From: "Kelley, Craig" <ckelley@cambridgema.gov> Date: Tuesday, August 13, 2019 at 2:42 PM Subject: Cannabis Business Permit Ordinance Committee meeting tomorrow (Wednesday) at 5:30 PM at City Hall Hey Everyone: Please excuse the late notice (my Outlook died last week and required significant IT support to bring back to life), but the Ordinance Committee will hold another hearing tomorrow (Wednesday, 14 August) at City Hall at 5:30 PM. The meeting notice is pasted at the end of this email. There are a variety of areas where the Council has sought clarity from the City Solicitor, such as when addressing requirements for shelf space set-asides, and the answers should be available before our meeting tomorrow but I can’t promise that no issues will remain in limbo. I have attached two versions of the proposed Ordinance, with mark-ups ,that we’ll try to work through tomorrow- don’t worry if they don’t make perfect sense to you, honestly I am somewhat confused myself. Perhaps the most significant area of contention is whether existing RMDs should be subject to a two-year moratorium on converting to adult use/recreational retail sales, thus, advocates argue, allowing new, less privileged applicants to get a head start in their sales before already strong market players expand to adult use/recreation and dominate sales. They argue that this moratorium would do much to bring equity to cannabis sales and be a major step in correcting past, and ongoing, wrongs of the War on Drugs. The current Ordinance proposal reflects this view. Another alternative is to allow existing RMDs to open in January and to have them pay into an “accelerator fund” that would be used to provide cash assistance, expert advice and so forth to both less prominent stores and also to what I call the secondary cannabis market which would be delivery drivers, food producers, cannabis café owners and so forth. These secondary cannabis businesses offer strong personal opportunities in the cannabis field but people trying to access these opportunities risk taking out credit card debt to finance imaginative that, absent professional help and grant financing, may be financially catastrophic for them. I am in favor of this proposal as I believe it will bring both wider and deeper equity to the cannabis business arena than would otherwise exist. I think there are two potential versions of this alternative out there, one of which would limit conversion of RMDs to those that were permitted in 2017 and one that would limit the conversion to RMDs permitted as of this past July. I think the numbers are 5 and 6 respectively and that we must have a minimum number of 8 recreational sales points under state law though there is no maximum number. I have always thought that medical cannabis sales were really more about setting up future retail/adult use cannabis sales than anything else. That’s where the money has always been. My guess is that if existing RMD’s are not allowed to convert to adult use/recreational, they’ll have to rethink their business models. What that looks like in terms of possible staff layoffs or store closures, I don’t know, but I can’t imagine that RMDs will not be negatively impacted a moratorium of any length. The Cannabis Business Permitting Ordinance is a regular municipal Ordinance, not a zoning ordinance. That means it only need five votes to pass (zoning typically needs a super majority of 6, and sometimes 7, votes to pass). At this point, we have no Cannabis Business Permitting Ordinance on our books and adult/recreation cannabis sales cannot start until we have one, which is causing a lengthy and expensive delay for a number of would-be adult/recreational sales operations. The Ordinance Committee can make changes to the proposed Ordinance via a simple majority (5 of 9, 4 of 7, 3 of 5) depending on how many Councilors are at the meeting, but 5 Councilors need to vote for the final proposal at a regular Council meeting for an Ordinance to pass (6 or 7 for a zoning change). Remember- this Ordinance Committee meeting is about a business permit program for retail cannabis. The location of these retail stores is governed by zoning law the Council has already passed, zoning we had to pass because the state law legalizing marijuana use and sales required us to. The location of these stores is allowed through Special Permits granted by the Planning Board, which reviews traffic and parking and similar issues when deciding if a site is appropriate for this sort of use. I’d be happy to discuss the difference between the existing zoning and the proposed business ordinance in person if anyone wants clarification (to the extent that I can provide it). And while I am a lawyer, please don’t anyone take this email as any sort of legal or otherwise dispositive information. If you cannot make this meeting but would like to submit comments, please email Dlopez@Cambridgema.gov. You may email the entire Ordinance Committee (a committee of the whole council) at Council@cambridgema.gov. Have a great day. Craig All emails to and from this City address should be considered to be subject to Massachusetts’s Public Records laws. To be removed from this list, click here. Please feel free to forward this email to anyone you think may be interested in it. Also, I have scheduled office hours in Central Square on Monday’s from 1-3 PM and Thursdays from 9:30-11:30 AM, but please email CKelley@Cambridgema.gov before coming to confirm before showing up. Wednesday, August 14, 20195:30 PMThe Ordinance Committee will conduct a public hearing to continue discussions on a proposed amendment to the Municipal Code to create a Cannabis Business Permitting Ordinance; Including amendments submitted at the July 30, 2019 Special City Council Meeting. THIS HEARING WILL BE TELEVISED (Sullivan Chamber)