Howie:

Good morning. You’re live on the air. Is this Cody Bass out of his closed session?

Cody:

Made it out of the closed session? Yeah, man. Just standing here looking over a airport runway thinking, man is this city hall. But then I remember, oh yeah. Wow.

Howie:

So you’ve, you just finished it with a closed session. Now you got to jump right in to one where the public can either be there or zoom in or whatever.

Cody:

Yeah, yeah. We have actually today, man, we are going to have a long meeting. We missed the meeting because one of our members was sick and so we had to cancel the last one. So we kind have two meetings in one today. Wow, man. But it’s all right. We’ve got a lot of things happening and so yeah, it’s going to be a long day. But yeah, closed session, we meet in the closed session just for things that are real estate or litigation, those kinds of things that we need to be able to make decisions that aren’t going to be privy to the public as it’s happening. But always there’ll be reported out once the final decision and things happen. So anyway, some people did to have an understanding of why we meet in the closed sessions.

Howie:

Now, by the way, I said nice things about Joe Irvin if he let you call before the open session. So I said, Joe, you’re doing a great job. Had he not let you call in? I can say, Joe, it’s time for another city manager, man.

Cody:

Yeah, nice. That’s right. Joe’s a great guy, man, Joe, we’re blessed to have Joe, that’s for sure. As the city managers that I’ve seen come through, and I think you may know him, but anyways, we really have seen a big change in the city, and Joe’s a big part of that, so I feel very, very

Howie:

Blessed. Hey, I get calls all the time because people, when they find out that you’re also a city council member, they go, Hey, that’s really cool. Here he is on the city council, but yet he has his own dispensary. And a couple of people have asked me, has he ever given all the city council members and the city manager a tour of your facility? And I said, I’m sure he has. I know you’ve had parties where you’ve had city council members pop in and stuff like that. It’s no big deal. It’s a usual small town kind of gig,

Cody:

Right? Yeah, no, most definitely. All of the council members at one time or another have come in, even with Wallace, the church, when they had a fire, we actually let them move in next door because it was right before we had done our remodel. So we had Phoenix Food Pantry move into where the bank was, and we had the church operating out of the dentist and our community center. And so yeah, everybody has essentially been through and even before I was on city council, part of the reason why I got on city council is how many times I had appeared in front of them over, well, now it’s 15 years, but then it was 10 years. I had really been up against city council probably well over a hundred times. And man, there was a will against trying to take out Tahoe Wellness Center. I’ll just put it that way.

Howie:

I remember.

Cody:

So it took a lot of policy and a lot of things. And so I really got to understand the city and also saw the need for real change at that time. And that’s what got me motivated to run. It was funny. I was actually looking, I think at LinkedIn or something, and it had my original quotes from five years ago when I was running, and it was really the need for sensible change from a local’s perspective. And I think we’ve done that looking back now five years. I mean, of course we have all these different challenges. There’s a lot of things that’ll always be happening as far as challenges, but there’s been a big culture shift, I would say. And it’s a good thing in the city. Yeah, I feel positive about it.

Howie:

Okay. First I want to say if that was really cool of you to invite the folks from the church that needed a place to stay, because I didn’t realize you’d done that because the church was on fire. And the second thing I would’ve said, man, if I was one of those parishioners, I would’ve said, look, the church isn’t burning this time, but can we come over to your place? We found by smoking some of your stuff, we found God a lot quicker.

Cody:

Yes. Well, there was definitely members of the church that had been coming to Tahoe Wellness before the church. Yeah. Oh yeah. I mean, what’s amazing is the amount of the broad spectrum of members of our community that we see. And we of course keep privacy and would never, ever expose an individual, but I’m telling you, from every single sector of the community, including law enforcement. And this has been since the day we’ve opened, and it’s because cannabis is such a broadly used and needed medicine for human people. So yeah, it’s used by everyone. And it’s not to say, I’m not saying everyone, but by every sector. When I went to Burning Man, it was the same type of thing. I was like, wow, the whole spectrum of humanities represented out here, even from the far religious, very sober here to help and heal people, and then to the far other extreme. And it literally covers, it’s amazing in cannabis in a sense, it touches every spectrum of the human culture and human people.

Howie:

Man, that’s so cool, because I never got a chance to ask you that. I know we have only a limited time and stuff, and your business has been around for, what, 13, 14 years now? If I remember.

Cody:

It’s Wild man, Howie, I can’t believe it’ll be, so January 2nd, the day we got the keys, we got our sellers permit February 5th, 2009, so it’ll be 15 years in January, which is just,

Howie:

Wow.

Cody:

It makes me feel so old. I’m like, what happened? But anyways, but it’s awesome as well, man. Where are we’ve gotten in? What’s happened? Yeah, but it’s pretty wild, to be honest. We’re more challenged 15 years into it in different ways. We were more challenged then because 15 years ago when I opened Tahoe Wellness, you really were looking at taking federal case and being prosecuted and possibly 20 years in the federal prison. So you were coming from an activist standpoint. It was not a business venture. It was about a movement and trying to change law and knowing that you very well were going to be, that you were going to be the target of federal prosecution. And because Tahoe is in the Eastern district and our federal courthouse is in Sacramento, it took many years. That’s why we didn’t get a dispensary. Tahoe Wellness was the first in Tahoe in oh nine because the activist and the movement was afraid to operate here because of the Sacramento courthouse and Modesto, they prosecuted a dispensary owner, and he got 20 years. Luke Scar Mazo. He just got out of prison literally about eight months ago.

Howie:

That’s ridiculous.

Cody:

And that was the same court that would prosecute Tahoe. And so that’s why it took a really long time and kind of why, what people don’t realize. But what’s intense is right now, now we are being more challenged in a way by the IRS still considering us to be illegal drug traffickers not allowing us to deduct our cost of doing business, which in turn is leaving us with major tax debts. And they used this to take out people that were legally smuggling cocaine in Miami and the eighties and these type of things. And here we are with the federal government coming after state legal and licensed dispensaries all throughout the country. But because Tahoe Wellness is 15 years old, we deal with it at a lot more magnified level, dealt with the audits and all of the things because of our age. And so it’s pretty intense as we went through being considered criminals. Now, we’re not even really considered criminals by the federal government. They can’t use a penny of the federal budget to prosecute us. But the IRS is still on take. So we’re still in this fight, but we’re actually, there is progress

Howie:

Getting the betterment.

Cody:

I continue to hold hope.

Howie:

Now, before you have to go, let’s plan on, seriously, let’s plan on some type of 15 year anniversary party, because I’m thinking that might coincide with the smoking lounge that you guys have built. It hasn’t yet officially opened yet, but we should. Let’s plan together some special 15 year anniversary. I’ll bring up some comic friends and let’s just make a party out of it.

Cody:

Yeah, man, I look forward to it. It’s going to be great. Yeah, we’ll do that.

Howie:

Okay,

Cody:

Let’s start planning it. Probably do the February 5th date.

Howie:

Okay. Yeah,

Cody:

Yeah, yeah. But hey, I’ve got the mayor coming, so I got to go. I’m running late and holding up the meeting.

Howie:

All right. See hi to Christie. She’ll let you go. Bye. And we’ll chat next Tuesday, my friend. Later. Bye.