HomeMy WebLinkAboutMerv_First Reading of the Cannabis Ordinance adjustments at the City Council meeting tonight, Wednesday, August 5 2020_RedactedFrom:Merv
To:Public Comments
Cc:
Subject:First Reading of the Cannabis Ordinance adjustments at the City Council meeting tonight, Wednesday, August 5
2020
Date:Wednesday, August 5, 2020 3:21:33 PM
Members of the City Council:
You have the first reading of the proposed adjustment to the Cannabis
Ordinance before you tonight.
All five (5) successful retail cannabis applicants that were legally approved by
the rigorous, expensive and time-consuming conditions, rules and regulations
set up by this very City Council together with the assistance of the outside third
party adjudicator firm, HdL, are now being unfairly undermined. This sudden
illegal alteration to magically expand the number of retail licenses to 17 in the
City is unethical and makes a joke of your process. This appears as an easy way
for the City to resolve and satisfy the baseless lawsuits from disgruntled
applicants that did not make the final top five (5) list. The message this conveys
to the world is that all you have to do to get what you want from the City of
San Bernardino is to sue them and they will buckle. Not only is this both illegal
and unethical to change the rules after we have already complied downstream
but also makes the city vulnerable to future lawsuits from the original
successful applicants. Seventeen (17) retail locations in a City of this size is over
saturation that devastated the cannabis retailers in Cities like Santa Anna and
Moreno Valley, etc. where they allowed for too many retail licenses and now
they are dealing with bankruptcies, vacant stores, blighted areas and increased
unemployment resulting from minimal taxes flowing to the city. This
encourages the illegal virulent cannabis Black Market who provide untested,
adulterated and impure product to be digested by the Cities citizens. These
illegal operators have the advantage by not having to adhere to stringent laws
from the State Bureau of Cannabis Control or the City and do not have to pay
the approximate 47% tax to the State, County and Cities on product sold.
If the concern is that because it takes about a year to complete the
requirements and construction the improvements security required to get to a
Cannabis Business License to start operating and receive taxes, then place
some deadline for a penalty of loss of the retail license if any of the five (5)
approved licenses do not perform and open timely and replace them with the
next applicant in line from the HdL Phase 3 Result List.
It takes about a year to complete the requirements necessary to obtain a
legal Cannabis Business License plus the time, effort and expense for
construction, building improvements, installation of secure systems, etc. to
start operating. So, if the City is concerned that any one of the five (5) legally
licensed operators does not open in a specific time frame, then replace them
with the next applicant in line in the HdL adjudication list. Do not penalize the
successful applicants by making it impossible for them to succeed in a City with
too much competition where no one wins, especially the City.
It is important to note that staff recommended allowing for more flexibility and
imposing deadlines on the timing of the successful retail applicants to perform
and open for business. I support that and the idea to impose a deadline for
those holding legal license to react timely or loose their license. Additionally,
staff was not in favor of expanding the number of retail licenses to those
applicants that did not qualify or were selected as the top five (5) by the
stringent criteria that staff created with the assistance of the third party
adjudicating company, HdL
I reiterate. The net result of this inequity is that the City is opening itself upon
for lawsuits from the successful applicants with legitimate licenses who have
spent, time and money to follow the very rules that this City Council
themselves set up and imposed which would be unethical and illegal. Most of
the approved dispensaries are in the South side of the City with everyone
competing against each other will cause bankruptcies, store vacancies, blight
and new unemployment with the City not gaining any tax income the way it has
happened other Cities.
Sincerely,
Merv Simchowitz
Managing Member
Pure Dispensaries, LLC