City Council on 2024-01-23 6:00 PM - CITY COUNCIL CHAMBER Meeting Time: 01-23-24 18:00
eComments Report
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Time
Agenda
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Comments Support Oppose Neutral
City Council on 2024-01-23 6:00 PM -
CITY COUNCIL CHAMBER
01-23-24
18:00
58 4 4 0 0
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City Council on 2024-01-23 6:00 PM - CITY COUNCIL CHAMBER 01-23-24 18:00
Agenda Name Comments Support Oppose Neutral
H.13. 24-0088 APPROVE AN AGREEMENT WITH TIERRA WEST
ADVISORS, INC. FOR CONSULTING SERVICES TO ASSIST WITH THE
CITY'S REVIEW OF THE CITY'S CANNABIS REGULATORY
ORDINANCES AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERMIT SELECTION
PROCESS FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $58,000 FOR THE
TERM JANUARY 23, 2024 TO JANUARY 22, 2025
1 1 0 0
N.1. 24-0082 DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION REGARDING A
CHARTER AMENDMENT RELATED TO AN INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING
SYSTEM AND AUTHORIZING THE CITY ATTORNEY TO PREPARE AN
ORDINANCE AMENDING THE CITY'S MUNICIPAL CODE TO
IMPLEMENT A VOTING METHOD IN MARCH 2025
3 3 0 0
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Agenda Item: eComments for H.13. 24-0088 APPROVE AN AGREEMENT WITH TIERRA WEST ADVISORS, INC. FOR
CONSULTING SERVICES TO ASSIST WITH THE CITY'S REVIEW OF THE CITY'S CANNABIS REGULATORY ORDINANCES AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE PERMIT SELECTION PROCESS FOR AN AMOUNT NOT TO EXCEED $58,000 FOR THE TERM JANUARY 23, 2024 TO JANUARY 22, 2025
Overall Sentiment
Tim Dodd
Location:
Submitted At: 4:01pm 01-23-24
Good evening - my name is Tim Dodd, co-founder and CEO of Sweet Flower, a leading cannabis retail operator based in Culver City and operating since 2018; Sweet Flower operates multiple retail licenses without complaint or incident. Sweet Flower was the first dispensary in Culver City and in Chico, the highest scoring applicant in Culver City, and has been awarded best dispensary in Pasadena every year of our operation. Sweet Flower supports item H13 to move forward with the City's cannabis process, with the following notes:
1) the work effort required to move the city to a comprehensive licensing process is not unknown and best practices can be derived from a review of recent processes undertaken by cities such as the City of Chico or Redwood City. Most cities now follow well-trodden paths (requiring real estate as part of the application, obtaining prior zoning clearance etc.) in their applications, and it would not be a significant work effort to follow those established best practices.
2) 12 months is a long time for an expedient work effort. We would hope the city could being processing applications be early Summer 2024.
3) Cities that have had issues in the past have usually come unstuck not by poor process but failure to follow process. It would behove the City to ensure that a black-out from contact apply equally to City councilmembers AND City staff from being contacted or influenced in any way by actual OR prospective applicants. 4) Real estate is at a premium and there are non-operator/speculator groups that may try to intercede between operators and landlords. It would behove the city to prohibit percentage rents or equity-taking by landlords or master lease holders.
5) Consultants often appear in interviews between the City and applicants. As the city should be interested in who the actual applicant is, and their credentials, rather than their consultants, it would behove the City to restrict interviews to the actual owners and operators, only.
We offer these suggestions based on our substantive experience in similar processes. We commend the city on its leadership and urge haste, precision and integrity of the process going forward.
Agenda Item: eComments for N.1. 24-0082 DISCUSSION AND POSSIBLE ACTION REGARDING A CHARTER AMENDMENT
RELATED TO AN INSTANT RUNOFF VOTING SYSTEM AND AUTHORIZING THE CITY ATTORNEY TO PREPARE AN ORDINANCE AMENDING THE CITY'S MUNICIPAL CODE TO IMPLEMENT A VOTING METHOD IN MARCH 2025 Overall Sentiment
Marcela Miranda-Caballero
Location:
Submitted At: 6:27pm 01-23-24
My name is Marcela Miranda-Caballero, Executive Director of California Ranked Choice Voting (CalRCV).
Thank you to Council, council staff and the city attorney’s office for your work in passing Instant Runoff Voting for the city and the work that is to come implementing the ordinance.
Please use CalRCV as a resource as you begin your implementation process. We are more than happy to provide you with information, resources, and answer any question that may arise.
Thank you,
Marcela Miranda-Caballero
[email protected]
www.calrcv.org
Steve Chessin
Location:
Submitted At: 2:48pm 01-23-24
My name is Steve Chessin. I am President of Californians for Electoral Reform. I helped educate the City Council about ranked choice voting in January 2022 and worked on the passage of Measure CA5 in 2023. As I have a conflicting City Council meeting to attend this evening and may not be able to testify via Zoom I am submitting this eComment.
I am pleased to see that you are now considering asking staff to prepare the necessary implementing ordinance.
I urge you to do so.
I am familiar with the implementing ordinances adopted by the Cities of Albany, Berkeley, and Eureka, as well as the implementing language used by San Francisco, Oakland, and San Leandro, and would be happy to assist your staff in preparing and/or reviewing the implementing ordinance for Redondo Beach. There are also other resources available to your staff. In addition to the California RCV Institute that my colleague Tom Charron mentions, I want to particularly draw your attention to the Ranked Choice Voting Resource Center (www.rcvresources.org) as they explicitly help jurisdictions in implementing ranked choice voting.
Sincerely,
--Steve Chessin
President, Californians for Electoral Reform
www.cfer.org
[email protected]
Tom Charron
Location:
Submitted At: 2:19pm 01-23-24
The California RCV Institute, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, offers education and resources related to the implementation of the Instant Runoff Voting method. Our organization is familiar with the implementation of Instant Runoff Voting (also called Ranked Choice Voting) in multiple California cities and is available to provide additional information, best practices, etc.
Thank you,
Tom Charron
Co-founder, California RCV Institute
www.calrcv.org