Good morning chairperson and members Garrett, Vollendroff staff and guests. Lobbies are open recording has begun.
Thanks this morning, everybody will convene the caucus meeting for Tuesday, June 25 2024. We only have one thing on our agenda today. And that's an opportunity for the board to talk amongst itself about our board meeting procedures, specifically public comment periods and things of that sort. Because I know all of us have had questions and concerns about it. So this is the first chance we had to all be in the room together talk about it.
I think the first question that we all had was, you know, how long should public each public comment period we do four minutes. I don't even sure why we have four. It's just what we started with. And I think it was a holdover. But some interest in maybe bringing that down to three minutes, just permanently for every every speaker. And then I think the other thing we have to talk about is the ability to further curtail public comment, if we have a huge turnout, as the legislature and other public bodies in state government do. It just turns out, we've had probably the most permissive liberal, public comment period. other state agencies that are run by boards, not there aren't any others with the exact same governance structure that we have. But some don't do any public comment, you have to only submit in writing, which I think is is overly onerous and unfair, but so we're really at one far end of it. And I think it would be in the name of sort of smooth running operations, to be able to streamline that, again, on a regular basis, permanent basis, ongoing, as well as the ability to to restrict when it looks like we're gonna have, you know, more than 20 people signed up, which just makes for a very, very long, and sometimes contentious meeting, but so anyway, that was my thoughts. You all.
Fine, go, darling, do you want to go ahead, and we'll meet you today. Okay. So, David, thank you for bringing this topic up. So I've been on the board now, unbelievably, two years now. And I have to say that I was surprised when I joined the board that we had as liberal amount of time for public comment. And it's more than I've seen in any other state or county agency in terms of allotment of time. And I have to say, I'm also proud of the fact that the LCB offers so many opportunities for public engagement, I think we do an incredible job, positioning ourselves and allowing the public to interface with us and interface not just with a certain subset of LCB, but directors and board members, etc. So I think we do a really good job at public engagement. But four minutes is a long time, especially in light of the fact that sometimes we do have a number of people signed up. And as long as we are making clear that in addition to your three minutes or whatever amount of time that we decide upon, that people can still even though as you say it is onerous to write public comment, but if in fact, you feel like you've got more than whatever the allotted amount of time is, we still want to hear from you. And we still offer that opportunity. I think it makes sense that we consider reducing the amount of time.
Yeah, thanks for that. And also, I think, just to be clear, when we talk about all the different opportunities people have most of it a lot of it's outside of any board meeting, right. We have stakeholder outreach, meetings, online, in person, etc, feedback, surveys and those things. Now, I'm not suggesting anything of that changes or needs to be cut back at all, we're just talking about the sort of organized drying up of our meetings.
This is Ollie and I agree with what Jim just said, and I do agree with the length of time of four minutes in long and reducing it to three on the piece about and I know we have the authority right now to change the time based on size or anything. I don't know of more than one, maybe two incidents where that could apply. And I guess my question is, rather than being put in a bias situation of determining now let's go Lord and three Are you because of this? Or because of that? Is there a timeframe on the board meeting to where regardless, even cuz we are now dropping it to three. So if the board meeting is to go till 11, or to noon, it's just that's when I'm on a hearings and things. They don't go past the time of the meeting. Rather than trying to be biased and determined something based on number of people. Is there a timeframe where the board meeting in? What do you mean by bias? Well, it puts you into a situation to determine this particular meeting based on number of people, we're going to now drop it, Lord in three to take that away.
Yeah, that's not I mean, I think we have to have that ability. And and we have to trust ourselves that we're not making those decisions based on anything other than the orderly running of our meetings as the lead. I mean, we have to determine is it gonna be that that decision is made based on 20 people, 30 people, there is something more that goes into making that decision? I would think, well, again, I don't think there is for most bodies, but I think we could say whatever. Well, you know, we can and often do go longer when we have a room full of people. There's been times where, you know, our meetings have lasted till noon, and then even after that, in the in the room here after German. So we don't always have that hard stop, that that legislative committee might say, Should we have a hard stop?
That's where I was just gonna go. I was going to ask if we could have that conversation, because I feel like sometimes, and I've had a particular example, where we went over, I didn't want to leave because I felt like I needed to be there. But at the same time, I had a flight to catch. And so I had to make a decision. Do I miss my flight? Or do I stay here? And listen? Because I think it was I mean, it was a really interesting conversation. And I wonder sometimes how many other people attend our meetings, who have other meetings to attend? And so therefore, they have to decide do I leave this meeting early? And do I miss things? Or do I stay here and listen to the rest of this meeting? Versus if we had a hard stop our meetings from our from this time to this time? People calendar? It they know, okay, the meeting is going to end at this time. And I think only if I'm hearing you, right, it's like, okay, so then if we have a hard stop, we take the number of people, we divide it by how many minutes we have for public comment, and we adjust the time accordingly.
Is that what I'm hearing? Yeah, that is something that is more based on? Yes. But the hard stop to three minutes and right. And that people know there's a hard stop. So even if it's three minutes, if you want a new see, there are a lot of people you want a lot your time for more people to speak. But I think is better based on a hard stop, then number of people, but and we are already going to three minutes.
Right. And hopefully that helps overall. But you know, there have been some times where they've gone long. And I think there are times when when we want to hear that. And it's not about you know, that hard stop. And it's probably happened four times in the last three years, where you know, a single issue got to the point where we had much more than an hour of, of testimony. And in some of those cases, I think it's hard to say we're going to do a hard stop, you know that that means some people won't have any chance to speak on something that's a one time issue. Not something that's a recurring issue that they can come and talk to you about any day. So couldn't we in in those situations.
As always suggesting, like, we know how many people are signed up online. And we know how many people are in the room. And if we had a hard stop, we basically do the math. And hey, this meeting and again, you're right. It doesn't happen very often. So we're not even talking about this being something that we would have to implement very regularly. But based on the fact that we have a hard stop. There's 20 people online, we have X number of minutes divided in that particular meeting. The public comment is less than three minutes just because we've got a hard stop. I mean, we see it in the legislature all the time.
I mean, I'm not, suggesting we go to 30 second increments like I've seen there. But-
That could happen though, you know on those big days, and then I think the question is, why wouldn't we want to be able to use our judgment to say, let's extend let's have that conversation, we should, again, trust our own judgment. And, and, and not?
I think the one thing that like Jim just said, and known, and people know, coming in that no matter what the board meetings never go past noon or something. I don't know. Jim, what do you think? Yeah, obviously, an hour and a half to two hours. I mean, I think that that's plenty of time for a board meeting. And I could go either way, an hour and a half or two hours. And again, I think we're talking about a very limited amount of time that this would occur. But it does make sure that if I'm logging on, I'm going to be able to participate, because the meeting is going to adjust to accommodate the large volume of people within reason. I mean, everyone has to understand that they're possible. There's meetings where not everybody who comes in the room or chance to talk, we can't control that, right? Because like you said, you might have to then restrict people to 30 seconds. Yeah. And they always go back to your first point. And they always have the ability to submit something in writing either supplementally to what they said, In testimony or instead of you know, and testifying doesn't forego your right to submit something in writing.
Yeah, and you're actually pointing something out to you or reminding me We also host these online, so people can in fact, go back and watch if they have the camera.
They don't have to miss anything. Okay.
The heart stop, the heart stop be 1130 or noon. While we're having this conversation, a hard stop. I don't know. I don't know how many times we've gone past 1130 probably only a handful of times. Right. Okay, so 1130?
Well, I don't know. I mean, it seems so arbitrary. Because at least in my calendar, it's clear, you know, I don't have some I don't book something right after this meeting. So or that meeting, but but this discussion today, are we saying 1130 hard stop, and going to three minutes. I guess I don't know what I would say whether 1130 or 12.
I would say that based on how often we go beyond 1130. And 1130. Makes sense to me with a three minute time limit. But I could also be convinced at noon, but 1130 makes sense to me.
And I'm good when 1130
Alright, let's do 1130 In three minutes, and we'll just have to have someone do math. When we have a lot of people signed up and figure out what else we need to do to get the testimony in there. And I try to do the math part. I think I'm good with that. Well, we'll bring our CFO down for that. Have auditors come in and do that? And we can you know, we don't have we decided yet about a board meeting for next week. We have not yet. So as it stands right now rules team does not have anything to present. But let's just to make this easy have have this start not July 3, but the board meeting follow up July 13, July 17. So as of July 17th, we'll have the new rules in place.
But I just wanted to say on my own behalf here I don't think there's any question about bias here there. I don't believe there was I don't believe I should have bias in my decision before. I think we've gone out of our way, in the three and a half years I've been here, to listen to a lot of people in a lot of different forums and let people repeat themselves and unfortunately, even let people, you know, make threats and intimidate. And so it's unfortunate that some see that as as bias. I don't and I feel pretty confident about that.
But unless the reason I clearly was saying so that we're not in any bias situation, not implying that there has been anything else about board meetings or testimony or anything that either you want to bring up?
Okay. Then we'll figure out the next day here, what we're doing on the third, whether we were thinking about maybe doing a double, you know, Tuesday board meeting again, but then most he doesn't have any, they won't have anything, right? They have nothing. So you're saying we're not going to have a meeting? They don't have anything for us.
All right. Rules team doesn't have anything to bring forward if we do the third, not on third, where we were anticipating that that may not happen. So we didn't want to build everything and to get pushed. So we have stuff on the 17th, then I'd say we should cancel the board meeting and the caucus for next week.
That makes sense to that.
So I do have a question for the board. Okay, willing to entertain, of course, Justin's got a question for us. So as far as the timelines that you're talking about on the testimony, there may be something that we want to talk about around public hearings, because a public hearing doesn't have to happen at the board meeting, right? Actually do it just following a board meeting. So you don't have to send you guys here, Justin. Okay, it's time limit for a public hearing that way, everybody gets hurt. But we could potentially do something like that. Or if we do build in the public hearing in the board meetings, you know, we'll probably want to talk about making sure that there's enough time, that it's not an over packed agenda, so we give time. So just something for consideration on the public hearing piece, because that's different than what you guys were talking about. On the open question, comment.
I think public hearings have take precedence over the average public comment. And we, for the most part, have really short public hearings, really, I mean,
piled up so but what you're right, I think we'll just have to watch that when we have a public hearing on the agenda. That comes before public comment, we'll see how much time is remaining for who might be signed up that day. But But you're right, I think we front load the public hearing to make sure that has adequate time for everybody who signs up? And I think the question then is our public hearing comments also, were four minutes or we move in public hearing comments to three minutes, or just average public comment.
I thought, everything
I was gonna say I'm all for consistency. And unless there's a reason to consider otherwise, it makes sense that we would make them consistent.
Just gotta make sure we reflect that on all the documents that we have related to public hearings as well. So okay, good question. We'll do that.
Okay, anything else from anybody? That I have, on this particular topic? Are we going to have one final call for? Oh, no. Yeah, anything where it's now? Yeah. Okay.
So I just wanted to let folks know, and I sent an email out this morning, I was at a conference last week, the International Society for the Study of drug policy. It was excellent. It was very, very good. And it covered a broad array of topics. But I created my own cannabis track, if you will, within the conference, because there were enough cannabis related. There was only one on nicotine, which I did attend, but it did cover harm reduction and opioid and fentanyl and a whole bunch of other stuff that I didn't actually attend. But the cannabis track was very, very good. So I sent out this morning, one, the agenda of the conference two they had two different documents, one was a summary of the conference sessions, and then another on the poster sessions that were there. So I sent those out if people are interested. And as I meet with, like the research team, and Kristen and others, I'll probably talk more specifically about some of the topics. But please do take a look. And if you're interested, let me know and I can maybe find a time to connect with you about the conference. And I asked Dustin to forward it to anybody that he felt like would be interested. So if you didn't get it and you're interested, just check in with Dustin. And he can send you a copy of the agenda and the abstracts for the sessions. They were very good.
Great. Yeah, love to.
Yeah, one quick thing it was in Montreal, and I didn't realize the significant differences in the provinces and how they've each implemented cannabis, and Quebec is one of the strictest and so I had the opportunity to visit one of the retail establishments there. And it was just it was just really interesting to see how they've done it. And then there was also presentations on the outcomes based on provinces, and based on how they've implemented so what's really interesting.
Is Quebec, is that is product just kind of a brown paper bag label, or-
Somewhat. It's not quite brown paper bag, but it's very, there's not a lot of-
Cartoons, or-
There's none of none of that, none of that. And they're also state ran. And so all of the employees are state employees in that particular province. And so it's just they don't have the same kind of turnover until anyway, it was just very interesting.
To do they have mandatory training?
they do have mandatory training. And they say I quit equivalent to master training for employees in those establishments. And they have really interesting conversations with new users who are coming in and you know, what they're looking for and high concentration products. It was very interesting.
Cool.
Also, they, our myself and the internal LCB task force social equity- social equity met, and we've actually gone over all of the input from the community meetings of recommendations and suggestions with our scoring rubric. And we just we looked at all of the comments, and we've had discussions based on the coming up with a potential new scoring rubric to present to the board. So when we have that ready, and I think we are giving ourselves at least two weeks to incorporate from the meeting and conversations, to present and come to a board caucus to present what we've come up with now as a potential updated scoring rubric based on public comments. It was a great meeting staff is doing a great job on listening to the community, listening to what we have, what's being recommended, and to make sure that we are factoring all voices into our final product that we want to present.
I'd love to see the stakeholder feedback document. If someone can send that to me, that'd be great.
Okay, last call. All right. We're turned in, we're off next week, then nothing, nothing on Tuesday or Wednesday of next week, everybody. So have a great Fourth of July.
