Recommendation to adopt resolution establishing a City of Long Beach Medical Cannabis Task Force.  (Citywide)
Item 19 is a report from City Attorney. Recommendation to adopt resolution establishing a City of Long Beach Medical Cannabis Task Force Citywide. Thank you. We have a motion by Vice Mayor Lowenthal and a second by Councilmember Austin. So I will turn this over to Vice Mayor. Did you want the city attorney first to go over the. Yes. And I did not need to speak. I'm sorry. Okay. That's okay. So let me go ahead and turn this over to the city attorney's office to kind of walk us through what we have in front of us. Thank you, Mayor. And remember, the council, as you recall at the study session a week ago, there was a request to the city attorney's office to prepare a resolution creating a task force to review a medical cannabis task force. So what you have before you today is the establishment of the task force based upon the guidelines provided to us last week. The the task force is has certain duties which we have made very broad. They include, but are not limited to recommendations on the appropriate number of locations, operational restrictions, methodology of testing to ensure safety, appropriate buffers, etc. is sensitive land uses and any other such matters that would aid the Council in their efforts to develop such a regulatory ordinance. The task force will consist of six members appointed as follows Each current council member shall appoint two members to their choice to the task force by notifying the mayor in writing of their selections no later than February 24th, 2015. The mayor thereafter shall transmit these names to the City Clerk for record ation. The task force will be subject to the Brown Act and all of the requirements of the Brown Act. The members will serve in a voluntary capacity and the task force will select a chair from among its members, and then at the conclusion of its duties, it will be dissolved. If you have any questions, I'd be happy to try and answer. Okay. Thank you. And so we have the motion in front of us. There is a motion by vice mayor along with on a second by Councilmember Austin. I should I should be go to public comment first. When we go to public comment on this, please come forward. I want to thank you for listening to what I have to say, and I apologize if I'm a little nervous. Not a problem. Just make sure you say your name for the record and address. Brian goes well and my, my address. Uh, five 933 Cherry Avenue, Long Beach, California. 90805. Perfect. A couple years back. On April 8th, 2014, the members of the voting members of our city approved to tax medical cannabis, I believe 74 to 26%. I completely agree on instrument implementing regulation and implementing a task force. The way that we had collectives in the past was a bit out of control, not necessarily looking out for the patient, completely more recreational than medicinal. I also agree on the non compensated committee which I would like to be a part of. There are true medicinal medicinal patients who need these services. Um, and we can perhaps limit excessive or inappropriate products such as BHO, which is hazardous, dangerous to make these products with solvents. Um, having more emphasis on CBD true medicine involving hospice and elderly patients testing against molds, toxins, solvents. Um. It will. Speaking of small business, trying to bring money into, um, facade development and bring just in the city in general, it will bring much needed taxes help small business growth. And it's happening anyways. I mean, people are still buying and selling and there's still these delivery services within Long Beach operating without business licenses. Um, operating on these websites under false pretenses that they are. Um, uh, how would you say like um, medicinal massage or, and certain things like that? I think that we can regulate, then come combat that sort of, um, illegal behavior and turn it into beneficial profits. And as a nonprofit corporation, these collectives should be donating their time and funds to community development anyways. Um, and then also some people complain that taxes might be excessive when in reality some clubs are charging excessive prices, retail versus the wholesale that they're charging now anyways. So that committee to kind of help regulate the um, I know a lot of about testing and things like that and I'm definitely interested in being a part of that. Okay. Thank you. Speaker, please. Hi there, Diana Logins. Speaking of transparency, I have given you a quote, some quotes from Mia Garcia. You have that in front of you. I won't say the whole thing, but the pertinent quotation is and just ensure through working with the manager's office that it's representative of all the groups that were said before. Now, that would have been the patient advocates, neighborhood associations, collective operators. Then he goes on to say. So I think that everyone on this day is responsible enough and thoughtful enough that the members that we select are from a diverse constituency that is brought to the table constituency. That means here. That means Long Beach. This. These are the people that, you know, care about Long Beach. The council was very and this is. That's not what that's finished with what Robert said. The council was very clear in its deliberations that this medical marijuana ad hoc committee was to represent all facets of the medical marijuana issue within the city's consist crew well constituency. They need to be stakeholders residents of the city. It's not supposed to be a group of people solely selected by council members to represent their individual personal points of view. This is no time to facilitate cronyism. The whole purpose of this ad hoc committee and I'm by the way, I say ad hoc because it's an ad hoc committee, I think it's going to get very confused with our group, which is the Long Beach Medical Marijuana Task Force. It's very similar name that they're using. So it should be an ad hoc committee. The whole purpose of this is to facilitate the democratic process at the very foundation of our country. It should have represented views from a patient advocate group such as the Long Beach Medical Marijuana One, a task force, neighborhood associations, collective operators and maybe the medical profession. Public Safety and city attorney and community development should be there in an advisory capacity. They should have the committee members should have a thorough knowledge of the subject and ordinance at hand. Otherwise, it's just going to get off to a slow start. This should not become a political football game when the health and lives of our residents are at stake. And I do appreciate councilman you're ranga. Councilman Austin. Councilman Ric Richardson. Council women Lowenthal and price for paying attention and considering this important enough to listen. Thank you very much. Thank you. Next speaker, please. Good evening, my neck. Thank you, Mayor Garcia, for allowing me to speak tonight. My name is Madeleine Johnson. I'm a civil rights and medical marijuana activist and also a cannabis patient for cancer. My concern is we have been fighting this and city council for the last eight years and nothing has been accomplished. I'm hoping that we can all work together with the activists, myself, Diane Levine, and others that has been fighting this. To be on the task force. This will make something happen. If you allow people from the outside who has no knowledge whatsoever about cannabis, how can they possibly tell us how to take care of myself as a patient of Long Beach cannabis community? We would like to see some collectives open where we have been suffering and we don't want to go to a lawsuit. Thank you. Thank you. Any other public speakers? Okay. I'm going to take this back to the council before I bring this bill back over to Councilman to Vice Mayor Lowenthal, to his maker of the motion. I just wanted to, too, for the for the public just give an announcement. So I received over the weekend an email from the chair of our Board of Health Commissioners, which is it's a board made up of medical doctors, health professionals, a variety of people involved in the health profession. And he had mentioned to me that they have been discussing the medical marijuana issue for many months as a as a group of health professionals, and that they would like to present to the council their thoughts on the issue as an additional piece of information that the Council could use as part of our deliberations. And so I just wanted you all to know that I received that email from from him unsolicited. And if if the listeners objection, I think they're interested in doing that over the course of the next few months from a Board of Health perspective. And so I'd like to also hear your feedback. If the Council is interested in that, I could relay that information back to to Greg, who is the chair of that group. And actually, he he himself is a is a veterinarian. But there's a variety of of other health officers on that on that board. So I'll throw that out there for for all for your for the input of of the council. Vice Mayor Lowenthal. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And I think that's a great offer and great suggestion and would probably contribute to the balance of the task force that we seek to have. So I would be open to that, and I hope that my colleagues would be as well. Council member, Austin. I'm sorry. Oh, you're past. Okay. Councilman Ringo. Thank you very. Again, I want to come out to commend the Council for looking at the task force as a as an aid and assist in trying to get through all the nuances of what we're doing here with with an audience, because it's very important, obviously, to to not only the the community, but the region as well , because it's going to have a much broader impact than just Long Beach. So we need to to consider that as well. I've got I don't know about any of my other colleagues here, but I've got a couple of calls regarding the lack of representation from the fourth District. So I was wondering if if I were to suggest that we can have a mayor I know the mayor voluntarily chose not to participate in the selection process, but since his office is in charge of the fourth District at the present time, that perhaps he can nominate two for the fourth District in lieu of not having a representative there. And if in doing so, would that change the the the ordinance itself if we were to amend it to include to represent a support district by the selection from the mayor, mayor or members of the Council. This is a resolution before you this evening and could be amended to increase. I don't think you could decrease any of the members tonight. You'd have to bring it back again for a new reading. But we could certainly change this in any way you feel appropriate. If the changes get too substantial, we're going to have to bring it back next week, but or the next council meeting. But you're certainly could approve this or as is or change it. Well, my my my my thinking on this obviously is to have full representation of for the nine council districts that we have here. And again, since the mayor is the person who is monitoring the activity to the fourth district, if he could be the one to select two members from the fourth District or at least have that office have two selections, as we know that the it's opened up in terms of the selections and from whom we can choose. But if it's going to change and and slow the process, I definitely do not want to do that. So just just putting that out there as far as whether it can be done. And if not, then let's move on. I also support the the the that the the Board of Health coming to the council. They could probably come at the same time the task force present this report to be certainly helpful there. Another discussion that I want to bring forward was the the task force in our in our discussions a week ago. We also talked about these buckets of money that that we're going to be getting. And I think it was Councilmember Lowenthal who who mentioned that there are paperless ways of paying for these products at these various dispensaries. And I didn't see that in the ordinance. So if if again, if it's not going to change the ordinance, I would like that included in there. But if it is going to change it, then I suggest that we put it somehow in the agenda for the task force to investigate methodology or other ways of payment that does not include actual exchange of of cash in some of these where you could have an ATM, for example, or a card where they go to the dispensary and there's no exchanges of cash. But it goes directly into into an account identified already by the city where it would go. So I would like to see that somewhere in the discussion so that we can minimize some of the fears that are out there in terms of these buckets of money that are going that that's going to be coming in and being able to minimize that that we're here in. Councilmember Your Honor, that certainly would be included under the scope of the duties in asking the task force to look at and also any recommendations from either the task force or the council could be included in the revisions to the ordinance as they come forward. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. And members of the council, if I can add, that was also one of the questions that staff were tasked with as part of the council's deliberations last week, and that it's on our list of things to. Follow up on. Thank you, Councilmember Councilwoman Munger. I want to thank the city staff for getting this this memo so promptly. I know that first experience in the five and a half hour study session and then getting to rewatch it to word for word, take down all of our concerns. I think he did an exemplary job and our office will get our comments back to you tomorrow. With regard to the fourth District, I also received a few calls, specifically from SBA businesses that are represented in the fourth District who felt that they would like some representation. So I would also be open to supporting Councilmember Veronica's comment related to giving them some representation. And since they don't have a councilmember, I'd be open to allowing the current. Do we call it the custodian of the council office? Administrator of the Council responsibilities. Sharon Weissman. To make that decision. If we're all comfortable with that. And. Councilwoman Tracy. Thank you. I, too, want to echo, councilman, your manga's concerns about that. We've received some requests for that, too. And I think it's I think it's prudent that we have a committee that's representative of the entire city. And I do support, Mr. Mayor, the group coming and talking to us. I do know that there are other groups that might be interesting and educational for us to hear from, perhaps folks who work in law enforcement with the FBI or perhaps the IRS, people who have had experience with these issues. And so if we are going to have an opportunity for different groups to come and present, maybe we can talk about kind of the framework of that in terms of the time limit so we can let them know ahead of time if they're limited to that 3 minutes or if they get a little bit more time. Just because I think it's important that the education be. Comprehensive and thorough. So thanks. Great. Thank you. Sounds good to me and council member Richardson. So just a couple of things. I actually don't like the idea of having a bunch of outside folks doing presentations here, because I can just add to that list. So I would say, you know, I mean, we have our own public health department. I would encourage them to weigh in and consult with, you know, the public health community on on how they would on what considerations we should be given when they come back and report. And the same as to law enforcement. I would love to see that come through our own police department and our local experts in terms of the representation in the fourth District. I think those folks called my office as well. So. So I would say just so we draw an exclamation point here. So there's there needs to be a motion to make this happen. We would need to amend the currently there's a motion on the floor by the vice mayor, seconded by Council member Austin, to adopt the resolution as prepared. So we would need either a friendly amendment or a substitute motion to change. I believe Section three of the proposed resolution to read the task force show consist of 18 members appointed as follows Each council office shall appoint two members of their choosing to the task force by notifying the mayor. Okay, great. So it looks like there's signal in there. They're good with that voice. Thank you. Okay, that's. That's the. The friendly has been made their. We have the we have a motion in a second on the floor. No other comment from the council. We've done we've done public comment already. So let's just before before we vote. Mr.. PARKIN So just so that we're clear, we've made the friendly amendment. This passes the resolution tonight, and then we have a timeline that's already in place that we're the names is going to be submitted by, correct? That is correct. That the names would need to be submitted to your office no later than February 24th, 2015. Great. So let's make sure to do that. And just as as a reminder to the public, we will not be our office will not be screening the names or making selections of the names. Unlike other commission appointments, the two names that you submit will be the two names that are brought forward. Okay. Thank you. Councilwoman Pryce. Motion carries seven zero. Okay. Thank you. And next up, we have. I'm 20.