Speaker 0: Thank you, Counsel Royal. Would any other counselors like to speak on this? Dawkins 0312 will remain in committee motions, orders and resolutions. Mr. Clerk, please read DAWKINS 0381.
Speaker 1: Lucky number 0381 Councilor Edwards offered the following order for a hearing to discuss the regulation and siting of cannabis establishments in the city of Boston, Boston and the Zoning Board of Appeals.
Speaker 0: The chair recognizes Councilor Edwards. Councilor Edwards, you have the floor.
Speaker 3: Thank you very much, President Clinton. Just real quick, I also want to thank you for your leadership in this moment. And to my colleagues, I think you should be our president.
Speaker 4: A round of applause on this for.
Speaker 3: I think people forget part of the job of the president is not only to keep the meeting moving, but to protect the body and to make sure democracy is happening. So thank you so much. Thank you, Counselor Arroyo as well. So we're I want to give a quick history lesson because there's a lot of institutional knowledge about cannabis that needs to be brought into this moment and hopefully will be discussed as we discuss how it is going on in the city. As many of you know, in 2016, the city of Boston voted overwhelmingly to decriminalize and outright legalize cannabis, a part of the statewide initiative. The statewide initiative also required the creation of a state agency called the CCRC, the Cannabis Control Commission. And they have a specific mandate, a moral mandate to undo the harm of the war on drugs that allows for cities and towns also to opt in or opt out of having legalized marijuana, the sale of it, or cannabis, I should say, in their districts. But it also puts on them an obligation to also deal with the war on drugs and the harms caused by it. Moreover, when we're talking about from the state wide mandates, you are required every city and town to have at least 20% of the liquor licenses. You must have 20% of those in terms of cannabis establishments and licenses. So we have a quota to meet. We have a moral obligation to meet. We have also an industry to grow and to regulate in the city of Boston that the city of Boston overwhelmingly chose to be regulated and to grow here. Now, with all of that being said, there was a delay. Some people felt the prior administration had taken too long and even trying to establish a system to give out licenses, to give out host community agreements, which is basically the way in which we can contract with a dispensary to allow them to open. And they felt that there was due to the Baker administration and the Walsh administration seemed to oppose the legalization. There seemed to be the unclear understanding. But eventually we opened up the Office of Emerging Industries. I was there when that office opened, and I was there when that office seemed to, unfortunately, in an opaque way, pick which entities were able to have a say and which ones weren't. We also, when I want to give credit to my colleague, Councilor Flaherty, one point or to point out to point out to point out to point out he took it upon himself, which I do appreciate to say. Not only are we going to have this industry thrive, we're not going to let it be concentrated in any one community. And we have and the number is 52 establishments to have in the city of Boston. It will be spread everywhere. No one gets to say, not in my backyard because everyone voted for it. So as a result, we didn't want a green mile as well, where it's just that neighborhood to go to, to go get high or go get your stuff. As a result and half mile buffer zone was put into this regulation to separate them and to encourage diversity, geographic diversity. That is why it's put it. There is no other industry, no other vice in the city of Boston that has a buffer zone like that. We also required to site from distances from schools as well, I think 300 feet. That is part of other laws when it comes to liquor establishments and so on and so forth. Now, I do want you to know that your Office of Emergency Industry was called by this body, which is our number one role, which is to hold accountable and to demand answers. Counsel Janey at the time held a hearing specifically to ask what is going on and why are people getting their licenses? What are what are the points system you're even using? And why is it that this person got it and this person didn't? And is Boston we had a horrible problem or two where within the half mile buffer and one got the both got the HCA and then had to go to the ZBA. And that's where the problem is exists today. After all the back and forth and getting there, HCA was going to the A. The Zba then chose the corporate cannabis shop and gave them their gave them the the opportunity to open up. They were just they just happened to be in front of. The Iraq veteran, the Latino, the local person who I represent, they were physically in front of him in mind. That's it. He came up and said, Well, I would like to also open up one. And they said, Sorry, you're within a half mile buffer. They enforce it against him. They could have easily switch the order and favored the local veteran. They chose not to. And they had no guidance to do so. So since then I have been disgusted with the CPA and their role in any way, shape or form in the conversation when it comes to campus. And I use that word disgusted because that's exactly how I feel and that's what they've heard. Now Councilor Janey's leadership was immense ingredients in creating the BCB, the Boston Cannabis Board. We're for the first time. Folks like ourselves, regular people in Boston will be giving out licenses. These licenses are connected to the HCA. So now we have a cannabis port. This did not exist when the half mile buffer was introduced. Introduced? This did not exist when we legalized it. It existed three years later. And that board has grown immensely and has made the entire process very transparent. They have hearings. They require, for the first time, a district city councilor to be notified to write a letter of opposition, of support. All of these things happened in the public eye. They require a community meeting. All of these things before the person can even come in front of them. And they have to have security. They have to show that they're an equity applicant. And that was one of the best things and one of the lasting legacies of Councilor Janey. Former Mayor Janey is the equity, the one for one requirement so that corporations can come in and just take up all the good spots and take up all the cannabis areas. We have a one for one that only exists for the BCB. Equity applicants only exist with the BCB. The analysis of location only exists with the BCB. And we did that. We added that in there. We added in labor members, we added in people who are part of the neighborhood for the first time. We added in veterans as a protected class. We added an indigenous people. We this body. And the thing is we this body can only add and amend the BCB, those standards, those individuals who sit there. That's where our power lies and we are able to adjust with the BCB as this industry will adjust because we're going to have on site consumption at some point, we're going to have restaurants at some point and we need to be able to regulate them. That's why I'm further disgusted by the. Because we cannot regulate them. I have a home rule petition right now that's been waiting two years to even add an urban planner to the Zba. You see, they are now able to say no to an industry that's moving like this to a board that's moving like this. It's moving faster than them with different standards in them, with equity obligations that they do not have, are not trained and don't know what they're talking about. Asking about race. Asking about equity applicants to only cannabis establishments. They don't ask about the color or the racial demographics of the developers who come before them. Trust and believe. It's nowhere near as diverse. They don't ask about it. They're not trained in it yet. They play around. And what happens is we end up being the last step for a bunch of people, in some cases NIMBYs who just don't want cannabis in their. So they pile on piling and just get the zba to say no to them. There's no standard, by the way, for their half mile when they choose to enforce it or not, it shows. Today there are six people, six entities that have been given a license by the BCB. Half of them are equity applicants, people of color, and they were told no by the zba. They're stuck in this horrible situation. When we had the hearing about the original and I introduced a zoning amendment to remove the Zba. When they came forward, one of the applicants owner appraisers said, If I didn't have to go to the zba, I would have saved $40,000. I wasted time and money. That's what we're doing to an emerging industry that's supposed to actually be repairing the harm on black and brown individuals who were harmed by the war on drugs. We continue that harm by BIA bureaucratic mess that we allow to continue to happen. So. Last year, I introduced the zoning amendment. It did go to the zoning commission. During that conversation, Councilor Bork and I, which we disagreed on, they brought on the broadness of my amendment. We disagreed, but we believe we came to it. I think a narrowly tailored compromise. I hope that Councilor Brock will come to the hearing on this to talk about that narrowly tailored compromise. As a district city councilor, I am sympathetic with her situation in that she represents predominantly the downtown neighborhoods where there might be an oversaturation of a lot of industries, including cannabis. So I know that's a lot, but I like half the council wasn't here when all this happened, so I wanted you to know why this is so important. We have this conversation. We are talking about real money and the tens of millions of the hundreds of millions of dollars. We are talking about an obligation, a moral one, to make sure that money flows equally, equitably into the hands of people who are formerly incarcerated and to people who are veterans, who are indigenous, who are black, who have grown up in communities that have been over overpoliced. All of that is in our hands. And by the way, if we separate the zba, it's solely in this body's hands. That's the kind of control and the movement and also the empowerment that we need to have. The CBA has nobody on there that deals with public safety. They do not have somebody on that list dealing with economic equity. We put them on the books. They don't deal with public health. They're not dealing with addiction specialists. All of them are on the licensing board right now. We have the expertize. We have the people in the movement. I'm just asking that you separate the two. But and by the way, I'm sure by now you've already heard enough complaints about the CBA and the administration of the laws they already have. Why are we letting them do this? So apologize for the length of time. It just felt it was very necessary that you understood my passion in this. My neighborhood was the one that got screwed over the most. In this back and forth and half mile and so on and so forth. We now have four cannabis establishment in East Boston, half of whom are equity applicants. I'm proud of that. So I'm not against the industry. I'm also not looking to promote it. I just want us to be the best government we can when we're dealing with these deep injuries. The best way we can do that is remove the CBD. Thank you.
Speaker 0: Thank you. Councilor Edwards, is anyone else looking to speak on this matter? The chair recognizes council for every council authority of the floor. Thank you, Mr. President. And thank you to the previous speaker as the original sponsor of the half mile buffer and as the former chair of government operations who worked closely on the ordinance that created the Boxing Against Sport. I'm happy to have this discussion. Please add my name. And it was actually a great recap of things that have happened to date. So as a reference to the spirit of the intent to the buffer zone was to ensure cannabis facilities were sited equitably throughout the city. Unfortunately, our CBA has approved a few buffer zone conflicts and they've denied others exposing the city to potential legal action and causing additional lack of predictability and fairness for residents first and foremost, as well as for the business owners who are out there trying to make commitments, signing leases, getting securing investors, trying to navigate the lengthy permitting process to site a fully legal business. With that said, I think it's also important to note that that we as a city were familiar with the Zoning Board of Appeals process. Our residents, our civic groups understand how to engage in that process that takes place every week in this building. On the second, on the upstairs on Tuesdays. The state law that legalized marijuana also allows for municipalities to control the time, place and manner of cannabis establishments. And that does not need to be done through local zoning. So we do have a cannabis board and we could empower them to make these decisions at the end of the day. For me, it's about predictability of process. It's about fairness and it's about upholding the half mile buffer zone. That's it. That's in the zoning code. And it can't be about who you know and who you hire. And this meeting in that meeting. We have a half mile buffer zone that was supported by this body, that was supported overwhelmingly by residents across the city who asked us to do that. And so I'm looking forward to a public discussion about this. Let's get the civic associations and the community groups. Let them get them in. I know that when we talked about this the last time, there was concern, because that's the process. They know. They know the zoning board of Appeals process. They know that they deal with the Office of Neighborhood Services. They work with District and At-Large Council is on our staff. Maybe it was sort of a new sort of process for them, but we need to bring them in so that they understand that the cannabis board that we have up and running, that they can be empowered to make these decisions if these aren't local zoning decision. But at the end of the day, again, predictability, process, fairness and upholding the half mile buffer is key to this entire equation. Thank you. I look forward to the hearing. Thank you. Counsel clarity. The chair recognizes counsel by our counsel blocking of the floor.
Speaker 3: Thank you so much, Mr. President. Thank you, Counselor Edwards, for both reintroducing the conversation and for that summary to everyone. And I think that we you know, one of the things that Counselor Edwards mentioned in passing, but I just want to underscore is that I think this council passed last year in ordinance a number of changes to the BCB in order to address, as Councilor Flaherty was saying, the question of whether the ECB itself was considering location in the buffer zone because part of what was happening was that there was a sense that the buffer zone question was sort of being punted to the zba and that therefore if we took the Zba out of the process, we'd be taking out that factor altogether. And so Councilor Edwards her with her leadership, we passed something that put more expertize in zoning and more focus on location into the PCB side of the equation and also raised the standard for a buffer zone exemption that the BCB was weighing. And I and I want to give credit to the cannabis board. I think we've seen them reflect those changes. We've seen them because that was another question is will they do it? But but we've seen them kind of process those. I think that the remaining thing that we have to navigate and it's going to be the topic of further conversation, is just that. Aside from the concern downtown about concentration, we have both in my district and I know in a number of colleagues districts and these like neighborhood business subdistricts where a lot of uses are all on top of each other. And one of the ways historically that we figured out how to deal with the fact that like five different people are getting deliveries for their businesses, all to one corner is that we basically use the Zba process as a way to be like, where are you storing your trash and what are you doing with deliveries and stuff? And so one of the, one of the concerns that arose on in my district was okay, but that level of granular detail isn't really what the PCB is talking about. But if someone's going to open a stationary store in this subdistrict, they're going to need to talk about this with their neighbors. And we don't want it to be that a marijuana store doesn't have to talk about those things with their neighbors. So that's sort of that's the kind of operational challenge that we're dealing with in the subdistricts. But I think, as Councilor Edward said, that we sort of move towards a a narrowly tailored solution to that problem, that looking forward to discussing it further. So thank you, Mr. President.
Speaker 0: Thank you, counsel. BLOCK And adding your name, Counsel. BAUCUS The chair recognizes counsel of our counsel. Are you on the floor?
Speaker 3: Thank you, President Flynn. And thank you to Councilor Edwards for for offering this hearing order. I just wanted to speak in support of reviewing the process of how we approve cannabis stores in our neighborhoods. But I also wanted to caution us to maybe use a wider lens when we're looking at it. I know of at least two instances when the Boston Cannabis Board has approved two locations within the same half mile, and then the ZBA has had to make a decision on which one they were going to approve in the neighborhood. One of those instances is outside of my district. One instance is Curry is currently excuse me currently live in Jamaica Plain where the cannabis board approved one corporation, one equity applicant. And now the CBA is left to make a decision about who goes there. And the other instance, it was in a different neighborhood. The Zba made the choice to obviously leave and the equity participant. And so I say that to say that I would like us to really look at the entire process, find the inflection points on where we can make changes to make sure that it's streamlined. And also, I am supportive. I'm not supportive of the CBA in any way, shape or form, but also thinking about how we remove remove bureaucracy without zoning in on only one issue when we've also seen similar decisions come out of the Boston Cannabis Board. So I really look forward to having this discussion. I just want to ask to my colleagues to widen the conversation, to look at the entire process and how it could be more equitable versus just looking into the CBA.
Speaker 0: Thank you, Counsel. Borough Council. We're adding your name?
Speaker 3: Yes.
Speaker 0: Anyone else like to speak on this matter? Would anyone else? Would anyone like to add their name? Please raise your hand. Please add Counselor Arroyo. Counselor Counselor Braedon. Counselor Fernandez Andersen. Counsel. Florida Counsel. Laura Constitution. Counselor here. Counsel Murphy. Counsel. Relevant. Please add the chair. Dark 0381 will be referred to the Committee on Planning, Development, Transportation. Mr. Clerk, please read Docket 03820382.
Order for a hearing to discuss the regulation and siting of cannabis establishments in the City of Boston and the Zoning Board of Appeals.