A bill for an ordinance concerning designated consumption area setback requirements. Designated consumption areas will be permitted to operate at least 1000 feet from of a school, 500 feet of a Child Care Establishment, 500 feet of a alcohol or drug treatment facility; 500 feet of a city-owned recreation center or city-owned outdoor pool. Council member Black approved direct filing this item on 4-11-19.
No items have been called out. Miss anything. All right, ma'am. Secretary, will you please put the first item on our screens? And, Councilwoman Sussman, will you please put Council Bill 349 on the floor? Certainly. I move that council bill 19 dash 0349 be placed upon final consideration and do pass. It has been moved. Can I get a second? It has been moved and seconded questions and comments by members of Council Council in Black. Thank you, Mr. President. I'm sorry to take time away from tonight's very important meeting, but an incredible amount of energy has gone into this extremely modest compromise, and it's been quite an experience. I'm not even sure how the vote will go tonight, especially with certain absences, but I've got quite a few things I'd like to say about it. I've been asked why I even bother to work on this issue, and there are four reasons. The first reason is the voters. I feel like there's a disconnect with our voters. Millennials are Denver's largest demographic group. I think we've seen that in our recent elections and they overwhelming whelming support this industry. Denver voters have approved multiple marijuana measures, both locally and at the state level. Amendment 64 passed in a landslide with two thirds of the Denver voters in support, with some of the highest support in District one and District ten. In November of 2016 over Denver, voters approved the neighborhood supported social consumption pilot program. And we need. To honor that. The second reason I've worked on this is kids. The purpose of this initiative was to protect kids from seeing and smelling consumption in parks, on sidewalks, the 16th Street Mall and along our rivers. There are multiple protections in place to protect kids in neighborhoods, including the fact that neighborhood support is needed, which will greatly restrict what neighborhoods are available, and give communities power additional protections for kids and neighborhoods, including a required public hearing. The fact that consumption cannot be visible from the outside, unlike a bar and signage, cannot indicate that there is consumption going on inside. All of these things protect kids. I'm really perplexed by people who are opposing this in the name of kids. It seems to me that they would be in support of concealing consumption from kids by opposing it. Are they saying that they're okay with people smoking pot in our parks? I find that completely illogical. I'm also perplexed why, in the name of protecting kids, we don't hear from the same people about bars being next to schools or our general acceptance and celebration of alcohol, which is a far more widespread and dangerous product, especially for kids. I have the feeling that most of the people opposed are actually marijuana prohibitionists who still oppose legalization and Amendment 64. So they come out in force to oppose all things marijuana, no matter how impractical. The third reason I've continued to work on this is business fairness. This industry is far more regulated, restricted and taxed than any other industry. We collect a lot of tax revenue, which we all welcome. This council voted unanimously to increase the marijuana sales tax to fund affordable housing, and I presume we all hope that those revenues will go up. It seems contrary to me that we heavily taxed the industry. We welcome sales to tourists, but we won't give them a legal place to consume. The fourth reason I pursued this is the process. There was a four part process. The first part was when voters approved the law. The second part was excise and license. After their advisory committee, they added restrictions over the objections of many, including the proponents, who believe that the setbacks are frustrating the intent of the voter approved initiative. The task force unanimously agreed that the distance requirements were preventing prospective businesses from finding a viable and available location, and the task force recommended either eliminating the added setbacks or creating an exemption. After six committee meetings, council members were not supportive of the task force recommendation, but there was support for this very modest compromise to reduce the added setbacks to 500 feet while maintaining the 1000 foot setback from schools. For those council members who are wanting to wait until the state hospitality law passes. I do hope you understand that the state law includes a business model exactly like the one that Denver's voters approved. The state law will not provide any guidance on how Denver should regulate, nor does it create setbacks. The state law does provide another business model allowing consumption in stores. So for those council members who are opposed because they don't like this voter approved business model, I wonder if you'll be leading the charge for the city to adopt consumption in some of our over 250 stores across the city. And with that, a reminder that this proposal is more restrictive than the federal drug free zone law. The intent of the voter approved initiative was to protect communities and children from seeing and spelling public consumption, and that by reducing the added setbacks with this modest compromise, some businesses will have the opportunity to find a location and provide that out of public view opportunity for our taxpaying consumers. I hope you will consider supporting this. Thank you, Councilwoman Black. Councilwoman Sussman. Was it councilman before that? You were next. Okay. Thank you very. Much. I was able to serve on the task force for this particular ordinance. And yes, it was the general consensus of the task force that there were restrictions that thwarted the will of the voters. And the outcome has made it evident since there are only two social consumption businesses in the city. The task force was made up of many voices on both all sides of the perspective. Then importantly, the neighborhood representatives agreed that the distance requirements were too restrictive, most significantly because they continued the concentration of marijuana businesses in minority and low income neighborhoods. One needs merely to look at the maps to see how it is perpetuated by the thousand foot restrictions. There are also many other restrictions that were not part of the ballot issue. I think that the the task force was made up of many folks thinking about what we should do, and particularly for the safety of children, certainly was top of our mind. Reminded me a little bit about the short term rentals where we worked on it forever, but we also established an advisory group for short term rentals so that they could sort of follow as the ordinance goes, pass and tweak it as we go along, which we have with short term rentals, and perhaps we might be able to do something like that if this ordinance passed. Thank you. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. Councilwoman Cannick. Thank you, Mr. President. I just made an extensive comments last week, so I will reference those about the evidence in terms of marijuana. Risk is mostly determined by, for younger kids, their home environment, their level of parental contact, and their level of involvement in activities. And for older children, the biggest determinant to deter kids is based on their peer group as well as that parental involvement again. So there is really strong evidence on how to deter children from marijuana use, and none of it has to do with the distance by which something is inside of a building from them. But so I will reference all of that from last week. But I just have one question for our legislative counsel, if I may, Ms.. Crawford, if you could answer for me. So if this ordinance does not pass tonight, so the ordinance stays as it was passed by voters, and then the rules that were passed by excise and license are challenged based on the fact that they may not be within the authority of the voters. In terms of, you know, if a court were to decide that, what would be the result if those rules were struck down? What would the distance requirements be if the if the rules were struck down by a court? Kirsten Crawford Legislative Council. So the question you present is, you know, analyzing a litigation claim. And I think, you know, certainly there could be a viable claim that was brought that talks about the rules, frustrating the intent of the initiative. But the outcome is up in the air and we don't know what a court would do. And we don't know at this point what what the evidence would show in a court's mind. But I guess the the underlying question that you're also asking is how would someone frame a claim more so if if the rules were struck down, would there be any distance requirement from day care centers, from pools if those rules were found to not be in compliance and they were struck down? The reason it's a it's a complicated question, and it is something that I can't step in the shoes of the court and determine where they would go, whether they would determine whether they have the authority to permanently enjoying the city from from enforcing the rules. I suppose that could happen. Okay. Let's let's do the question in reverse then. So my I would posit that we're at risk we are at risk of the rules being struck down altogether, which would mean the only distance requirement would be schools. You're not you don't want to weigh in on the odds of that. And I understand, but it's a possibility if we pass this ordinance tonight. Then what we have, the ordinance will have distance requirements in it and the rulemaking process becomes. Yeah that that's right. I think there is at least an argument from, from your perspective that you're actually codifying this in an ordinance and then the distance requirements are something that only could be changed by council. Okay. Thank you. I just I wanted to clarify that and I realize I didn't do a very good job framing my questions. Right now, we have some debate about whether the department had the authority to pass the rules they passed or not. If you really like distance requirements, putting 500 foot distance requirements in the ordinance is much safer than having there be no distance requirements in the ordinance for anything other than schools and taking your chances with whether they're challenged and whether they're struck down. So that's the point I would offer to colleagues who really want to see some 500 foot who really want to see distance from daycare centers, pools and these other things. This is putting them in the ordinance where they can't be challenged, as you know, beyond the scope of the rulemaking authority. So that that's my poorly tortured legal question point. Thank you very much. Thank you. Councilwoman. Can each Councilman Espinosa. Along that same line of thinking to our attorney. How vulnerable would we be to such a such litigation if from this day, as we just acknowledged prior to this vote, that there are ample opportunities in communities of color and and lower income neighborhoods, because what then it's saying is that these social consumption opportunities, the industry doesn't want to build social consumption opportunities where they have no problem growing their product and that they only want to do that in more affluent communities. That would be sort of opened up by virtue of a vote. So, I mean, you can't at one time say there are opportunities that are just not where these businesses want to locate and at the same time say we're not granting the opportunity for social consumption was you know, so is a vote to not decrease the limitations really make us susceptible to any sort of litigation on that front. Kirsten Crawford Legislative Council. It's a similar question posed a different way, but I think there's not any way for me to determine what a court would do if a claim was was brought about frustration. I think a court would look to the evidence and try to determine what are the reasons that that the businesses are not finding locations. I do think to a point that Councilwoman Canete made in our at the time of the hearing that the rules talk about excise and licensing, having the authority to administer and enforce, and that perhaps this goes beyond that. But there's just no way for me to guess what a court might do. And would that be a 1 to 6 action should those actions have been made within 30 days of that rulemaking or. No, no, not likely. You might see it in the form of just a complaint or a declaratory judgment. Right. Thank you. Thank you, Councilman Espinosa. Councilman Lopez. Thank you. Actually, my question was addressed in the last line of questioning. So thank you. All right. I don't see anybody else in the queue. All right. Well, before we vote, I'll just end by saying, first of all, thank you to Councilwoman Black. We had a lot of task force meetings. We had a lot of committee meetings. We had a long meeting last time. And here we are again. So thank you for doing this, especially because it was called out in the ordinance that this was a part of the function of what we do, you know, as serving on the task force and being personally someone who did not vote for this ordinance when it first passed. I you know, I am a little surprised that we're here struggling to even do this, because this was, I think, a very conservative attempt at a compromise to something where there is one business license. The voters voted and said, we as the citizens of Denver want this. And the system that we have has has led to only one. Maybe you could argue two, although that one quickly went out of business for now, I guess two licenses. And so I think that it is incumbent upon us, no matter whether we supported this or not in the beginning, to try to live up to the voter's intent as best we can. And I think that what the task force pushed for was an even more aggressive approach to open that door. And I think where we landed was about the most conservative approach that you could take the one next small step to see if that door opens. And I'm not sure that even by opening that door, we would end up with, you know, more than a handful of licenses citywide as compared to what we have for consumption of alcohol. So I thank you for for sticking with this and for bringing it forward. I will be supporting this. I hope that my colleagues will support it. And we can take that one step towards seeing if that makes a difference in honoring the voter's intent. So councilmembers, a quick reminder that any referred ordinance adopted by a vote of the people may be amended or repealed by city council only by a two thirds vote. So nine affirmative votes instead of the standard seven affirmative votes. Our counts of council are required to pass this bill this evening. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black eye. Brooks. Espinosa No. Flynn No. Gilmore No. Herndon No. Cashman I. Can. Lopez I. Knew. No. Ortega Sorry. Sussman. I. Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please. Because voting in those results. Seven, nine, five nays. Seven ays, five nays, custom bill 349 has failed. That concludes the items to be called out this evening. All bills for introduction are ordered published and we are now ready for the block vote on resolutions and bills on final consideration. Council members remember that this is a consent or block vote and you will need to vote. Otherwise, this is your last chance to call out an item for a separate vote. Councilwoman Sussman, will you please put the proclamation resolutions and for adoption and the bill on final consideration for final passage on the floor? Yes, Mr. President. I move that proclamations and resolutions be adopted and bills on final consideration be placed upon final consideration, and do pass in a block for the following items. Numbered zero 4 to 1 334327332333209330212299306307. And that looks like it. Thank you, Councilwoman Sussman. It has been moved and seconded. Madam Secretary, roll call. Black. Hi, Brooks. Hi. Espinosa. Hi. Flynn, I. Gilmore. I Herndon. I Cashman. Hi. Can each find Lopez. Hi, New Sussman. Hi, Mr. President. Hi, Madam Secretary. Please call the voting announced results. 1212. Eyes. The resolutions have been adopted and bills have been placed upon final consideration and do pass. Tonight there will be a combined public hearing on Council Bill 302 approving and accepting Comprehensive Plan 2040 and Council Bill 303 Approving and accepting Blueprint Denver.