Your Friend Doesn't Owe Us a Dime, Chuck
Back in 2021, owners of recreational cannabis shops sued over the “community impact fees” (CIFs) in their Host Community Agreements (HCAs), arguing that CIFs were an illegal tax. These cannabis business owners asserted that their shops weren’t costing their host communities anything close to what the CIFs—usually 1-3% of gross sales—were costing their businesses.
The lawsuit worked its way through the system, and eventually, the Court agreed with the (already obscenely wealthy) owners.
The Court told the Cannabis Control Commission to rewrite its regulations: the only CIFs that would be permissible were those that were actually and quantifiably caused by the cannabis businesses; and, if municipalities had already collected CIFs, those (already obscenely wealthy) shop owners could ask for their CIF payments back.
In April 2022, Caroline Frankel, owner of Caroline’s Cannabis, filed a lawsuit against the Town of Uxbridge. Caroline wanted the $1.4m she’d paid in CIFs.
On November 1, 2022, Littleton’s town counsel told the Select Board about the lawsuits and advised the board to amend the HCAs that include this now-illegal CIF language.
On March 27, 2023, the Select Board was presented amended HCAs for MRM (product manufacturer), Littleton Apothecary (recreational sales), Community Care Collective (recreational sales), and a second HCA with Community Care Collective (for cultivation/manufacturer). Town counsel told your board that she and the cannabis businesses’ owners’ lawyers had negotiated new terms for these four amended HCAs. All the Select Board needed to do was sign.
Click here, when Mark asked why the Select Board didn’t have an updated HCA for Sanctuary and keep your eyes on the time-lapse in the lower left corner.
Nine seconds into the clip, you can hear you, Chuck, confirm town counsel’s statements about Sanctuary (not that she asked for your interruption/support) by saying, “That’s right” and four seconds later saying “Right” once more.
Then, town counsel explained that she and the lawyers for Sanctuary were still passing “an entirely new HCA” back and forth, which was why she didn’t have it yet for the board’s signatures. (A curious side note: nearly a year has gone by, and I cannot find any evidence that any “entirely new HCA” between Sanctuary and the town even exists.)
When Mark suggested that the Select Board wait to sign all five HCAs at the same time—so that they could be compared against each other—you laughed at this. Click here to see how emphatically you make the point that Sanctuary is different from the other cannabis businesses in town.
And I agree/d with you on this point, Chuck.
All the other HCAs had CIFs; Sanctuary had an “Annual Payment.”
In fact, I remember thinking, as I watched this March 27, 2023 Select Board meeting, Well, at least Littleton will still be getting something from Sanctuary.
Fast-forward six months.
By September 2023, I had reason to believe that you had used the power of your elected office to enrich yourself and that the relationship you had (and still have) with Jason Sidman/Sanctuary was (and still is) unethical. Those beliefs led to my asking Ryan if Sanctuary was up-to-date with its “Annual Payments” as per the terms of Sanctuary’s HCA.
Ryan sent me this:
When I saw that nothing had been paid for the last two years, i.e., since September 2021, I figured the “go-to-guy for all things cannabis” (you, Chuck) had “forgotten” to enforce the terms of this HCA.
Eventually, I did the math and thereafter, I wrote that your friend Jason Sidman owes Littleton a lot of money.
Well, when the Cannabis Control Commission rewrote its regulations, which will go into effect on March 1, 2024, the commission made it clear that municipalities were no longer going to be able to extract money or charitable donations or volunteer hours from “marijuana establishments” through HCAs.
While the original gripe was over those “based-on-sales” CIFs that recreational cannabis shops felt were unfair, the CCC wanted to fix all of it. The new regulations weren’t limited only to based-on-sale CIFs and recreational shops; the new regulations would apply to “Annual Payments” and cannabis cultivators, like Jason Sidman/Sanctuary.
So, Chuck, I was wrong.
Your friend doesn’t owe us a dime,
Jkb
P.S. How it went for Caroline: click HERE.