 2022 and we're convening the meeting of the Massachusetts Game Commission. We're doing so virtually, so I'll take a roll call. Commissioner Mabrion. I am here. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioner Hill. Good morning, President. Thank you. And good morning, Commissioner Skinner. Good morning, Madam Chair. I'm here. Thank you. And good morning, Commissioner Maynard. Good morning, Madam Chair. I am also here. Okay, excellent. We'll get started today as public meeting number 394. We have a few short meetings ahead and we'll be hitting a new milestone. Calling to order and we're going to start with administrative update from Executive Director Wells. Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the commission. I'm going to turn it over to Assistant Director Perchban at the IEB to give you an update on what's going on with the casinos. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. I'm going to start today's report with MGM and at MGM they're offering poker tournaments every Saturday. The summer concerts have ended through the season and the big E opened up on Friday, September 16. PPC, they have a Parktoberfest starting October 1. At Encore, they're offering commemorative chips for September, which is the New England Patriots. In October, they're going to be offering Boston Bruin casino chips. This past Sunday they had the Sean McDonough Celebrity Golf Tournament. They have an Oktoberfest on the south lawn on October 2. They've expanded PIT 38 by adding six Baccarat tables, two PyGal tile tables. They added 22 stadium games in front of the sports bar. In October, they'll be expanding poker from 15 to 24 tables and going seven days a week. Any questions? Questions for Bruce. Can you just repeat the poker table situation? Yes, they're going from 15 current tables to 24 tables and they will be operating those seven days a week. The hours, I believe, are going to 4 a.m. to 9 a.m. to 4 a.m., but of course that would be depending on demand. Thank you. You're welcome. Any questions for other questions for Bruce? I'm moving in an excellent direction. Correct, commissioners? I think we're all nodding our heads, so thank you to our licensees. We know that there's a balance being struck here. So as on public demand as well as the ability to hire and all of those challenges, so thank you. Anything else, Bruce, that you have for us today? No, it's just been steady going out there. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Then, Karen, if you have nothing else on the administrative report, I'm going to turn it to the legal division and Carrie, Terry, you see us here, Deputy General Counsel. Carrie, it's my understanding on the agenda that you planned on going over the last stages of a regulation change that we are implementing. I think we happened to preside over the hearing on Thursday. We received no oral comments, but we did receive an extensive written comment right around 9.30 Thursday morning. With that in mind, I believe you've asked if we could shift this matter so that you can digest that. Yes, we could. We could change the documents properly and, and also answer any questions that commissioners may have in separate briefings and put it on for a meeting in the near future. And that would be 3A through E, am I correct? So that you didn't try to digest that eight page memo on your own. Does that all make sense to you that we give Carrie a chance to put it all into proper perspective and analysis. Okay. Thank you. Then Carrie, if you want to move to. Yeah. Great. Thank you. Thank you. So we discussed this last week as well earlier this month, as I'm sure you recall you voted to promulgate by emergency 205 CMR 244.06 related to the certification of the independent testing lab for sportsway during devices. The recommendation of the regulation that you voted on gave the commission the authority to authorize an entity certified as an independent testing lab pursuant to 205 CMR 144, which is on the gaming device and equipment side to also provide testing services of sportsway during devices in Massachusetts. So in your packet, our petitions from the two existing certified independent testing labs, GLI and BMM, or authorization to be approved to test sportsway during devices pursuant to that regulation 205 CMR 244.06. And I believe Katrina should be here as well if you have, although I don't see her, if you have technical questions. I'm just pulling out my documents here. Does everybody have a chance to review that. Any questions on. Okay, these are the. And Karen, these are the two that we anticipated right. Exactly. Yeah. I think that the request satisfy that discussion. Right commissioners. Yep. Any questions that on this matter. We'll move ahead. We'll need a motion. Certainly, Madam chair, I move that the commission authorized gaming laboratories international, also known as GLI and BMM test labs to provide testing services for sportsway during devices in Massachusetts pursuant to 205 CMR 244.06. I second the motion. Thank you. Okay, any further questions or edits. All right, Mr. Brian. Mr. Hill. Hi. Mr. Skinner. Hi. Mr. Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. I zero thank you Kerry for that good work and we'll look forward to the discussion on the reg and a future meeting. Thank you very much. Thank you. Okay. Well, this gets us right to the community affairs division a little earlier, and then anticipated chief Delaney thank you for being right here on time and I see Mary Thurlow and Lily Wallace your team here so thank you all for your good work on this we really have the privilege of having some good time to sink our teeth into this matter. And I know for a couple of us, it will be the first time that we've talked about the guidelines in this way so thank you. Thank you, Madam chair and commissioners. So today, we want to discuss with you our 2023 policy questions, and just as a little background on on the program. The development of our guidelines annually we go through a kind of a three step process this being the first step where we review the policy questions and then we will go into drafting guidelines and have that available for public comments and then we go to final guidelines. So these policy questions we meet with our local community mitigation advisory committees are subcommittee on community mitigation, as well as you to discuss these issues and try to get some guidance going forward. So what happens is over the course of the year, you know questions often come up based on the last round of grants or just some general interest in different matters. And what we try to do is compile these and bring them to the commission. You'll see on the agenda, it does ask for a vote there we do not typically need a vote on these we usually just try to get a sense of the commission on whether or not. We just want to move ahead with some of the proposals that we have in here. I think if, if something were looking like it was, you know, a bit controversial or whatever we might ask for a straw poll to see if we should go ahead or not. But typically we just try to get the sense of the commission on whether we should move ahead with these particular initiatives. So jumping right in. The first item that we have for you is, should the commission consider a new gambling harm reduction grant. So little background this this came out of our last year's grant round, the city of Boston applied for some money for a problem gambling program. The, the idea really wasn't fully developed at that point in the city withdrew their application but that got us to thinking, you know, should we consider doing something like this. So we talked with Mark Vander Linden and his team and said, Hey, is this something that you would like us to pursue. And the answer was yes. Now, Mark's group does some community engaged research right now through the public health trust fund and the thought here was that since he is our some of that work has already been done, that perhaps we could use community mitigation funds to expand that program out so more communities might be able to participate. And by doing that we're not sort of reinventing the wheel we're taking something that we've already been doing and really just trying to broaden it out. And I think that the notion here is that if we are to move ahead with this. We're going to do it on a kind of a pilot basis probably one in the east one in the West, and then even we could do one in the category two facility area around Plain Ridge Park. Again, just to ease of implementation. You know that that seems to be appropriate. But the other piece of this is that we also realize that some of these communities might not be ready to go into a full blown kind of research project, but that they may need. Really, some seed money to even just think about this and what they what they might want to try to do for a project of this nature. So the other thing we thought about was providing a relatively small amount of money. We're thinking somewhere in the order of about $20,000 per community so that they could start to, you know, to hire a consultant or a researcher who could help them kind of look briefly at their community and see you know are there certain populations that are that are at risk or whatever it might be. So, so what we're recommending doing here is to move ahead with this pilot basis for grants of up to $200,000 for those communities that that might be ready to go into doing the research with a smaller grant for those about $20,000 for those communities that might need some help, even just figuring out what what they might be looking at. And I think the whole goal behind this is to create a pipeline of projects so the thought is we have some of these early studies the smaller studies $20,000 studies that would lead into the $200,000 studies but ultimately we want these $200,000 studies to come up with some really concrete proposals for addressing problem gambling that could be implemented and then our thought is perhaps next year if we have a couple of these in we can set aside some money to try to do implementation of some of these strategies that people come up with. So I'll stop right there and ask if any of the commissioners have any questions and also I'd like to, I think, as we go through each one of these if I can get the sense of the commission on whether we think this is something that we should move ahead with. I see Commissioner Hill. So just a quick question, Joan, I think you touched upon it. We, I think the intent was and I just want to make sure we're clear. If a community is getting funding from other sources we could partner this with those projects is that accurate. Absolutely. Absolutely. Oh, just one other thing, you know, we did bring these to our local community mitigation advisory committees and in general the folks were in favor of this. We did have one comment that kind of questioned whether or not, you know, community mitigation funds should be used for this kind of work where you know some of this work is done under the public health trust fund. It wasn't really an opposition to it was just sort of a question of the appropriateness of the funds and I think in looking at what's allowed under our under the law, you know, any impact from the casino is eligible to be funded under under the community mitigation fund so. So that was the only sort of negative response that we got on this. If I can just share my view real quick on this, a lot of conversations took place about this issue over the last few months it was very positive in all the groups that we met with. And this is something that I think absolutely fits within the scope of community mitigation, and I would be okay with moving this forward as proposed today by Joe. And I look forward to again we had an application which Joe touched upon this year that really got us thinking about this and from that one application is this proposal that's before you today. Thank you. Commissioners other commissioners, and thank you commissioner help your work on on this with the community affairs division. Commissioner Maynard. Thank you madam chair, Joe I just want to thank you for for answering my questions about this and really let the public know I wanted to make sure that Mark and his team had eyes on on applications and applicants I think what Mark has done is amazing work. I think that given our new charge. It's more important than ever to have these funds used in this way, and like Commissioner Hill. I totally support these funds being used in this manner, especially now, given given a new frontier. So, I think it's going to be great job. Mr Skinner. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I echo commissioner Hill and Commissioner Maynard sentiments about moving this forward. Full support for me. Thank you. Excellent. Commissioner Brian. Same here. Right. And I too completely support this and, and, and really appreciate your moving forward and investigating this along with Mark. And the public health. We work very closely with it under the public health trust fund and the MOU that we have for accessing those funds as actually question whether we could use community mitigation funds at times to further some of the community work, public health issues and equity issues that outside what had been budgeted for the Public Health Trust fund work. And I agree it's completely compatible. We have Mark's helpful eyes on it. And the resources are there. And to the extent that we develop the pipeline that you suggest, Joe, even better. The only thing I want to mention is on the recommendations, I would emphasize Director VanderLinden and Chief Delaney that when you're soliciting the grants that they agree to provide what Joe described as recommendations that are practical and that can be implemented so that we can see really the impacts of this good work because it is to mitigate, right? We want to make sure that it's working in that direction. So the recommendations, I think, will be really key and that sounds like an easy task, but I think Director VanderLinden knows and in research sometimes those recommendations can be the hardest part after you see all the results. What are your next steps? So I think this is an excellent idea. I'm very, I'm very excited. And the only thing I would also add is I hope 20,000 is enough for seed money. So I would give a little bit of latitude. We're putting this out for public comment eventually, right? Whether we... Yes, we'll be going out for public comment once the draft guidelines come out. And we certainly have a ton of work between now and the draft guidelines coming out to craft what this whole thing is going to look like. And we will certainly be asking for the commission's input when we get there to make sure we're really getting on all the high. Right. So that would be just a threshold, if that's enough to make sure it's useful. Thank you. So you've got to go ahead on that. Excellent. So the next item, and again, this is adding a new category, what we're calling projects of regional significance. Now this comes back to the fact that as of right now, we have been generating some surpluses in the community mitigation fund. And we're looking at ways of spending this money. And one of the things that we realized was that we have some very large projects that are coming up in the next few years in both regions, probably a little bit more in the east than out in the west. But there are certainly a lot of these large projects, many of them transportation related, but certainly there are some others that we are looking at as well. And we've been working with the local planning commissions. And we've been working with MassDOT to try to identify this kind of universe of projects. And we realized that there are lots of projects out there. Now, the idea with this category is saying that we have these big projects that are regionally significant, that serve a much broader public purpose than just mitigating a casino impact. But the reality is that, for instance, if a project were done that relieves traffic congestion in an area, that will certainly relieve the traffic congestion that's associated with the casino. So it is addressing a casino related impact, but it has a much broader benefit to the communities in the Commonwealth. So our thought is that we could provide a relatively small amount of funds towards those very large projects. Our thought is that right now, sort of in that 10 to 15 percent of the project costs would be eligible. So now, if you look at our transportation construction category right now, we provide one third of the funding for those types of projects. This would provide a smaller percentage, but it would be obviously for a much larger project. And let's just take as an example the proposed bike and pedestrian bridge across the Mystic River. That's a $40 million project. If we were able to provide 10 percent of the funding towards a project like that, we're providing $4 million on something like that, which would seem to be, again, if you recall in some of our discussions, we always look at what's our fair share of the funds. And so that 10 to 15 percent probably seems to be about in the right range on these projects. So all of the folks that we've spoken with, we spoke with the city of Everett and Springfield and the planning agencies and all, you know, Amasda and everybody really likes this idea. And of course, the devil is in the details, but everybody thinks that this could really be greatly beneficial for the communities. And the other thing that it does is that by us offsetting some of the costs on some of these projects, the state can then stretch their dollars further on other projects if we're sort of offsetting some of those costs. So again, everybody was pretty much in favor of this. I think with our local community mitigation advisory committees, there were a lot of heads nodding up and down. We didn't really hear any negative comments, particularly with respect to this. And I think the other piece is right now, you know, we'll have to look at exactly how much money we have available. But again, we're thinking about doing this on a pilot basis for the first year, probably one project in the East, one in the West. And we're thinking in order of magnitude of, you know, six to 10 million total, and we'll refine the numbers and refine that number when we when we develop the guidelines. But, you know, for these purposes, let's say it'll be $8 million for the first year, just a halfway point between those two numbers. And, you know, we would need to figure out how we want to split East and the West, you know, should be a percentage of, you know, the revenues that are generated or just an equal split. And we'll dive through some of those things as we're developing the guidelines. So with that, any questions or comments? Questions on this, Commissioner Hill? No questions are common. Putting on my former hats of select men and in the legislature, the more things you can do regionally, the better projects come out, I have come to find. So if this is something that could work under this program, I think it would be a very good thing moving forward. So starting it out as a pilot, I'm okay with moving us forward as proposed today. Another commissioner comment or input? Michelle Bride. Now this has come up in the time that I've been here, because as you said, the bigger projects, we don't, we can't necessarily commit long term, but to get a regional project together. I think this is a good step in the direction of addressing that conundrum that we have and how our funding works with these. Commissioner Skinner, Mr. Maynard, do you all set? Is it a green light? Yes, I agree. I will not belabor the point, but I think that it's very important, and I like the way that Joe and team are thinking. Thank you, Commissioner Skinner. Thank you, Joe. Thank you. Great. I feel the same way. Again, at the point, we recognize that we want to engage regionally on these bigger matters. I think it's also a really exciting opportunity for this division to really coordinate for the stakeholders here and move these important projects ahead. A little bit of an expansion of your work, too, Joe, but I know your whole team is equipped to do it, and it's an exciting opportunity. I really hope that we can get a couple of good grants. Excellent. Applications, I should say. Yeah. The next item, this came up last year. Should we be a bit more prescriptive in the guidelines with respect to the types of projects that are eligible to be funded under any specific category? For those of you who went through the process last year, you'll remember we had a few projects that people applied under one category, but it seemed like they probably should have been applying under a different category. All we're asking here is what we would like to do is just be a bit more specific on what types of agencies are eligible for certain funds, like, for instance, under public safety. The anticipation when that category was created, this was particularly for police, fire, EMS, DA's office for public safety agencies. We had some folks who were applying for public safety dollars that weren't public safety agencies. The other piece of this is we would like to provide them more guidance so that they know where things should be placed, but I think we also want to give ourselves the authorization in the guidelines to move an application to another category if somebody files in the wrong category that just gives us that previously we didn't have that ability, so we dealt with them on a case-by-case basis, and we approved some of them, and we didn't approve some of them last year. From our meetings with the local community mitigation advisory committees, all of the comments we got on this were saying that the more guidance you can give to folks, the better, because if it makes it less confusing and they know right where they're supposed to be, it would just make it easier for the applicants. So with that, any comments or questions or? Commissioners, everybody giving them thumbs up? Thumbs up, just a comment. I think it's always a good thing when we can strengthen the policy guidelines, especially in this way so that we are providing more clarification on what kinds of projects are eligible for or which stream of funding. So full support on this right here. Great. Thank you. Joe, could I just add this? Could you plan on working with Mills and David on this in terms of there might be an opportunity to provide clarity in a graphic way, through graphics, infographics or something on the website to help on the clarification? It's a good opportunity to use some imagination here. Yes. And I think one of the things that we might be able to do is once we create the guidelines is we have application forms for the different categories. Maybe we can add something to the application form that a lot of people don't really study the guidelines. They just go to the application form and start filling it out. And maybe we can give them some additional guidance in the actual application form where there might be people looking right at it when they're filling it out. Yeah. And Tom and Dave may have a good eye for that too, from their communications background. So excellent. Anything further? And I also love offering the flexibility making it clear that we could put the application into the right bucket, if need be. Yes. Thank you. Thank you. Okay. So the next one, this is kind of the sticky one that we deal with. And we've dealt with this a couple of times in the past. And this is regarding should the commission set a limit on repeat applications? In several categories, we have folks who have submitted repeat applications. The most notable one, of course, was the County Sheriff's Office with their Alcohol Rehabilitation Center. And we've been providing them lease assistance for now seven years. And they have a 10-year lease there. And I'm not going to go into all of the details behind sort of how we got there. But so there's that one in particular, which really is kind of, that one kind of stands on its own because it's very different from the other ones. Now, for instance, in the public safety category, we get annual applications from the Hamden County DA's office. We get annual requests from the Everett Police Department, West Springfield Police Department, and so on. And again, this really is a policy question. Should these funds be used every year becomes essentially almost like a line item in people's budgets? But maybe that was the intent of the legislature. It's always this sort of question that comes up. And then in the community planning category, we have folks who have come in year to year asking for money on marketing plans and things of that nature, where those projects kind of feel like they're not really planning projects anymore. They're implementation of plans. And again, it's sort of the question of whether we should be doing this or not doing this. In talking with our local community mitigation advisory committees, the general consensus of all of those groups is that we should just leave it at the status quo, allow people to come in if they have a continuing issue that needs to be addressed, and they can demonstrate that. We should deal with it on a case by case basis only because we have the money available to do that. If this program were more competitive and we had way more applications than we had money available, then it becomes a little bit different. But in the case where we certainly do have money available to help these folks, that's sort of the input that we got from the local community mitigation advisory committees. In each of these categories, we could deal with them separately. The community planning category is different than the public safety category. For instance, with community planning, we could tell people that we could give them a couple of rounds of funding and then maybe a third round that's at 50% and then after that you're on your own, or not. We could allow them to continue to come in if they can demonstrate an impact. It's just that on a lot of these categories, particularly community planning, it's really hard to quantify the impacts on a community. Again, it just gets a little bit more difficult over time to say, well, have we done enough to mitigate this impact? We don't particularly have a recommendation in this area, but I guess we'd like to hear from the commission on what you think we should do with this going forward, or should we do nothing at this moment and just deal with it on a case by case basis? The commissioners, thoughts on this? Well, I'll lead off, and I'm sorry if there's a little bit background noise. Let me know if it's too disruptive and I'll move some household issues going on. We give out, Joe, Lance, for instance to the, as I think you mentioned, it's either the court or the DA's office, and they're able to offer evidence of continuing impact. I think that that's the kind of repeat, Grant, that maybe the legislator actually anticipated that it would be ongoing impact. So I guess I worry about saying no to repeat altogether. Just one minute. Believe it or not, they're fixing the air conditioning minute that went down, the air conditioning that went down during the heat wave. We're welcoming it, even though we're now turning on our heat. So this was the day for me to be here. Excuse me. So I would say that, you know, I would just be careful not to ban repeat altogether if there's evidence of continuing impact because that might be exactly appropriate. But I like the idea of the case by case. And I guess I see the benefit of doing it in each of the different categories, although I suspect the standard would probably be the same. Commissioner O'Brien. Sure. I just mentioned this. I've said this before, and I mentioned it in the two by two. So I'll bring it up here too, which is I agree with you. I wouldn't want to ban it outright, but I would want to see some sort of offering as to why it needs to be repeated to your point. Some of these are going to be in perpetuity. They are just an impact that will be ongoing by the nature of the casino being in the community, particularly looking at, say, the Middlesex, I mean, the hand and share question. I know that we asked a number of questions last year in terms of what does the lease say? What were the expectations? Did you seek money in some other way in your budget other than just kind of putting it in there? And I believe, and Joe correct me if I'm wrong, I believe we determined at that point that they hadn't even sought monies elsewhere, that sort of the budget had been requested with the assumption they were going to sort of get their chunk of money from us. And it's not that they wouldn't necessarily get it from us again, but I would like to see in those long-term requests where the nexus or the impact is a little more tenuous. If there was an effort to get it elsewhere that failed, that to me would be pretty compelling, even if the nexus were a little weaker. So that's my thought on some of these criteria in terms of the continuing requests. Very helpful. Commissioner Maynard or Commissioner Skinner or Commissioner Hill? I agree with what's already been said by you, Madam Chair and Commissioner O'Brien. So at this point, Joe, I would say let's keep it on a case by case base moving forward for now. Okay. I'll set that. I would add, Madam Chair, I would add that like Commissioner O'Brien, I agree we should leave this status quo, but I would caution for those who are applicants that if you listen to the last few minutes of our conversations, theoretically it's going to make it easier for others to apply and for this money to get out the door so it may get more competitive in the future. And so I would keep that in mind and strengthening those applications and making those points that you made, Madam Chair, on continuing need may get more and more important as the years go by. You know, and I think that we can also do a better job when we're reviewing these applications and going out to these folks with requests for supplemental information and trying to really dig down into what efforts people have gone to to try to come up with other sources of funds or whatever it might be. Any other comments on that? Okay, so the next item is there should limitations on grant amounts be increased. There's a little chart in your memo, the funding from 2022 and 2023, what we're recommending for 2023. So in just a couple of categories, we're recommending increasing the amount in community planning from 100,000 to 200,000 and transportation planning from 200,000 to 250. You know, the transportation planning has been at 200,000 since we introduced it. We just know Costco up over time and so on. It seemed appropriate to increase that one. On the community planning one, you know, one of the interesting things that we found in one of our community planning grants that we gave out, I think it was to the city of Lynn for a marketing plan. They went out and tried to bid that and they had no takers for the project because it was fairly short dollar value and so on. So the thought there was probably at least increasing the cap on that so that we get projects that are sort of viable projects seem to be appropriate. Public safety seems to be about the right number. Specific impact seems about right. Transportation construction, we went up last year from a million to a million five. So we don't think that needs any adjustment. And then workforce, we went from 400,000 to 500,000 last year. So that seems to be in line. And again, and this is also in the interest of trying to expand eligibility a little bit and increase the utilization of the funds that, you know, these increases might help in that way a little bit. It's on that proposal. Sounds reasonable. Mr. Skinner, I think, sorry. Mr. Skinner. Go ahead, Commissioner O'Brien. It sounds reasonable to me. Oh, thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. Commissioner Skinner. Same to me. Just a question. The community planning grant type and the transportation planning grant type, were those the only two grants that were not increased last year? The public safety has been at about 200,000 for the last couple of years since we introduced it. But that seems to be, you know, about the right amount. In fact, most of the folks who come in on those applications don't usually end up getting that full amount because there's not always a good nexus to the casino on some of the items that they're asking for. And this has become mostly asking for funding for equipment and things of that nature, and not so much. We have a few folks who are asking for real operational kinds of things. You know, Everett does some late night police patrols in the city of Austin, asked for some from some actual, you know, operational funds. But that seemed to be about right. And specific impacts always been at 500,000, which is a fairly high number. And that's there to say, you know, hey, if something that doesn't fall in any of these other categories would go under specific impact. And we wanted to have sufficient funds in there to deal with any kind of eventuality that will come in there. And always remember that every one of these items, these numbers are waivable by the commission. If someone comes in and really can demonstrate a need for money more than what is outlined here, they can ask for a waiver and the commission can grant it, you know, if there's truly a need for that. And so my more direct question is why now for these two lines, why the increase, what's changed since last year? Well, with the transportation planning, we've been doing that for about four years, four or five years now, and it was always a 200,000, you know, just with inflation and all it seemed to make sense to go up. Same thing with community planning, but we increased that by a higher amount just because we heard some of the difficulties people are having it, even getting someone to getting a consultant on board to do a study that's that's not a sort of sufficient size. You know, and we want to try to avoid that. Any further comments on the threshold amounts that are proposed? All right. Okay, so the next one is related to this. We're asking whether we should raise our regional incentive awards to encourage more regional projects. You know, as it currently stands, we do have regional incentive awards in the community planning and the transportation planning categories. So in the community planning, the bonus is $10,000 if two communities work together and $15,000 if three or more communities work together. In the community planning category, we've only had a couple of people come in trying to do regional type things and we really would love to see more regional projects because they're just more bang for the buck and, you know, dealing with a larger geographic area, particularly things like marketing plans or tourism plans and things like that seem to make sense to do on a more regional basis than by individual community. So we're recommending, you know, increasing that to like $25,000 for two communities and $50,000 for three or more. And then on the transportation planning, we were saying we could probably increase those to like $50,000 and $100,000 for the communities. Again, those transportation projects can become very expensive very quickly, especially if someone's trying to do design work and things of that nature and, you know, having communities get together and work together to find solutions would be great. We know that communities in Massachusetts are generally fiercely independent and that certainly incentives are often necessary to get folks to work together, but we'd love to see it happen. So those are our recommendations in this category. Commissioner Hill, I'll see the thumbs up and I know it echoes what you said earlier about the import of regionalization. Anything else? I'll just add to the remaining that we have had some very successful projects and the marketing one from the Plainville area, Foxboro Plainville and Rareham. Is that right? Yeah, we definitely have had some regional projects come in, absolutely, but we'd love to see more of them. Right, so it's a successful model and just a reminder that the community division will be offering what we call, you know, ground-bag trainings, but virtual trainings and opportunities to highlight successful regionalization projects so that community-centric tendency can be addressed. So thank you for continuing those, that outreach, and I know that you've also included in those, that outreach even inviting the communities to speak to their peers. So thank you. Yeah, and I think, you know, these the workshops coming up for this year, you know, we wind up, you know, with the new gambling harm reduction category, we want to be broadening this out to public health agencies and others that haven't typically participated with us and, you know, try to get a really good group of folks to, you know. That'll be great. That'll be great. It might require a couple, right, a few? Maybe. We'll see, we'll see where we are. But yeah, we try to do those in December once the solicitation is open because people often have a lot of questions about, you know, particular projects and things of that nature. Excellent. Okay, so the last item that we have, last major item, again, this is come up before, in fact, we kind of asked this each year for the last couple of years, you know, should the commission pursue an expansion of CMF eligibility via either a statute change or within the current framework? So I think you can see that between last year, some of the work that we did last year and the work that we're doing this year, we're trying to expand the eligibility within the current framework of 23K. And I think with what we've proposed for this year, hopefully that will increase the utilization of the funds. But I think we certainly do need to think long term about what is the viability of this program going forward and how would be the best way to manage this going forward. And that could require a change in the through the statute. And I know there's been a reluctance to try to reopen 23K for various reasons, and I understand those. But I think ultimately that may be what we need to do. I'm not suggesting we need to do it this year, because we're doing a lot to try to expand eligibility within the current framework. But, you know, we've talked about as a group and with our local community mitigation advisory committees, I've always thrown out there the model of the community development block grants, where a program like this could be operated in that fashion where formulas established for how the communities get money and what projects are eligible. And then, you know, a community would have to submit a work plan to us on how they're going to use their money and so on. And that would certainly make it, you know, easier to implement and sort of having to identify individual impacts of the casino. That would kind of go away with this. But something like that would probably require a statute change to do that. So I think for this year we're okay. And what I'm suggesting that as staff that we want to try to do, you know, in the next year is do some research on how some other grant programs are run and maybe put together a little bit of a white paper on what this program could look like under different structures and bring that back to the commission, you know, during the next year to say, all right, is this something that we really want to pursue or do we just want to keep the status quo or whatever it might be? So with that, I will open that up to any comments. Commissioners? Oh, just aside, the local community mitigation advisory committees, the communities love this idea of this being like a block grant where it's, you know, it's less work for them and doing applications. It's less work for us in, you know, having to do all of these detailed evaluations of every application. You know, their notion is the easier it is and, you know, the most efficient way it is to get the money out to the communities is the way they would like to see it. Commissioner O'Brien, thank you, Joe. Yeah, I mean, I think with what's on our plate and everyone's plate in the next, you know, six months. What are you talking about? Is it in that? No, I'm just spitballing here, right? Might not be the year to propose changes to 23K. But I'm probably not saying anything that everybody else was thinking, so. Other comments, commissioners? And very, very fair observation, Commissioner O'Brien. Other? I agree, Commissioner O'Brien. And what I would say is that, you know, Joe, I've told you this offline. I would read, you know, 23K in this respect as broadly as we possibly and legally can to help mitigate issues in these communities. And I think that's how I would look at this as of now. I do think that eventually maybe it's a long-term conversation to have, but, you know, read the language as broadly as we legally can. I'm sure Todd and team are happy to help us read it that way and guide us in that respect. But that's how I would look for it. Yeah, and I think, you know, if we start looking at, you know, some other structures for this program, I think we could then take those and work with Todd and say, hey, you know, do we think this fits? Do we think it doesn't fit? Do we think, you know, to make it fit, what will we need to do, you know, that kind of thing and sort of triage those ideas with respect to how 23K is written today? Joe, can you help me out? I'm right now under new 23N. Is there any link to the community mitigation? I know that it's worth waiting mobile. It's across the Commonwealth. But I'm just wondering if it extends out more broadly because of that. I don't think it does. And Todd, I haven't studied 23N quite to the level that you folks have, I'm sure. But I don't think there's any provisions for community mitigation in 23N. But it's strictly public health trust fund, I think. Yeah. Yeah. But the, what I would say is that this is to mitigate impacts of the casinos and if the casinos have sportsbooks in them, that is a gambling activity. And if that creates a negative impact on those host and surrounding communities, that those communities would be eligible to come in. But like, for instance, I don't think, say, Rainham or the communities around Rainham or, you know, Suffolk Downs probably would not, it wouldn't expand the eligibility, I don't think of, because it says in 23K, it's to mitigate impact on the host and surrounding communities of the gaming establishments. So, it's probably a limited benefit that we could use these funds for in some of the communities, but probably not across the Commonwealth would be my guess. It extends out to the public health trust fund, but not specifically the community mitigation. And you can see the logic, but I appreciate what you just pointed out, Jo, that it certainly would include any in-person sports wagering. Yeah, I would think so. I think that would be a reasonable connection. So data collection will continue to be really important there. All right. I agree with the other two comments. And I would say that tabling this right now is okay, but I like the idea of the innovation. I also like the idea that you just said, Jo, maybe it's not a complete revamping of the structure, but where we might be able to get a little bit of technical assistance by a legislative change that would allow us to maybe more easily meet what we know probably was the legislative intent around mitigating impacts here. Then we keep that list and in file legislation, perhaps not for this November's deadline, but next year's. If it's not a whole revamping, something that could give that additional flexibility that we would like. And Commissioner Hill's all aware of those types of changes that would be reasonably non-requested. Okay. So those are all of the major policy questions. In your memo, there's the last page we outlined. These are questions that we pretty much ask every year and we're not really proposing any changes to any of these. And I guess I don't know if any of the commissioners have any particular questions about any of these last six. I wasn't going to go through them individually because it's pretty much status quo from year to year, unless there's something particular that's of concern, I guess we can finish up with this piece. Since everybody had the chance to see the memo in those questions, where are they having them in front of them now? We did walk through all of these questions in the two by twos as well. So there's been a few things in between, Joe. So I'm just making sure everybody I don't understand what you're talking about. So there are six questions and and for those less familiar with the process, if you've had a chance to speak with those about those with Joe, then we're all set any specific questions right now. Okay. And I understand this is all going to be coming more formally in front of us. Yep. Yeah, all of these things will be particularly addressed in the guidelines, you know, you know, again, the overall limit on grants and how much category two spending we do and all those things. So you'll have another look at them at what sort of the final numbers look like. But we're not proposing any wholesale changes to any of these things. But yeah, but today's discussion is really the launch of this whole process. And Joe, it's, it's so well run. I want to, you know, emphasize that each, each meeting, even if we don't vote or whatever, it really does help Joe and team move ahead on a great process. So okay, I don't see any comments right now, Joe. Great. So I guess that that finishes up our discussion on the policy questions. I guess we can move into the subcommittee renewals. Yeah. That isn't a next memo. What are you looking for exactly on that? You know, those are those subcommittee renewals are voted by the commission. They're not, they're not gubernatorial or other constitutional officer appointments. Okay, good. Right. I'm going to turn it over to Mary and Heather just quickly run through the memo and what the ask is. Okay, great. Good morning, Mary. Good morning. Good morning, chair and commissioners. This morning, the community affairs division requests a vote on the commission's representatives to the local community advisory committees for regions A and B and designation of the commission representatives for the community advisory subcommittee, public safety subcommittee and addiction services. So first of all, I want to thank our current representatives for wanting to continue their representation. The members that I have before you with the exception of one new member have been on this on these committees since 2018. And we recently lost one member because she's just too busy. And she has actually been on this committee since 2017. So that kind of shows their commitment to this committee and to the work that we do. So for region A, we have Vincent Panzini for the representatives of the chamber of commerce. Mr. Panzini, as I said, has participated since 2018 and has been a very active member. He's got quite an extensive background, which you'll see in your memo. David Bancroft is the regional economic development representative for region A. And again, he's been on there since 2018. And as the he's the senior vice president of the community of community development, and he too has been a very active member at the meetings. We do have two openings for the human service positions, which we are looking to fill. And that's where we lost Myron Negron. And we want to really thank you thank her for all her hard work at these past years on the committee. For region B, we have a new member, Diana, and I don't, I'm not sure how to say her name. Thaisal? And Lily is familiar with her and has worked with her in the past. And she brings over 20 years of experience to the position. Ellen Patashnik, who was our human service representatives, has been very active. She is a retired social from the social service field, but she still is active on as a volunteer disaster responder, which has given a lot of interesting conversations for the disasters that she's gone to while being a member of the committee. We're currently looking to fill the regional economic position and one remaining human service provider in region B. So today, we would like a vote on these members by the commission. And then after that vote, we will go on to the commission's representatives on the subcommittees. So can you help me out a bit? Sure. I don't have the motions in front of me. These appointments are for the subcommittee or for the local advisory committee? For the LCMAC. So these are the commission's representatives for human service economic development and Chamber of Commerce. Right. And so this is the only one. These are the appointments that the commission votes on. The other ones will be by appointments by the governor's office, by the governor or other appointing officials other than the commission. No. Are you talking about the subcommittee going ahead? The subcommittee representatives were voting on from the commission. We're not voting on. This is just the local. I want to make sure this. Yes. Okay. So commissioners, do you want to take it region A and region B separately? Or do we want to just do one motion? Unless there's just a first I should ask for discussion opportunity to question for questions on the candidates. Commissioner Maynard. I just wanted to point out that they're in our draft motions, which I know that we have every right to change and adhere that it does say reappoint for additional one term of members, but there is a new member being proposed. So we would have to take those motions separately or make a new motion. I just wanted to point that out. So my follow-up question, Mary, Diana Seisnell is our new member, correct? Yes. So in the motion, we would just do two different motions. Yeah, one to renew and one to yes, the new. And I'm okay doing all of them, Madam Chair, but no, I think step, yes, and making sure the language and just I'm sorry I'm a little bit stuck on this, but Todd, this is where we do have the, this is our appointment, right? Yes, the local advisory committee. Yeah, I'm just, I was just taking a look at that as you were speaking here. Yeah. So under the, what is it? Section 58, 68, 68. I don't know, off the top of my head, 56, 58, 60, 68. 68. Thank you. Yep. So where else is that? I'm a little embarrassed to ask this question, Madam Chair, given my formal former job. Are there, are there gubernatorial appointments on this, there are gubernatorial appointments on this board, on this, on the, on the subcommittee. Yeah, on the subcommittee, on the local, that's what I want to clarify, local, there's, it's all our appointments. Is that correct? Or are there other job? Even the community, the human service providers will come back to us on each recommendation. Someone to be on the commission for the committee. And then there's the commission appointments. Yep. So all of the member communities have a person that's nominated by the community. We don't approve those. We, we don't approve those, those are their appointments. Yes. Correct. For the local. Okay. So it's not all. So the locals have their own appointments. Yes. And then under the statute, we have some appointments. Yes. And the outstanding ones Mary has noted in at the bottom of each region. Yes. Okay. Excellent. Thanks. So I think that's two motions or one that's clear on the reappointment versus new appointments. That'd be great. You could probably just take out reappointment and say a point for a one year term. Yeah. That would be fine. Because we do this annually. It's a term not stated in the, well, it's for a one year. One year appointments. Is that right, Todd? Or is it silent one term? This has actually come up a number of times. I believe in Joe, please jump in here. So the, the umbrella committee, the gaming policy advisory committee, two year terms. I don't believe there's any other place that talks about the length of the term. If I have that right. I think historically, the commission has appointed these members to one year terms, but I don't believe that that is required by statute. Right. So I think that the commission has exercised its discretion to, to offer as one year. And that's for all members of the local advisory. Okay. Thanks. I, I had a memory of this discussion and I'm sorry I didn't look at it before, but I think given that it's a new process for folks that they should understand. Okay. All right. So commissioners, do we have a motion of some sort? I can try. Do we have further questions maybe. Madam chair, I move that the commission appoint for a one year term the members of the local community mitigation advisory committee as included in the commissioners packet and discussed here today. I second the motion. Thank you. Any further discussion on that? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. And commissioner Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. Excellent work. Thank you. And these are all to those who are listening. Thank you so much for your current service and thank you to the new appointee and Millie for helping identify her. It would be very exciting. Good work. Thank you. Okay. And now would now we need the commission to have a discussion on the various representatives for the three different committees. So for the last year, Brad Hill was the commission representative on the subcommittee for community mitigation. Eileen was on the committee for public safety and Mark VanderLinden was on the addiction services committee. So we need to know if the commission anticipates having the same representatives on these committees. I'm going to have just executive director Miles will just weigh in and just in terms of the process in terms of the three of the subcommittees under GPAC. Yeah. Yeah. So the subcommittees under GPAC, first of all, before we get started, I did want to comment that this is a lot of work to coordinate all of these and put this together. So big shout out to Mary Thorello for all the work she does on all of this. And also with respect to the GPAC and some of those subcommittees, the things that Crystal does to coordinate some of the other subcommittees. So I did want to say thank you to them. So Kathy, are you looking for a suggestion on the designase? I mean, my recommendation would be to continue as is. Sure. I guess that my question is just that today's I want to make sure that again, structurally, we understand that community mitigation division, you know, is managing the community mitigation advisory subcommittee. So I'd love a report on that with respect to what really probably would have happened on the agenda. We would have maybe made it a little clearer about the public service subcommittee work that's under Commissioner O'Brien as you've heard. And I know that Crystal is just, you know, provides all the support for that as well as the addiction services subcommittee that Mark has been chairing. So I guess I would just say that it fell in today under the community mitigation division work. And I just want to make it, you know, clear that there are the way that the structure works is that GPAC is the umbrella committee under the statute. And by statute, the governor appoints the chair. I know Commissioner Maynard was very instrumental in helping us have chair Meg Cohen, Manager Cohen. And so we're delighted with that and that work continues. So we might want to have, and we've had her in before we might want to have a little bit more, you know, a full sum report on the GPACs work. And then under that, the statute then prescribes for some subcommittees, including today's community mitigation subcommittee that Mary is about to outline what we need there in terms of leadership. I know that we designated Commissioner Hill last year as our designee. And then I think he was made chair. I'm not sure if the statute has us make him chair, if the committee makes him chair. But that's one thing that could be clarified. And then I would just want to maybe set aside perhaps another agenda item opportunity for Commissioner O'Brien to really address the work that's been going on. Public safety subcommittee with a support, as I mentioned, Crystal, as well as Mark being able to highlight the good work of the addiction services. So I guess my point is we're hearing all about all the good work of the community mitigation subcommittee today. And I want to make sure that we maybe at the agenda setting meeting on Wednesday, that we offer the opportunity for them to go into the work of the committee and what's anticipated in the future. So today is really about I understand the appointment process. And I appreciate that. And, Crystal, I know that you're keeping track of the appointments as well, in terms of who's on the subcommittee. So you might even want to weigh in on the two other committees, but why don't we just address the community mitigation advisory subcommittee right now? Maybe you can even tell us who's on it. The current members and then NBC staff has been working with the boards of commissions on filling the governor appointees. I would suggest if there are any outstanding, we learn about those today, because Commissioner Maynard may be able to be very helpful. So, Mary, on that note, let's hear all about the community mitigation advisory subcommittee. And I guess, Brad, too, if you want to weigh in, I don't know how often that meets. So thank you. Chair, the subcommittee meets on the same cadence as the local community mitigation advisory committee. In fact, we have our meeting this afternoon of the subcommittee. So essentially, we're asking the same questions of the local community mitigation advisory committees and the subcommittee on community mitigation. In the subcommittee, there are governor appointments, there are commission appointments, and so on. And that's where it differs from the local community mitigation advisory committee. And Mary, do you have the roster there, Andy? You're muted. And Madam Chair, with respect to the three committees, the Section 68 just says that the commission appoints one member. So as far as chairmanship or whatever that's voted by the committee themselves. That's what I remember. So for the community mitigation, we do one. We have to probably renew that if it's an annual event. And then I'd love to hear the current roster. Very awesome. One sign, Mary, before I lose my thought. It's really, you have done this in the past, Joe and Mary and Lily, if you could extend an invitation to the other commissioners to attend as members of the public in case they want to appear at the subcommittee meetings. We do that with the understanding that we can't ask questions or deliberate, but we could certainly listen. I understand today's conversation may be very similar this afternoon as this morning's. But again, if folks are interested, commissioners, you may attend. Commissioner Hill will be the speaking commissioner today, but we can attend as members of the public if you have time and you want to attend. Okay, Mary. I'm doing it for you, Mary. No worries. So our host, our Region 8 representative is Eric Demas. He's the CFO in Everett. We have Haskell Kennedy, who's the Region B representative. He's retired and lives in Springfield. We have, from the Department of Revenue, we have Sean Cronin, and then we have, from the Mass Municipal Association, we have Jackie Lavender-Bird. We also have another person who assists Ms. Bird, and that's Dave Kaufman, for the LCMAC representative. So the LCMAC two committees, they each nominate a representative to represent that region on the subcommittee, and they are Ron Hogan, who is from Maldon, and Jennifer Bonfiglio, and she is from Agua. And that's our members. In our vacancies, there are vacancies. We need some Governor appointees in the Community Mitigation, one who has experience in community mitigation gaming. We need a small business owner in a host community, and we need a Chamber of Commerce representative who is chosen out of three candidates. And that's another Governor appointee. And who makes the choice? These are all Governor appointees, those three. So the Governor would choose out of three options from the Chamber of Commerce? Yes. Okay, so Jordan, using your experience, do you want to weigh in on that? Maybe some suggestions. I know that Mary is working, too, with the Governor's office. Yeah, Mary and I have time offline, too. You know, just to pull the curtain back a little bit on this, you know, the Chamber of Commerce appointees, the way this typically works, right, is that the Chamber of Commerce or the Governor's office going to the Chamber of Commerce will say, we need to have these three names by statute. Give us the three names. We'll make a decision. They go through a full background. The Governor's office doesn't call it suitability. We would call it a background check, but it's essentially suitability of the candidate and they would choose. So I imagine that the Governor's office, once they make contact with the Chamber of Commerce, they actually don't have a lot of room, right, to actually, they have three names. On the small business owner, I imagine that that's probably easily identifiable. And I will, assuming everyone here is comfortable, I'm happy to make contact with them on that. The community mitigation on gaming, I imagine is a pretty hard seat for the Governor's office to fill. I don't know if they had that in their back pocket. Again, speaking from prior experience, I imagine if Director Vanderland and I could talk or someone who could maybe make some suggestions on that front, I bet it would be go a long way for the Governor's office to make that point. And go through it from a responsible gaming lens. Yeah, I mean, I think that's how I would look at it. That's the way my brain's working right now. So you just exposed my bias. But that's, yes, I think I would look at it maybe that way. Or if Joe just has someone who is kind of in and around the space. Again, my particular bias would be go at it from that lens. And you'll work with Mary on that. Does that make sense, Mary? It's helpful, huh? Yes. So, but otherwise you don't have a quorum issue, right, Joe and Mary, you've been We usually need everybody to show up. Because part of the part of the thing is there's also a representative from Region C, from the Region C LCMAC, which doesn't exist. And, you know, we have a couple of these and a representative from a host community in Region C, which doesn't exist. So, you know, we have two members that we can never get unless we award a Region C license and create a sub, you know, an LCMAC from that region. So that puts us a little bit behind the eight ball right, right out of the right out of the gate that we can't fill two of these seats. So our quorum is a majority of the total membership and we're always we will always be two people short unless we award a Region C license. So we are always right on the ragged edge of quorum. Thank you. Okay, so do we have to vote on any reappointments other than our own chair? Nothing. We have, okay. So it would be my hope that we do reassign Commissioner Hill up to this position, commissioners. Any thoughts? You've gotten your, you're, you're starting to I know that we have thoughts about rotating. Also these positions that they be annual. You know, not necessarily these positions, but we've talked about our other officer positions being that's an annual appointment as well. I guess this is an annual appointment. I'm not sure. Again, the law is silent on it. But we've just said since it doesn't say anything, we just have done them annually. Yeah. Yeah, I don't see a reason to disturb commission membership on any of the subcommittees. I'm happy to support both Commissioner Hill and Commissioner O'Brien. Can we just do one at a time please? Let's just stick to community mitigation right now. But so you would be happy to support Commissioner Hill. And the only reason why I say that is because I want to make sure we want to move into public safety and the arts today. Okay. Thanks, Commissioner Skinner. So you're saying for Commissioner Hill? I'm saying for both. Okay, she's saying I know we're moving into that discussion, but I'm putting my my support for both. Okay, excellent. Thank you. I think the commissioner has done a fantastic job in his work on that on the committee. I would support it also, Madam Chair. Thanks. Any other thoughts? Okay, then I have a motion, please. Commissioner Skinner. There with me, Madam Chair. My monitors are all crazy. So I'm trying to get back to the packet so I can make sure I'm speaking to the right one. Community mitigation advisory subcommittee, right? So I move that Commissioner Hill be reappointed to the community mitigation advisory subcommittee as commission representative. Second. Thank you. I have a second. Michelle Bryan, did you say second? I said second. Thank you so much. All right. Any further discussion on that? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Hill. Okay. Commissioner Skinner. I. Commissioner Maynard. I. And I vote yes, 5-0. Thank you so much. All right. Mary, great work. And you'll continue to work on the vacancies with Commissioner Maynard. And I'm very, very happy to have his help. We also just want to extend our appreciation to the governor's office for working with us over the years on these important appointments. All right. Now, the public safety subcommittee and the addiction service subcommittee today, I guess it would be appropriate to move on our representation. I don't know if we have, Crystal, I don't know if you have all that information again in front of you and Mary, I don't know if you've coordinated, but the vacancies on that, I kind of feel as though we really haven't moved this up as well as I would have loved in terms of Commissioner O'Brien and Mark being able to explain their work. Should we, I'm happy to move forward today on it, or I'm also happy to have its own presentation. Commissioner O'Brien and Mark, I turn to you. I'm happy to do either Crystal correct me if I'm wrong, but there were some vacancies. I believe they've been filled at this point. So the last meeting that we had, every open seat was, in fact, had a designate, had an appointee. And we talked about human trafficking. We also talked about the fact that the sports wagering bill was potentially imminent. And, you know, talked about our responsibility under 23K to sort of give suggestions back to the Commission on regulations and connection with public safety and connection with implementing the laws. So I had closed the meeting out with the understanding that if that passed, we were going to have the next meeting on that. Crystal and I have had conversations about scheduling. It's looking probably like an October date is what we're looking at at this point to move forward on that. Great. And just because it's an important recognition of the volunteers who help us, Crystal, do you happen to have that list handy? I hate to put anyone on the spot. I could grab it. It might take a moment, but I would agree to everything Commissioner O'Brien had said. We did have a few seats we had identified before the last meeting, that there was a bit of turnover, and they were all in place and ready to go by the last meeting. So we would have to say there are a couple who have been in their seat for a bit that I would need to look back and see their appointment date if we're looking at two-year terms. But I can get you that list. In that subcommittee, there are terms that are set forth of two years? I think, well, you know, I'm not going to say it for us, but I believe that it says to the two-year term comes after the designation of the subcommittee. I think it says the committee shall designate subcommittees, and then the very next line says that members of committees shall serve for two years. That's how I've looked at it, but if we're looking at it for one year, then we probably need to quickly reevaluate some of these. I'm honestly not certain of everyone's appointment, although, of course, the marks, what Mark is sharing now for the subcommittee on addiction services is still really new. So I think it'd be okay, but we would probably have to take a look at the... You can look at that. And Mary, I don't know if you want to weigh in on your knowledge, but I would love, Crystal, if you could give those names because they're important volunteers when you get it. But right now it sounds like we have a full slate. So the question would be the appointment of our designation of Commissioner O'Brien, if we're going to redesignate. I know I've heard from Commissioner Skinner that that would be her recommendation. Mary, do you have something to weigh in on? Well, I think we should move forward with the... I think we should move forward with getting the representative from the commission on here. Yeah, I have a question for consistency. Yeah, Commissioner Maynard. We actually issue appointment letters from the commission when we put someone on it. No, but we probably should so that we can watch terms. Yeah. Commissioner Maynard, can I assign your YouTube helping on that effort, please? I'm sure that you can come up with great appointment letters that can be issued and it will help us maintain good files on this, particularly as transitions occur. I'm happy to help. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that very much. You too. Okay, so for our subcommittee on public safety, we do have Commissioner O'Brien as our representative of the commission. We have... I'm looking at who moved too. We have the designee for Terrence Reedy as Elaine Driscoll that changed over just this past meeting. We have Attorney General Tom Caldwell. We have... Anthony Galuni. We have our designee for the State Police as Brian Connors. Major Connors. I think we have changed over our Mass Chiefs of Police representative and that is now Chief Michael Bradley. We have Dave Manning from the Gaming Division Troop for representing our Public Safety Labor Union and that is everyone. Excellent. So to Mary's point, it's a good time to be consistent. We'll work on appointment letters to memorialize these appointments and designations. Do I have a motion for sharing the public safety? And of course, by statute, Commissioner O'Brien is appointed as the specialist on public safety by the appointing authority Attorney General. I can move, Madam Chair, but I... Thank you. I probably should have done this before. I assume that Commissioners Hill and O'Brien are interested in continuing in the capacity that they are currently serving. So if I'm... If I should not make that assumption, then we can have that discussion. Well, we can verify. I would say... Commissioner Hill did vote aye. So that's a good validator, right, Commissioner Hill? Yes. Okay. Now, Commissioner O'Brien. Just for the record, I loved it. I loved being on the subcommittee. That was my sense. So I wanted to make sure I wasn't forcing anything on you in making the motion. No, I can't. If I'm nominated for something and I don't feel I should or want it, I will let you know. And I'm happy to... I'll probably abstain on the vote, but happy to hear the nomination for the subcommittee. Excellent. Okay. Commissioner Skinner, good threshold question. All right. So I move that Commissioner O'Brien be designated as commission representative on the public safety subcommittee. I second the motion. Any questions? Okay. Commissioner O'Brien. Abstain. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. Oh, Skinner. I'm so sorry. Commissioner Skinner. You threw me off there. Well, you know what? I heard you moving and I already assigned your vote. My apologies. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Maynard. Aye. And I vote yes. For one abstention. Thank you so much. All right. Now, again, very excited that the Addiction Services subcommittee is up and running. That was all kind of done in tangent as we shifted from the MOU arrangement that had been in place at the beginning of the gaming commission and it shifted to a different structure that really allowed for activation of the statutory subcommittee with great external expertise and representation that I know Director Vanerlinen wanted to access. So, Mark, do you want to just bring us up to date a little bit on that work? Please, if I'm not putting you on the spot. Sure. I'm happy to. Thank you, Madam Chair and good morning commissioners. So the Addiction Services subcommittee, as Chair Judd Stein just mentioned, was activated. It's been, I'm sorry. I can't remember the first meeting. It's been less than a year. But it has met three times since then. Actually, I'm sorry. It's met two times since then. It is fully staffed. We have the two governor appointees. We have the representative from the Department of Public Health, the representative from the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health, and myself as the commission representative. We met in August. I think it was August 9th and we are scheduled to meet again next week. We are meeting on a more frequent basis. We're trying to tackle the issue of third party exclusion to come up with a recommendation or advice for the commission on implementation of that. There's a number of other priorities that the subcommittee listed at the beginning in our first meeting and we'll be looking forward to tackling some of those after we provide this work. Excellent. And Crystal, do you have that membership too so that we can extend our thanks to all these volunteers? I can tell you exactly. Okay. I guess some of them aren't volunteers because they're actually statutorily designated, but they're still giving their time. Right. Our two governor designates who are volunteering every time are Yoyo Yao from the Boston China Hood Neighborhood Center and Dr. Rodolfo Vega with JSI Institute. Our Department of Public Health representative is Victor Ortiz, who is the director of problem gambling services there. And Marlene Warner is the executive director of the Massachusetts Council on Gaming and Health. Victor and Marlene are identified specifically as these are organizations that need to have representation. And then you. And me. Right. So. And again, I have to extend my thanks and appreciation to Mary and Crystal for really being able to bring these groups together. I know the virtual platform has helped on getting forums and participation across the Commonwealth. That message was heard when the legislation did extend the accommodation under the open meeting law for us to be able to use this format because Mary, you are not in your head. You can get folks from across the state to participate in a way that was harder when we only met in person. So thank you. And thank you to Crystal and Mary for it's not simply administrative. It is a lot of administration that takes special, special talents. It is also relationship building that's going on behind the scenes that really benefits the work of each chair and the work of the commission. So thank you to Mary and Crystal. I know that Crystal is doing, are doing, you're doing the minutes. I know that you're really helping on the calendar. And I assume Mary and you and I haven't spoken, but I'm you're doing the same. It's a lot of work and and it's statutorily required. So thank you. All right. But I guess that again, to Mary's point, staying on the same cadence, we should think about our designation for the Addiction Services Subcommittee. That is a designation the group decided to make our very own the chair. So the committee itself made Mark the chair. So congratulations again, Mark on that. So do we have a motion with respect to this designation? Mr. Skinner. And I move that Mark VanderLinden continue in his role as commission designee on the Addiction Services Subcommittee. I second the motion. Okay. Any further questions and Mark and Crystal, thank you for chiming in on that in your work on that. Okay. Commissioner O'Brien, you shifted in location. There you are in the middle. Hi. Okay. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. Commissioner Maynard. Hi. And I vote yes. Five-zero. Thank you, Mark, for your work on that and your your chairmanship. Okay. So Mary, is that not the list on those? And there are no vacancies as to that the appointments, though perhaps we should check on term. Commissioner Maynard, with respect to any gubernatorial appointments, can make sure that if we need to have the governor reappoint around term issues, that would be great. Madam Chair, I just did take a quick look at section 68. And the only statutory term limit is on the gaming policy advisory committee. All of the subcommittees are silent on that. I don't want to give any kind of legal advice that I gave in the past in past positions around silent terms. But I don't know, Commissioner Maynard, if you have any insights on how that's usually practically implemented, is it by the committee itself or what's your experience? Or do you not have it? Well, my experience is that usually there's a statutory issue that it doesn't speak to term, but that you, you know, I'm not going to give legal advice on the side. No. But but I would be interested in hearing, I know it seems like this conversation has been hashed out a few times, but kind of hearing some advice on that. And either way, I would operationalize the letters and the terms, even if it is a regulatory, if we're the ones making the terms, we should somehow codify that. I agree. And then it will help also with this conversation future, right? So I'm realizing you don't want lifetime appointments. I'm not sure that the appointees want like the lifetime appointments, especially when they're giving their time, which we do appreciate. Yeah. Yeah. There's a whole bunch of legal jurisprudence on this whole issue. So I'm not going to chime in, but we do appreciate everyone's everyone volunteering. And then of course, the leadership here. So, Joe, are we all set on this part of them? We are. And that completes our work for Community Affairs for today. I'm going to check in with Mary. Are you all set? Oh, two thumbs up, even better. And Lily, thank you so much. Are you all set? Two thumbs up, great. And Crystal, you're all set. One thumb up, but her other hand is busy probably typing away. So, okay, thank you. Commissioners, do we have under item number five any other business or updates? All right. I've seen no, Commissioner Skinner. Just an inquiry. I'm hoping that commissioners can get an update on the status of the hiring of the administrative assistant at some point. Executive Director Wells, I'm going to turn to you and David Muldrow on how we want to manage that. We could put it on the agenda setting. Believe that, you know, and I'm not sure if Dave is on the meeting. I'm looking at mine. He's right here. I'm sorry. I don't know. That's good. I'll let you. I have to just caution that we should not give a name. Yes. Thank you. There's no name. Commissioner O'Brien, you're nodding your head. Right. Okay. Go right ahead. Thank you, David. Okay. We have identified a final candidate and we have extended an offer pending thorough background investigation. And it's my understanding. The reason why I did interrupt is that it's my understanding that we advise some candidates who are subject to the background check now to not necessarily give notice to their employer, if they are employed, so that if there's anything that comes up, or they make any decisions contrary to us, they can stay in their job. That's why I'm collecting their privacy. Is that there? That is correct. Thank you. Thank you, David. Is that helpful? So the background check is underway. I don't know if we have a time frame on that, Karen. And usually those can be done within a couple of weeks, if not shorter, depending on how quickly we get the forms in. And David will keep you up to date on the mechanics going forward, commissioners on that. Again, I think Commissioner O'Brien and I would have loved to have had it be a different process, but process for someone at that level to be public is this would be very onerous. So thank you for indulging us and allowing us to go through this process and, you know, in our informal capacity. Thank you so much. Okay. Anything else? Any other update? Okay. There's no other business than I guess the only business we have is a motion to adjourn. And I would move to adjourn, Madam Chair. Thanks. Thanks, Commissioner. All right. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Mr. Hill. Hi. Mr. Skinner. Hi. Mr. Maynard. Hi. Well, yes. Thank you, everyone. And thanks to the entire team for all the contributions today. Great job, the Community Mitigation Division. Always interesting. And thank you to the League of Division.