good evening thank you all for being here and thank you to those watching at home or watching at some other night or day this is the informational session on tuesday a special election sponsored by the belmont league of women voters education fund my name is funny freedman penny schaefer was supposed to be here but she's not and she wrote the script i am reading so if i stumble little on this script you'll understand why we are both longtime members of the belmont league of women voters and original members of belmont's marijuana study committee we were started in the fall of last year and we've been studying the issue  a lot since the fall last september and we sought thought to learn as much as we could about the marijuana law and its implementation in massachusetts as well as how it relates to belmont to now tonight session is an outgrowth of our effort we also had a session in the spring before town meeting to help the town meeting members understand all the issues i'm joined with by julie crockett who's going to help on the computer we have two computers going because  he was going to have notes here i want to stress that the belmont league of women voters has no position on marijuana nor on the ballot question we are here to help people understand the question that is on the ballot and to encourage people to please photo tonight we will review the ballot question explain what a yes vote means and what a no vote means review it's not affected by tuesday's vote and there's a lot related to marijuana in belmont that is not affected by tuesday's vote and we would describe how we got here then we will open the floor for questions and we will leave plenty of time for questions so please hold your questions for the end in the audience tonight are many individuals who actually were involved in development of the man you're marijuana regulations in belmont and we'd like to thank them for attending and for making themselves available to answer questions they include pam eager who is in the fact she wrote the original citizens article that started the whole town meeting process and that was on the special town meeting warrant emma thurston in the front row authored the a notable amendments that town meeting had to consider before we were able to consider pam's original warrant and we will explain that later emma is also a member of the belmont league of women voters now in our study committee ellen cushman is in the back row is our town clerk most people probably know you by now but it is wonderful that you're here to help answer some of the questions as well and next to allan is spencer goober sorry i said it wrong and i go over is town planner and can't help speak to what the town planning committee is doing related to all of marijuana regulations unfortunately no one from the health department or the board of health was able to join us tonight they fast the regulations in the spring and we will explain a tiny bit about that and then on your handout in our last line is a link to learn more information about what they're doing in addition we are very grateful that our state senator will brownsburg or is in the room with us he's in the middle of the room and our state representative dave rogers plans to join us later both of them will help answer questions if it comes up they were both instrumental in the regulations that we the state now has dave had a prior engagement and that is why he's not here right now the league wants to also thank belmont media center for broadcasting this event live tonight and for recording it for future showing on cable and on their website so that voters can be informed before voting on tuesday we also would like to thank the citizen herald which covered a lot of this information in the last couple of weeks and for belmont tony and for their coverage of this evening and the election before next tuesday and thank you franklin for being in the room right now and just a reminder please hold your questions and to the end thank you and i can get this so as a reminder tonight we will briefly review what's going on with marijuana in belmont what and the term that we use for retail marijuana is adult use marijuana that was decided by the state quite a while ago and that is the terminology now we will also explain and answer questions about the ballot question and remind people please vote on tuesday september tonight is your chance to ask questions and that's why many of you were in the room with us the league of women voters does not have a position on marijuana nor on the ballot questions and we ask the people please don't present speeches tonight we really would like a discussion not somebodies agenda of why they feel strongly about something under massachusetts adult use marijuana law the state issues licenses so the state is the one that issues the licenses belmont does not issue the licenses and any marijuana stablish mint that meets the state requirements can get a license but belmont is involved because they can limit the number of establishment they can limit the location where it is within town they can limit the hours of operation and the signage this state is also regulating a lot about signage the there's probably less the felt a lot to do about signage in this respect then in other retail operations next tuesday is the vote just about limiting the type and number of establishment so it's not about any of the other aspects of marijuana in t the bell ballot question we'll explain and a lot more detail as we go on but we want to remind you that voters are being asked to ratify what this spring town meeting decided that the has to be the exactly the same language that the springtown meeting ratified so we are not allowed to vote on a different question that people might have wished that we could be going to the polls to discuss this question will limit the number of establishments in the type of marijuana establishments a yes vote would limit the type and number in belmont a no vote does not limit the type or number of establishment so let's start with a little history how we ended up here in two thousand and eight there was decriminalization of marijuana in massachusetts that started a process that many people in massachusetts appreciated and continue to change the regulations of marijuana since then in two thousand and twelve massachusetts voters approved medical marijuana and some of you might be aware that there are medical marijuana dispensaries now in cambridge some lle and other places in two thousand and sixteen massachusetts voters went to the polls again and we had a state question about whether we wanted to allow adult use marijuana this allowed also local control of non medical marijuana stablish mints in belmont the vote almost eighty three percent of voters came to the polls and voted on this question and almost a guess fifty two and a half percent voted yes on this question so that made belmont a yes town the cannabis control commission was created in august two thousand and seventeen and we will refer to them sometimes as the c c c and they did began to develop regulations and issued licenses as required by law they took many months to get to that point they are  they released their draft regulations in december they've recently released their final regulations in march and the process began in july the st adult use marijuana stablish could open if everything was in place it takes a while to license all these establishments and most of you know that mary in massachusetts licensing is a little stricter than and some other states so we do not currently have any open retail adult use marijuana stablish mints in the state each community in massachusetts can recreate in addition to what the kind of this control commission has a regulatory system for the establishment in the town or they can ban it so several types of licenses include cultivating manufacturing testing and retailing and then there is on consumption and delivery licenses which was discussed a lot by the c c c but they decided not to issue licenses of those sort at this time but they might consider them later so we do not have any discussion in our regulations right now about the livery although the health department actually made a restriction just in case to resteal leave a state license an applicant must document cooperation with the community that is a host agreement as it's often called and you have to have a community outreach meeting within six months prior to submitting your application to the state no one has done that in belmont yet there are no applications in belmont currently so there are no licenses being considered by the c c c right now the host agreement might include impact to the town of three percent to cover cost to the municipality and that cost could be for up to five years and so nobody has considered that yet but we might have that in belmont if a retailer wants to come to town and then complains to all of these by laws regulations permits and licenses is when they can then be governed by the state c c c retail establishments cannot display products outside of the building they can you cannot see any products through windows there are no signs or advertising materials that might display medical symbols images of marijuana any print paraphernalia anything related to marijuana so it will not look at all like what you consider a package store where you might see the names of beer outside or neon signs advertising what they are selling there are also several taxes as part of the marijuana regulations there is a ten point seven five percent state excise tax this is in addition to the state sales tax together that adds up to seventeen percent then municipalities may add a three percent local tax it works just like a sales tax but because it is local the money would go directly to the town town meeting voted on this in the spring and authorized this tax in belmont so if we have any retail establishments in belmont we will get that three percent tax there's also the host agreement which i referred to a little bit before they allow community to collect a fee of up to three percent of gross sales for up to five years some communities in belmont you might hear have been having coast agreements which have been a little bit controversial and the c c c is still weighing in on how much they're going to control hosed agreements but the three percent is legislated we have the right to collect the fee as long as it's reasonably related to the cost of marijuana establishment in town so the impact of it which means issues like traffic congestion i assume most of you would appreciate the extra traffic  public safety costs the police kind of costs of having to patrol more related to an establishment and drug prevention programming the health department would get involved in that municipalities can also pass by laws to govern what is referred to as time place and manner that's when the planning board gets involved they're working on this right now they had one forum in this open public forum in the spring they had another one tuesday night and they will still i have another meeting sometime this fall before they go to finalize their regulations which will then have to be voted on at town meeting in november so none of that is final the planning board has to go to town to get approved the health department does not they are run differently let's get to the ballot question this is the wording on your ballot this will be what the sample ballot looks like it is very wordy and typical of a lot of ballot questions is a little confusing to understand that's why we're here tonight because we found that lots of people after seeing this had even more questions than before i'm not going to read the whole thing so what does a yes vote mean it means that we would prohibit cultivation manufacturing an independent testing labs in belmont that means none of those three types of marijuana establishment it would also limit the number of state issued retail licenses available to belmont to twenty percent the number of current alcohol retail licenses right now we have six retail stores that sell beer wine or hard liquor so twenty percent of that is obviously not too but the way the rich regulation is written if it gets rounded up if we were to add more than ten alcohol licenses in town then the number could change to higher also if we were to drop to only five the number would change to one but for right now we are this regulation would allow two license as i mentioned we have no licenses yet so that's why it's depends on the timing what does a no vote mean it would allow any type of marijuana stablished and so we mentioned it would allow  manufacturing or there are some small other types of regulations types of marijuana establishment that could be considered in the future we are not considering the now in this ballot question it would also not limit the number of establishment so regardless of the number of alcohol stores if marijuana stores are very successful and more retailers want to come to town that would be allowed if we vote no but this is still state licenses we do not make the license or do not give the license in belmont this ballot question does not get involved with a lot of other aspects it does involved in the zoning bylaws that's what the planning boards doing for adult use marijuana right now and that will be voted on at town meeting if you have strong opinions about where  there is still time to get involved and make your comments known to the planning board it does not restrict any individual's right to grow marijuana for their own personal use that was in the regulations that we passed in massachusetts november two thousand and sixteen this by law cannot affect that i don't it does not pertain to medical marijuana we made that regulation in two thousand and twelve message two sets whether or not any stores that sell medical marijuana come to belmont this is not a pact to buy this regulation and this we go to the polls on tuesday so a little bit more about how we got here for this particular question in the spring of this year there were two articles related to marijuana on the regular annual town meeting article eight established a temporary moratorium on marijuana establishment until december of this year so no licenses could be issued in belmont before december of this year that allowed the planning board to figure looking at their zoning regulations the health department had already finished theirs but this allows the town to have this vote on tuesday and not have any grandfathered licenses issued before this article nine regulated the sales tax that i talked about before it off belmont collect a local sales tax of up to three percent on any marijuana products sold in town there's also a separate part of town meeting called the special town meeting in that is when the citizen by law that i mentioned pam eager wrote originally offered to opt  out of all adult use marijuana establishment she presented this by law and the way tell me to work she had to present it before before we got to that day and town meeting allows amendments to a by law so several amendments were written to change the original warrant to article that pam road and emma thurston wrote many amendments that changed the original by law with the had a very lengthy discussion in town meeting for over an hour and in the end voted on only three of the amendments and that changed the original by law to what we now have that were voting on tuesday the wording that was decided by tell meeting the town meeting voted yes on is exactly the wording that will be  voted on tuesday it cannot be any different or it would not work we would have to start the whole process again so as i mentioned before the health department has been working on this as well the board of health works with the health department to make regulations and there are two regulations that they chose to include that i want to point out there are unique to belmont as at least in the spring and i believe that's still correct that belmont is the only town in massachusetts that change the minimum age to purchase marijuana you have to be twenty five years old if we have a retail operation in belmont you have to be twenty five years old to buy marijuana in belmont they also put in the regulation as i mentioned before no delivery so even though there is not a state law yet that allows delivery if we got one in the next year it's already been decided that belmont wants all marijuana sales to be face to face the planning board as i mentioned a couple of times is working on their regulations so there are a few parts to that they are originally extended the moratorium so they could spend more time getting the public involved they had a public hearing in the spring they had another one on tuesday night of this week and they promised to have one more this fall so there's still time to get involved and then that by law that they come together and put together will be offered at november th meeting and has to be approved to be accepted in belmont and now we're at the point of questions from all of you hopefully you will have some and please save your speeches for your friends not for here but we really do hope that we have a good discussion about marijuana and while we're discussing it i want to offer many different links there's a lot of words on this page but we're going to leave it on the screen so you can write it down if you wish but there are regulations that massachusetts created that we've mentioned that is the st link on this page then there is a guy to me it's a pallet ease and how they want to control marijuana and that is a separate link the board of health regulations can be found on our own town website the town clerk has a lot of information about our  election on tuesday and that's all this particular link if you don't want to write down the full description of the link you can also just go to the town clerk's page and find it and the planning board has all the work that they are doing about the bylaws on their page again it is a long link and if you don't want to remember all of that you go to the planning go to just a town of belmont and then find the planning board and you can find that that's how we got the links for you and thank can you come up to the  ones who made that yes to get a state issued license for it sounds like more like a retail operation do you know what are the kind of requirements from the state for those other types of i think cultivation manufacturing and testing are they different do you know does the state have different requirements for those type of establishment there are lanes the regulations and the licensing process is long and that's part of why retail operations have been open just because you have to have cultivation manufacturing and testing in the state to be able to offer to retail you can't import marijuana from another state and each of those facilities has to be licensed in massachusetts in order for a retail establishment be able to sell it and it's taking a while yeah just curious especially for cultivation i mean i would imagine that there's some sort of square footage requirement and i'm just wondering how that would apply to belmont because obviously we have you know our own sort of geographical limitations and space limitations and so just curious many people think that it would be highly unlikely for cultivation to want to come to belmont when there is more land in other towns things since we don't have any other questions at the moment will do you want to say anything about these regulations or you can sit up here if you prefer so thank set the state our state senator will transfer is here he's been very involved in these regulations for a long time well invited my involvement has been those st of all a supporter of the idea that you should get away from prohibition for marijuana and especially in the context of or very dangerous drugs that are out there now with marijuana on the market that's polluted  legislators i feel slightly differently i think that you have spoken a lot about this if there's a lot of information on your website but voters might want to hear what you feel about this well i think the opportunity thank you know i supported the question and then through the i kind of accidentally ended up really in the middle of negotiating the final conference that they were we laid out all of those that  then became the regulations and my motivation throughout that process was to make sure that we have a viable process that would be impossible for people to actually get their licenses and to avoid creating a regional r process and we build a lot of protections into that to make sure that we're going to have legitimate facilities that are in a so you pure well labeled product that people know what they're getting you can dose themselves safely and all that so without was our focus and with that in that framework the goal is to make sure that we get actually get get it out there and accomplish the goal of creating a safe marketplace and eliminating the unsafe illegal marketplace there is obviously there's a i'm no fan of using marijuana i don't use it in forty years since those days in high school you know i and i and at that time i  concluded that this was something that wasn't good for me and so i you know i that's the conclusion i reached and i think you know other people reach that conclusion as they go through their teens and experiment a little bit move on often other people decide they like it it's something they want to keep doing but  with that and i agree with the with the findings that have been made in the concern that people have about very high purity of some of the products out there even the public health risks for young people using very powerful marijuana so i think that's all very real but on the other hand but there's always another on the one hand on the other hand on the other hand we have this illegal market that gets a lot of young frankly mostly young men into trouble with in the in the dealing process and we also have this illicit market where people are buying things where they really don't know where they're getting and it's so scary out there right now with all the synthetic chemicals that are being added into everything i mean fans and all and feds and all of variants are being added into cocaine in the illicit market there is being else i did into the marijuana list market and so those are very very dangerous thing so i think i think on balance i feel strongly that moving forward into a legal market for marijuana is something that is a good thing to do  as pros and cons but on balance i think a really good thing to do i think we have a safe state framework and i actually i personally was relieved that the ballot you know the town meeting framed the ballot question that would not outright prohibit want to locate in place where there's a lot of you know teenagers i mean not teenagers twenty in the late teens and adults or i think of the twenty one adults the twenty something population like you know that's going to be around davis square i would be disappointed if the town approved this question voted yes not because the few things we might be able to do in the form of was a testing you know we could have a testing facility or why would we want to shut that out about what i know i don't get it i don't understand what the public health or other benefit is of keeping these questions out of balance so i personally i'm of the view that i mean i will certainly be voting i was relieved by what happened in town meeting we narrowed the questions substantially and i hope the people nonetheless vote no on the question a as a community that we voted for this the majority people voted for this in the in the invisible action and we should then turn around and say we're not my back backyard is my feeling about it we should say if it's if it's good enough for this woman's question can you tell us more about the licensing process for the other three types for retail we know it includes a host agreement do you know much about god licensing for the other three types i don't know about the host  but there's there's a whole lot of regulations of they have to comply with i mean it's just related sort of each of those big big concept is the have a very fully controlled process from distribution track into retailing so that it's it's a very controlled distribution process there's no leaking in it so the there's a lot of regulations about you know who can do this and what they have to demonstrate in terms of lack of criminal record financial capability can hear you when you're speaking so just in the interest of trying to be balanced pam eager since you wrote the original question would you like a minute to come up here and talk  if people have other questions feel free but this isn't is ending up being a little bit more of a discussion and that's good based on the original question that was put before town members and the whole state in two thousand and sixteen part of that provided for a vote within the town by the citizens of the town regardless of whether it passed and state or not if it even if it passed in the state which it did that the town could still have a vote whether or not opt out my feeling and others who put together this petition and circulated it to get the by a lobby for a town meeting felt that the margin had been very close in belmont fifty two point five to forty seven three or whatever that's not good math but it was very close and the trying out was high but there were other things that were being voted on at the time that brought a lot of people out and it would have been nice i think for people to have been able to decide again with another question because they may not a lot of people didn't read that very clearly and didn't know for sure that they could vote on it after it passed the state i think it would have been a very good idea to have another vote just on up or down anybody keep letting people have questions so what would you like to come up and explain your benefits to how we ended up there reason i wrote the amendments initially was because i was hearing a lot of feedback from people around the community that they wanted some restrictions they wanted to have some control but they didn't like the black and white options just one or the other  in opposition to my personally personal beliefs i am completely anti prohibition and i'm working on this for a quite quite a long time i decided that it would be in the best interest of the town to be able to give several options of what we could opt out of and let town meeting decide so we started with seven amendments that were actually six and then the th is the twenty percent the cap so that that would what was what the retailers were kept up so that was the very last one and then we ended up voting on one that would do exactly what that ballot says except expire with it had a sunset clause in it so we could kind of see how things were going and then it would stop that got voted down that was the st one the town meeting voted on and it was not accepted and then i did exactly that same the one that you see out there was the next one that we voted on and that was passed so that's that's how we ended up there if it makes sense and the other ones i tabled because we had voted on that one it was the most restrictive so i thought that that kind of set what people want wellington just kind of wild anyway so i have been totally uninvolved in all the conversations surrounding this and everything that's happening locally i'm just curious in the conversations around the decisions that were made with these via laws and with what's happening in town with regard to marijuana how much has the those states that have been regulated adult use for now several years like done for portland oregon was there any conversation has discretion around what's happened there and kind of using that as you know an example of what we might experience locally with retailers well i know that our belmont league of women voters study committee looked at that i personally i've never used marijuana say this on t v i guess but i went to a retail distil business in one in oregon one in washington and one in colorado and i asked a bunch of questions and i was really a little uncomfortable at st walking in the door particularly the st time and it was amazing to me how different the experience was and i anticipated and they were very open to questions and that helped our research just in the committee we also looked at some research done in the other states when we were looking at our work in the last year i don't know if how much you looked at other states when we were looking at last i personally didn't travel but we did have a delegation of senators before the in two thousand and sixteen before the question was adopted who traveled to colorado and spent a lot of time there talking about the how things were going here and those conversations informed a lot of the regulatory dues that we had here to strong structure and to put in place strong regulations on packaging labeling purity of the kinds of things that make the marketplace  taxed at the local level if i if so on my website but i am not fresh on a bit of the overall we have a sort of a middle middle middle level tax rate is compared with the other places but my recollection was that when the discussion was we didn't want to high because that you don't get rid of the black market as easily and you don't want so low that the state doesn't get enough benefit to encourage towns to have  issues that people came to me with it was that they didn't want a whole ton of retailers like that and everybody handing out licenses willy nilly so that was the reason for the cap that i put on and then as far as the other  products of production and everything some people were worried about a smell which is not you can't do that in the state laws there's very specific regulations about that and other people were worried about in the future delivery if the state did rul ellen would you like to say anything about our question since you're here ellen cushman is our town clerk who has been very involved in this is well as any election so since you're here photo vote i'm curious did you want to good turnout so we have a good representation in town it's pretty important for us and the only other thing that has not been said is that i have to tell meeting in may i actually submitted our by our general bio which is part of the requirements to the attorney general's office to make sure that it would and that's because i said it snort normally it would take some months to get approved by the and it's ace it does every general by resulting by a walk down that town or city puts in place has to be approved by the attorney general to make sure it has continued their conversational is only via laws to their october nd meeting and they're still receiving public comments so i love you to submit comments to you can email myself my own email is on the town's website or i have my business card here with me as receiving and will have another public meeting on october nd so can you just say where the public meeting is in the time place we haven't set the location yet i generally try to get the st center for tweak a but the draft language has to be on october rd and then we have a couple weeks to make any final revisions but then i believe it's october th that has to be finalized and then it will be voted on november anybody has any other thoughts soon after the june meeting at the party work out for him they decided they wanted to model it after the medical marijuana vial that had gone through town meeting successfully and they felt that modeling lie after the medical marijuana is sort of a pretty good chance of making it through town meeting successfully some of them will be the for the general business district is and the local business to distribute local business to as long feet of high school property at that particular part of the map makes it very confusing for many people because it looks like you could sell marijuana at the high school right i tried to do it so i in the one putting together the high school now right people many people have expressed concern of that being too close to the high school and there you if you could speak a little bit more about how big a buffer there is around the high school sure so thank you thank you all for coming i guess we can say good night don't forget to vote on tuesday from seven am to eight p