the dispensaries that will have a permit here in el cerrito that's what we're proposing initially um at least until those businesses get up

0:51:24and running and we can monitor the deliveries better and and see how everything is is functioning and make sure that there aren't any issues okay and then also with i notice on the the business times uh here it says operation between uh 8 am and 8 pm can that be changed in any way because

0:51:50looking at that when uh you're thinking about uh transfers of uh online with um accounts and all that um especially for um our seniors would it be possible to um have the hours changed on that to like perhaps nine to nine the hours can be whatever the the council wants them to be

0:52:15thank you if i could make a comment um what i typically hear is that seniors don't go out at night so i'm not sure that seniors would be an issue from what i understand they mostly go out during daylight hours i'm sorry um seniors mostly go out during daylight hours it's my understanding

0:52:41in general um that anyway um greg oh certainly i'm sorry i'm having trouble getting near the mic is my real problem here i'm gonna uh my comments are gonna focus on the actual ordinance language i want to thank you very much for the um the the report you made in front of it um

0:53:04however my comments are going to be specific to the language that is being proposed uh and in some places the the the summary report was good but it did not necessarily reflect precisely the the language in the ordinance so my comments i will walk you through where

0:53:19my comments are and and my questions are um so you know it one of them is in the definitions so 6.80.010 a there's a discussion about seeds and it says that seeds are cannabis and then seeds aren't cannabis and i'm very confused should one of those be so the second set of seeds be stocks um

0:53:47and and so specifically cannabis does not include the mature stalks of the plant fiber produced from the stocks oil or cake made from the seeds of the plant where previously oil or salts and such from seeds or resin was considered cannabis so i'm just curious if this definition is coming

0:54:07from the state or is this a typo it am i missing understanding the definition of cannabis i think the intent of that i think that um sentence that you quoted is meant to um discuss industrial hemp uh which is um so it would be so you're talking about from a different

0:54:31species than the three species plus other derivatives that are identified as uh as cannabis i believe as i'm reading through this quickly i believe that that's the intent but we can certainly clarify that if you would because it it the use of the the oil or cake made from seeds

0:54:49uh is described in two places and so it it we need a better understanding of what the second one is intending to be um in f which is commercial cannabis activity um so it's at the bottom of of this page and that's not numbered um the uh we but not limited to cultivation

0:55:12possession distribution transportation laboratory testing labeling retail delivery sale or manufacturing of cannabis we're obviously not allowing cultivation or manufacturing actually we're not allowing most of these things um is this again a state definition that we're relying on or are we in a

0:55:29position to make our own definition that that excludes these things as part of the of cannabis activity well that's that's a broad um definition that's in there for a reason is because under this draft ordinance all commercial cannabis activities would require an operating permit and then the

0:55:47operating permits are further limited to retail and delivery so i i think that structure um makes the ordinance a little bit easy to amend in the future if the council wanted to permit additional uses what if i don't want that flexibility applicability 6.80.030 applicability

0:56:12in here we have except for hospitals and research facilities that obtain written permission for cannabis cultivation under federal law it is unlawful to commercially cultivate distribute manufacture deliver or test cannabis in amounts that exceed personal use this doesn't is distribute

0:56:30uh does that cover you know marketing sales selling retail that it does it seems like there's some there's a concept missing here of the sale of marijuana sorry which section are you on 6.80.030 applicability and it's the second sentence except for hospitals and

0:56:52research facilities that obtain written permission for cannabis cultivation under federal law it is unlawful to commercially cultivate distribute manufacture deliver or test cannabis and amounts that exceed personal use allowances what about sale and i mean what about marketing and and

0:57:10retail sales is i'm missing the concept on this sentence i agreed but though that that should be it says you know without a permit these things are are not allowed why aren't we being comprehensive about the things that we want permitted i actually wouldn't include distribution

0:57:32with that's a distinct activity from sales correct so should not sales be included in this litany of of uses that are described that's my question shouldn't sales and retail be included in this litany i'm just curious why we've got all these other things and you can consider it because tonight's a

0:57:59workshop you don't have to answer everything tonight so but i i am curious why just those select uses were chosen to be listed in this in that exception um under uh this is a this is a systemic uh question um for but the best example of it is under operating permits

0:58:266.80050 operating permits and it says an operating permit shall be required we defined operating permit in the definition section and all defined words like operating permit are capitalized so i'm just curious if if there is and you did you chose not to capitalize them

0:58:47throughout so i'm not i'm it this is much more of a of a which way are we going to go because i i think in other ordinances we do cap we use the defined terms where they occur and i just want to i'm not i don't recall which way we go with i think that's correct that we might do

0:59:05that so it's inconsistent throughout the municipality okay it depends on the drafting of each individual ordinance all right uh fair enough remember there are ordinances there that have been there for a very long time indeed indeed um going back to six point eight zero zero

0:59:20four zero limitation on use um and is this and then i'll ask this in a couple of different locations we do we did pass a comprehensive smoke prevention protection ordinance and in that ordinance if i recall correctly we we essentially say there will be no new smoke distribution tobacco sales

0:59:43establishments except for some really hard way to get those tobaccos is is this limitation on use consistent or should we be cross-referencing other ordinances that are specific to smoking um in in this paragraph um i wouldn't make so i'm gonna i'm gonna answer but if i didn't understand your

1:00:08question correct it's poorly questioned it's poorly stated so feel free to restate it um well i i if i understand correctly so the the locational requirements in this ordinance don't cross-reference the they're similar to but they don't cross-reference the location

1:00:24requirements for tobacco retailers so a cannabis retail business could be located within a thousand feet of a tobacco retailer but not another cannabis retailer okay and should this limitation on use where we are referencing codes should we be referencing things like our

1:00:45existing uh smoke potential prevention protection ordinance is there a reason to name it or cross-reference it um we can look into that it might be prudent to reference it since it you know it is applicable to marijuana smoking and this next question is on the next

1:01:04page so it's it's under operating permits it's b description of proposed site and it comes up there's also this alternative delivery language in the back what if a business has no physical address in el cerrito what it what if they're proposing to be delivery only

1:01:25um and i mean i guess that they would still have to give you the site the address the physical address they would be citing would be the address where they're packaging from um no we're anticipating that you know if an alternative delivery scheme was desired that it would be limited to

1:01:51businesses with a storefront retail location okay because it it's not that clearly written right now it you could be at uh you could be one of the stores you referenced in your memo and come to us and propose delivery only so if we don't want a delivery only business we should be

1:02:11potentially a little more clearly writing that because right now the way i read this i could be a retail facility in another city and come and propose to be a delivery only in el cerrito i think you have to look at the rest of the ordinance where it's fairly clear that that's not the case yeah

1:02:29this isn't all we can we can have that conversation at another time because actually i did look the entire ordinance i'm sure you did i have no doubt about that whatsoever part of it was with that in mind and i did not find any direct evidence that prohibited a

1:02:45a company from having no they didn't have to have a physical presence in el cerrito it does not say that that that's i will say it does not say that can i point you to that sure um so um this is 6.80.070 performance standards letter k deliveries and then it states deliveries within el

1:03:16cerrito shall only be permitted by cannabis businesses which have been granted operating permits that's correct that's what it says right that doesn't say they have to have a physical address they just say they have to be granted a permit okay i i see your point but

1:03:32we we're limiting operating permits to two and anticipating that they would be storefront retail locations so but but i see your point that it's not explicit it is not explicit okay because i read i read through it twice trying to figure out if it was explicit i'm not saying i'm one way or the other

1:03:51i'm just saying i got to this point in here and wondered what happens if it's a delivery only and delivery only is not necessarily covered um if you don't want a delivery only company to make an application we need to be more stringent um under the saint going back to where i was

1:04:08sorry operating permits 0.50 description of proposed operations a description of the nature of the proposed commercial cannabis activity product types average or expected sales amounts average or expected amount of cannabis storage and sources of cannabis do you

1:04:28what level of detail are you getting for the because this is during the application proposal for their sales are you are you asking them to give it by product type uh medical versus recreational edible versus smokable what what is what is the what level of detail are you looking for when you say

1:04:50average or expected sales amounts yeah i i think we're looking for sales of different product types can you please put in by product then sure um that would that was my suggestion there which uh tell me which letter that was e as in edward uh there's a typo in g

1:05:12um one of the people who wrote us and provided their comments today in h was suggesting potentially 10 years for litigation would you be amenable to 10 instead of 5 what can be anything that the the council wants it to be during the i just recently attended a meeting where noise permits in another

1:05:35city require two rounds of neighborhood notifications to those that live within it for noise that's 150 feet in that particular city is there a neighborhood notification requirement uh during the application process there is not in this draft uh but it but it sounds like you guys

1:05:58were con considering a neighborhood notification i mean i know that i know we've had several of our liquor licenses upheld in el cerrito as a result of neighborhood notification requirements by by the tobacco and alcohol tobacco and firearms so just curious if we've got a

1:06:19neighborhood notification requirement um we could add one okay if you would please certainly don't want somebody waking up in the morning and will get to odor smelling their neighbors can i um can i clarify so um a courtesy notice is that uh the notice notifi noticing that i was

1:06:42exposed to last week with regards to noise requirements night permits in night work permits in city of san francisco actually was pretty robust and required effectively some documentation that it had been distributed so whether certified mail or some sort of uh

1:07:04you know documentation that there had been an attempt to notify the neighbors so i don't know if we want to go to that level but certainly we want to make sure that we have some sort of notification that an application was in was has been received is going to be submitted

1:07:21at what location application submitted it should be part of the application process that they've notified the neighbors um i'm sorry let's let's can we stop for a second you want every applicant every business that's going to submit an application to provide notice before

1:07:41it's been before if the city has even reviewed the application well when would you suggest it to occur uh i i don't know because because it's a brand new process which is why we're having a study session but that's why i'm attempting to clarify yeah so so at this point the application goes in and

1:07:57the city could approve it without any further input from the public then then the applicant then the applicant there's no reason for the notification to go out because then the neighbors have no recourse at that point because they the permit's been issued so i'm just curious

1:08:12when do the neighbors get to know that a business is going in next to them of this nature we can't answer that question because you've just introduced the idea but um but that being the case we can do notice at other points i just wanted to clarify that if we get 10 applications for two

1:08:29for two locations you might not want um a notification requirement for all 10 locations you might want to valid point prior to prior to issuance of the two permits you might want to identify a breaking point at which notification would be provided before the permits are actually issued that

1:08:47that sounds like a good idea that there would be some opportunity for public input prior to issuance of the permit but after the applicants have been verified as good applicants i guess is what you're saying and do you want to create a public input process before or

1:09:05is it simply notification um based on your input it sounds like they're a break point for that opportunity for public notice to be meaningful uh it sounds like a good idea okay um i have not i've not necessarily thought through what that would look like uh there

1:09:26certainly is uh comment letters that suggest that uh that's something that we should be considering okay we'll we'll we will we will all everyone who's working on this will will look at that for um revision what is the current process for the sale of alcohol so when there's a new license uh for

1:09:48sale in in the in the city we've had experience where i think it was 500 or 600 feet neighbors you know put up an objection and we've had some businesses struggle for many months waiting for alcohol to back on firearms to approve their their permit for sale so there is

1:10:09some type of notification i'm not promo i'm not providing saying that it should be quite so extensive as what atf goes through but certainly there should be some opportunity for people to uh provide input on an applicant's proposal uh that you know i mean there's we're going

1:10:30to get to odor control but there's odor control there's lighting there's security um there's there's image there's all sorts of attributes to these businesses that i there's not clear to me when the public gets the chance to to comment on them i see our i see our miss cavanaugh lynch is here

1:10:50good evening members of city council margaret cavanaugh and your development services manager currently um when a depends on what kind of alcohol permit is being submitted to the city what we've seen in the last several years in particular is restaurants with beer and wine or full

1:11:05bar that's an administrative use permit so we've sent out a notice to neighbors typically within 300 feet and we check with the police department to make sure there's no concern with that particular vendor in the state of california alcohol is licensed by the abc or alcohol beverage

1:11:22control thank you and and going down the same line of of discussion under um the same we're still an operating permit uh i is in security plan five measures for preventing off-site impacts to adjacent businesses or properties do you can you can you explain what that would mean

1:11:47what what is what are what are you expecting them under their security plan to to submit that would address measures for preventing offsite impacts so measures to prevent um you know folks from going to adjacent parking lots and uh using products things of that nature

1:12:13so it's it's just the the use of marijuana products in the immediate neighborhood use and things associated with the use litter smoking things like that okay because it off-site impacts could be as you say litter um it is probably the number one thing that that i'm thinking of that neighbors

1:12:37would certainly potentially pin back to any business potentially even one like this under the same section m as in michael air quality um so the applicant shall provide a calculation of the anticipated emissions of air pollutants applicants are encouraged to design

1:12:59their projects so as to minimize or avoid air pollutant emissions now air pollutants include dust but what are some of the air pollutants that you are envisioning that these businesses would have if they're not allowing smoke on there what what are the air pollutants

1:13:16that you are having them calculate um i i think that remains to be seen um when these businesses um start operating um i think you know we're putting it in there um you know so the air quality and greenhouse gas emissions go a little bit together they do i'll get the greenhouse

1:13:37gases in a minute i'm just if i'm an applicant i don't know what you want me to calculate here so i was just curious if you have an example of what air pollutant you are concerned about um i i don't know that we have identified any up front okay i mean if if the answer is

1:13:55there are none then the answer is there are none under hazardous materials you did actually identify like carbon dioxide and and although i'm not sure nitrogen in and of itself is a air pollutant but you did is that some of the things that you're thinking of as some of the

1:14:11products i mean i'm just trying to figure out what what they would be calculating in this in this request it could be i mean it could be their air pollution you know uh air pollutants associated with some of the products do we have a getting to green and greenhouse gases at gas emissions do we

1:14:30have a methodology that we expect them to to use in calculating the greenhouse gases like vehicle miles traveled of this of this cannabis from humboldt or something i mean what what how far out are you going to go with regards to greenhouse gas emissions well there

1:14:48there are um standard methodologies that are used for environmental analysis under the california environmental quality act so we we could utilize those uh standards and best practices and is that the because that you do have a reference to sql at the end of that paragraph but is

1:15:05is that is that a clear enough reference for a methodology that an applicant can go and find the methodology you're looking for to know what you're you're applying what you which like it could be vehicle miles traveled of the clients it could be vehicle miles traveled of the employees it could be

1:15:23vehicle miles traveled of the product i'm just curious what what you expect them to apply it to um i i believe that it is there are you know there are some standard softwares that are used to project uh greenhouse gas emissions from the whole project yes okay under hazardous materials you you

1:15:42do give examples uh like the cryogenic gases um are you going so far as to get to some of the other types of typical uh business hazardous materials that are in businesses like you know copier toner and i mean what what's the because is this as much a fire is this a

1:16:00is this was a requirement from the fire department or is this a what is the underlying requirement here i i think the the underlying concern is is public safety so um you know we want to want to make sure that these uh you know the flammable substances are stored appropriately

1:16:18um and you know that any uh subs you know substances that could be hazardous to the public are um you know contained and stored properly so i i don't think we're anticipating you know common household products or office supplies or things listed okay good that that

1:16:37could be a slightly clearer than if that's the case because flammable is i'm scanning quickly but i don't think flammable is used in in the current text under application process number b uh where permits for commercial cannabis uses at any time prior to private we

1:17:02talk about we can reject them um if we reject them is any or part of their fee refundable no well it's silent at the moment you may want to actually elaborate on that um under permit term you i th your presentation actually is clear very clear that you're anticipating one year

1:17:30initially one year terms and and so permit term is you know with up to three years it certainly sounds like a appropriate amount um okay all right now uh getting to and this obviously in here is another place essentially where we can get neighborhood nodes moving to

1:17:58performance standards odor control um where where is that measured and how is that determined is that something that is objective or qualitative so we we currently have uh standards for odor control performance standards for odors both in the zoning ordinance and

1:18:22the san pablo avenue specific plan and the standards in the specific plan in particular were included with the guidance of the big bay area air quality management district um and um so i i think that those you know those are they're they're accepted standards and i think that they there are accepted

1:18:49measurements for those things so and when you say contained on the property you mean like in the building essentially or is the is the objective because yeah or you know or odors that are um small enough that you know they dissipate before they reach the property

1:19:06line okay um in the in c which is alarm and video surveillance we talk about cameras that are motion censored and capable of recording activity um yet further down under um c5 we talk about recording is that where we talk about recording 24 hours a day um no there it's it's motion also

1:19:34somewhere in here we talk about recording for 24 hours a day i was just curious which which is which is what we're looking for 24 hour a day footage or motion activated um we can take a look at that there's obviously a lot of security and surveillance requirements

1:19:56um i don't offhand i don't remember if the intent is for some areas to be motion activated in other areas to be continuously recording but we can certainly clarify if that's confusing it it would be great because in some cases it looks like it's the lighting that you want motion sensing

1:20:13but the cameras are running it's again it's not completely or completely clear and there is some requirements for the lighting to be fully shielded and not spilling onto neighborhood structures i'm just curious if that how that will be um you know regulated at what point during the application

1:20:38process are they demonstrating their lighting because it it talks about minimum lighting level of one foot candle and i'm not certain that that's adequate illumination for the type of high digital filming that potentially is necessary for law enforcement it just seems very

1:20:54low one foot candle so just curious if that is something that fits our current business uh the business uh security license that we have in in the city um i i believe this is in sync with that but i i don't have that ordinance next to me so excellent under uh c2 cameras shall be placed at each

1:21:19location where weighing packaging transport preparation processing or labeling activities occur cameras shall be positioned to record all weighing packaging transport preparation processing or labeling activities um processing is not i did not see it in any of the definitions at

1:21:36the beginning of this ordinance it's a i didn't do a word search but i'm wondering if processing is a newly introduced term can you tell me which section you're on again uh c2 in in performance standards so 680 70 performance standards i didn't i don't recall reading

1:22:03processing before this point so i'm just curious what activity these cameras are intended to capture we um we can look into that and see if that is a term that's used elsewhere staying in this section and going to 17 so this would be c-17 each commercial cannabis use

1:22:35shall identify a liaison and provide contact information to the chief of police should that be cannabis business i think that that would make more sense um the one foot candle i made my comment about that seems low and then in in this same one uh which is what 18

1:22:55minimum lighting it says the lighting required shall be turned on from dusk to dawn yet elsewhere you talk about lighting that's motion activated so i'm not certain which lights stay on from dusted on and which ones are motion activated and it could be clear to that effect to

1:23:15make sure we get good applications [Applause] so i in the delivery in in the delivery concept um i went actually one step further under ledger so this is now i'm still in performance standards 70 performance standards e-ledger cannabis businesses shall maintain for a

1:23:41minimum of three years a written accounting or ledger of all cash what if the transactions are by a bitcoin or some other type of ecoin that's intended to be uh traceless what what what is the what for this ledger are we what what what are we trying to capture and what

1:24:01if that transaction is done through one of these third parties so it's anonymous or through bitcoin that's also anonymous i think that would be captured by the term reimbursements um but i i i but it i guess my question is if the purchase is by a bitcoin such that the purchaser is unknown

1:24:25right in theory the purchaser is unknown what type of information are we requiring them to collect from a purchaser that's potentially using a bitcoin to buy what's the intent of this of this ledger so that we can capture somebody who's reselling it i mean what's what's the

1:24:41purpose of this ledger uh i i think the the purpose of the ledger is to you know as as best we can make sure that sales are occurring legally um you know bitcoin i think is not necessarily as anonymous as as you think but but your point about cryptocurrencies um that could be you know is is taken so

1:25:07um but they're physically standing there in front of you so you there's other information you can collect from the the buyer so i'm trying to figure out if it just because they're using a cryptocurrency doesn't mean that there isn't an opportunity to collect other

1:25:20information so i'm trying to figure out should we be making sure that there's some type of information that's collected so that that's useful for whatever purpose you're trying to collect this information um i i think i'm going to refer to the police chief to see if uh you know he

1:25:35has any thoughts of you know this doesn't involve security right it's in security so i'm just trying to figure out what what information we're collecting what's the purpose of it and figure out if there's a transaction that we are overlooking that the cannabis industry is going to be potentially

1:25:52using as a result of the federal legislation i think we're looking for is a record of all sales so if the sale happens by bitcoin or another cryptocurrency or an online service we want that included on the ledger part of this has a component for the public goods so there is an interest in making

1:26:12sure that embezzlement isn't happening at the business so it's in early on in the regulation process and we want to make sure that the businesses in town are correctly paying their taxes and have records that we can refer to if we need to look for transactions excellent yeah i

1:26:29just wanted to supplement that by saying that my understanding of this requirement was one to keep a record of the transactions not necessarily to identify the purchasers okay that that we wanted a record of the sales so that we could um both for taxation purposes for

1:26:46embezzlement purposes for matching um income to inventory those kinds of things we would be able to use the ledger for those purposes as written it i don't believe it was ever intended on our part to be a way of tracking the identity of the individuals who made purchases so we

1:27:03would need to revise that if that was something the council wanted but it wasn't our intent okay so then in under that under that understanding the method of payment is irrelevant uh under that under that understanding i think that's correct and just to piggyback on

1:27:17that uh the surveillance systems are really for theft and for uh crimes that might occur at the business with the business being the victim not to keep track of who's coming into the business to purchase to legally purchase marijuana um going to k which is deliveries

1:27:33uh k-3 is cash shall be prohibited as a form of payment for cannabis delivery transactions payments shall be via credit card check or other means of cashless payment or cash payment shall be made in advance at the business location um is cryptocurrency covered by the

1:27:50terms other means of cashless payments that's the intent okay excellent um if if you are going to introduce the term processing i'm now in k sorry l retail business conduct conducted within business it says no production distribution storage or display of cannabis or

1:28:12cannabis product shall be visible um so production did i i didn't do a full search but productions didn't seem like it was an allowable use that's correct processing could be the substitute here if processing is something that is within the use so it wasn't clear to me if you meant

1:28:36processing at this location at this point in the in the ordinance uh it says you know you can't be within 600 feet of a library but i'm assuming that they would be grandfathered in their locations if the library was moved to a location closer to these facilities that's

1:28:58correct i think that that is in there somewhere but that was the intent i did not see a grandfather clause but it may not be necessary at this time since we don't i mean that might be more important when the library is relocated but i'm assuming that if if one of these

1:29:17uses if somebody was to open up a school within 600 feet of a business they would be grandfathered in that's the intent okay i don't know if we need to be put that in explicitly i did not see anything to that effect that you know and maybe that's basic land use law

1:29:35but but i i didn't see anything to that effect i think it's a great idea to make very clear that especially when a new school opens up that the expectation was that that business was there before and would have the right to stay the alternate delivery language that was

1:29:53provided to us um how would that where where would that be used and how would this be used what was the what was the intent of this additional information the alternate delivery language um so that that is an alternative uh if the council wished to um permit deliveries

1:30:18more broadly than what the draft ordinance and where would it be inserted i mean where where would it go in the in the ordinance and it would be supplemental so should their thing be things like live scan requirements and hours of operations be added into this if it was something that

1:30:36we were considering i thought they were but um yeah if they're not i mean the the intent is that um if the council wished to permit more delivery businesses that there would be a more robust process for permitting those delivery businesses that would you know not be tied to

1:30:58retail businesses in el cerrito so that the the permit process would be more similar to the operating permits so there would be an application that was comparable to the applications that we've got under our application process which has a host of correct i i don't think that

1:31:16all of the application materials are going to be applicable but as many as possible right and perhaps additional things it's i would characterize it as an outline of an alternative approach to deliveries and if the council were interested in pursuing that we would

1:31:29figure out how to integrate it into the ordinance as a whole great thank you um i think that concludes my questions at this time thank you very much okay paul thank you i'm gonna take a different approach than councilmember lymon here um but i think his line of questions are

1:32:03supportive of what i'm going to say i'm going to be very general and broad as one of the two new city council people up here i wanted to go over my thoughts on how we move toward regulation of marijuana in el cerrito and my goals for what we need to do over the next few months

1:32:22as you all know every city in the state is going through the same process that we are and it's a difficult one it's not easy and there are many many pillars of issues to consider as we deal with all the things that greg mentioned and other other issues whichever way cities decide it will be a

1:32:41learning process and so it is in our city as well i understand the desire of those communities who decide to make a cultural choice not to proceed with recreational cannabis sales for whatever reason it's the right of every community to define its purpose and its character

1:32:59i happen to support the more than 70 percent of our local voters who voted for proposition 64 last november with our geographic location our proximity to major cities who will be allowing recreational sales and the opportunity for tax revenue i believe it would be unwise not to be

1:33:17part of that cultural east bay which is evolving in this logical way i also support implementing prop 64 for a variety of other social reasons but as i said back in april this year as we liberate our community from cannabis prohibition we must not be afraid to regulate in

1:33:35ways that protect our health and our safety and that will take time that's the theme that i'm talking about here i believe it will take a long-term public and administrative process to deal with a variety of issues that impact our community and i don't want to rush this

1:33:50significant change as it turns out very few cities in the bay area and around the state will be ready in early 2018 to provide the services we're talking about we don't need to rush this and so it is with our city i want to applaud our city staff for the efforts they've done on development of

1:34:10commerce component important to prop 64. i'm especially pleased with the limiting of two dispensaries the specifics for their location the general approach for delivery of product within our city boundaries assuring critical uh buffers and for applying strict performance standards i

1:34:31think those are great and i do want to support the general approach of a conservative regulatory structure as the industry evolves over time but there is much that remains undetermined that may need to be flushed out with additional public process in this town for example as i mentioned to our fire

1:34:50chief i'm most concerned about the health and safety effects of the personal growing of cannabis in el cerrito some cities like fremont have proposed regulations for electricity water ventilation and chemical use should we do the same some the state law does allow moderate

1:35:09regulation on residential growth to prevent mold and fire hazards should el cerrito consider a permit system to allow greater safety inspections what does the public think about this it's a big issue and there are other issues i would like to further review that are not addressed

1:35:26here tonight what should our taxation policy be i know i want it to cover the cost of regulation and help educate our youth in el cerrito what public benefit should we ask from our dispensaries that we choose what does the public think about that i'm undecided as to whether we should

1:35:44allow edible cannibal products at all in el cerrito until better protections are provided and labeling is established at the state level to make sure that our youngsters are protected and i'm glad to see tonight that we're talking about a one-year process for approval of uh

1:35:59permits and not just automatically going for three i'm very pleased to see that that concerns me so as i said there are many questions that remain to be answered in what many believe to be a short amount of time the good news is there's no requirement that we rush into this until we are

1:36:16ready again i want to praise the city for the general direction presented to us tonight but i'm hopeful that what this city council votes on next month will be an initial step on cannabis and may i suggest finally that we readjust our expectation timeline as to when we might truly be

1:36:36ready to open a cannabis storefront i'm hopeful the city can look ahead and solicit additional public input on specific implementation topics not addressed tonight in the document we've been given so that we can benefit not only from our residents views but benefit from the ideas and

1:36:55experience of our sister cities around us i know as a city council member that would be helpful for me and i believe also for our residents and the character of our city thank you okay um and i'll um bring up my questions and then we'll see if anybody on the council has any repeat questions and

1:37:14then we'll go to public comment and then we'll bring it back to the council for discussion um the one of the questions that i had when i read through this was about the theater district and second store use and when i thought about the businesses that i'm aware of

1:37:36that are in the second story first of all in that district first of all there aren't very many that i can think of and secondly i'll bet they don't have elevators does anybody know the answer to that yes so in the case of a one of the two retail uses um that are

1:38:05selected are decided to locate in a second story in the theater overlay district um there is a standard in the building code for how that is a that americans uh the ada code is applied the title 24 actually in our building code is applied so if someone is putting over um 156 000 of

1:38:24improvements into a project they are required by state law to bring themselves up to 100 um accessibility they have to meet the the gold standard um otherwise they are required by state law to um apply 20 of the value of their project towards improvements to make the

1:38:44building more accessible but not fully accessible that's we see that in local restaurants we see that in any new when a new tenant it locates into an existing business or tenant space so if um someone cannot do a full 20 improvement they have to fill out a financial

1:39:05hardship form they have to meet with a building official it's a long discussion and then we monitor that site for the next three years and any additional improvements that total is moved towards the 20 of improvements we want to move them towards um that's a that's state-wide

1:39:20building code application but that is i was talking to our building official today and we followed that precise approach on any antenna improvements um including new retail uses in this location so thank you for that description of the basically what came from the ada

1:39:37but it it doesn't actually address the um the point that i'm concerned about and which is why are we setting it up so i mean that's a very historic it's not only our theater district it's a very historical meaning old district meaning there probably weren't elevators when

1:39:56these buildings were built as far as i maybe there were i don't know but the um it just seems like a peculiar thing to do to say that in this particular district it you know to have a discussion about having it on the second story when in fact what that will uh

1:40:18do via the stuff you the code that you just mentioned is exclude people who need elevators for example people in wheelchairs people who have mobility problems and i i just would like it not to be done in that way because i think it is not at all what people were thinking would happen

1:40:48you know in creating this kind of um a setup that we would exclude uh people for whatever reason that might be legally permitted but is um still very much a thing that separates out people with disabilities from people who don't have disabilities so i would personally like to see that

1:41:15changed in the way this is all set up because i i think it does have that exclusion that i don't even know that it was intended but it would be the it would be what would happen and um there wouldn't be anything that we could do about it because in fact the building code and the ada

1:41:38permit it because the ada is actually not an a perfect document itself it's it's a compromise and this is as you described very well this is how they the compromise was done so anyway i have a concern about that and i also have a question about the um on page uh

1:42:05i don't know i guess there's never page number but on in section 6.80.080 um a 2 it says a library open to the public what that means then is that it's prohibited i don't maybe this is this referring to building is 2a referring to within the theater district or is it referring

1:42:36to other areas and the reason i'm asking the question is that we have previously had a proposal from connected to bart about putting a library on bart property and so i was just wondering if how that would be covered by this so these are the location requirements

1:42:59that apply city-wide um so it would apply to the current the location of the library when the operating permits were evaluated if the library was was subsequently moved i think council member lyman through his comments was and questions was suggesting that we'd be more

1:43:20explicit that if uses if some of these sensitive land uses locate in other locations in the future that the operating permits would remain valid so if we if that's one of the areas under consideration is there a way to reserve it so to speak for the library well i i think um reading between the

1:43:51lines here a little bit i i think um if the council's desire was to uh prohibit um cannabis businesses in the theater district it would have much the same effect as limiting it near the plaza bart station so limited so the theater district does not include the bart station but it's close enough

1:44:18is that what you're that's correct i mean that that's the so the these businesses would only be permitted on san pablo avenue so the theater district is the portion of san pablo avenue that's closest to the el cerrito plaza bart station okay so um if one were to try to

1:44:35cover the concern that i had about second story not being equally usable by people with disabilities what can you suggest how that would be corrected well i i what i like i said i was sort of reading between the lines thinking that a prohibition in the theater district

1:45:00might might address that concern but if i can just back up for a moment and just explain um you know and we can certainly include whatever restrictions that the council desires as far as these types of businesses in the in the theater district in the theater block zoning district

1:45:22um we can craft that however the council wants but i just wanted to back up for a moment and provide um some of the rationale for crafting this the way that it is proposed in this draft ordinance um the thought was you know as as i explained um the theater district is an area where we're

1:45:41trying to encourage active ground floor uses and we weren't certain that these types of businesses would be out you know active ground floor uses at the same time we didn't we were a little bit cautious about excluding the entire theater district because it is a fairly

1:46:01um sizable chunk of the southern part the southern portion of the city and in order to allow these separation between these two businesses um you know we were hesitant to remove that entire section of the city from consideration um so you know that that is something to

1:46:20to take into two blocks not an entirely uh not a large section of the southern part of el cerrito it's the theater block itself and and the plaza block right correct but that's the yeah right but going so if i can go back to the uh buffer map here um so you see if oops

1:46:42here's my mouse so you can see um on the um so here's this is the southern city limits right here and the theater block is everything that's in this purple here so if you exclude the theater block and then in conjunction i actually can't see this it's pretty small but it is those two blocks i was

1:47:04talking about right correct so it's two blocks and then in conjunction with the buffer around fairmont school and fairmont park and the library it would really limit the southern portion of the city to just this one block between lincoln and central would really be what what was

1:47:22left over so for people with certain disabilities uh the definition that's currently here would limit their use of the of it probably to that smaller thing too because putting it on the second floor wouldn't actually work for them and i'm one of them if i could by the

1:47:47way if i could make a suggestion we'd probably need to do a little bit of research on this um because it would be going on going beyond state and federal law so we need to make sure that it wasn't that those that those laws were not preclusive of this approach but we we could revise the

1:48:03proposed ordinance to state that if a cannabis business wanted to locate in the theater district and therefore had to be on a second floor that either they would have to it would either have to be in an accessible building or that they would have to make accessibility improvements which i

1:48:19understand would be considerable to add an elevator for example but um we could we we would as i said we would need to do additional research but we could add that to the ordinance potentially okay or you could just say that it's not allowed in the theater district

1:48:37we could but as um as sean was suggesting that the the the the the spillover from that is to significantly diminish the number of locations that would be available in that part of our city for people my point is that for people with disabilities it would not do that

1:48:53right because if they couldn't use it in the theater district then it's yes it's just making it equal access yes yes the if i think that we've heard that your preference would be that either if it goes onto a second floor that there be a requirement if possible to

1:49:11make sure that that the business is fully accessible on that second floor or to preclude it from the theater district since since allowing it there would be discriminatory against individuals with disabilities right that that's true so um okay i think since everybody else did such an

1:49:30eloquent job of uh bringing up comments i don't think there's anything else i want to add so what i would like to do now is go to to see if we have any public speakers yes we have six that are signed up okay the first three are delphina fung followed by chris jaczynski and jeff goodella

1:49:57good evening um mayor abelson council members and city manager i'm here today to again emphasize the fact that under federal laws is still illegal to cultivate sell and use marijuana in addition under california's proposition 64 the city council has the authority to completely ban marijuana

1:50:18related businesses and regulate indoor growth for personal use adjustment as one of the council members had mentioned but in the event that you decide to go against the petitioner's wish and want to proceed further you need to know that you have the power to just actually

1:50:35authorize deliveries you don't have to actually authorize the storefront stores and in that regard i had written a long letter that has 20 points that i comment on the drop ordinance and the main points included on the measurement on the buffer zone even though the map seemed to show a

1:50:54radius but it has a straight line measurement language and i think it should be deleted and changed to radius and the definition of youth gathering place we should include tutorial and learning centers because parents of kumon and coachland they actually designed the petition that i

1:51:11submitted with 398 people on it and in terms of the neighbor notification i in my concept but when i comment on it i look at it as more like a building permit process when someone wants to build something you always actually send out a letter and the adjacent neighbors

1:51:29actually have about 15 days to comment and i think we can use similar process and in terms of the permitted use i believe that instead of being vague and say up to three years we should be specific as being presented to the council member to say that initially it

1:51:46will be one year and with increment maybe two years instead of leaving it baked because once it's written we don't know how it's being implemented and for food drink or other edible products which contain cannabis they should not be permitted to be sold and as a

1:52:04council member lyman mentioned the smoke ordinance should be specifically referenced to instead of being infer that you have to put two ordinances together and also lastly the application fees shall not be refundable and in the process of listening to the questions i believe when i read the

1:52:26ordinance i look at the alternate delivery language to be applicable if you decide to just allow deliveries and no storefront at all because then you can actually address some of the medicine needed patients and we just allow deliveries and then they will be on a mock cost certain

1:52:47number of hours and i agree with council member linemen the word distribution is not clear where the sale is included and when i look at it further i was thinking maybe the distribution will include both money sale and no money transaction meaning if i'm a parent i distribute it to my kid that

1:53:06will be part of the word distribution so that's all my comments thank you thank you kris josinski followed by jeff godella good evening merrill council member staff my name is chris jaczynski i am a resident of oakland california and i am a member of a local advocacy advocacy

1:53:29group called oakland privacy um i wanted to specifically touch on um a phrase that was included in section six 68070 under performance standards and that would be section c the phrasing question that i want to raise concerns about is the very last one of section c as it

1:53:49pertains to video surveillance and it reads the operator shall provide the chief of police remote access to any on-site web-based video surveillance to monitor remotely at any time i have i take issue with this phrasing and just the provision itself and want to touch on three particulars of it the

1:54:09first is that you know i totally understand the need to regulate this industry responsibly and considering that we're at the vanguard of it the delicacy of doing so but at the same time i think it's important to consider that for the employer of this establishment the

1:54:25employees any of the customers that the um prospect of constant unannounced surveillance produces a specter of invasiveness and then from a broader standpoint it essentially presumes guilt and wrongdoing on behalf of the customers on behalf of the employees on behalf of the

1:54:51employer secondly you can see from the surveillance requirements in this ordinance that there's ample requirements to be in compliance with the law as it stands whether it's holding on to security footage for 60 days notifying law enforcement if there is some sort of

1:55:10legal activity going on etc so i think that the ordinance apart from that constant potential surveillance is pretty ample in my opinion to stay in line with the law and then thirdly i think i would just like everyone that's working on drafting this language to think about

1:55:25the broader implications of including this type of language and giving you know constant potential access to law enforcement of these businesses of surveillance cameras that are always on just to think about the broader implications across other municipalities and other industries as well and with

1:55:44that thank you for your time thank you jeff godella followed by chris gray and carl mulligan hi my name is jeff godella i grew up in el cerrito my family goes back three generations here um uh well i'm here to advocate for the addition of delivery services along with the brick

1:56:08and mortar retail establishments in the ordinance and i have a few reasons for this right now cities and counties are banning cannabis businesses throughout the state therefore facilitating the black market and all the public health and safety issues that come with it

1:56:26i know as a compliant cultivator um on a mountain far away i have a light local license um uh that nothing's hurt the black market more than legal pathways to access of cannabis unregulated deliveries will continue in el cerrito until you decide to allow and regulate

1:56:48them allowing licensed deliveries to operate out of el cerrito so i'm not mean i don't mean outside delivery services coming in legally that are legal to operate and coming into el cerrito i mean a delivery service that operates out of el cerrito where they have a physical

1:57:07address and they operate out of el cerrito it will bring in tax money um from outside municipalities because they'll be able to go out of el cereal just as domino's pizzas on solano comes into el cerrito to deliver pizzas that tax money goes back to albany um it gives the uh citizens the option of

1:57:29safe and regulated products through delivery service and i believe that's kind of the goal one of the goals of this strategic plan of the ordinance if you don't allow delivery then the only delivery services that will operate in the city are unregulated and that's cash only

1:57:50products that aren't tested products that aren't licensed products that who knows what you know um all uh the state is requiring all deliveries to have a physical address and uh if if the delivery service in el cerrito has a physical address in el cerrito i don't see

1:58:13um why a lot of the criteria for the retail doesn't apply to the delivery service as well as far as knowing which deliveries are authorized and which aren't um as far as transactions for deliveries the hypothetical example given in the draft i think is ridiculous nobody's

1:58:31gonna go to a store pay go home and wait for a delivery when they could have just taken it home with them the also the apps and the third party facilitators of these cashless things as far as i know are also still hypothetical people want to do it but i get around in this industry and i

1:58:53don't know anybody currently operating like that um i don't see a big difference between a 25 pizza transaction and a 25 cannabis transaction there are security protocols put on delivery drivers the amount of cash they carry such and such like that if they get robbed they call the police you know the

1:59:15same would happen for a regulated delivery service now if that delivery service is not regulated they're probably not going to call the police or maybe they will i don't know you know that's it's just another reason to regulate deliveries and regulate them in a way that doesn't put them out of

1:59:30business by prohibiting them from using cash so that's that's basically all i wanted to say is just add deliveries to this ordinance a delivery only services and uh i think you can do that and this would still be considered a conservative ordinance a kind of getting your

1:59:52just getting your feet wet testing the waters type ordinance these delivery services are pretty much invisible currently your time is oh sorry thank you thank you okay chris gray followed by carl mulligan howdy gowdy and arya campbell good evening my name is chris gray i'm

2:00:12here representing the el cerrito wellness center um i gave the city clerk our comments so hopefully you have those already written so i just want to briefly touch on a few things so mayor and council members um i want to first commend the city staff for they did an excellent job they put together a

2:00:32lot of regulations that cover a lot of different areas and i think they did an excellent job on on the whole thing it was comprehensive and it covers a lot of the public safety fire planning issues so they should be commended i think today we are here just to make three suggested

2:00:52uh improvements that we saw in the ordinance and the rest of it i think is all legitimate and should be implemented the first is regarding the proposed hours of operation i think when you open up a business and you provide a service to the community you want those hours to reflect when the

2:01:08community wants to use it so we feel 9 to 10 would be probably the best hours or something very similar to that there's people coming home from work they have commute hours etc i think it just makes it um a lot more accessible especially when liquor stores and other things are open

2:01:25to two o'clock i don't think we need that but we should have a legitimate time frame where it's opened the second is in regard to the process the selection of up to two dispensaries in our letter we talked about having the staff review all of the applications when you apply there's so many

2:01:43requirements on having a location on safety requirements video requirements etc they're pretty complete at that point the ones that do meet all those requirements we think should go to the city council for selection one of the main reasons to do that is it creates a more open and public

2:02:03process and that the applications would include where the location is so people could come in and testify to the decision makers you who are elected to represent them whether they think that location is appropriate or not and so i think that's a good way of addressing some of the concerns we've

2:02:19already heard the third and last concern we had was the prohibition of cash transactions like some of the other speakers have mentioned right now there really is no possibility of doing deliveries because cash is the only way to do it which is done illegally what we're proposing is to have the

2:02:39person who's most concerned with it the chief of police have the final say on doing it so um we agree with them completely large amounts of cash would be dangerous and they shouldn't be permitted but if you had a small amount of cash to do one transaction as a maximum the police chief okayed that

2:02:56type of a thing we think that's a compromise until there is a third party or a different way a banking system that can collect either credit cards debit cards checks something right now there's nothing there's like they said there's some proposed apps to do it but they're

2:03:12not being used and they're not implemented yet and lastly i want to thank you for considering our suggestions we look forward to continuing to try to partner with you and work with the council and the staff to help el cerrito develop a model ordinance that will lead to the highest

2:03:27quality and safe dispensaries to serve the residents of the city thank you you have any questions also i'm sorry oh sorry are there more speakers yes carl mulligan followed by howdy gowdy and arya campbell good evening council carl mulligan located in el cerrito

2:03:55i guess i'm not going to get the attention of the staff here i spend my time coming up here and the people that have come up here have spent a tremendous amount of time and a lot of the aspects and a lot of the points that we've brought up during some of the meetings have been completely

2:04:10ignored by staff staff actually i called staff yesterday to ask a simple question about where this the notion of shall issue no more than two valid operating permits for cannabis businesses in the city staff didn't reply so i wonder where that came from i didn't hear it in any

2:04:32of the meetings i didn't see it written anywhere mr fideli you said prior to being elected in may 17 may 17 2016 that monopoly issues aside because i had spoken about fast tracking this business into el cerrito and you said monopoly issues aside one business is enough so we know your

2:04:56perspective on that miss pardo okimoto pardon me said at the same meeting that it's about the patience so i think i know your perspective on that i don't know with respect to the number of businesses but i think i have a an idea of your perspective on the issue

2:05:14i'm not sure if one business can get a permit to operate this retail business and then a second permit to run a delivery business thereby giving once again a monopoly to one business that's not clear in here i don't see that um i hope you'll all appreciate the t-shirt that i wore today i'll step out

2:05:35for a minute george or george orwell 1984 if you haven't read the book recently you might want to pick that up again because this ordinance is very dystopian in my opinion and in particular as has already been addressed by the gentleman from oakland the operator shall provide the chief of

2:05:52police remote access anytime you know that that whole thing so he spoke about it a lot better than i'm even going to um and i would like to say that that was the reason that i wore this t-shirt today because i think that the idea of spying on people when they don't know

2:06:09that you're being spied on how is a how is a worker supposed to adjust themselves if they need to they have to go to the bathroom because they think that the chief of police might be watching them that's an insidious insidious way to go about your day your daily work

2:06:23environment i'm not going to say anymore i may email you about some other content in this thing but i'll let the other speak i just think that this is for all the effort time effort money that has been put in by the public it has been completely ignored by staff and we

2:06:42already know from the past experiences here in the city council that the city council will completely ignore staff too if they want so you'll ignore staff and staff will ignore the people and then so really the decision is left up to people that we don't know who's making these

2:06:58decisions is it city staff is it the city council is it the legal aspects of the city or is it the police chief thank you thank you all right good evening mayor abelson um council members my name is howdy gowdy [address removed] um so i'm generally supportive of the

2:07:25direction of this policy and i think it can use some more work in places and many of those have been already talked about i particularly want to focus on the public benefit and what um some of you have already mentioned in terms of what what this you know economic

2:07:48uh benefit is going to be whether it's taxes or some kind of other offering to the city i think it's it's not a good practice to leave it so nebulous and open-ended i think we need to be very clear about what our expectations are um when when this whole discussion began

2:08:15it was very much couched in terms of we're going to get you know a revenue stream and whether you know you think it's good or bad to be focusing on you know the revenue stream rather than just the validity of the business um i think it just needs to be very clear what the expectations are in

2:08:36that vein and it's not good as it is written right now to just leave it up to the a closed administrative process to determine you know what the right public benefit is if it's a public benefit it should be something that's discussed in in public so either what was offered

2:08:59before that we have planning or council be the the final venue for for these decisions or um or perhaps just building into the ordinance a more clear expectation of what what it takes to have this operating permit um so and i don't really know the details of that like whether you know a tax is

2:09:25something that we can do easily or takes a vote or you know if it's more complicated now that there's a 15 state level tax so i mean there's a lot of questions there that i think need to be discussed as to how to best implement that so what else um i guess one question is

2:09:47there's a statement that gives the impression that there is a maximization of separation between cannabis and residential uses because so many of the new uh projects on san pablo avenue are mixed use i'm wondering if mixed use commercial is excluded or not it's not clear to me that it is they say

2:10:11commercial zone um so does it have to be an exclusively commercial zone that's just a question i'd admit i didn't read all the details of the ordinance so maybe it's in there um i also want to speak towards having more yes i am i just want to echo what others were saying

2:10:30about i think delivery is expanding delivery in a responsible way is a very um appropriate way to address this business and our community with minimum impacts because it basically takes it to the most safe and legal point of use rather than um something that might more

2:10:51easily be used in an unapproved location so thanks thank you um two final speakers are arya campbell filed by skyler turtle i wanted to thank the people who worked on the proposed regulations and who came up with a reasonable plan your process was fair and considered the

2:11:13input of people who participated in it i support the proposal with just a bit of tweaking having two cannabis retailers along san pablo is definitely a good start i'm also here to represent shawn donohue chris conrad and mickey norris who regularly come to these

2:11:31meetings but who couldn't be here tonight and who told me to convey their support for the draft from the last meeting and they may submit a few suggestions by email later on it's important to give people a safe place to consume cannabis some renters can't consume it in their

2:11:50homes and we know that there will be other places around the east bay that people will have on-site consumption licenses so why should el cerrito residents have to travel far and wide to have a place to smoke on site we urge you to allow on-site consumption and get the

2:12:10tax revenue attached to it in el cerrito i think you probably know the numbers uh 73 percent of el cerrito voters voted for prop 64.

2:12:23so it's clearly very popular um over nine thousand said yes and over three thousand said no the people of el cerrito are ready to move forward and reap the benefits of legal regulated access to cannabis thank you oh i didn't introduce myself but i think she said my name aria

2:12:43campbell thank you also i'm um the secretary secretary of contra costa normal the national organizat organization for reform of marijuana laws so if anybody's interested in reaching out for information from our side feel free to let me know i don't know how since i'm not leaving

2:13:04information uh sky the last lip i have is skylar turtle hello council thank you for your time my name is skyler turtle i am a lifetime kensington el cerrito resident went to elsewhere high graduated 97 and i'm just here to advocate for small time delivery only businesses

2:13:28i agree with a lot of the things said today about the retail and i hear concerns about the public's you know safety and um the way california has the regulations proposed right now for delivery only they're basically invisible some other speakers said that as well they're not

2:13:46allowed to advertise there's no foot traffic they're not open to the public there's no parking needed that way it's very indiscreet and also a good way to test different areas and i just think that also the brick and mortar stores as much as i agree with them i think they're

2:14:03necessary they're very expensive and i understand the concerns that go into that whether that's security surveillance staff it makes it very hard for a small time resident to put in an application for that and i just think that as a resident there's plenty of mom and pop stores out

2:14:21there they're small they're local and i just think you should kind of think about small-time people that don't have outside investors and they are residents so they have the city of el cerrito's real intentions at heart whereas outside investors might come in they might live hundreds of miles away

2:14:40they don't care about el cerrito they don't care about the residents they just care about the dollars i've heard a lot of talk about going back and forth and figuring out the right way to work this um and i see that as definitely the way to go i mean i'm sure there's going

2:14:52to be things in the first few months to come up that don't work and certain things that work better i think with a resident they're willing to listen a lot more than an outside investor or business that might have a big law staff and might be very difficult to deal with so

2:15:08thank you for your time i appreciate it just think about the little guys thank you i have no other that's it okay uh thank you very much everyone and so now we'll bring it back to the council and given that this is not a decision-making day what we'll be doing is talking about

2:15:30our thoughts on and ideas on what we would like to see in this ordinance and who would greg mayor if i may i actually have some as a result of the testimony and i've got some additional questions that i would love to have staff's input on before i start giving opinions

2:15:51one of the letters we got from mr gowdy talked about that federally supported affordable housing might be vulnerable if they even possess marijuana it is there can you are you familiar with his comment are you familiar with with the point he's trying to make with

2:16:11regards to some of our most vulnerable housing people that might need medical marijuana potentially jeopardizing their housing as a result of of not having a safe place to [Music] ingest or consume their marijuana well i'm i'm not familiar with federal law with relation to

2:16:34federally supported affordable housing but what i can say is pursuant to the city's smoke pollution prevention ordinance it would be it would not be permitted to smoke cannabis in a multi-family dwelling unit right but cannabis comes in oils and extracts and edibles and stuff like that

2:16:53so what the way i was interpreting his his comment was even the possession of an edible potentially would jeopardize their their federal funding their federal subsidies so i'm just i'm just curious it this goes speaks to one of the last speakers who talked about a

2:17:08safe place to to consume in in the evaluation of not wanting as places to be consumption these points of retail to be points of consumption as well did we look at this potential side effect i'm just curious we would i think we would have to further look into what applicable federal laws

2:17:31okay um without it's not my area of expertise i am aware that there are some for some forms of housing that receive financial support from the federal government that there are limits on the ability that possessing cannabis on site um might um result in them being evicted from the

2:18:00premises i guess i would all say that i mean we can certainly look at it some more there was a significant amount of discussion um on the staff level about permitting consumption on site generally i mean for a variety of reasons not just housing reasons the feeling of the staff

2:18:18was that again on with the let's start small and see how it goes approach that not allowing on-site consumption seemed to be the preferable approach at the beginning of this something that could be changed later only because without knowing what uh what that would

2:18:39look like yet until there's there are more of those kinds of operations in existence it's hard to know what it would be like what the nature of how it might affect the nature of the business um whether or not the the resulting business would be consistent with the types of business

2:18:54communities that the city's trying to build so there it there was a lot of discussion around that issue generally um not necessarily uh regarding um this particular housing issue but certainly with with an eye toward trying to be mindful of the needs of um people who

2:19:10would be purchasing but the belief that as an as an initial step that um not allowing consumption on site seemed to be the best approach but that's up to the council to decide if the council wanted to go in that direction we would need to spend some time working on

2:19:24refinements to the ordinance yeah i'll have my comments lined up and it'll cover that um i agree with the council member fidelity about the attractiveness of packaging lollipops gummy bears the state is taking some action on packaging and labeling are we relying on the state or are we in a

2:19:44position to potentially make sure that the labeling is not very attractive or there's potentially a child proof you know packaging for the distribution of some of these these products so this the state is uh taking the lead on packaging and labeling requirements

2:20:05um and we we were anticipating um relying on this uh i mean the council would be within their authority to go further than that the um the um i forget if it's the tobacco retailer ordinance or the smoke pollution tobacco retailers yeah all right so that that ordinance does go a step farther

2:20:28um and prohibit some of the um types of packaging and products that you're referring to um you know i i think um as the city attorney said um you know one of the the driving factors was kind of starting small and so um you know we were also uh also wanted to be cognizant of

2:20:49um you know staff time and city resources expended towards um you know regulating and monitoring you know these types of requirements um the one of the commenters talked about learning centers i know um actually that we have a dance studio on san pablo avenue and there's also a

2:21:09defense skills studio on san pablo avenue or these are education centers or youth congregation centers were they considered in your points of concentration of youth that might get a buffer they were not and i'll just say i think those those types of businesses tend to be a a little bit more

2:21:40mobile than some of the you know the the other i think the uses that are listed tend to be a little bit more established schools the libraries you know senior centers community community centers that things of that nature um parks obviously don't don't move around a lot um

2:21:58so you know that's that's sort of what uh what we were aiming for um the the other thing is um you know i i sort of uh also view those types of uses um similarly to you know home day cares and and those home day cares can be a little bit harder to track because some of them

2:22:18don't some of the don't require permits smaller home day cares don't require permits from the city so we don't necessarily know where they're located larger ones do of course and and we we do track those um these next two questions might be for the the chief of police

2:22:36one of the the questions on page six of the memoranda there was in in a discussion about police department supports limiting deliveries to businesses that are licensed to operate in retail establishments the last sentence says for this reason the police department is seeking clarity through

2:22:55the proposed regulations that will allow the department to easily identify delivery operators which are licensed in el cerrito so you this paragraph talks about how difficult it is to enforce delivery in el cerrito and i think through the the the process of regulating deliveries

2:23:16we're going to have license plates cars you know driver's license and and the works so but this comment caught my eye that it that it's difficult to essentially enforce an el cerrito now um how how is the enforcement going on i mean how are we enforcing our current no

2:23:37delivery law uh successfully and will regulating the delivery make this will this make it really easier to regulate from the non-regulated deliveries they're going to look just as non-descript as everyone was describing tonight so i'm just trying to figure out how

2:23:59regulating the delivery will actually help you do enforcement so i'm i'm going to defer to the police chief regarding regarding enforcement but i do i do want to say that you know the idea behind this regulation is that it would be very clear if if we were to permit the two

2:24:18licensed retail businesses in el cerrito to be the only operators of delivery and then obviously had a list of vehicles um that were used in delivery um then it would be very clear you know if if deliveries were uh happening on a permitted basis or or not if the you know if a delivery was

2:24:41observed um or if you know or if a vehicle was pulled over and you know was found to be conducting a delivery it would be very clear whether it was permitted or unpermitted okay so so will will this make enforcement of non-permitted deliveries easier um so what i see in the

2:25:01kind of the next year when deliveries are going to start being a legal enterprise in california is that these are going to be businesses that are doing deliveries and so if a business knows that it is prohibited from doing deliveries in el cerrito say there's a dispensary in

2:25:16berkeley but uh el cerrito has a prohibition against them doing deliveries because they don't have an operating permanent town i think some of our first approaches would be to approach those businesses if they're doing you know deliveries that are in town that are not prohibited

2:25:32i think right now we're we're in an environment where we don't have the legal framework completely in place like it will be starting in january so we may have enforcement operations in the future where we um we look at those businesses that are targeting their delivery services at l

2:25:49cerrito when they don't have an operating permit some of the other things we may look at going into the future as well is whether or not having only two businesses is the right number we think to start the program of authorizing delivery in el cerrito having two businesses linked to

2:26:07brick and mortar retail locations is the best way to regulate and see the effect of those businesses but going forward as the city evaluates the nature of marijuana businesses in el cerrito the ordinance may change over time to increase include different business types and

2:26:24change the numbers of allowed businesses i'm going to i might have another question for you but i'm going to build on the response you just provided if we were to support a brick and mortar delivery a sorry a delivery only that was all the processing packaging weighing

2:26:42and and labeling was done in el cerrito but they didn't have retail um does that does that fit within the your most recent comments about trying out a business that is uh they're at their their physical address is in el cerrito but they're not they don't necessarily have retail

2:27:01they'd be delivery only uh so right now we're looking at two licenses in town if one of those licensed applicants was a delivery owned only business with a location in town then it seems to me that that would fit the profile of uh the current ordinance that somebody

2:27:20could apply to have a delivery-only business but as it's written it would still be one of only two businesses in town so there might be a retail business with a delivery component as well as a delivery only business can you uh chief can you speak to the need for the as needed access to the

2:27:36surveillance um and is that more for when our vehicles are responding to an incident on scene that they want to be aware of what's going on inside or is this a random uh live audit so to speak what what's what is that can you speak to the the concerns that were raised about them certainly if

2:27:56staff was preparing the ordinance our thinking was that uh not necessarily an insidious reason but uh if police officers are responding to a crime like a takeover robbery there that we'd have access to the system to be able to do that in real time to see what's going on in the business as our

2:28:12officers arrive to help ensure their safety and responding to a crime at the business not that we would be in a state of constant monitoring uh and looking to see who's going in there and what's happening and that uh that was not the intent of the line so yeah that's certainly something staff's

2:28:26going to talk about after the meeting tonight because i i get where the concerns are and when you go into it not thinking of the you know other components of it you sometimes miss that so public comment was really great on that yeah i i suspected that was the case which is why i wanted to ask the

2:28:41question because i knew know that with our vehicles the way we've equipped them uh responding officers can actually watch video in their in their vehicles prior to entering the scene and and they're better prepared and better uh they're safer as a result of that so i i figured

2:28:58that's where your the this was going and not necessarily the the other interpretations that the public included absolutely so we're going to revisit that and see the value of having it in there um the next two are more for the city attorney um and staff obviously you may have an

2:29:19opinion as a result of all your deliberations uh what about a medical only uh facility is is the is the state law so intertwined that we would not be able to preclude recreation at this time i mean yeah good i i was just gonna say i suspect we have the same answer though

2:29:41um well perhaps so jump in if if uh you think anything different but i was just gonna say that the there's i don't think there's anything in the ordinance that would preclude that um this is for cannabis retail it doesn't specify medicinal or recreational or any

2:29:57combination thereof um so you know we would accept permits and evaluate permits for you know any type of cannabis business that that wanted to operate in el cerrito i'm not sure going forward how much a desire there is for businesses to only operate medicinal sales um from you know from

2:30:20the businesses standpoint um but you know it's but yeah we wouldn't you can't tax them but that but i guess my question is this is more about the service we're providing and certainly all the testimony we received over the last two years is is that medically cannabis is a very useful product

2:30:41desired and needed by many people what i'm hearing is that we could we could limit it to a medical facility only if if we had the will that's my understanding i i don't think that there is any aspect of the now multi-layered state laws that would preclude that so it is a possibility um

2:31:02uh we'd not we'd want to double check but i think that could be done if that was what the council wanted and i just have two more one is it's related edible can we say we want it to be an edible only uh establishment can we regulate the product that's sold it's possible i think one of the

2:31:23problems is going to be um making that integrate with the state licensing um i mean it's not that it couldn't be done but the state's going to license you know a retail sales and and specify a set of products that they can do and if we then um [Music] limited it to consumables only i'm not

2:31:46i'm not sure how that would integrate with the state licensing um also i mean just there's not necessarily a legal reflection but just reflecting on just your previous comment your previous question and having a friend recently who you know has been going through some health things you

2:32:02know that what works in terms of delivery for any individual in terms of medical benefit varies a lot and so for some consumables don't work and if you limited the businesses to that you may be precluding some el cerrito residents from getting the form of cannabis that was most beneficial to

2:32:20them okay and then my last question is about the comments about transparent processing and the processes we had a dialogue prior to public comment about potentially having a process that allowed for public input is that something that was discussed outside of tonight or is this something

2:32:39that staff wants to go back and consider prior to our next next review of the ordinance some sort of opportunity to touch applications to make sure we understand not only what the benefits are to the community but potentially provide neighbors an opportunity to talk about

2:32:57uh you know their concerns with regards to a business that's coming in next door to them i i think that's something we'll we'll definitely work on uh before we bring the ordinance back i think we've heard that concern if that um is a concern of the majority of the council

2:33:15then we'll we'll work on uh you know uh program to to do that or or perhaps a couple of options right great so i was just gonna i was gonna supplement i mean i i think we've heard from from you and from the council and other members of the public and just want to say that we're

2:33:33trying to balance a number of factors in crafting this ordinance um and it's not that um and our proposal to you was to use an administrative process only because we felt like that struck the right balance we've heard tonight to take some other things and to give them greater weight

2:33:51in that so we'll see what we can do to come up with some approaches to doing that that also still retain the benefits of the process that we thought came out of what we had proposed great so here are my thoughts uh just to get us rolling on that um it's not just about

2:34:08for me it's not just about revenue although that certainly was one of the motivations for for when we took this up but certainly now that we've dove into it i'm not certain that the revenue is quite as lucrative as what we may have thought at the beginning and we've had many

2:34:24testimonies about the medical benefits of marijuana so for me this is more about the service we want to provide to our residents and making it more accessible 70 or more than 70 percent voted yes on this so but it's balancing that 70 percent with the 30 percent who

2:34:41didn't vote for this so it for me it's i'm not opposed to recreational marijuana and and certainly in um many uses uh many ways the edibles are exceptional in my mind whether i'm opposed to this is the smoking of it we've we went through a tremendous amount of time and effort with regards

2:35:04to secondhand exposure to smoke and so for us to be encouraging recreational smoking contradicts our our own actions our own prior actions that i was party to so for me i'm i am conflicted on that aspect and that's why some of the questions about whether we can regulate the

2:35:23products that are being sold is certainly part and parcel of my questions um you know i shared council member your fidelities your concern over the attractiveness of products and so certainly we would want to make sure that there's some sort of labeling or packaging requirement similar to the

2:35:39tobacco sales product i certainly would support a medical only facility if if indeed that was the wish of the council i see no reason to change the operating hours than what staff has proposed eight to eight um in my little research here uh seven stars is ten a.m to eight pm

2:36:01uh the berkeley uh san pablo avenue store in berkeley is nine to nine so you know there is some argument for adjustment but i staff obviously had a reason for eight to eight and i would support that the process for selection i think should be more transparent we've had a feedback

2:36:18from staff that you'll consider that cash for deliveries um based on the testimony that we've gotten from uh staff and and the police chief i think at this point in time it's okay for us to prohibit cash sales until we see more evidence of safe transactions i definitely understand the

2:36:39pizza delivery analogy but at this point would support staff's position on prohibiting cash for deliveries uh with regards to product limitations uh i've stated that we should have more child resistant packaging or some type of limits and then finally on on-site

2:36:59consumption i'm fine with prohibiting that at this time let's see how other organizations deal with that around the state so what prohibiting on-site consumption that is the way the ordinance is written and i support that at this time so thank you um paul do you have any

2:37:20comments just a few and that okay a question i just want to remind us all that we have a double um i'll be i'll be brief i just want to say i was pleased to hear the term going forward by the chief and other folks here tonight because i do believe this is an organic process

2:37:36whatever we decide if all these issues it would take two years to figure out and have agreement on everything so i think a basic construct going forward we can correct that i think it's beneficial for all of us to test it out see what other cities are doing see how we're

2:37:52doing but that takes public involvement to an el cerrito what i wanted to ask is going forward what is i'm glad to see that the process the staff is talking about moving it out to spring what's coming up in the process and will there be any discussion of home safety requirements

2:38:10that i mentioned earlier for the public to talk about whether it's electricity or i mean sky mentioned another public process interventional or something is are we not going to have another chance for the public to talk about the next step that we're going to be

2:38:28voting on um not voting in november but in the future are we going to have any homegrown issues discussed sure um certainly i i think what you've heard here tonight is that you know this is um staff's proposed model for for an initial an initial ordinance for the

2:38:46commerce side of things but what about the growing in the in our residential neighborhoods i think so the the the residential cultivation that's permitted under prop 64 the auma is six plants per household and given given the small scale of that we didn't have a lot of concerns about

2:39:09you know safety i i think a lot of the safety issues come out of of larger scale grow houses and and uses that that are illegal now and will continue to be illegal um and we'll continue to um you know enforce those through our public safety actions and we will watch and see where

2:39:26those problems if they do exist exist and respond to them correct okay um i would i just had a question when we're talking about delivery only maybe get having one of those and one brick and mortar would that take care of an ada requirement having a delivery only does

2:39:42the delivery take care of that concern for the ada folks as far as delivery to a home as opposed to i can't get upstairs and get to this um it's it's i i i think there are a lot of people that would say not really i can't assume that but i just equal access separate system okay

2:40:05okay um that's my understanding of it thank you thank you mayor i just have a couple things that i just wanted to mention um thank you so much for uh this report and and uh also to our chief of police and um i just want to make sure when we're uh looking at this we do consider

2:40:33delivery service which includes uh service from the two proposed uh businesses uh that will be the only uh businesses that will be able to deliver in el cerrito and i think that is in my opinion is a good idea to do i also want to thank the residents here in el cerrito i hear

2:40:58what you had to say regarding surveillance and and so i appreciate the chief of police and his uh uh overview and and what he had to say on why he wanted to have that on there so you know we are concerned about safety and uh to that uh i appreciate it but i definitely

2:41:20would like staff to look at this um and and also regarding laws about surveillance to make sure that patients and and um our residents um are not going to get uh affected by this somehow um so with that and uh making sure that you know we do have people with cancer and aids right now in

2:41:48el cerrito some of them are living in affordable housing now so i want to make sure that we look at that as well that our patients dealing our residents dealing with catastrophic illnesses like that do have the access when they need to take their medicine thank you

2:42:13so marijuana is currently being bought and sold in the city of el cerrito it's just unregulated so i think the faster we can get to a point where we regulate it the better i also think the faster that we can implement some of these brick and mortar distributions

2:42:35is also better we've been talking about this for a long time and i know in some ways it sounds new but in other ways it's also been around for 20 years so i think that we've actually lost out on a lot of income hemming and hawing over what and when and where we're going to

2:42:53do so i'm very excited about getting on with this and and continuing on with this process i know that when marijuana is regulated that it actually decreases the black market which decreases the consumption amongst miners i know when i was in high school it was more accessible to have marijuana than

2:43:18it was to have beer so the faster we get on this the faster we can you know stomp out that black market in terms of um having a place to consume i do hear some of that concern and especially if it's going to potentially cause someone uh losing their housing i really appreciate that

2:43:43comment i really hope that we can as we i understand that el cerrito has many conservative folks and so we're trying to balance what we're doing and be sort of conservative and cautious especially as a small city and not jumping out there as maybe the first ones to

2:44:06to have public consumption but i think we definitely need to keep our process open so that we know that it could be a possibility in the future and i also appreciate the comments on surveillance i was definitely looking at it through the lens of safety but i can understand

2:44:31i know within my own workplace we have with we have issues about constant surveillance and how that makes the work environment so i appreciate those comments and i hope that we all will revisit that and come up with a good solution around it thank you um the only

2:44:50i guess the closing comments i would have is that i um i i do have a significant concern about the disabled being included not given a separate inferior system once again and i would like our city to be known as one that supports people with disabilities not relegates them to

2:45:18a difficult living situation and if you remember most of our city is a hill and is in fact pretty inaccessible to people with disabilities so the area where we're relegating the sale of marijuana is the area that is the most accessible in town so that that actually is is good

2:45:42the question i have now is one really to staff and that is have you gotten the information you're looking for from us to proceed to the next meeting we will have go ahead i have one question i heard mentioned um private businesses where youth attend classes whether it's martial arts

2:46:08or dance or something and i'm thinking taking a step back we're looking at uh playgrounds you know places where kids are outside they're they can see the outside environment um as mr moss noted they're pretty permanent their parks their playgrounds their structures they don't typically move uh

2:46:33if we started to put buffers around places where the youth enter and exit a building we will be um the challenge becomes uh much harder to define so restaurants youth go in and out with their families are alone right um uh it just when i start thinking about private businesses i if there if there's

2:46:56a an outdoor element to it i can see how that feels more like a playground but if it's a like a martial arts studio where they're they go in they take a class or the dance uh uh business ensemble avenue they enter and exit with their families um i was hoping the council could give us more

2:47:15um comments on whether you meant to capture those or if that was um an observation but you hadn't really decided i'll take this i'll take lead on that since i brought it up i i was asking if you guys considered it um and i let the matter drop you think you've answered my

2:47:32question adequately that those are more indoor uses and businesses and not necessarily the type of facility that would rise to the level of needing a buffer so thank you the other point i would just make in trying to run through it in my head rather than gis was i mean it would

2:47:51likely be an effective moratorium yes yes i did do that mental math as well i was also able to think of like there's several places where we sell alcohol right next to where children go in and out of those types of um you know lessons for music i can think of like on

2:48:12you know right there on the theater block there's a you know i don't know what's it called pick and pack or something like that so and i don't think there's been any particular problems with the youth attending those music lessons right next door okay um i'm not hearing anyone um

2:48:34it seems to me we're ready to proceed to the next um i think i think his staff taking the comments back both from the public and from the council and then um [Music] tell me what you're going to do then sure i was just going to say i think that there are a couple of

2:48:55other points that i want to make sure that we have clear direction on in particular council member lyman brought up some points and i just wanted to see how the rest of the council felt about some things in particular um the applicability of the the smoking ordinance and how that ties into on-site

2:49:19consumption of cannabis products um and then also limits on products that might be packaged and marketed towards minors well i'll answer that i i feel like it should be treated in the same way that cigarette smoke smoking is being treated and i think it's currently

2:49:46treated that way already right isn't it it is yeah so it i would like to leave it that way because the issue i believe is uh the right of those around the consumer of those products to living in a smoke-free environment and i particularly remember a woman coming to our meeting several times and

2:50:12talking to us about her child who had asthma and they lived in a multi-family house and so it was it was a health concern and so i think of that example uh and i was thinking of that example um when council member lyman was speaking actually and i i don't know how we can

2:50:38in my mind we should not be in we should be consistent in the smoking ordinance it's about all smoking it's about it's not just about cigarette smoking and that was the way it was originally intended anybody else and you're talking about an interior place not an outside

2:50:59thing um i'm talking about as defined in our anti-smoking ordinance already which is a separate because i i view it's that is trying to one of the things that does is to enable people who are not the smokers to be in a smoke-free environment and and i agree with that as a city as a

2:51:25whole but if we're talking about a place is that what you're talking about where consumption of cannabis can happen no pardon me a multi-family um but i have the same concerns that rochelle has about if there's a housing connection i think we need to explore that a little

2:51:44bit right well that's the example i gave the multi-family house where a mother a child was having difficulty breathing from and it was from second-hand smoke okay yep yeah let me let me let's sleep sleeps from apartment to apartment correct let me let me bring us back on

2:52:06to what staff's question is because i did make comment on this um and the staff is asking should onsite consumption at the retail facility be allowed that's that's what staff is asking and and yeah that's why i was specifically staff is asking if the retail establishment should be allowed

2:52:30to have a smoke room right that's fundamentally what you're you're or some type of onset a smoke room would be prevented under our existing ordinance it would be the consumption of right so we're more talking about consumption of edibles or topical applications or things like that right

2:52:50so that's that's what staff is asking about and and the way the ordinance is currently written it is prohibited and i don't see any reason to change the way what is drafted in the ordinance but but i did ask staff to consider the effects of that on these people who have

2:53:10federal federal housing subsidies i guess i don't understand your question if they consume it in the place of business what effects would i mean what effect would it have on their housing if we prohibit it from being consumed there and they take it back to their house

2:53:38their their where they live their apartment their house whatever and it's in their apartment and for some reason it is discovered by the the authorities they could lose their housing but the losing of their housing is not in our ordinance it's the federal government that would do that right but

2:53:59what we would be doing is allowing them a place where the an alternative place where they could consume it that's correct uh without that worry i would i think that's what this would do right no this this ordinance does not allow that at the moment not allow it

2:54:17that that is that is and my point was i see a difference between tobacco and cannabis and having a room i don't necessarily need to see that happen now but maybe if there's enough public issues down the road for that room for that place i don't see a difference in terms of the

2:54:38smoking right if if it's edible or topical you know or one of the other forms that doesn't spread to other people in this surrounding you know that when you when you eat something it doesn't impact other people but when you smoke no matter what you're smoking it does

2:54:59impact other people that's the difference to me does that make sense what it doesn't make sense but you can have regulations about ventilation in a room segregate that building someplace well i'm saying i mean so you can make if you want to have that room you can make it happen where it

2:55:18doesn't maybe maybe i'm just saying i'm not i've seen smoking rooms in other states that allegedly did that but didn't really i agree with the housing stuff it's it's that one room where if someone needs a place to do this then anyway anybody else want to weigh

2:55:37in no okay we need to watch the time did you get did you get clear guidance on that i think i'm sensing that there is support to continue with the way that it's written now to prevent on-site consumption in yeah at the business location with the caveat that we should look into the federal

2:55:56housing restrictions and see what those are anything else i think we have direction to move forward okay with that i want to thank everybody involved in this process it's it's been a long one and this is unchartered territory really so thank you all especially the people

2:56:22actually especially everyone here and um so when would you expect that we would hear this again so uh we anticipate bringing a refined finalized ordinance back to the council at the november 21st meeting for in preparation for a first reading okay so with that we'll move on on our agenda

2:56:50and i'm hoping that any local and regional liaison assignments can be possible until the next meeting if that's okay and we will adjourn the regular meeting and we will be convening a special city council meeting in closed session do i announce the closed session here i

2:57:15guess i do um so i just do i just announced the two closed sessions here um yes okay so i'm i'm announcing the first closed session which is the conference with real property negotiators um regarding 108 48 sam pebble avenue and also regarding 6 500 stockton avenue

2:57:44and with that we will convene into a recess into closed session you