Interject halfway through, a little more than halfway through and just really thank everyone for their incredible commitment and willingness to serve in this capacity. Well, thank you. Any other questions . Supervisor fewer thank you. Thanks again. Supervisor ronen hello. My name is ryan miller. I also want to acknowledge the excellent candidacy from this crowd. I also want to mention that theres some powerhouses on deck here. So standby. [ please stand by ] our veterans of color, low income, disabled, food insecure, many with Substance Abuse, with former incarceration and were experiencing transformative results. Were shifting bitter crow money johns to warm members of our community and these are the most vulnerable citizens we have here in San Francisco. Ive been working with the senator for the past two years to get this bill passed at the state level. Its currently on the governors desk and its received unanimous approval from the legislature. I also advocated for multiple cities and at the National Level. I have been involved with the decriminal nature movement. Im here really just to be of Greater Service to this beautiful city. Veteran voices are elevated in the halls of legislature and we mentioned access and how everyone in San Francisco can access cannabis, not my people. A lot of my people have to choose between eating and medicating with cannabis. So im here to serve as that compassion voice. I would like to answer the diversity question up front. Where i grew up, i was labeled as gringo, powder, whitety. As a child, i asked my single parent mother saying i love my dad, but why couldnt he be mexican . It would have helped me fit in as a kid. I learned about my privilege and that privilege has led me to the streets of oakland. I was arrested in sacramento this year for Stephon Clark and also deployed with the veterans to the pipeline protest in standing rock, north dakota. Ill see you on alcatraz this year for thanksgiving, for the sunrise ceremony and im grateful to serve and grateful for all the advocates here also. Thank you supervisor fewer. Thank you very much. So do you think when were rolling out this Equity Program and were trying to wrong right many of the wrongs we have done around the enforcement of cannabis, do you think we forgotten about our veterans . Thank you for mentioning that. Absolutely, and in the most mill tar listic country in the world, veterans are often an afterthought. Yes, i love the Equity Program, the original equity group that has brought that legislature forward, this culture forward. I think its important to have a separate pathway for veterans, and that doesnt disrupt the initial intention of the Equity Program. In the military, we have this culture of no one left behind. Thats what im here to do, to ensure that the veterans arent left behind also. And how do you think on the state level, with all these state regulations, that we can have our veterans have access to medicine . Thats a great question. With s. B. 34, we hope that they will find that any day now and were working with the state treasurer to eliminate the state medical i. D. Card requirement for veterans, something that hasnt been mentioned. Once you register for that state card, you forfeit your gun ownership rights. For veterans, thats an irrational choice. Okay, thank you very much. Do you have any questions supervisor mar . How important is it that diversity be on this committee . Absolutely. The majority of the veterans i serve are veterans of color, low income, disabled, housing and food insecure, Substance Abuse experience, and what im here to say if youre going to put a white dude on the panel, im the one you want. [laughter] since coming back from the military, like, you could find me when were protesting on the streets of oakland. Im eyeball to eyeball with the police. Im standing between the police and the community, inviting the tear gas and rubber bullets on me to buffer between the Violent Police and the december Desperate Community demanding justice. Im here to leverage those privileges to elevate the communities affected by these terrible policies. Thank you. Next speaker. Chair ronen, supervisors walton, mar, fewer, hello. Im a fifth generation San Francisco native. Im an alum of usf where i received my mba. I want to be on the Cannabis Oversight Committee because i want to be an access asset to the city of San Francisco and all of you, through collaboration, using my experience, and through my deep commitment to the community here in the city i love. I have experienced some judgment to provide a valuable voice on the Oversight Committee and hope to earn your recommendation today. I dont usually put myself out there politically like this, but i feel im uniquely situated in providing you support in creating the best environment for Legal Cannabis in our city. I serve as the chief Compliance Officer where i oversee multiple permits of cannabis, in cultivation, manufacturing, distributi distribution. I have experience and expertise, and genuine commitment to community and equity. I also lead our Company Equity and Public Affairs work. Its inclusive of all people. To help us meet our equity goals, we look to Community Organizations and thought leaders in the community to help us. Groups like Success Centers and Young Community developers are helping us learn how to best serve the communities we operate in and i think its a critical part of all businesses navigatinavigat navigating equity in the city. I provided you letters of recommendati recommendations. I was the c. E. O. Of the First Cannabis Laboratory in the United States that was not adjacent to law enforcement, that was created to provide a way for Cannabis Companies to self regulate and introduce Quality Control into the industry at a time where there was none. That is symbolic to the forward thinking to solve the problems that the industry is facing. I applied for seat 12 and 14. My relevant experience for seat 12 includes being an owner of four dispensary companies. I also am the owner of two retail dispensaries outside of San Francisco. Im an ally and outspoken person of the office of cannabis, and with the department of Public Health, i worked closely to provide analysis and feedback to create sensible policy for the citys equity goals and business. My relevant experience for seat 14 is i am the chief Compliance Officer, meaning im responsible for all relevant laws and government affairs. We analyze policy, we engage with our policymakers, and our legal team reports to me as well. This experience makes me qualified for seat 14 not only because i have expert knowledge in San Francisco and california cannabis law but because i have applied knowledge. I have boots on the ground with my staff everyday to figure out standard operating procedures, stra training, and to answer problems that arise that we work to implement the laws and the regulations that the state and city has put in place. We inevitably encounter challenges and on every white board in my office, it says find the solution. Thats how i want to work with you guys as we navigate this exciting opportunity to create a collaborative relationship with the board of supervisors through the Oversight Committee. Im happy to take any questions from the committee. Thank you. Supervisor fewer. Thank you very much. Thank you for coming today. Norcal, i see that you applied for the position that actually says that youre an owner of a storefront Cannabis Retailer, but isnt that a Delivery Service . Its a company that we have all different types of cannabis permits. In terms of retail, we have four applications in. None of our Retail Stores are open yet. All of our applications were submitted over 12 months ago and all are in the process. I think the fact that i have experience and firsthand knowledge of the complications of navigating the retail process makes me uniquely situated to represent the struggles that retailers are trying to open right now. We dont have a retail store in San Francisco today. How do you see the relationship between Delivery Service and brick and mortar and how can they Work Together instead of opposition to each other. I see brick and mortar and delivery as complimentary. I see that because i personally and my company have under taken a lot of research to understand consumer behavior. Consumers want interactions that happen at the dispensary level. Theres many people who dont want to travel to dispensaries or who are chronically ill and prefer to get deliveries. Consumer demand in the marketplace is driving that. I think that its important for all of the city retailers to remember and understand that they are allowed to deliver and that if they are feeling impacted, i think theres an opportunity to do education related to ways that they can expand their brick and Mortar Retail to serve delivery and the customers they already have relationships with. So, what do you think about having brick and Mortar Retailers, actually having a maybe pool of delivery people that are employees, joint employees of these retailers, that actually do delivery instead of a service like norcal. I think its a really interesting idea. It would be really exciting to get some people at the table to talk about it. Thats where i would want to starting start. To understand the laws and regulations of how possible it would be and if its something that people want to do, then to think about how we need to create policy to empower the businesses to execute on those Innovative New ideas. Okay. Thank you, how important do you think it is to have diversity on this committee . Deeply. I think diversity of not only humans, but of expertise and perspective is critical. You seen from all the people that stood up, people are bringing Different Levels of knowledge to the table. I think what the board is looking for outside of assets, to give advice is critical. Diversity of people, diversity of ideas, diversity of experience, its a great question and absolutely very important. Thank you so much. Any other questions . Thank you. Good afternoon supervisors. My name is aaron flynn. Out of high school, i joined the marine corps. I did a combat tour in iraq in 2003 and in afghanistan in 2004 after which i exited the service and was not in a good place, mentally and physically. The v. A. Gave us a lot of different options, pharmaceutical options to alleviate that pain and none of them were working. Fortunately i was lucky enough to land in humboldt county where one of my comrades from the service had grown up. I found cannabis to be by far in a way to be the best medicine i was suffering from. Very quickly i realized that being involved in cannabis is something i wanted to do in my life. It helped me and it helped a lot of my comrade from the military and many other people that were sick and had issues. So, i jumped in with both feet. I learned to cultivate there an outdoor greenhouse, indoor up in humboldt and i came to San Francisco to pursue a larger patient base, with a Larger Population in 2010. Around 2015, as it became clear that the city was going to create new policy and the state was going to create new policy, i recognized that as a cultivator, as a manufacturer, as a distributor, there was not a lot of representation on the advocacy level. In San Francisco back then, when you said cannabis, most people thought retail. They didnt think there was much production going on here and as you heard many times today, there isnt a lot of production, but i devoted a good amount of my time and efforts towards banning the not retail side of the cannabis industry together. I helped create the San Francisco chapter of the Growers Association in 2015. Up until now, i worked on representing the producers here in San Francisco. Theres not many of us, but were proud to be here in this city and proud of what we do. By default, we are craft and small. There isnt any space in San Francisco for these huge, you know, half acre facilities, so i want to make sure that those businesses continue to be represented as more rules roll out. Im currently the cofounder of a Company Called gold fill San Francisco. We hold a cultivation permit and distribution and manufacturing permit. Im proud to say 70 of our staff, we have four people at cultivation, and we hired our 8th at manufacturing and distribution. 70 of them are San Francisco district, and 30 are from bayfield. I am applying for seat number 9, which is an operator of a cannab cannabis cultivation. We spent every last dime and waking hour to navigate the complexity of the permitting process. Many of them lie with the department of building inspection, with the department of Public Health and the pl planning department. Its been incredibly difficult to get through this process as many of these rules are just being laid out and there is still a lot of uncertainty from the Plumbing Department on how they want to see the different pipes run, from the planning department, how they want things. Its taken so much more. We knew it was going to be hard but we didnt realize it was going to be this difficult. One of my primary concerns is folks who have not even started this process. I started in the very beginning of 2018 and i would say that im about threefifth of the way done with the cost and with the build and with the permitting. I truly believe that in order for many of the small and equity owned businesses, to make it through this process, they will need assistance from folks who have been there in it before them. I was sadden to see that the office of cannabis did not get their requested permit navigator position they asked for. I honestly thought that it was probably one of the most important things that the board could have given the office of cannabis as far as resources. We can do all kinds of Different Things as far as getting equity folks into this pipeline, but if theyre gummed up by the two year process that it takes to get through the planning department, to get through the building department, then all of it would have been for nothing. I truly believe that one of the ways that you see larger companies, both cannabis and nonget through the complex process is through expediters. Very unfortunately, not very many equity folks can afford expediters. In this position, i would focus on imparting as much of that knowledge i have gained from going through this process myself, to those folks coming behind me. I encourage the chamber of commerce for whom im a member. Many of the organizations that we work with closely, the office of economic and Workforce Development to focus on this. I really think there is a lot of focus and were ignoring some of the facts on the ground on how difficult it is to just simply get through the technicalities of d. B. I. And the planning department. I will say ive been privileged to engage with the Success Center and closely engage with the office of economic and Workforce Development. Im glad to see an Apprenticeship Program moving forward. I appreciate the way the industry has reached out to. It would be a mistake to create a Training Program that didnt address the needs of the employers and was something that was more of a blanket. I want to continue to engage as much as possible to get that perspective on the nonretail side of the cannabis business. Finally i want to say im grateful to build a cannabis business in San Francisco. I am not from here, my wife was born here, we had our second child here. There are many just as qualified and likely more deserving of this opportunity than i am and its one of my primary motivating factors to apply for this committee. As i mentioned, its been a difficult process to get to where we are right now and if im afforded the honor, ill bring all my experiences and pain points to create a more streamline pathway. I love operating in this city. I dont want to just be one of a select few nonretail operators that is left here when the dust settles. I hope we can see a Diverse Community of business owners. I really believe that is through training and engagement of folks interested in running these businesses and were the best suited, those of us on the ground, to give that knowledge; informat