City Council / Lincoln Redevelopment Successor Agency / Lincoln Public Financing Authority - Regular Meeting

Good afternoon, I should say, everyone. Okay. Special study session, September 1st, 2026.

Good evening. Welcome to the City Council. Tonight's meeting will be televised and available on People Channel 18, YouTube, and Zoom. Those wishing to address City Council will be followed up on at the appropriate time. Those who submitted a speaker card will be called first. No speaker cards tonight. Followed by those in the audience and finally those attending through Zoom. For those participating through Zoom that wish to provide public comment, please use the raise your hand feature or star nine if you are calling in.

Thank you very much. And I would call the roll, please. Thank you.

Council Member Andriada. Present. Council Member Reedy. Present. here for the moment on route okay council member brown here mayor pro tim ecklund and mayor pearl here thank you very much

Thank you very much. Have them stand there and do it by themselves.

Very good. Public comment on an non-agenda item within the subject matter is your attention to the council. All speakers' time will be limited to three minutes. Let's extend it by the mayor. All comments and questions should be addressed to the mayor. And in most cases, the city council is prohibited from discussing or taking action on any item not appearing on the posted agenda. This is a game of brief discussion provided by the city staff. We have, anyone, speaker cards?

We do not have speaker cards tonight. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to provide public comment? I see no one. Switching over to Zoom, if there's anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand. I see no one has raised.

Thank you very much. In that case, we'll move on to item five, discussions of retail and industrial cannabis land use.

City Manager. Thank you very much, Mayor. Good afternoon, City Council. So, we have a slide deck for you, and maybe a couple of little housekeeping items before we get started into the meat of this. So, first off, just so it's in the record, in late June, City Council had a strategic planning session and established a number of ongoing and new fire And one of the items that was added to the priority list was exploration of additional revenue generation, including but not necessarily limited to exploration of a program to zone for a permit and regulate retail and wholesale cannabis activities in Lincoln. So I'm going to go through a bunch. There's quite a bit to discuss today and a lot to think about. You may not cover it all, and that's okay. One other little tidbit that... is a little strange about this, uh, is, um, a few of us here, Doug and myself and hope, uh, I think I'm safe to say that none of the three of us, when we got into our very different careers thought that we would be working on cannabis in our careers. And all three of us have spent significant time periods of our careers working on cannabis programs. Um, so, uh, although, like I said, it wasn't really something that I, uh, ever thought was going to come up for really since about the mid-teens. It's been an issue or a concept or prohibition or an accepting community sort of over and over and over again during all those years. So I wouldn't say that we're necessarily like the full subject matter experts, but actually the three of us, we probably administered every version of program that you're going to discuss today at some point. So, we will go with the deck here. I know. Bad angle. Okay. So, I'm going to cover some of this. Doug's going to cover some of it as well. We're going to talk about a little bit of the history of how we're here today, regulatory environment. We're here at a state and federal level. We're going to talk about revenue, which is, it was for a long time the sole reason that most communities even considered this. Business operator selection, if you were going to stop some work, city operating regulations, and then hopefully some direction from the council. So. You could go back, actually, prior to the 2017 recreational legislation, all the way back to 96, and up to 15 passes of the Compassionate Use Act. And essentially, this was the medical marijuana bill. And you may recall that there was a period of time in California from about 97 through 98, probably early through about 2017, where people could go to a physician and receive essentially a prescription, a card to cannabis for medical use. And for a really long time in California, there were medical dispensaries that kind of operated in the gray area of the law. Local land use, some places permitted them, many places they just kind of popped up. This happened in Sacramento actually quite a bit in the late 90s and early 2000s, where they were kind of businesses that were allowed to operate and ignored otherwise. But that tightens up a lot during the late 2000s, And then into the teens, cities start to really look at it as an economic development driver and a retail possibility. Fast forward to 2017, the ballot initiative passes in that year that basically sets up the framework for medicinal and recreational adult use regulation. The Department of Cannabis Control at that time was referred to as the Bureau of Cannabis Control. It was the state agency that was responsible for licensing and regulation at a business level. One of the cool things that the 2017 law did that the League fought for was it... Would have been possible for the state to just say, hey, with you, this is a normal retail activity and cities will treat it as such. But we lobbied pretty heavily to retain local control on a jurisdictional level to make sure that cities had a choice about whether they wanted this type of use in their community or not. Things have changed since that time. There have been a few different trailers that have tightened regulations on operators. The Department of Cannabis Control has grown as an organization. They have enforcement agents now. They have what they call a seed to sale, where they track every single plant from its beginnings to its harvest. They have very strict rules about how things are packaged and the safety tops that they have on any of the things you may purchase, primarily to try to limit it from children. Essentially, what we have now in California is a dual licensing system. If you want to start a business in California that's cannabis-related on any level, you got to get a series of state licenses, and then you have to get local approval, which is really what we're here to talk about today. So as I mentioned, broad local authority. If you're interested, I was curious because it's always changing, but in California at the moment, this is not an exact figure, but it's close. There's roughly 486 cities in California. Of those 300, it's still prohibited inside their jurisdiction. So about a little more than one third now have some allowances. You see that primarily in the Central Valley south of about Merced, from about Merced down to essentially the Inland Empire. It's a cannabis desert. North of here, you'd think that would be similar, but actually there's a number of allowances as you go north down and up. And then there's some communities that are coastal in nature that have kind of stayed away from the time being. But it seems to change every year. Yeah, so go ahead.

So on this one, one thing that's kind of interesting is, so when the state was going through and they were creating what has evolved now into the Department of Canada's control, they took an interpretation of Prop 60, Prop 64, which basically was trying to take away any kind of local control. So what they were basically saying is, let's say that you got licensed in Oakland, then you could deliver to any community in the state in that community because it had to recognize that. So our firm actually took the lead in litigation and brought together, I think it was 30 different cities and counties, sued the state and got the state, so it never got to trial because they mooted it out because they came back with an interpretation that actually preserved local control, which was a big victory, and said that no, there's self-determination with each city and what the That was somewhat key to its passage and how they sold it to to the jurisdictions, which is why even like folks who were delivering into communities, they're supposed to have business licenses. Even if they have a, let's say we allow it. You're still supposed to have a business license in a place that you're selling. Just like I have to have a business license when I provide legal services and Lincoln. So this would be important kind of factors into the discussion, but but local control. the state was forced to recognize local control kind of hesitantly, but it remains in a very effective sense today.

It actually operates, if you think about it, it's a more intensive process, but it's very similar to how ABC licenses work today, where, I don't know, Zach may do this now, but either myself or the chief sign off on an ABC license, whether it be just for an event or for a bar, You can't get that license without one or both of our signatures. So it's the one way where the state and cities do actually work fairly well together, where they will not issue anything. It's kind of like sending off the torpedo. You both got to turn the keys at the same time.

So did you say your stats, did you say about 300 of the cities don't? allow, but if you look at all the numbers in California, about a third of them do have allowance?

Yes. Okay. 486 or so, what the internet tells me is that 300 or so have either not taken a position on them yet or have outright prohibited.

Sean, what's the difference then between outright prohibiting and just not taking a

It's less now, and Doug might be able to speak to this because he works in more communities, but there used to be a time where you would have dispensaries that were sort of viewed as retail, but not necessarily approved as cannabis. Like, so they operated in a pseudo legal spot where the city could shut them down, but they chose to sort of just, you know, essentially look the other way. Some communities are much more serious about it. It sort of depends on, we'll get into the, what's really important about this discussion is we're really gonna be talking about three very distinct and different things. We're gonna be talking about retail, which is one thing, We're going to be talking about manufacturing, which is another, and then wholesaler distribution, which could be viewed as third. The stats I'm giving you are retail related. There are likely far more cities that have allowed manufacturing and other pseudo-industrial uses because they view them differently. And we'll get into that.

So just to kind of address the question. So like one of our clients, the city of Newport, it's prohibited. It's in the municipal code. It's a violation of the municipal code. There's penalties associated with delivering there. And there's no retail locations that are allowed. It's prohibited. Then there's places like Angel's Camp, right? So Angel's Camp has taken more of a laissez-faire approach. They haven't prohibited. They haven't allowed it. they're not preventing from people from doing it. Now, they would probably, that has more to do, and a lot of this is what we're going to talk about is your brick and mortars versus like delivery services. So they don't allow any brick and mortars to open up. That's what Sean was hearkening back to the medical marijuana or medical cannabis days, where people would just kind of like clean it like it was a smoke shop and just pretend it's something that it's different. So, but today, when we talk about taking lazy bear drugs, It's really just people allowing deliveries and not having ordinances on the books, and they just say it's fine, right? Unless you get pulled over because you have another issue. And then you have the third category, which is the groups who explicitly allow it. And then there's the different categories of allowing it. And again, even in retail, again, when you look at retail, we'll go over this. There's subcategories within it.

Just be clear, even though, as an example, Woodland prohibits retail establishment coming in, they can't stop their citizens from getting DoorDash to deliver it coming from a licensed place.

So technically, if they prohibit deliveries within the community, they could technically do it. They couldn't prohibit somebody from going to a neighboring community. acquiring it, and then bringing it into Woodland and consuming it, right? But you could have a prohibition. You could have a prohibition on delivery.

That was the whole case that we had against the Bureau. Except for medical, right? Which is what I just read on your screen, but medical delivery. Is that true?

There's nuances to it, right? So you can't prevent people from growing it, right? And you can't prevent access to it. So then it gets into some – now we get into the whole caretaker law. You have a caretaker going to pick it up, and then is the person delivering it your caretaker? Or, again, this gets really nuanced and stuff like that. Let's just say with medical cannabis, there's ways to get access to it through delivery to the city. In order for that person to be legally compliant, they have to have certain paperwork filled out. They have to carry that paperwork with them.

It's actually a more practical issue than a legal one. If I called Zach tomorrow and said, no marijuana delivery in Lincoln. He'd probably be like, okay, how am I supposed to tell who's doing that? Because it's not like they have 1-800 weed for you or whatever on the side of their truck. It's just people in normal vehicles typically, a lot DoorDash, a lot, you know, any of these other kinds of things. And so, you know, the amount of delivery traffic we have, whether it be in an Amazon carriers or DoorDash or any of the other things, you know, it's practically impossible, I would say. And Zach would probably also say, hey, we actually have some serious offenses we'd like to enforce today. So in general, there are some cities that take a pretty hard line on that. But is it practically enforceable? Not really. Why? That's really an answer or a question for you to answer. One of the things I put in the report that I thought might help frame your discussion, which is kind of this idea I've been having about policy that like when you're thinking about something, think about what's the problem we're trying to solve if there is one. And so... Some other communities frame it this way. It could be about consumer access. You might be a free market person and just say, hey, I think people should have access to things that are illegal in California and they want here versus elsewhere. Revenue was the driving force for the first number of years, no question. It was a lot less for a while. And there were tremendous opportunities and revenue sharing agreements in those days where essentially the industry was, I don't think this sounds right, but like essentially buying their way into communities on some level. And by that, I mean, and you saw all kinds of crazy agreements. We've seen things, we've seen tax rates as high as 10%, just on a local level, not including excise tax and all the other things. And then you have other models where it was percent of revenues. It was, you know, based on the amount sold. And that doesn't just mean retail. It also expanded to the other uses. So some communities decided to use that as a way to plug significant deficits. Some communities, for example, where I came from, we decided to use it much like we use the ARPA funds. The concept was only for stuff we can't otherwise afford. We're not going to use this to run our business off of. This is to level up the community. Economic development has increasingly become a thing as the industry started off with a lot of what I would call independent to start a business. What's happened as it's become a real serious industry is corporations, large alcohol companies, corporate entities that are even listed on the stock exchange, were starting to buy up and corporatize essentially the industry. I haven't followed it since I've come to Lincoln because we haven't really been involved in that, but I assume that's only increased over time. It was probably thousands of small businesses hundreds of large media businesses.

Can I expand on this? So one of the things that has come in is, so we'll talk about vertical integration, right? So that's when, you know, what company controls basically almost all of the levels. So the retail is how you get access to, you know, somebody who wants to buy, whether it's a medical patient or whether or not it's a recreational person. And from there, you have two different channels, you know, through delivery or If you control cultivation, so how things are grown, so if you cultivate it and then you process it, so that's your distribution, and then if you manufacture it, that's the people who make the oils or the vapes, the equivalent of cannabis vapes and other products that are oil-based, and then you sell it all in your store. famous brand Snoop Dogg or somebody who's like part of it or something like that. And so you'll have brand stores in terms of, hey, we sell all these products and things like that. And so what it has done is people started off, you had a lot of people who were in the black market who were trying to convince push those people out percentage of those people and it's not a small percentage because of taxes have gone back to the to the black market and part of it is some of these folks just weren't suited well suited to being business people and all the regulatory compliance issues and things that came up or or or it was just a better business model for them for a lot of reasons um and so it's what sean's alluding to is because of that and because of the investment that's come from it even through like hedge funds that will open up specific funds to kind of invest in cannabis you'll see large-scale investments in it that like a mom and pop couldn't keep compete with so it's like when right? They're offering all cash. They're offering 20% of upmarket sometimes. And then they'll buy up a neighborhood and then they'll sell a quarter of the neighborhood and twice the value to another fund that they own and then drives up the price of the homes and then same people can't afford it. Everybody's, right? So it's not, that's not similar to what happens in the business when the big boys come in with more money than can do. They'll buy out the people, right? Or convert them into employees. And then it gets all consolidated. So you're seeing a market consolidation right now.

So the other thoughts, as you're kind of thinking through, so we went through consumer access, revenue, and economic development. And there was a time, although I think the argument's less valid today where cities were really considering this as a way to address some public health and safety concerns about the black market. So there was this kind of free market concept that you could go all the way back to prohibition with, I suppose, where is it better if folks are going to participate in this activity, is it better to have it regulated and monitored versus the alternative on the black market side? As Doug mentioned, I'm not sure that that has worked out the way that they thought it was going to because it's different than beer or liquor, right? It's not easy to make those things. have a yield and fun fact in California although we can prohibit almost everything else what we cannot prohibit is I think under our code in California you can grow your own forget the number plant six six as long as it's in an enclosed structure and there's some small permitting authority that you have to get and then the last one is local control which is just you know this kind of bedrock concept of you know In other communities that have considered this, the question they've asked themselves is, when is the legislative landscape gonna change where we lose that control and it just happens? And wouldn't you like to make sure that you've defined what's okay here first before? You saw this with massage parlors years and years ago where massage parlors used to be super highly regulated during the Schwarzenegger administration. The CAMT got to lobby, got to him, I think, or at least lobbied for a change. And there was a law passed that basically said cities, you can't shoot, you can't. create a massage establishment any different than a hair salon or a nail salon or a statistician or anything. That's the same personal service in their mind. So what did you see? Overnight in certain communities, hundreds of these places open up in strip malls, right? So that's one other consideration as to what kind of problems we treat.

Can I add one more on there too? So, I mean, one of the biggest things is to basically have a record of who's involved in the industry and your community. It's never going to be 100%, but it can be better than zero, right? And so I think that has the potential of helping, like when the cities that I've worked in, law enforcement likes to know who's licensed and who's not licensed so that they know what to expect. So there is some value with just in the knowledge and being able to separate out people who are trying to do it legally versus people who potentially aren't.

I have a quick question. I missed the... the connector between if we if we did this and then like with a massage or analogy how does do it ahead of time prevent when it's changed or the regulations change that everything comes in well it doesn't necessarily prevent it but if you already have an established market in your community then it's already established versus more of like a need the door is open and you

Can I add to this? So SB 330 is a law that passed in 2018. It's in the development world. And it's about basically limitations that you can put on housing, on new housing development. The rule was that if you had a law in the books like Davis did, that you would have to go to any kind of development. It has to go to voter approval. Since it exists, but after 218, you couldn't add anything. So, so laws take effect in two different ways. Sometimes they, they recognize and grandfather and rules that were in place. So if you have some rules in place, then you might get grandfathered in. Then sometimes they just obliterate them. And then, but everybody's playing in the same market at that point. But you'll have built in, but you will have established rules. Let's say you approved it, right? You'd have built in retailers that have some market advantage because they have a little bit established.

Right.

So this is an important slide because I think that what people might generally think and what I would have thought before I got into all this was, well, you know, council passes a code change and finds its way under our zoning book and people come in and start a business. The end. Okay. There's a lot to it. So if you want to exert the right kind of control, and most communities want to make sure that if they're going to make this work, it is something that they feel pretty strong isn't going to blow up in their face later. We always recommend that, and the council's done this for a long time here, that anything that you do starts under a pilot format where you're testing out these rules and making sure that it works. So the program can wind down and no longer be in place if it's not working or if we have problems. It can be changed and amended easily so that you're not setting up something that may or may not work here. The program itself, there's a lot to it, right? So first steps would be developing an ordinance. We're going to get into it later, but that ordinance is going to have to define the where, the how many, the what, right? There will be application materials. Doug and I have administered programs in the past where we're not talking about development application plannings used to where you fill out a couple pages and some plans and we review it. This is deep. It's backgrounds on operators. It's pro formas. It's details of what you're going to do, how you're going to do it, where you're procuring it, to the extent you're paying taxes or fees to us as a result of this, how are you paying those? In the early days, cannabis businesses didn't have banking. They couldn't get into any FDIC-insured bank for a really long time. So this was a cash operation they would bring to cities I mean, quite literally hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash, and you'd have to figure out how you were going to, you know, 100 grand in cash is a lot of money, depending on the denomination. So, all of that's included in kind of the program development. The entitlement is a whole other part, which falls more into Nita's department, where this goes, you know, through places of pretty standard and typical use permit process, where It'd be similar to a bar or any other kind of use that the community is going to have interest in. You'll have that normal back and forth between the people who live in the area, different opinions for and against. The planning commission has to rule on those. Ongoing administration, so inspections, compliance. The state takes care of a lot of the inside. The building compliance is typically related to any kind of problems that may exist outside. Or as we were talking about before the meeting, it doesn't happen very often because this is so highly regulated and they have to spend so much money to get out of the ground. But you do periodically have bad actors that sell more than just cannabis, like we've had with some of our smoke shops recently. Yeah. Specialized consultants, so like, you know, obviously the key issues that are brought up during the land use process are security, you know, is this going to cause additional crime issues in the area? We can get into this later as you explore more, but I have generally found that I have not seen significant changes depending on siting and the quality of the operator in terms of just spillover crime problems like you'd have in a bar. Bar is like... Way worse, typically. Because most of these places, remember, you're showing up, you're buying whatever you're getting, and you're going home. Odor is one that always is a big deal. That's kind of changed over time. There's all kinds of technologies they use now with carbon filters and others to limit that, but that's a common problem. And then extraction safety review. Enforcement, so you have investigations. If you have bad actors, you have administrative processes for hearings about revocation of licenses.

safety review. Speak to that?

Yeah, so it's typically in the manufacturing process. So the process, I mean, they may have different machines now because I haven't looked at it in a couple years, but it's very similar to how you extract olive oil. But depending on what technology you're using, some will use gas. So fire's really involved in making sure that what you're going to do is not going to blow up.

Yeah, they use butane in many of those kind of oil extractions, and so there's concern sometimes that Not in a fun way.

The litigation component, so we'll get into this a little bit more, but it's typically people who quit paying. They're struggling. They get behind in what they owe the city.

What was happening for a long time is that businesses were coming in and they were agreeing to, I think, objectively absurd agreements with cities and businesses couldn't support them.

Some of us might just be good negotiators.

It only works if we get paid, though. But to that end, what's changed is a lot. A lot has changed. What used to be sort of tell us what you want when you do it has really changed over time because I remember like 10 years, less than 10 years ago, there was maybe 25 cities in California that had considered this. Now quite a bit more and more every year. And so it's not as scarce a resource. Although one interesting thing, and I didn't mention it, it's not in the slide deck, but interesting thing about Placer County. This is just what I've heard through the grapevine. There was a push at one time many years ago on the cultivation side of Placer County. And my understanding is that the county at that time kind of took a no prohibition sort of perspective on that use. And this would have been many years ago. That sort of continues in Placer County, not consciously necessarily. So right now, there is one dispensary in Placer County. It's in Colfax. It's a small little house. But other than that... There's, there's nothing in our immediate geographic region and the closest locations to you. That are residents we have to go to would be North county probably. But what we've also learned. Doug mentioned this, is that your local taxation structure is one thing. There are so many add-on taxes at a state level that I think what happened was for a while, the people that were going to these establishments were simply going to pay because where else are you going, right? And over time, as the market has become more competitive, businesses that can't absorb all of that cost or pass most of it on to their consumers die. And so you've seen a constriction in sort of what revenue is available at a local level.

And then when that happens, because I've had to enforce this, sometimes they'll sell to somebody else and they won't have gone through the process or you'll find out about the sale after the fact. And so then you have to go through the process of shutting them down. Yep.

So this last bullet's really important because... If the council is interested, we have to have reasonable expectations about what kind of positivity from a revenue perspective you could get out of this. I don't think it's inconsequential. I think it's pretty significant just because the market here is so quiet. But the bigger question you'll need to get to later if you ever want to really seriously consider this is what do you use that money for? Just dropping it as a general fund would not be recommended. What many places have done is they've upstacked police departments. They've funded, like Captain Eaton has a special response team. They've done more of that. So try to address more community issues. Some of them poured money into kind of drug education communities I was part of. We would have recreation programs be essentially free for most of the community. Some value add stuff like that. So Doug's going to speak to this, because this is really his world.

OK. So when I'm going to, maybe we should do. Do you want to do the next slide? No, no. I'm going to talk a little bit about the entitlements in order to kind of give a. You want to go to that? Yeah, maybe go to the, just go to this. Doug, did you pass it? You went the wrong way. There you go.

So just logistically speaking for the revenue, you know, you could consider this a special revenue fund. So it's not going into the general fund. It goes into its place for a specific use.

I mean, the biggest mistake I will say from a revenue standpoint that I've seen is folks who started paying ongoing salaries and used it to meet MOU contracts because whenever there's a reduction or when these guys have a dip in business, We have to pay a lesser amount, and you may agree that the market doesn't support them staying in a higher amount, and you'd rather have them viable than go away. Then it just puts a lot of stress on your general fund. So I think you treat pilot programs as pilot programs, and then – Once five years has gone by or something like that, then you can kind of reevaluate. But we do recommend, and my personal experience has been,

and not just for themselves. It's kind of like education and the lottery money. Instead of being just for extra stuff, like you said, school districts are budgeting it. And then when it's not there, then they don't have it. And then, oh, where's all the lottery money?

Well... Yeah, exactly.

Yeah.

So I have done this... somewhat differently than a lot of people. I will say probably the most of the state now has copied what we did, so we were the first ones to ever put this program together. It started, so IELTS started off with just doing the development agreements. They had a whole bunch of problems just with the development agreements because development agreements are not really designed for this use. And the bigger problem with contracts is their contracts. If something goes wrong and somebody violates them, you've got to go litigate it. And litigation can take two to three years from right now. So you can be going through a litigation process and They have a bad operator, and their goal is to stall you out. And three years, you have bad things going on in your community that you're having to deal with, and you can negate some of the stuff. So it really started off in Oakland and Berkeley, in parts of LA. There wasn't a whole lot of agreements or anything formalized, because that could be used as evidence in federal cases against them in prosecutions. And I only came around, they did the first development agreement. And then after that, we added the conditional use permit. And then once you get to legitimizing it, the business permit just kind of comes in. So let's go through each of them. So I look at cannabis in my way of protecting my clients and cities, like an onion. So you peel back one and there's another layer of protection that's underneath it, right? So let's talk about why we use the different tools, why the different tools exist. So, I want to go the development agreement, just because we've already kind of talked about it. The development agreement is the method in which I use to negotiate what we'll call public benefits because you can't really do a classic tax. Right? And so you negotiate, you're going to have this impact on the community. That's unique. And we're going to have to offset that impact if you want to do business here by giving back to the community in a particular way. So we're going to negotiate what we believe that impact is. So if you think about it as land development, it's kind of mitigation, right? So mitigation of the impact. Because there will absolutely be... more police involvement. There'll be more staff involvement. There's going to be time spent. And somehow we're not in the business of losing money, particularly for businesses that you're not otherwise required to allow to operate. And so you've got to recapture that. And again, if you're going to allow something, you don't need to let and add benefit to the community. So we memorialize in the development agreements the public benefit amounts and things of that nature. And ultimately, what's not represented on this is we would probably recommend if you want to have a program like this, you backstop it with a foul measurement that allows you to tax up to 15%. So what happens is if anybody ever gets out of this development agreement or they try to suit it and validate it, how the tax fits in later on with compliance. So the development agreement is how we memorialize our arrangement, right? But again, there's complications with speed relief when we're able to enforce it. So what can we do if I have a bad accident? That's where the conditional use permit comes in, and that's kind of what we added to the equation that a lot of cities have now adopted. So the conditional use permit, so you have two different approvals that you're required to have. If somebody now is not operating in a way that's lawful or a way that they're allowed to do consistent with our code and with their agreement, it allows us to go in and pull their conditional use permit and to shut them down as quick as like 30 days. a process that we still have to follow, but it's a public process. And even if they're in breach of contract, we have a remedy of getting somebody who's a bad operator to stop sooner rather than later. Because as somebody who's had to enforce people who quit paying, for people who just decide to sell in the black market, for people who lost their state license, the state is still very hard work, they're just going to say, yeah, you're good to do it. So the conditional use permit is our vehicle to go in, shut them down, and then we can go through our legal mechanisms to be able to get them to quit operating if they don't comply with the revocation of a conditional use permit. And then every business that does business in the city of Lincoln is required to have a business license, and cannabis are no different. So And we want to know who's operating here. And we want to know that they're in this line of work. Information is very helpful to police, at least in my experience. And so them knowing who's doing business here is really, really helpful. And so that's how we get them registered. And that's where you'll have to look at Are you only going to issue licenses for people who have brick and mortars here? Or are you allowing delivery, which is another component of retail? And that will dictate who can get a license and who can't. Why is that important? Because you can get in big trouble and you can get fined if you start engaging in businesses in the city that you don't have a business license to permit in. so you can have elevated fine schedules for people who are, for instance, maybe, I mean, let's say that you decided that only folks who have brick and mortar in Lincoln are able to deliver in Lincoln. And let's say, while I think compliance is very difficult, Some cities have chosen to use part of the money to do stings like once a year or a couple times a year or randomly, right? Maybe every three years. And so you'll bring people in and you can find them not doing it. So what happens? Everybody goes and gets a business license all of a sudden because they hear in the community that somebody got a zap. And so the people who are delivering now go get business licenses and you know who they are and you can figure out whether or not they're legitimate or not. And the ones who don't are the black, are typically the you know, using counterfeit numbers and stuff like that to look like they're lawful operators or not.

Would that potentially or inadvertently increase success of the business in town? Because you're kind of also eliminating some of their competition and then enabling them to do better to maybe be more sustainable?

Only if you're doing periodicals. that do periodic stings. Because people, particularly in the cannabis industry, we found that... And some of it's an education aspect on their part. We're not really thinking about it. But once they see people get zapped, you know, they go in... And business licenses are, in the context of this business, still very important.

Yep. And it really is a good analogy to use an ABC license as a comparative because... Those, much like those, these are such expensive licenses to receive from the state and require so much work and money. Losing them is really serious. We had an issue with a bar very close to here a couple of years ago, and it was a big deal. Especially when, you know, an ABC license on the open market is selling for $400,000 or $500,000 in some cases.

Well, and the same applies here, because if somebody comes here and they get violated for not having a business license, and we report that to the Bureau of Cannabis Control, it can jeopardize the license that they're delivering from.

Plus, we get more sales tax if the purchase is happening here and the delivery is coming. Correct.

Well, you get to point to sell stuff, but yes. So the business license tax is the most reliable. When we talk about things that could potentially go away in the future, this is something that will never go away. Because it's still a discretionary act, there are ways to sign an appropriate business license tax. But there's a lot of, it's not as straightforward as we're just going to have a business license tax. You really have to figure out who you're going to make an eligible for. So that's the first thing. The most important thing is the public benefit fee, which is typically negotiated in development agreement. And the backstop against that is about where a tax is approved. And again, the number we've used in every single city is 15%. Now, we've never had to invoke it, right? Because when you get the development agreement, the public benefit fee exempts you from having to pay the default tax. But what we also can potentially use it as the people who are delivering in the community who don't have a business license, who don't have a permit, who haven't paid the fee, you can potentially get them for tax evasion.

And all these products are also taxed at the normal sales tax rate or whatever you have in your community.

Just a quick reminder that we don't currently have a business license tax. We have a registration fee, so this would be ending. Right. I didn't think we did.

And then cost recovery is generally speaking, just like in land development, we make those who are trying to go through the process pay for the cost of the process, right? That's going to be less easy to pull off today than it was when we used to do it. So, for instance, one of the main ways originally that we went through is we would get so many. So I'll give you an example of the city of Turlock, which we ran the program. And to even apply and have us review your thing, you had to pay $25,000 non-refundable because we were just trying to figure out a way to not have 200 applications to go through and really get people who were serious. And we still got 28 to 30 that paid $25,000 for us to review. That process, I don't think could happen today. But you could certainly make sure that the cost recovery for those who are approved that they pay for it just like plan development would as part of it. But that's more one-time cost recovery as opposed to ongoing.

I don't know if it was, Zach, you might know this, Sacramento or I don't know, somewhere nearby when this became a thing, They opened it up for all these cannabis companies to go through the process and they paid like thousands of dollars to apply. And then the county, the city, whatever it was, I forget, denied all of them. That was very early in the process. To your point, you couldn't do that now. It's good work if you can get it. You keep that going. This is where you talk about comparing 2018 to 2026 or 2027.

The landscape here has changed.

Was that Sacramento, Zach, or was that?

It wasn't the city. Okay. The city's been pretty much open arms to us. Right. Yeah. It was a cabin. I was going to ask you questions about that. It was a cabin.

That's what I thought.

Back to types of business, and this will be something when we stop talking here very shortly, you'll need to focus on a little bit, which is these various different types of things. Each one is unique and different. Some of them are very low impact. If you go by most cultivations of industrial building for all you know they could be making a widget of any kind um that kind of these days cultivation doesn't really exist very often and except for in rural areas outdoors it's primarily hydroponic inside similar situation you never they don't want you to know what's going on in there um And then there's these interesting businesses which are not really related to the supply chain in the same way. There's rigorous testing requirements of labs. Those are interesting economic development opportunities because they're usually high paying jobs. And typically the entry point for kind of low skilled employment is a higher dollar value for an entry level person than it would be for other kinds of similar businesses.

And that still falls under this license?

Anything that the product touches, essentially. So as Doug mentioned, mobile program is required. We bear the cost and risk for enforcement. So the idea is that we're going to try to pass that cost on to anybody that may be interested. we talked about the, we love pilot program. We love Aaron Lincoln because if they fail, we were just trying it out. If they are successful, then we just delete the word pilot program. Um, and, um,

um touched on this um so there's a number of different ways that you regulate it of course um but in each i think the key there is you can start to get a sense of just how many decisions you actually have to make it's not just

And then this is the last slide, which is kind of just a start for your discussion. So do you want us to continue on this path and start to frame some things for you to actually review, i.e. standards, codes, etc. ? to preserve the option of a tax measure for a future ballot down the road? What business types of interested? And the most important thing, especially on a pilot program, and our kind of joint recommendation would be that you're really careful about limiting the number. So, you know, I don't think there's any kind of theory as to what makes sense. But in a community of Lincoln's size, given that we don't really have anything else regionally, you know, I don't see a reason for you to consider anything over two retail establishments at the most.

Well, at least two, though, because you at least two, because we've had bad experiences when when Effectively, the second one tends to police the other one. So your best source of information is usually their compensation. Businesses of all times do that, by the way.

And then... What business types are of interest? And should there be caps? We talked about that. And then what resources should be committed to development costs and revenue projections on this? Because the good news about having Doug on board as city attorney now is that he has real world, real time experience of what the market looks like elsewhere. So we're having these discussions with him. I think it's going to be really interesting if we go down this road, because it's a little different than if you're in Berkeley, for example, where there's plenty of this all over the Bay Area. Different negotiation. Here in South Placer County, where your closest competitor would be, if you don't count Colfax, would be a 40-minute drive or so, maybe more. This is a market that I think probably has some real interest, if I had to guess, from the industry. And so I think the negotiation will look a little bit different. To wrap up, in your agenda packets, I included links to some code sections that other communities have used for you to look at sometimes at your leisure.

You can...

just see how detailed they get and how specific they are about what's allowed and where. A really big question, and you may not want to talk about it today, but at some point, the most important thing is the where. This is the classic land use discussion. There's two philosophies. Some places have decided that retail and every other use should be in light industrial areas that are generally away from stuff. And that was sort of a cautious way that we administered programs early on because we just didn't know. Fast forward a number of years, there are establishments that you can go to that feel more like a Apple store when you walk in than they do a seedy, sketchy spot that you're thinking of in your mind that I have too. What you've seen in communities, in fact, Nita and I were in Indian Wells, Indian Wells or Palm Springs, I forget.

That was Palm Springs.

And we were in a very bougie area of Palm Springs having dinner. And we noticed that a number of retail strip malls in this area, which had really expensive furniture stores and nice restaurants, kind of style and quality that you would have seen of other businesses. So it's sort of changed over time where they've ended up in retail locations. The only area restriction, and I didn't check this before the meeting, you might remember off the top of your head, Doug, is the state does have one rule, which is, I believe you cannot be within a thousand feet of a school and make certain findings you have to make certain findings yeah but the stamp is a standard 600 feet from a school or daycare i believe facility so where children congregate so parks etc right uh video games yeah i got we got into a big phone with somebody of whether or not a baskin robbins constituted you know So, you know, that is self-limiting in a way, but 600 feet isn't as far as you think it is. And to use Council Member Reed's comment about the discussion we had on smoke shops a long time ago, is that if a miner is going to go 600 feet to a cannabis dispenser, they'll probably go 1,200 or 1,800 or 2,400. So I don't know that that's... I think the idea was to try to at least not have them hanging out around our schools. So that's, in a nutshell, a very complex issue that may take a couple of times of us chatting about for you to reach some sort of step forward or backwards. But that's generally the landscape of cannabis today. So just to add on...

Let's just say today you said you want to do everything, go full and make it happen as quickly as possible. You're still looking at a six month to year long process to get everything to the point where you've got people opening up stores and stuff like that.

Probably longer. It's going to take us probably close to a year to just get to the point where we could start entertaining the conditional use permit, which takes several months to get through.

So I want to be realistic, too, about just it's not like having gone through this a lot. It's not a quick process, at least not unless you want to take a lot of shortcuts. And this, generally speaking, in my experience, shortcuts on. I have two questions.

Number one, you mentioned you want to have two operations. Is that two separate businesses or is that two separate storefronts?

Two separate businesses, two different sets of people who are not friends.

Okay.

So you don't want one to really just be the sister of the person. You want them not to be each other.

And the second question, probably more for Sean or Earl's going to answer it. What sort of revenue are we talking about here?

Well, it depends.

It depends on the type of part, in part by the type of business that you want. If you want that retail dispensary that's high scale, you're possibly looking at more revenue than like the modular building. Or if you're looking at deliveries only, is that going to be more or less revenue than a storefront retail?

I mean, look, most of the revenue is going to come on the retail side. So you're going to have a disproportionate amount of conversation about that. It's also tends to be the only one that ever the public would ever have any interaction with. The other interaction is pretty, pretty minimal. It's vendors, it's people picking up, it's people leaving, it's deliveries, it's, you know, you know, stuff to either come in to make the product or sending the product.

Well, I know what you're seeking there. It's, Here's an idea. In Riverbank, for a period of time, I'll have to go back and double check this, but we were receiving somewhere in the neighborhood of $80,000 to $90,000 per month from our two retail facilities.

It's higher now.

Is it? Okay. So one of them was a really big operation that had a huge following, and they probably paid 85% of that, and another was a public benefit fee that they paid the city. Separate of that, we also had a cultivation industrial, that was a whole nother thing more difficult to come up with the number that makes sense because it's not retail. But depending on the scale of the operation, you could, you know, there are some communities that have, that generate millions of dollars. I mean, I don't know what SAC generates, but I'm sure it's tens of millions of dollars.

So most of the, so Dixon and Riverbank today, right, probably make between 1.2 and 1.6 million per year. you can extrapolate from that as to what that would mean. You don't have a lot of competition here. You have a higher population. One thing that we'll talk about when you take into your direction is delivery is going to be a huge topic of conversation. And how much you allow delivery can also affect your relationship with your neighbors. So let's say Roseville doesn't want it, doesn't they find out somebody from here starts delivering there and you'll get, I mean, I know because I get the calls, right? They may come and have not nice words with you because, hey, you got your operators delivering here and you don't want it.

Well, what do they do when Sacramento delivers? I mean, Sacramento delivers here.

Yeah, that's what I'm saying. I'm just preparing you for the conversation because it relates to your relationships.

Do we know what other cities in Boston County deliver?

As far as I can tell, there's no active prohibition or enforcement of delivery.

Roswell was the most active in terms of shutting down people who would just open up storefronts. Deliveries are harder, too.

Well, and this isn't my judgment one way or the other, but deliveries, I mean, on my street alone, FedEx, UPS, all the other deliveries, DoorDash, like nobody knows who, you know, there's so many different types of deliveries. Somebody walks up to your door with a bag. coming from McDonald's, but that guy's coming from the dispensary. Nobody knows. Like you said earlier, it would be really hard to enforce that and to know who's... You wouldn't want to know that either. No, you wouldn't. That's the point. Can I ask a question? I want to know from Zach, what kind of issues, because I've seen, I know where one of the places in Sacramento, there's a lot. I mean, it's like very nondescript. It's like high security and there's not a lot of riffraffs down around, but like what kind of things have you seen that might be problems in when you were in SAC?

Well, I mean, you're going to get the full spectrum. I've seen murders happen at these things where you have Asian gang members who decide to hit a same location over on 43rd Avenue. But the couple of murders that I've been to are literally at the same location. So I think it comes down to, one, the conditions that you impose upon the locations. Because I can tell you there's other dispensaries that are in downtown Sacramento that have never been hit before. And they don't even have problems from a call service at them. Right. So it's really dependent upon the conditions, the security measures that are put in, how hardened the locations are themselves. I do think there are some more issues that come with marked delivery service that we just talked about, where you get crews who will follow these cars, and they'll follow them home, and you'll have robberies of weed product. But that's where things are on. They're very well advertised. There's a specific location right off Highway 160, just after you pass El Camino, you're coming into downtown. It's right there on your right. Yeah. Doug probably knows the name of it. I do. Yeah. It's a very nice building. There's technically two. We don't have issues there at all.

That's what I'm talking about.

I've seen that multiple times. I've never been or even controlled a call for service at that location, so... My opinion is that as long as it's set up correctly and the proper boundaries are put on them, that's what controls the problems that you have on them.

Okay. Just in my experience. Right. Okay. Because that would be my next question to you, seeing that, you know, you're going to be the head of the police here and all the things. And so I know talking to... Doug, right? Our friend who wants to... David. David. He was telling me, and I won't say where, but one of his friends who's a police chief who says in public, oh, no, I'm not for it. But then they'll tell him behind the scenes, like, look, I don't care, you know, but I just can't say that publicly. So I'm not trying to put you on the spot. I really I really want to know what you feel about it. Like, do you think based on your experience, and now that's not Sacramento, right? And what you just said is very true. Depends on what kind of restrictions we put, what kind of, just permit, all of the security, all that. Like they just said, it's going to take a year of prep to get this thing ready to go. What is your actual opinion? Do you think that that Lincoln can handle that if we set it up right and it really won't be that much of an issue and it's worth the extra revenue that we can get for things? Or do you your honest opinion is just like you would rather just not deal with it?

No, I mean, I think the mayor and the vice mayor actually asked me this question at lunch and I told him that I was in support of it, provided that. the proper regulations are put in place and provided that the PD has input in the process. I assume that you would have. I'm sure we would. Yes. But no, I mean. I'm sure he has input. Okay. No, I'm just kidding. I don't. If you asked me that question 20 years ago, I would have said something completely different. But the reality is, is the state has taken a stance ford's marijuana where it is regulated much like alcohol just like sean said and so i think the whole country is starting to move that way a little bit i know they've even recognized some of that at the federal level there's been discussions for that so i just think it's more of a 21st century stance uh of where i developed that from and as long as it's controlled properly and we We'll need to do compliance checks, and you can't do that using patrol officers. Right. So you have to have a unit that can stand up like SRT, who does the tobacco enforcement and stuff like that.

I think it's really ironic to use the drug money to have law enforcement to enforce the drug. I think it's funny. Well, it's no different than... I know. It's no different. No, 100%. Yes, I get it. I get it. Yeah, totally. Yeah, okay, I appreciate that.

Another component that is sort of hitting the news these days, and I don't really know where it leads, although I think I do, is the Trump administration sort of made this push to reschedule World Campus from Schedule 1, which is up there with the worst of the worst, down to Schedule 3. many levels below. And that sort of sent, to me, that signal that eventually, on the federal level, they were going to make, they were going to sooner or later make a policy change. And so the question that I've asked elected officials in the past as a thought experiment is, you know, all of them have heard, 25 years ago, when medical, when I was approved, it was kind of shocking and crazy and, you know, Different. And then recreational sort of happened again when that one passed. The question I've asked myself is, if that's going to eventually happen at the federal level, what does this look like in 24 years? Are you walking into an Albertsons or Safeway or something like that, and there's a special area you go to? I don't know. I suspect so. The only idea is that if there's plenty of con arguments, if there's a pro argument, you at least have some modicum of control for now.

What's the situation with the banking? Are they able to do regular banking? Or is it still a cash business?

Are you talking to say that one more time? From a banking standpoint. They can take credit cards. It's just like any business. You're not dealing in cash. That's They moved away from dealing in cash for specifically the reasons. So they don't give. It's a legitimate business. It's a license. It's legal.

I mean, realistically, 60% of the fastest growing population is 55 and older population. And 60% of adults. So it's not a question of whether or not it's happening. It's just a question of whether or not you want to regulate.

I will add one other thing on that, too, is if you compare just anecdotally in my experience in law enforcement, how much violence we have at a bar that over-serves compared to a marijuana dispensary. The bar all day long is by far the higher location in stats than a dispensary ever would be. I think I've seen maybe three murders at the same weed dispensary in a high crime area in Sacramento, whereas you pick any bar that is a historical trouble location,

patients so we touched on what uh there's a difference between the ones that get hit frequently and so there's reasons can you share what some of those are why they're targeted more um and and then my second thought is i think um goes without saying that it would be It would be great if you had a report and you imagine that you would put together like a list of all the things that would be recommended for us to implement if we were to do this on your side and public safety and setting us up to be not that safe.

Yeah, I mean, I think just in my experience, seeing the one I'm talking about specifically, it's in a very dark area. It's in an industrial area. It's really kind of on its own, tucked away where there's not a lot of public view to it. Crime prevention through environmental design is basically it's lit properly. You don't have a lot of bushes around it where people can conceal themselves. So it's a myriad of factors, basically, of why this location, in my opinion, continued to get hit. Because I can tell you one that's four miles away, I've never been to a call service there. They encourage cash payments. Yeah, exactly. So there's a whole host, I think, between the experience that these gentlemen have, obviously, and then some of the things that I've seen in my career, I think that we can get to a place where we could, you know, if you choose to run a pilot, that we would put some good safeguards in place to give it a fair shot to make sure we keep our community safe.

One thing that we did, the program that we established in my last city, because it was a very controversial decision at the time, like I felt the heat under my seat the entire meeting. And it was sited in an area of the community that was the median income was very high. It was a very wealthy neighborhood. So what we agreed to do was monitor and report back to the city council for, like, I think on a quarterly basis for a while. Any, even if they're small-scale crime issues that we had that were associated with the business, whether it be, like Zach said, undesirables hanging out outside doing things they shouldn't do, breaking and entering thefts. violence, whatever. And what we actually found was that because of the security requirements that we layered on top of them, crime actually reduced year over year in that area. And for the first couple years, we had zero issues. The first one we had was some lady went in to go make a purchase and someone smashed her car window, stole her purse, which could happen anywhere, obviously.

Well, calling your purse in your car. Yeah.

And then one other little funny thing, I don't know if I've ever shared this publicly, but it's been years, was we start this program, right? And it's very controversial. And the Women's Club in That particular women's club, they're generally pretty elderly ladies. And so they're asking. They're very curious about it. And it had started and opened. And they said, you know, it's a little weird, but we'd really love to have a tour. Would you arrange that for us? So I called the owner. I said, sure. He said, sure, bring them down. So they come down. I couldn't make it. He calls me afterwards. I said, how'd it go? He's like, oh, they're really interested in how we set everything up. And they're really curious about all the different kinds of products we had. And he goes, you know what? Almost every single one of those little old ladies bought something and left it there. So here's here's my thought I what I struggle with right now is we're a long ways away from you know coming before us with the conditional use and deciding yes or no, do we actually want to put this in our Community.

If the council feels like it's a priority for staff, can you continue working on it? Then that's their best council decision. I struggle in the moment right now to be like, we have so many big projects that we're dealing with. I don't know if this is something that I feel comfortable with devoting a lot of staff time to right now. But I mean, I just want to say that. I don't know where I am with that.

It would kind of depend on how you want to prioritize its expediency. So the good news is that we don't have to make up anything. I mean, it's already kind of been made up. The process part of it, where the real work comes in, it's like what you put out at RFP or RFQ. you know depending on how you want to structure it some doug would probably recommend that in other situations like this we usually have two council members that are part of that process in this instance i don't know whether your opinion has changed we generally that's not a good idea because what was happening in the early days is the lobbying efforts that were happening were in some places were Most of the work ends up being kind of on our side, negotiating with the party, trying to make sure we're packaging together a product that is a project that's going to look nice for the community. It's not going to make people feel uncomfortable. Maybe the council, you know, look, we have a couple of members here that are going to have perspectives. Maybe the council wants us to go have some discussions more broadly with the community about this. Hey, what do you think? What's been interesting about it is you mentioned strategic planning. No, one really says much. It comes up numerous times at city council meetings with numerous people in room. That's right. And we have 2 people here today. I don't know how much people care about. I don't.

That's true. I guess once we do, once we do the RFP or whatever, and then the applicants are paying for the process. That's different than right now. Like, we're paying for you to do the work when there's other priorities. I'm not saying. I'm not saying absolutely just forget about it and don't do anything. I'm just saying right now, if they're paying for the process, great. Go through it.

But if we're expending a lot of energy, but like you just said,

the wheel. I don't know. I just feel like there's really big priorities in front of us right now. But that's just my guess.

You bring up a good point. One of the reasons I asked how much revenue we're talking about, because if we're talking about $100,000 to $200,000, okay, then you're absolutely right. But if we're talking now into seven figures, okay, maybe that, to me, that tilts the discussion. Because, okay, to me, that raises things up. Because the magnitude of what we can do with it, that's not...

So I'm with both of you because I'm pretty reserved, you know, in that aspect about trying to keep safety and I want to keep a community where kids can grow up with family oriented things. And to me that, and that's just, it's just in my own mind, the connotation that's just from, from growing up kind of thing. Right. And yeah, the whole country is kind of moving that direction, but still in the back of my mind, it's hard for me to get past. At the same time with revenues, possibility for the revenues and the safety guards and stuff that were presented on how they are running the business and set a little of these for me. And then of course, because we're facing an issue where we have some shortfalls and different things, I can be open to it because I believe that If we're at a place where it can be regulated well enough that it keeps the communities family-oriented and safe, then the money can be used for additional public safety things that we need, like fire trucks or different things like that. I kind of split 50-50, but I agree that I don't think that I want to have our staff spending our time and money on that unless it's like a huge, yeah, we can get so many for our public safety.

Well, I mean, I think like, let's set aside whether it's right for one moment and just like talk about money for a second. I don't know, Doug might know better than I do, but my sense is that in this particular environment that just happens to be slightly odd in Placer County that we're sort of a desert. The financial upside for a period of time is significant because we'll be the only one. And that won't always be the case. I will guarantee you sooner or later other communities of this, I don't know this for sure, but I've heard that other communities are starting to think on it a little bit at least. And we found that the ones that established themselves first were successful and the ones that are late. The ones that exist in Zach's former jurisdiction, Zach, that have been there a really long time are still there.

So what you're saying is we need to get on the ground floor of this? If you want to do it.

If you want to do it for some sort of financial benefit, then now is the time to really seriously think about it. Delaying it is okay. There's just...

I would be okay with pursuing it as long as I feel comfortable that the communities can stay safe in the process. Because I believe the revenue is something that will be very beneficial to our public safety and to our community.

Just listening to the level of expertise that we have here, I think is a huge advantage to us. and going, here's the new metrics and dynamics. Okay, now where do we go from here? But to me, the biggest thing was just figuring out what are we talking? Are we talking about significant amounts of money or not? And if we are, that's fine. To me, that moves the needle.

I remember what you primarily discussed today is retail, which is always the I mean, setting aside the product itself, the industrial manufacturing and distribution components are very real economic development options.

That have almost no community impact. Yeah. They're really just more of a public safety fire, depending on manufacturing, more of a fire thing. And then police can be involved in either.

Let me ask you a question and then follow up. When you talk about a million dollars, give or take, whatever, is that just on retail or that layer on top of that?

manufacturing and... Correct. You can layer on top, but most of the revenues come through there. A lot of the cultivation and manufacturing has gotten consolidated in a few areas. So you could open it up, but we couldn't guarantee that anybody would

And they have expressed being in favor of it because of the way I did it at Kent. And so not just workshopping it here, but being a real feel for it.

since I think Councilor Adirondack has to be here in a minute, but before she does, I wanted to just get one quick little temperature check, because if we're going to start to put some stuff together for you to look at, that where is so important? Because it really is sort of a one or the other decision. It's either that you're going to pigeonhole them into pseudo and white industrial areas, which is an easy decision, or Or always on the retail side, you take this more free market approach. If a commercial developer is happy to have you, good for you.

But Captain Ian was saying that that might be not an ideal approach. Please, if it's like an industrial area, then it might be more prone.

Yeah, probably. It depends, right? Like, if you have an industrial area that's on a main road that has a lot of vehicle traffic, it's probably going to be fine. If it's tucked back, you know, four streets back in an industrial area that doesn't see a lot of traffic, there's not a lot of surrounding businesses around it, you're only going there for one reason, and that's where you want to go.

Well, our industrial area has a lot of traffic. I mean, it's...

But what about proximity to... Like 65 and commercial.

So we did, we asked Jen to kind of pull up a map of the city and highlight some of the new types that are currently allowed within the city of Memphis to help provide some visuals for you.

Oh, when do you have to go?

I've got to be in Rockland at 630, so.

Okay. The only thing I was just thinking of, for you to be here, the sense of the council is, yes, have the staff continue to explore and bring top-level options for us. I'd like you in on that conversation. That's where you want to go.

Yeah. I mean, thank you for that, Mayor. I appreciate it. Yeah. I mean, I'm not going to be the one to say just stop talking about it, because that's what I told the residents. I'm like, I can't tell you how I'll vote in the end, right? I have a very conflicting... Like Ben said, like, you know, like I, I have my thoughts about marijuana. I have my thoughts about all of that. Um, and personal experiences with family members and friends and all of it, but I'm also not, um, government big brother. Right. And we have, they have the right to, we have the right to go through the process and have, and this is the first step of the conversation and then see how our community really feels about it because the years before this Lincoln has always been absolutely not, absolutely not. Right. So far, we don't we're not getting that vibe right now. Right. So the conversation we've had, like things have changed a little bit. So, you know, I I'm fine with staff going. I just want us to be careful that we're not spending a lot of resources, spending our bills on things until someone else is paying for the process. But sure. Yeah.

Yeah. Just for your decision making process, the biggest thing will not be staff time on the front end. It's going to be the time that they have to dedicate to making decisions. And how much you want to workshop that and do outreach in the community. That's the first part.

Yeah.

Well, I'm definitely for outreach to the community. That's always 100% first thing.

Yeah, I'll give my two cents really quick. I've done a lot of reading and research on this. And I think that like Captain Eaton, if you had asked me about this 10 years ago, it would have I would have had a completely different opinion on it and I can relate and empathize with all sort of variations of acceptance and feelings from, you know, addiction to morality to free market and, you know, just being realistic about the world right now and where we are today and, where it probably will be without knowing for sure with the crystal ball and the benefits weighing the pros and the risks and where it stands today. I have also spoke to a lot of people in my district and one person was kind of like, I just don't really like that, but I also get it. similarly to what I just stated against the way the world is. And then most people were like, yeah, whatever. Like that's California. It's everywhere. You know, I, it was just really like a thing that worry, why are you even asking? You know, it's people that I wouldn't have thought would say that, you know, it's like mom's my age or, you know, all it's just, it's different. So I think that, um, if it's done responsibly, it's not, and we're mitigating the amount of risks that we possibly can. It's not having an impact on a community. We're partnering, and we're also getting feedback from the community. I feel that it's probably worth it to, at this point in time, that we might have this opportunity because there isn't a lot in our area, but people are still buying it in our area. Why wouldn't we take the opportunity and... you know, and financially benefit from something that's already happening anyway. We're just not thinking about it the same way. So I don't think we're going to change people's behaviors necessarily, just where the money's going. So that's kind of where I'm at.

I apologize. I do have to go. Thank you, everybody. Thank you, Sam, for all your time. Thank you. Yes.

Thank you.

Thanks, Holly.

Sure. I think that the...

One, I think, first of all, four should be on the table, especially, I mean, we may not have an opportunity to capitalize on that given the market condition, but I think all four parts of the building process should be there. On the retail side, I lean more towards Palm Springs than four rows back in Industrial Park. I think, and what I took away from it was the more light, the better. And a high-trafficked, nice retail center seems like like to avoid the potential downfalls. And I think your point, I think there'll be people who will not like it no matter where it is, but also if you're going to do it and you're going to put it in the spot that has the best chance for success and minimal impact on the community, I think that makes a lot of sense. So, I mean, I, I went to kind of Holly's point before I wouldn't say sprint, but I would definitely say, you know, Walk the distance. Deliberate. Deliberate. Yeah, fast walking. Those guys go pretty fast. They do.

But that would be my instance. Before we put the map up, did you want to take a public comment, or do you want to do map first, then public comment?

Let's do public comment. OK. Is there anyone in the audience that would like to provide a public comment?

you'll get three minutes three whole minutes and you have to use it all i didn't write it down this time so i might have a heart attack three minutes um my feelings are not uh they're not a mystery i've spoken on this like i don't know three or four times um I hear everybody's, you know, the, like to Holly's point about, you know, family members, you know, I have family members that struggle with alcohol and you can buy that everywhere in this city within 600 feet of a school included. I don't think that. negates one, the financial benefit for the city, and two, just the fact that people should have, it's legal, it's a legal business. They should be allowed to have it in the city. It's legal for people to buy it. They should have that option in the city. And I just think it's, from a financial standpoint, I think it's irresponsible to look at the amount of revenue that other cities make. The example I gave before, Marysville, 2020, 2021 fiscal year is 978,000. They have 12,000 people. They have three quarters the number of police officers we do for a fifth of the population. There's a lot of benefits. Are there negatives? Of course. There's negatives of putting a Koi store on the corner. I understand the negatives and there's been a stigma on it for a long time. But I think you know, to, I don't know if we made the point, might have been Sean, um, that, that stigma is slowly going away. And while it's too late to get on the ground floor, cause the ground floor has been built, um, but we can still get in one of the prime, the prime suites, um, before the stigma is completely gone and the opportunity for that revenue is going to be gone.

Um,

And I understand everybody's, you know, the moral, all that. I would say that, in my personal opinion, as a city council, it should be more about what's best for the city before your own moral stance on it. Thank you, Jason.

Thank you.

That was close enough.

I can say something else.

We'll give you an extra 30 seconds next time. All right. Anyone else?

So I do see a few people on Zoom. If there's anyone on Zoom that would like to provide public comment, please raise your hand. I see no hands raised. Okay.

Thank you. In that case, Shana, we'll turn it over to Jennifer.

So here we have the path. This blue dashed line is the current city limits. The gray areas are our sphere of influence or areas that would be annexed. The green tree dots are parks. The purple things are schools of different kinds if they're elementary, middle or high school or charter schools. I didn't know about the daycare thing. I could add that later. But we have different types of land use. So if you look at this like, I don't know what you want to call it, this salmon color, this is commercial. Anything that is like a light blue is a public facility. It could be a school facility or city hall, anything that's a public facility. The purple is light industrial. Industrial is, I don't know what you want to call this, pink. And so there's areas scattered around the city. If you wanted to zoom in here to like Tulford's area first, you see we have this area. It's like in beige. This is like an employment center site slash commercial type use. in that you'll have like regular commercial. This is like the gas, the new gas station is here and then that's going to be where the new retail center is going to go. So that's kind of strip mall-y kind of. And then at the same time you have, you know, Ferrari Pavilion commercial here, which is strip mall that's going to have a daycare. So then that would

I think they lost that tenant.

Oh, they did?

I think so.

Okay. So, but that's commercial. So the difference between the employment center and the commercial.

So like your commercial corridors that like, so that 12 Bridges retail center, that's probably out of play. At least the one right across the street. That roadway is probably... 220 feet. And so you're, you're within those, some of those areas that are further down, you know, um, towards joiner probably, or, or would be in play. Most of your Lincoln, uh, Boulevard commercial corridor, uh, doesn't have much, um, key areas what you probably end up seeing is we've seen in other places is you see one smaller mom and pop that ends up in your downtown somewhere and then you see one more well-funded corporate entity in one of your retail centers somewhere usually um and they they serve sort of a different clientele some some of them are more like a walmart of marijuana and others are more like I don't know why I live that way.

You get a lot of good sound bites tonight.

We really shouldn't have recorded this, though.

And then, of course, you have Village 5. And what I'll tell you is that the big retail developers, really their view of this use has changed over time. It used to be they wanted nothing to do with it. They didn't want, many of their corporate entities that are their big moneymakers they lease to don't want to be in the same center as something like this. That's changed. We're seeing more of that. It's just becoming an integrated thing.

So, I mean, it sounds to me like, you know, let's follow up right now, that the council's view

a broader view of location versus pigeonholing it somewhere dark and rich. We can work with that. And then I guess the only other thing related to use would be I don't think we need to talk about land use as it relates to the other types of uses, because those, to me, make a lot more sense in light industrial or industrial areas. It just shouldn't be there anyway, so pretty simple. So for next steps, what we probably would recommend, we'll do some outreach and have some of these discussions just generally, kind of like we've done with the measure, where we'll just bring it up as we're out there talking to the community and get generalized feedback. And then I think what we may do is Doug and I can work on some very rough drafts of ordinances and pilot programs to present to you. Question for council is, would you rather do it in a workshop setting like this, which has some advantages and then it's a little bit formal? It says some disadvantages could be more difficult to get people to pay attention and attend. Or would you just rather have this discussion at city council meeting? It'll eventually get to you there, right?

If you're going through, like I built a matrix of those three, you know, what was in each or whatever, that feels like a more informal discussion to kind of go through those. Yep. But what we'll do is, and by then, people who are engaged will know.

Yeah. And we'll do a better job this next time. I'd rather, I really appreciate Holly's comments about sort of a load repairing at the moment, but I'm kind of of a mind that once we see a path here, which it sounds like we do, I'd rather just knock it out. Next workshop. You know there's regularly scheduled one next month we just come in next meeting will be going through code sections getting into detail, but it'll be with fully fled well pretty fully fledged documents that you can say great and then we'll schedule it for.

People to catch wind of it, I think, when it versus trying to track something that's like months apart to like. Yes, like.

So I think what we'll probably present is like a decision matrix. So it'll be a question. We'll give pros and cons. And then you tell us which direction. Because that will ultimately inform the ordinance. So you'll basically be writing. Think of it as a choose-your-own-adventure book. You make one decision, and then it takes you to a different page. And then we move on.

OK, good.

Any other issues, thoughts? No enforcement officers here. She'll be involved in this, I'm sure. I thought she was presenting.

Oh yeah.

Is it easier to chase down somebody under the influence of marijuana or alcohol?

It's easier. I can't believe you asked that question. I believe it's your problem. Oh, okay. Definitely easier.

Talk about the officer or the person he's chasing? The officer. All right, we good?