meeting this briefing we're going to allow lots of time for your questions but we want to start by just presenting what we did in our report what we covered i hope you have read it if you haven't read it it is available online roll on the process do a little introduction of our recommendations will have presentations on the two recommendations we made maintaining the number of selectmen and increasing the number selectmen a little bit on open meeting law and the board of selectmen some additional observations that we made and we're going to end with hopefully lots of time for your questions so we're going to start with an moderator there were thirteen of us here are the thirteen of us some of the many of us are here judy  so we we started meeting in june of last year we met once in june once in june once in july once in august and we took sort of the summer easy starting september we met twice a month and in january i think we met almost every month before we reached our deadline you know every week sorry and we finish our work one day early january thirtieth instead of generally thirty first or so as we considered what to do with this topic we sort of identified what the key topics what's the work that some by the board of selectmen how much time it takes some questions about the competitiveness and the cost elections we picked thirteen comparable towns a mix of ones that have three three member boards a selectman five and the one town in the state that has a seven member board of selectmen which is wakefield try to get a mix of population size of the budget something that's a comparable to belmont's mix of residential and commercial property  just try to understand what lessons we could learn from talking to representatives of these towns the the thirteen towns we picked are here i think we started with twelve we added a hanover which is a slightly smaller town than the others but hanover was interesting because they're the most recent town that moved from three so i commit to five selectman so we thought there'd there have not been a lot of changes in number of selectmen so head over was the most recent milton sort of as we speak are in the process of moving to five but it was the last one that actually made them so some of the questions we asked about the comparable towns you know one of the links of terms the rotation of elections how much do candidates meetings those sort of issues we also gathered for input from belmont by surveying the current and former belmont selectman asking them about the time commitment their interactions with other committees and their opinions they were not shy about sharing their opinions jen they've they're very varied but most of current and former selectman were in favor of not changing  the number of slots we also held public meeting right here in this room in october posing some questions for questions about transparency competitiveness willingness to serve in diversity of opinion had a lot of discussion here and some interesting data gathered was very helpful in our work we also surveyed committee chairs and department heads in  belmont asking them as a committee chair or department head what what do you need from the board of selectmen sort of an open ended question that got a lot of varied responses and some people were not shy about sharing all sorts of available online it's sort of as long as our report so but there's lots of good stuff there next i want to talk about introduce our recommendations so what we did once we had done all this research we created a long list of arguments for increasing the number of selectmen and for maintaining the number of selectmen we sort of edited all these arguments down to sort of the best ones eliminated all kind of the ones that overlap to overlapped and then divided them up and different members of the committee write sort of a detailed justification for each of those arguments most of the committee members wrote an argument on either side so we sort of had an opportunity to think about it from both perspectives one speed wrote written the arguments volunteers on the committee two people wrote sort of our draft recommendation for each each argument and we debated and discussed the wording we had a lot of deep discussions and collaboratively added to the text ultimately the committee voted nine members voted in favor of the recommendation to increase the number of selectmen and four voted for the recommendation of maintaining the number of s so we're going to start by going over the the case for a recommendation for maintaining the number of selectmen so that is  a precinct two i was on the side that voted for three and i'm covering the first six our board deliberations remain transparent open to the public that under the open meeting law you cannot discuss it  business unless you're here at the table and an open and open discussion no selectman can then go off and talk to somebody every selectman is invested in the job  elections would remain competitive well that was interesting because our last election ted no competition whatsoever three members are more apt to be a consensus which is true meanings and more efficient and reasonable in le in talking to towns that have five they can go from seven thirty to twelve because you have five opinions that you have to listen to karen level of authority accountability would be maintained  i don't know what else you want me to say i started as strong as i could i tried to go to five i just couldn't do it but the thing that had me stand out standing out the most for me was that the majority of selectmen want to stay at three joined with my colleagues a majority of whom thought this was a good idea to stay the same it three rather than go to five and i'm going to cite the remaining arguments for you before i do that though i want to thank paul rector and i want to thank the entire committee this was a very good committee one of the best i've served and i think people were very diligent they worked very hard and i think there was a lot of good discussion and a lot of consensus achieved even though i was on the minority side of all of this i think i thought in the end that the two sides were relatively close and many of our statements could be made in the form of it is likely that or it might well happen that rather than definitive statements about what the future may hold and i thought that was genuine the first i don't i'm going to do is number seven salary and benefit costs would not increase i think this is pretty obvious if you keep the same number give them the same salary and benefits nothing is going to change i had the interesting good fortune this week of talking to our town administrator about this issue and patrice is from shirley massachusetts which is next door to air massachusetts and i found out from her too late to communicate with this whole committee that air is one of the unique places that went from three selectmen to five selectman and back to three again just and therefore i thought of a very interesting case and i spent some time this week trying to find out find out why person who really has to do the communication and i asked her about this and as you may have heard at the lead discussion i also asked her a question about that and she said well with with three  we end up spending a lot of time chasing three selectmen instead that's what we call it chasing the selectmen and she said it's pretty obvious that if we had five we'd have to spend about sixty percent more time because we have two more select to chase in the absence of a very strong town administrator function and in the presence of selectmen who like to get their hands dirty and actually get involved in the operations of town government it makes it very difficult for the town administrator to do her job and to try to keep things keep things moving number nine is belmont has not strengthened the role of the town administrators the one thing that's important here is this was not a warrant article about government structure this had nothing to do with government structure it was only a very narrow question shall we increase the number of selectmen from three to five which i think has very little to do with government structure  effectiveness so it is a very interesting fact that we are still in a situation where we have no strong town administrator sixty years ago neighboring towns conquered lexington arlington adopted strong town manager forms of government sixty years ago sixty years ago here in belmont we had three  secretary and that was it and we really haven't gotten much farther than that in terms of of developing a strong town administrator which is the core governance question i would argue at stake here number town i think is a little overstated too much as a state for a change of this magnitude this is one of those things where i would say we could modify this but i think change like the change of some magnitude or something like that not unlike the way resort of tried to hedge a little bit on will there be more diversity if we have a five member board well simply maybe likely maybe strongly likely but it's not going to be absolute but what i did find interesting in the air case was their experience they had three they went to five as part of a really a governance study committee and then things sort of fell apart it's an administrator explain it to me this way changing the number of selectmen is basically it's not a governance issue it's a political issue and the consequences are making that change are understandable you then politically and what happened was that the meetings were town for slightly got much longer they got hot but more hostile the local newspaper talked talked about them being so hostile that actual physical form hostilities might break out at some of these meetings and they went on for like that for quite a long time then they had another committee to study the role of government and they decided by golly three was a nice number we'll go back to that and things got more peaceful and so they can get things done i'm not sure that that is going to be a change of this magnitude i'm not sure going from three from three to five ever causes these sorts of problems but it was one of the possibilities we thought about what what might happen and we've got a lot at stake here in beaumont we've got major capital projects and what you really would like to see when that happens is the united agreed you know a group of selectmen who are united in favor of moving forward on those capital projects the vital point is and this was broke and you know we're we're not really sure now and then only one of the selectmen who spoke on this issue at the town meeting when this came up that he could explain your excessively number one the job was too big for any any group of three people got to have five it's just the workload is too much for anybody to take on and number two he at least wanted to talk to all of his colleagues well talking to your colleagues is something you're not supposed to do under the open meeting lot things are supposed to be transparent discussions of government issues a supposed to be in the public that's the whole reason behind the open meeting and then on the question of workload when i looked at the comments from current and former selectman of those who commented on it ten to thirteen said the work was fine i can handle it needs included people who had active jobs going on while they were s it just in time ok now we'll go on to recommendations to increase the number of selectmen and we have two members of the committee who will go over those arguments laurie be looking so we want to  for the people drawing us at home i'm one of the pick i came to the committee i'm debbie doing press and from precinct four town meeting member i came to the committee going back and forth all the time should we stay the same should we expand but by the end of our study i came to strongly believe that we should expand because of all of the benefits that could come with expansion and as as ralph has pointed out a lot of the benefits are things that we think are probable if you have more people for example you will probably have more time to meet with members of the public or communicate with down committees it makes sense and i think we do a lot of things in our lives because they are probable we wear seat belts not because they guarantee that will survive a crash but it's more likely that we'll survive a crash so know there's not a guarantee in many of these cases but i think you could look and say well the worst case is it stays the same the best case is we get an improvement so through going through the first several one of the things that's really important to the task in terms of getting things done in terms of our finances in terms of being able to hire the best people is stability and we've just hired an administrator i know that if i was looking for a job and i knew that any election year there could could be any year that could be election that changes who's on the board of selectmen changes the priorities of the board of selectmen and all of a sudden even though i was working hard and doing well i wasn't the person that was you know fit the new board i'd think twice so a major benefit of a five member board of selectmen is being able to hire the best people not just in town administrative bit or all of the high level positions where it's affected by who's a who's on the board of selectmen i think it's pretty clear that if you have a board of selectmen that changes priorities every year and rethinks decisions every year because its membership has changed that could delay projects because replanning increased the cost of projects so greater stability is a payoff for for increasing the next is more people is likely going to mean greater representation of everybody in the town on the board of and we talk about diversity we talk about not just things like gender diversity but age diversity cultural diversity economic diversity we have all sorts of constituencies here in belmont and an important thing in the functioning of a government is that people trust their government and you're more likely to trust the government and expect good decision making if there's someone on the board who you believe innately understands your priorities and needs so diversity work more slots means you can accommodate a greater range of who's in town reduced costs now paul mentioned that belmont has some of the highest costs of run to election of all of the towns we've surveyed it really sticks out like a sore thumb and the money is coming and then many cases almost entirely from the candidates pockets and we're talking five figures here folks it's scary to think about it that really limits who can run we shouldn't have that limitation when you have five people on the board of selectmen and two open seats and it does become easier to run because there's a greater chance that you'll win there is in some sense if it's more if it's going to cost you less you're more likely to try right because you can afford to do that but beyond that it also becomes less about you going against the other care one of their candidate perhaps but you putting forth yourself as someone who deserves a vote it's not as combative i'll also point out i should have said this before that when we looked at these other towns the spending to run for the board of all what board of selectmen could be in the hundreds of not even the thousands so you don't have to you can have i for example i spoke to the people in acton and some years there was no spending on the board of selectmen it just it's a different point of view ok one of the things that we learned when we spoke with the past selectman and it doesn't happen all of the time but it happened in multiple cases is when you have a three member board it's very easy to have one person isolated by the other two and this is dysfunctional that's not what we want on our board of selectmen it's also it happens sometimes that one person dominates the other two i think it's easy to see that when you went to a five member board it's far less likely that you're going to have anybody being isolated or any one person dominated and once again going back to the benefits of diversity there is the versity of skills we tend to have finance folks and lawyers and people who do urban development that's very common to have people in those professions active and active in art but it's also other to other skills can be put to bed if it and with five people on the board of selectmen we could have a real wider range of life skills and professional skills on the board of selectmen so when they look into a difficult topic they have those viewpoints they have the expertise so my name is laurie graham and i am currently a precinct six town meeting member and i was one of the people that voted for increasing the number of selectmen so the argument permits members to use one another as a sounding board and i want to be cautious about this because we talk we understand that the open meeting law applies it doesn't matter whether you have three people on the board of selectmen if you have six people if you had twenty people you're still limited in terms of what you can do outside of open meeting and nobody is supporting violating that but i think that for some people it's really really helpful to be able to speak to another board member to sound out say you know this is what i'm thinking is this what you're thinking what do you think about this but being very cautious not to have serial conversations and i can say from my experience on the school committee we had six people is that we were very careful to not have serial conversations and not to have conversations with him in a quorum of you know more than that than four people so even though the way it's set expressed here is that it permits members to use one another as members a sounding board i know that lynn is going to be talking a little bit more at the end about open meeting law so i just want to be clear that we weren't considering this as a benefit of a great you can violate open limits the number of times that they can be able to speak to residents residents may with five the thought was they would have increased opportunities for residents to communicate with the board of selectmen directly to ask a question to express their own opinions it takes some of the burden off of having three people sitting at the table increased ability to communicate with town committees one of the things that we found when we surveyed and asked the opinion of  town committees and specifically town committees not just town departments but different committees and we know that we have you know close to seventy different committees and in town is that for many of them they felt that they weren't really the amount of work that they have to do limits the occasions that they can really communicate with with a committee and the committees some of the committee people felt that they weren't really having access to to a slot and so increased opportunities  would would come if there were an increase in the slackman increased ability to attend extra extra no meetings and this came up in terms of select select people being able to go to meetings outside of  just something was internal be able to go and talk to their colleagues have increased ability to have somebody go and speak at a conference or seminar that sort of thing an increased capacity to subcommittees and now it seems with three people that there are limitations to the number you can't have a bunch of different subcommittees so that if there were other committee subcommittees you could have two people from the select people attending a meeting and participating in a subcommittee and increased ability to accommodate many member absences without limiting the board's effectiveness and this also this was one of the ones that i was a little bit on the fence with because and i think that many of us who were in support of increasing the board of selectmen felt this way too is that we're not saying oh great if their five people then that means one person can just kind of notch one up and vacation and or not attend the meetings and not be fully invested in what happens but with three people if there is a very crucial and important vote that needs to be taken oh if only two people can attend it means that you really can't have that vote so and i think we said in the report that we aren't suggesting that that this be a way of if there is a very crucial vote that happen has to happen that it should wait until the full board is there in attendance so again not trying to do an end run around anything but just to have some more opportunities for  perhaps a less burdensome role and also to give more opportunities for residents to be communicating with the boarders like however not town council so i i do have a good amount of familiarity with the open meeting law but i'm here in my individual capacity so of course as you know one of the reasons that this article and this committee was passed and the committee was formed is that there was a concern that no conversation with a board of three no conversation can occur outside of an open meeting and there were some who felt that it's just in an unusually difficult way to try to conduct a lot of important business not to be able to have any discussion outside of open meeting the purposes of an open meeting law of course are to ensure transparency in the deliberations on which public policy is based and to ensure this transparency the open meeting has a number of rules the most fundamental of which is that all meetings of public body must be open to the public and the meeting is defined as a deliberation by the public body about any of its business and the deliberation is  oral or written communication by a quorum of the board and a quorum is a simple majority so those rules kind of build on each other also the open meeting law requires the public body to pos a notice forty eight business hours in advance of its meeting with the a you know a reasonably clear agenda that what's going to be discussed and the public can attend and with the permission of the chair can address the public body although the basic right is to attend public meetings and there are very limited reasons why a public body can have a closed session and a vote to go into a closed session has to announce those very specific purposes and has to be by a roll call vote so there are a number of protections built into the open meeting law and when  if the board was increased to five there's a rule against serial communications by a board member so you can't communicate outside of an open meeting by having multiple conversations you know multiple to person conversations that add up to a quorum and that also applies to email you can't communicate elect e mail or any form of electronic communications which is a defined term in the in the law and so if the board of selectmen were increased to for example five what these rules mean and what the committee really found is that the if the ability to discuss outside of a public meeting is really limited to a conversation with one other person because on a five member board three is a quorum and so if two people have a conversation and then one of them goes and has a conversation about that business with a third person then you have a you have a conversation among a quorum and that would be prohibited so increasing the board to five members would have a very modest impact on the board members ability to have a discussion outside of in a meeting which isn't to say that that might not be an advantage i think we many of us can agree that when an important decision is made you often want to discuss it with someone and develop your own thoughts again though the public the open meeting law puts a premium on transparency on the public's business being conducted in public and  therefore an increase to five members would have a very modest impact because of this rule about serial communications and we certainly i think i can speak for i was by the way one of the members who felt that it would be voted in favor of the increase and but i can think i think i can safely say for those members you know  as a generality for those of us who felt that way that the ability to have any outside conversations was not a driving factor in our feeling that a larger board might be a benefit for belmont it merely is one factor among many and i think we felt that you know several of the other factors that debbie and lori have discussed were more more  compelling for for the majority of us who voted that way so additional observations we on the advice of the moderator we started to work on work on this issue and we sort of decided well gee we're finding lots of other interesting things can we make recommendations on these things and i think probably rightly we were steered to the idea of we should just focus on our mandate from town meeting that we are going to focus on recommendations about the number of selectmen but in our report at the end we do make some additional observations one of which is a selectman as a policy making board in many of the comparable towns that we looked out selectman our policy as a policy making body they do not participate directly in administrative management of the town these are tasks assigned to the tone administrator slash manager and department heads select policy makers devote attention to listening to constituents about the policies and following up with a town administrator or manager to ensure policy objectives have been met we also made an observation about the role of they instituted this in the fifty's and sixty's fifty's and the town manager acts as the town stiff executive officer has hiring the appointing a thirty and hiring authority  and is accountable to the board of selectmen who evaluate the administrative results achieved by the town manager this is just a different structure than what we have in belmont as noted yes we never had a or manager there is no language in the town byelaws that authorizes independent action or appointing authority by the town administrator we've had several reviews of government structure of the most recent was in two thousand and nine that have proposed increasing the role of the town have been straighter but town meeting has not adopted that recommendation another topic that we've sort of touched on a little bit is the what is the cost we wanted to just share some of the numbers and observations that we made currently stipends are paid to the stockman five thousand dollars to the chair forty five hundred fluctuates sometimes people take take it and some people don't over the past ten years it's been about one hundred sixteen thousand dollars in cost the town you could extrapolate if there was a larger number of select n that number would be potentially larger but it's an unknown it's not known what what the future members of the board of selectmen might might want to participate in the health insurance plan but we did want to also observe that nine of the thirteen comparable towns we looked at did not provide benefits or a phasing them out  one dollar if it's even one dollar no matter how much and so there are towns that are phasing out paying their selectman so that they won't be paying  disappeared which is similar to us is closer to medway and they have three selectmen they have the size of the town that we have they have the bond rating that we have and there are a lot like belmont but we only chose the eastern part of the state we really didn't study anything in the west and there are many many towns out west that only have three so we've reached the point where we can have some time for questions we've got about fifteen managers two of them have administrators that i know do think when they're working with only three selectmen that they're one select one away from losing their job oh that is their sort of view of the world i'm not sure that's a fair assumption on their part but that's generally the way that they do think about my other question has to do sort of emanates from my concern that we have additional post open we will actually have more and contested election was there a survey of how many elections we've had first selectman in the past ten fifteen years in which there were more than two people running for the position of selectmen at any given i know i would say no there's not there's not been one in which there were three there was one there was no one there in twenty ten when there were three i think that's the only one in the last  has or more than i think it's something that it's it's also important to consider how it is that people end up running for select when and my observation people get recruited by other people and if there were more seats open i think there could be more recruitment i'm also thinking about the larger school board which we had a whole lot of seats that weren't there was not completed by people who were able to run uncontested most most of the cities that have five that i talk to if there's an opening there will be a contest but if there isn't it's generally no contests my name is ian todd or some precinct one town meeting member and thank you all for all this work that you did i have not read the report so i apologize if this answer and they're really talk yeah i was just wanted to follow up on ralph's point about if we had one case where there was a town that went from three to five and back to three but how many cases were there of towns that went from three to five and are still it five or where those five member towns organically starting at five and just having them i hated many three three to five is the is the trend in fact that that's what was so remarkable about air and what the newspaper set out in that region was this may be starting a new trend because groton was going to go to five and then decided to stay at three and so there are towns and maybe rethinking what they're doing but five is sort of it has been for a long time the fashionable number yeah that if you want to be seen as a good government is working well and i was the person who interviewed the folks at hanover which just made this change i think it twenty ten so within the last you know period of memory  he felt that if there were five they might actually begin to act much more like a board of directors and a policy board than getting involved in the day to day activities collector was one of those six as far as the town administrator goes taking aside having to play border collie with three of them having to be fired was there any research done as far as the impact on the staff would involve hiring more staff is there were a cost to the office if we go up to five because you now have five people calling in i mean obviously there's more paper but was anything looked at as far as that was concerned of a tree so i directed that question to patrice warren discussion night and she said this is going to increase the cost of her doing business and him personally she's told me it might require an additional half have tea or perhaps even a full time person to add to her staff just to corral the the five instead of three if they were all a policy making board that would be different but her impression so far is they like to get involved  precinct time member i have two questions one is do we did you have any sense of how popular the hours are today whenever i've not been very popular but maybe i just got lucky  hours that's not something we looked at because because one of the arguments was how much more accessible people would be and my impression is that that's not a big issue right now but am i missing something i only might come it from my own personal experience there was a period when there were no selectman holding office hours for a number of months and twenty seventeen and so there was no access so it's it depends on who and then could i get a clarification i assume the open meeting law you can't have multiple selectman talking to a third party and not call that a serial communication sorry if they were you know it was being used to even though they can't talk to each other and i'm just here of i don't think i mean again i'm not town council but i don't think there would be anything prohibiting you from talking to them and from them talking to you and if i happen in my conversation to say what the other ones to especially the appendix i found one of the most important things on page forty of the appendix this was ralph's account of his meeting with his interview with mel collector who was very distinguished though i sometimes disagreed with him town in ministre or in belmont and went on to be to work in winchester with a five member board and now in brookline with a five member board and and he is but president or something or other of the mess from this has been this will solution you know he's respected by his colleagues his opinion is worth considering he favors a five making a mistake in thinking that she'll be chasing all these five select men it may be that the that a five member board of selectmen would be much more like a policy board as was suggested and that would be good and that if she needs help it's because the selectmen are assigning her so many tasks that she'll need it for that but not because she has to call  one up and that went up and so on i mean that's what emails were she's allowed to get in touch with all of the selectmen one email not to discuss things that need to be covered in public meaning but to just report this evening i was a member of the belmont league of women voters study committee that was formed last year to study the  marijuana legislation on adult use in belmont now the league of one of the league of women voters examines issues in depth and on occasion will then lead to a position in this case we have been studying it this year as a committee but who have not adopted any positions so we're here this evening  at a meeting sponsored by the league of women voters education fund to prevent the to present information for all of you on the topic of adult use marijuana we don't have any committee reports for you to read so you don't have to feel guilty or we will welcome your questions at the end of this presentation tonight we hope to review the current status of adult use marijuana regulations in both massachusetts and in belmont and then we will answer questions about the three warrant articles on town meeting that's coming up in me i want to make it clear that all of the discussions this evening do not affect anything related to medical marijuana this is adult use recreational marijuana only in addition it does not in any way affect adults right to use to grow or to possess small quantities of marijuana so that's what we're not talking about tonight is your chance to ask questions and hopefully get some answers it is not a time for debate or advocacy mostly because we have a short amount of time and that will happen on the floor of town meeting as i said the league of work the belmont does not have any positions on the use of marijuana nor the three warrant articles being presenting we are here to share what we've learned tonight's agenda a bit brief background on marijuana massachusetts we had invited and had accepted and our state representative day for odgers had accepted to be here tonight however we just learned that he's still at the state house baiting budget issues so he will not be here so i'll take some time to give you a brief background then give you some background on state regulations and how they affect belmont then we will look towards two people on my left and right for local impact w have to dr david out her speak on the board of health regulations and then geoffrey wheeler our senior planner speak on some of the zoning issues and the  tour finally we will talk specifically about the warrant articles and welcome to your questions dave rogers who's not here i would add that he invited people to if there are questions that we don't answer i will communicate them to him and get it he'll get back to us ok in two thousand and twelve massachusetts voters approved medical marijuana and that is now in place there are twenty three dispensaries in the state of massachusetts now for medical marijuana in november of two thousand and sixteen the massachusetts voters approved a statewide adult use marijuana and local control of non medical marijuana stablish mints eighty two per eighty two point five percent of registered voters in belmont voted in that election and of that fifty two point five percent voted yes on the question of adele use marijuana then after that mess massachusetts formed the cannabis control commission and that commission was designated to adopt regulations they did so and in august of two thousand and seventeen those regulations were created and began to be created and then on march ninth final  regulations were released since that time licensing is taking place at the state level and on july one two thousand and eighteen july of this year will begin the sale of recreational marijuana adult use  in the state thank you if each community in massachusetts can create a regulatory system for these establishment the state is designated threads that can be created in the state retailers cultivators independent testing laboratories and product manufacturers now within those four categories there are eight different types of licenses that can be adopted so far onsite consumption in places like pot cafes or movie theaters or bowling alleys has been put off for regulations at the state level as has delivery licenses that is not to say they won't happen at some point but the state put a pause hold those on the first day of accepting licenses when the cannabis control commission the c c c opened for applications they received one hundred and ninety applications for the four types of a  state and as i mentioned in addition there are already twenty three medical marijuana sites in the state now to receive a state license an applicant must show cooperation with the community where wishes to establish and that needs to happen in three ways before they can apply for a license in the state they must hold a commuted a outreach meeting this must be well publicized and known within the community and this must happen within six months prior to them applying for a state license in addition they must have signed a community sorry a host community agreement with authorities in the town now the authorities in the town have the right to collect an impact of up to three percent as part of that host community agreement and this three percent is to be used to cover document costs to the municipality for up to five years so if that is imposed as part of the host agreement the town will collect that and put it in a special account that must be well documented as to how it's used it can be used for things like a resource officer in the schools police costs perhaps even including traffic control police drug education drug treatment centers and other things that are as direct result of having the establishment in the town and we will certainly hear more from jeffrey and david how they must comply with all of the local laws regulations permits and licenses state as well has released regulations on things like advertising and how products are displayed and this is again state regulation you will never find a shop with brownies in the window i assure you because one of the regulations is that to enter a retail marijuana establishment is a two door process to enter the establishment the first thing that happens is you will be met with someone who will check your photo i only after you have been approved to move on by the age you can enter another door and where you will enter a retail shop where the brownies and the chocolate and the marijuana will be on display so the state has done that very clearly in addition have been given certain privileges or restrictions any town that has a retail establishment may impose up to three percent local tax on sales of marijuana being consumed this is a three percent tax in addition to the three percent posted agreement this three percent local tax will be collected by the state as part of a sales tax and at least four times a year will be given back to the local government this money goes into general revenue so this three percent sales tax can be used by the town and any way that they choose how much might belmont collect we have no idea however what we do know is that for every million dollars of gross sales in a retail establishment the town would collect thirty thousand dollars so i general estimate might be that a town with a with retail sales like belmont might collect somewhere between thirty thousand dollars of two million who knows that could be total fantasy we don't know because we don't know what the sales growth sales will be however a couple of statistics to think about in colorado which has had a del use marijuana legalized for several years in colorado last year the state collected in licensing taxes and fees over two hundred and forty seven million dollars in one year in washington state in washington state last year three hundred and nineteen million dollars were collected and fact this number was one hundred thirteen million dollars greater than the fees that they collected for alcohol so marijuana has exceeded taxes in the state of washington over alcohol ten meeting article non of the regular town meeting this article would authorize this three percent so we can talk more about that later but it's a article that would put the tax on the books whether or not we had any marijuana establishment and in addition to that  may pass by laws to govern town place and manner that's why i have these today to talk about belmont establishing want to accept that and while he was a member of the board of hell he had the task and took a leadership role in developing regulations that have been put forth by the board of health and david as i mentioned before i need to restrict you to about five so we have time for you know the people you're working with so putting that restriction more than once and i do thank you very much and before i say anything i do need to reiterate the her chilean efforts of the league of women voters is put into this particular issue anyone who's lived in town knows how involved they are with elections and issues in the past in my time in the town i really rarely seen them put quite as much energy as they had into this and i think this is the fourth time that i've met with you folks involved with this issue so they're pretty well versed anyway i do thank you very much for seeing i do need to put out two quick disclaimers number one that met my chairman here to the left as i now am no longer on the board of health i ended it at the end of march however during my tenure is when we did pass town regulations having said that i am speaking in the past for the board my present position i am speaking as an individual in the town now as we sit here we are one of the few towns in the commonwealth that currently have passed regulations controlling marijuana establishments in town these are in place this is not something they need to come to town me being the board of health is a regulatory board and we are able to pass regulations as i'm sure you all know because we've passed them on a wide variety of things so what we'll be talking about is currently in place why did we rush to do this because we didn't want to risk any grandfathering issues when people did try to come and so anybody who comes to belmont now must meet these regulations and the only person that can overstay and are regulations of the attorney general of the state of massachusetts so it's not a matter of questioning by anybody else what these regulations are are things like cleanliness the ability to inspect because there is going to be food not prepared but sold in there so like any other spa or any place else gas stations that sell packaged food and you should know that all this food is going to be packaged very specifically by regulations of the state that we are able to inspected for expiration handling eccentric set are we allowed to go in there and make sure that the place is clean because at the end of the day they are going to be handling things you're going to be consuming and so we can expect them you're going to be licensed here in the town now unfortunately we can't charge another ten thousand dollars for a license like the state is we are our allowed to charge a fee commensurate iwm with the amount of time that it takes to inspect the establishment and that's what we do with any food establishment in town so we charge more of a fee for star market than we do for the mobil gas station but we do inspect them both twice a year to make sure that they are clean the thing that i'm most proud of and the thing that really myself and my colleagues on the board took a not only a stance on but an initia his we are currently the only town in massachusetts as of today because i checked that raised the legal limit for buying marijuana in belmont to twenty five from twenty one that is on the books now i'm happy to talk about that further i do not want to take the time now as to the logic behind that it has been published in the paper in other places and i'm certainly happy to speak on it but this was something that was very important to me individually and to my colleagues as well now that doesn't mean you can't consume it under twenty five it means you cannot purchase it and so that's something that will be anybody that comes into town with that otherwise in many many ways these establish are going to be treated like restaurants and food establishments that they must be inspected they must have a cleanliness record we are able to vet the people that are owning these shops as far as their past but the state's going to be doing that as well so again if you come into town and decide you want to open a restaurant we do a certain amount of vetting we do a certain amount of education as far as running it and eccentric cetera and we inspect you including surprise inspections as far as that goes so that's going to be the role of the board of health once again i feel important to state that the board of health takes no stance we have no horse in the race on whether or not this is going to be allowed or not to be sold in the town we simply wanted to protect the town and my example that i've used for many people his age you may remember about ten years ago that the state said that towns have to allow tattoo parlors because of first amendment rights and expression and you may not know that we have regulations for tattoo parlors so if you ever decide to wake up one day and open one in town you'd need to meet these regulations we've never used them we don't intend to background that as you saw this you heard about all the state with the stated time wise what we did time wise was in two thousand and seventeen we adopted a moratorium to allow the town time to plan accordingly for this  on laboratory testing and product manufacture what are the impacts of those so the more time was put in place to in order to release try to study those and truly get their arms around it unfortunately as you also heard the regulations actually didn't get finalized until the march ninth and didn't really allow time for the planning board to really investigate the regulations and see how what those are saying as you saw the regulations say we can actually regulate signage differently for more marijuana stoush when then we can for other retail businesses that's a really important piece of information to know when putting a buy a lot together so this amendment article seems to extend the moratorium until december thirty first  twenty to twenty so what does the zoning do as i sort of started to mention the zoning actually allows you to look at the commercial districts you now have if you chose to take one a copy of what the commercial districts in town  buffer to a school that has kindergarten through twelfth grade it we can make it less then five hundred five hundred maxwell our medical marijuana by law that time meaning adopted a couple years ago i think at this point i'm sorry as three hundred feet as a buffer we actually got an e mail from a town resident who suggested it should be one hundred fifty feet so obviously there's a lot of thoughts around if you go form of the  you also can regulate decides an establishment you can regulate its hours if you don't want the business opened up on sunday that simple enough to do we can put that in the by law we can put that also within the special permit which is another piece that we can do as we can have we can require a special permit similar to what we do with medical marijuana this would allow public a full public process public input and an opportunity to hopefully address what concerns residents have about the proposed  is another reason why it was good to wait for the state regulations to come down is because we cannot adopt a by a law that unreasonably that is unreasonably impractical what that means is if we adopt a by law we have to make sure that indeed a business can open you can't put barriers in the by law that for whatever reason economic his ickle whatever make it impossible to open in town if we come forward with a by law we have to show that indeed it's reasonable and therefore then business can open in town if you don't have a zoning by law it just is what we have now if a retail sales you'd be considered a retail sales if you're a manufacturer we go by what the by law says about manufacturing there is no just there would be no buffer zones there would be no limitations on where you could establish in marijuana stablish meant you would be saying basically we wanted to be treated like any other use in town and therefore then it would be subject to whatever of whatever those regulations are the map i gave you  shows you the commercial districts you note that there's a lot of white paper within the boundaries of the white is residential and it's important to note that difference between how small the color is versus how how large the residential area is clearly there is going to be concern about how does the residential and business impact each other how do we make sure that if a business opens up if we adopt a by law that is and stuff and i'm really why the planning board is recommending the extension in some of it have already tapped upon touched upon and it really is to engage in the planning class process which is what the existing by a lot currently states  is to understand more time to in the regulations and make sure that the state regulations in the by law are in compliance together it's to understand what these uses are and what the impact would be in the midst of terminal location finally with this also does is a preserves the town's ability to adopt regulations if the opt out does not move forward so if you don't have the moratorium in place and the opt out does go to a vote of the citizenry and for whatever reason that should fail we have no by a long place we have no safety net as i said we're back to what happens when there is no zoning in place if you adopt a moratorium and the opt out still does not it just to remind you now that three warned articles that we are speaking about the first two are on the annual town meeting and the third is special t meeting i'm not sure that jeffrey mentioned that the moratorium in article eight is asked to be extended to the seven birth thirty one of this year and  is there some hope i had some rumors to believe that the planning board is hoping to come up with a room or by the fall yes there is going to be a special town meeting called in november  in that case after the planning board comes up with its recommendations it does have to go to a vote of town meeting now article eight because it is a zoning article  it will require a two thirds vote of tell me article not the article which in poses a possible three percent sales tax on retail marijuana retail adult use marijuana and marijuana products it will be a simple majority vote and that is the article that i mentioned before that this only can happen by a vote of teh meeting so even if at the moment or even the foreseeable future we are not anticipating any retail this would be could if passed would be on the books for future times when ever a establish an get to  this is a citizens article that was what on by petition to amend the general bylaws to opt out in other words prohibit all types of adult use marijuana in belmont and in addition to that there have been six amendments that have been submitted that will be offered to this article and these amendments give sort of multiple choice as to what might be accepted or not in the town so the article one is a complete opt out of all retail sales or all retail establishments where as the amendments will give choices perhaps might want to have retail sales but not independent laboratory testing so that's what these six amendments do and several of them but not all have sunset clauses which means if adopted these regulations will be in place until april thirtieth two thousand and twenty one now delma was a yes town and what that means is in two thousand and sixteen belmont voted fifty two percent of the voters to adopt recreate a don't use marijuana in the state so the state has dealt with opt out provisions in two different ways so the state the regulation the c c c have said if you are no te and you want to opt out it is a vote of your town meeting or authoritative body if however you are a yes town you need to have a vote a yes vote from town meeting and a yes vote and a town wide election using the same language so if belmont wants to opt out as is suggested by article one it will require a vote a yes vote of town meeting and a yes vote of at a town wide election same language and the state regulations under section three local control reads ballot question under the subsection may be placed on the ballot at a regular or special election held by the city or town by the vote of the board of select in the article that you were just given thank you jeffrey for bringing george george all our time counsel wrote a very good three page summary of these regulations and in that document he states that the selectmen have complete discretion in deciding whether to put the question to a vote however if you then look at the foot no at the end of church is article he raises some uncertainty of the differences between the state marijuana acts and the representative town meeting x because of that further clarification may be need but let me just repeat this one because it's so difficult if belmont wants to adopt an opt out and that even that seems contradictory if you want to opt out you  voting yes article one to opt out if elma out and it can be a town meeting member vote first and then a town wide election or the perverse it doesn't matter in this case belmont is going to first a town meeting vote if tell me then votes to adopt article one in other words up to out of marijuana then in order for this to become law it must be passed by a town wide vote how that happens is not straightforward but it must according to both george hall and the great state regulations on local control must come from a vote of the board your time it is your time to ask questions we remind you to keep your questions short and to remember this is not a time for debate not a time for advocacy this is a time to get information from those of us who are sitting up here and in addition in the audience i have several other members in the leagues of women voters study committee under one who if i need help will be there to help me so questions helen golding precinct one  mention that a vote of the populace could occur there and what i'm remembering is a local election or a special election  we have any ability to require that go on to an election that occurs at a general election time because this original referendum occurred in election in which there was the five whatever it is participated percent participation where that is typically not the case in local elections and certainly not the case in special elections so i just wanted to know if we had the ability to make this occur at a time when it was likely that a lot of people were you have given me an opportunity to mention that our t clerk ellen o'brien cushman very much wanted to be here and plan to be here this evening but something cable for her and she's not but i have had that same question and finally got a ruling today in a discussion with ellen cushman that the law under died before g which is the recreational marijuana law passed by the state legislature clearly states that it must be a town election and it must be a tag question on the ballot so there has been discussion and i was among the many who thought well why not just put it in the november election we have an election coming up a new vampire however ta'am council has ruled that it must be a town election either a called a special election or under our town elections next if it is possible however to call a special election the same day as the november election however what ellen cushman then described to me is the nightmare quality of that vote for her her staff and the voter because you would have to go in and basically vote twice you would have to go to the end table to ice they out table twice and get two separate ballots the cost of this because people have asked to calling a special election is usually for a one question ballot around ellen said around seventeen thousand dollars the only money that you would save if you did a special election in the november election you would save the cost of the police officers she said that might be around seven thousand dollars so given the nightmare quality she didn't want yes right exactly and i  hours sure absolutely that's right one of the things that we also found that if it the citizens form of compelling the selectmen and if that goes through would it be ok then the special election can only be from two pm to eight pm which has every  if question one is a citizens petition to ask if that goes through should i know it's get get there is there are many steps but if that process does not make this let me just say oh yeah we should have an election if they then compel the selectmen to have an election then it has a different charter and if that is accepted by our town council which is also correct correct but i just thought oh well right but while you're discussing all these steps that the citizens are trying to do you should know that the election will be shorter hours if it goes through that every ok so this is the commercial district map that you know this area here that is striped on your map it's with a high schoolers and a little bit where the loading dock is in the animal hospital as  w medical marijuana there has been no determination about what to do about adult use marijuana the question becomes if there's no by laws in place then it becomes just what you would allow for retail sales right now we tell sales are allowed to happen in cushing square so you would just have a retail sales store there would be no differentiation if without a by law that's why some people argue that's why you need to buy lots you can differentiate where you want i n in addition add in i'm not sure if this was a piece of your question or not the town can vote to ban all adele use marijuana in addition to that it can vote to limit the number of a stablish woman's in town below the statutory minimum of as defined in the regulations twenty percent of the package stores alcohol sales stores in town and delma we have six alcohol package stores and so twenty percent of that are there i'm catherine beach i was on the am on the committee just add two quick things in addition to that that the adult use marijuana zoning cannot be more restrictive then the marijuana zoning that you see at the medical the bad medicine and medical marijuana zoning that you see up here and also by state law there is no way to ban medical marijuana although we do not have medical marijuana establishment in town i'd like to add amendments referenced here so i wanted to start just by updating you on the amendments i've been working with ellen they were all you know mostly approved by the by a lot of maybe the other night with some pending changes to language i've never written by law and meant before so i had to get that right one thing that i did add to the amendments that she is she's probably working late tonight looking at these i tend to get e mails from her attendant i did add a cap to the number of retail locations oh that one ok and that is i put it on every amendment i'm not sure where it belongs but that's for ray to figure out and everyone else so ok i think those are the only things that i changed that got changed let me just look at it really quickly while you're looking at it does anybody have any particular questions on the amendments since some people may not have read them do you want to give a quick summary of what they were going to an overview so  the numbers that they are my disclaimer and what i'm going to read them is not necessarily the order in which they will be voted on so and there are only truly three versions the other three are identical versions with a sunset clause that was the other thing that i changed this on a clause just for logistics for the for law passing change that to december thirty first of two thousand and twenty one just one of the ways the laws get passed so the first amendment  i wrote i'll just read a it's amended move the article on be amended by inserting the phrase except for marijuana retailers after all types of the marijuana establishments and then with the language about capping it at once so essentially what this does the only way that we can collect this sales tax is through retail sales so the cultivators the manufacturers the independent testing facilities those do not collect three percent sales tax we need sales tax so if we do not want cultivating we do not want manufacturing facilities here then we could exclude those and everything else that would fall under other establishments but keep retail only so that we could get that three percent sales tax at one shop what this also covers i know there's been talk about this and other other times cannabis cafes that's come up in different meetings there is no state regulation on cannabis cafes right now or on premise consumption social consumption it's called a couple different things the state kicks that can down the road to next year so right now there is no language for me to define in an amendment to restrict a cannabis cafe because it does not exist in the state you can't ban something that doesn't exist article one or the amendment one would cover that potentially that's up to george and everybody else but my tent was for that to cover everything except retail that's a store front you know direct to consumers number two remember number two is exactly that same thing except with a sunset clause of december thirty first two thousand and twenty one as jeffrey mentioned this is a brand new industry for the state there's a lot of things that are very unclear about it we could get three years down the road and say maybe maybe we do want to facility that manufacturers maybe somebody does want to build one of there's a micro business point of contention in there with the state that you can have a very small facility we might just change our minds in three years and i wanted to leave options so that if three did years down the road things have changed we have an easier opportunity to start fresh with violence so one is exactly the as number two with that sunset clause so the second i'm sorry number three number the third amendment is moved to amend article one by striking the phrase all types of marijuana establishment and serving in place there of the words marijuana cultivat s and this also again has that cap of one not sure what belongs there but again so this would restrict only facilities that cultivate marijuana plants just growing facilities so that would not allow those at all it would allow retail it would allow manufacturing and potentially social consumption at a later date that's unfair and testing correct the cultivators would be the only thing that would be banned that is exactly the same in my amendment number four except with that same song amendment number five i apologize for all of the amendments but i did want to have an option of the sunset clauses four was phrase marijuana cultivators and marijuana manufacturers so that would prohibit only manufacturing facilities and cultivation facilities so essentially protecting retail again so that we could have that  and testing sorry i keep forgetting independent testing because that's not in my in my train of thought ok i'm going to cut you make sense thank you i make sense to me but i've been living with this in studying it for a long time understanding is that the legislation is written such that if the only way as i understand it and again you have to do you have to understand that this is very difficult and needs interpretation that the law is written such that it has to pass town meeting in order to kick into place the procedure of collecting five hundred signatures within seven days in order to compel the board of selectmen to all of that was different than what i understood from our question is there as i understand there are two routes one is and it will depend on the vote at town meeting but if a town meeting voted seventy five percent to twenty five percent or something you you jack white precinct one just a question on the process there and then this second question or comment suggestion i guess on the if the selectmen they it passes in town meeting so that town meeting says yes we should put this issue to the voter does the seven day clock for five hundred signatures start ticking from town meeting or ticking from when the belmont  the special special town meeting because this was put on for a special town meeting and thank you for that clarification the last time the town did a special election was the mclean zoning by law and it's really more a suggestion i don't know why the proponent of article nine is who's going to be presenting that i recognize your league of women voters and it was in neutral person but i thought your comment about collection in other states was very informative and i think that although not me personally i think for some people that potential revenue is certainly determinative on article nanine it may be determinative on how they vote about the opt out and so i would just urge you ever is the proponent of article n perhaps think about how to translate the experience in other states to sales per person and from there project out a little bit more accurately ballot it was a vote of the board of selectmen so yeah ok yeah you're welcome sorry about that i am jessica bennett precinct one town meeting member i just i'm going to beat this dead horse on a little bit  so if town meeting votes it down and we don't get it on the ballot in this election no we don't give it the way they don't have a special election based on this wording what if somebody comes back and has different wording that applies to selling marijuana in town like for instance they propose something that only bans retail we've been go through this whole process again yes you hood yes clear by that that would be write the legislation for the state and he made it really clear that they thought a lot about this and wanted us town to know towns to have different routes and he has told me even that he considered that no towns when getting tax money from it and that didn't pass but he really wanted it to be much harder for us town to then opt out and that is why this is so complicated the actual details afterwards has gotten so complex that we've gotten different opinions about this even as of yesterday and today and that's why we're having a little juggling here to try to understand why we weren't sure we wanted on the screen and if you read george hall's summary that's why there is footnote number four because it's still not clear and as a follow up to that we don't pass it this time and we figure out our bylaws and  my name before really cracking down meaning members precinct five so my question is if we do nothing right and then the planning board starts thinking about whether we want retail or cultivation or where the boards where so they decide or you opt out of different races so if you don't want cultivation you have to actually go to vote to opt out correct so if we're a town that says we only really might have retail you could opt out of the other two right like again by the same process of a vote of town meeting and a vote of the electorate so we could end up with if we want to opt out of multiple things at different times we could and we through this ok so so that's the rationale in the original amendment for just trying to opt out of everything right i think the amendments were to give us choices and if i may and i know time is becoming night let me put a little bit of reality on this little and jeffrey i think you'll back me up on this the likelihood of a cultivator or a lab opening up of this town is zero because simply if a no other reason than the square footage that these places require that there just isn't a facility in your zoning that you could even begin to put a place like this also these cultivators in laboratories are looking at established buildings purely for the cost i happen to know framingham is salivating about a lab because they have all of these empty labs from the compound in days and they see this is enormous revenue for framing him and they already have the empty buildings we don't have anything like that so while i'm certainly not advocating for not opting out of the town chooses to do so the reality is that what may come to this town is going to be adult use the other three in retail and sammy yes it's the others are just practically not going to be able to come to belmont cuz it's just a place for them to go but if they care but if they came they could come if we don't agree it's just right because people talk about the tax money you could have  host agreement for which is to jack's point you don't want to speak about just the thirty thousand who want to speak about sixty thousand because if in fact we get an adult retail facility in town it's the three percent sales tax  to the state and back to us and then the three percent host agreement that comes to the town that in all likelihood will be managed by the health department or that's how it usually is that could be used for anything from opioid intervention and adult to as as geoffrey said a resource officer in the middle school to police details etc so you're actually not speaking for potentially thirty thousand and up here actually potentially speaking sixty thousand and up with thirty thousand earmarked the things that this town needs so those are the numbers you do want to be working with thank you i have my eye on the clock and we said we would and nine thirty so i'm going to take no i'm going to take the last two questions but and then cut it off there so some of us will be here a little longer if you want an individual question scott ellen sugarman town meeting member precinct eight i understand the purpose behind them is amendments a set of six but what i'm wondering is ok i've just heard that you know we're not likely to get a cultivator in town just given our logistics but in theory town meeting could choose to separate amendments which are actually contradictory then one says only retail in one says only cultivator just for example then what happens when the answer is that can't happen because first of all you're in the moderator wouldn't let that happen because it's simply one article that she's offering amendments or so you wouldn't the moderator would allow you to vote on contradictory amendments of because it would be out of order so once have voted on say you excepted amendment that says retail only then the others are going to become a tax i just yeah i mean that's that's where mike widmer comes in that it would be right again i just wanted to clarify to the process the licensing process from the state and whether we have any interested retailers and also i just want to how long would it take somebody to get license to sell in town and and it was fun to verify it was we were talking about the planning board being able to regulate to the point that we would only have one retailer in town so we want to make sure i understood that right yes there is no pending applications first off just to be clear and yes i do get calls from people that are interested in opening up marijuana shop in town wanting to know what the status of the regulations are  interrupt the health department has also had queries about coming to belmont so i mean there's people sniffing around wearing my understanding is that less is in congress is on a good day is six months from the state yeah because you have to meet with the community if you establish host agreement which is a obviously that's going to be a fight back and forth and then you have to get a license just because you're granted a license doesn't mean you have zoning compliance you can be granted a license without having to own compliance and that's a whole second this is also by the way not in significant money i mean the application of the state is fifty thousand so we're talking and they're estimating it's a half a million two million dollars to build out a retail establishment so it's not in significant money we're talking about and so we're talking about a significantly more onerous process than say opening a dunkin donuts on pleasant street i don't know we're having trucks we're having trouble doing that so hard so you know we're talking about a pretty onerous process but but let me correct you i i would disagree with the word onerous because it really is a protective process you know they want to make sure that whoever finally does this all the right people going in to the community in the proper way so   if we voted against our running out it's not like saying next week we're going to be stepping out because and again in addition to that you have the regulations that the health department that you also need to meet right so it's no i'm going to pass on monday and open up on wednesday i think i'd like to add that the fact that we're having phone calls coming to town i think might be due to several of our neighbors were no towns and already have opted out no towns had as you heard much easier process to opt out and like lexington and winchester have opted out so we might get their tax dollars eight and early because they might have a lot of residents who don't want to drive to came that was the flip side is i doubt