 Everybody heard this meeting is being recorded. Mr. Stevens, you should be all set. And we are conducting it virtually because Governor Baker offered relief to bodies like ours that operate under the open meeting law once we had to address the pandemic now back in March. I want to call today's meeting to order. It is November 19. It's one week from Thanksgiving. We're at 10.03, and it's public meeting number 327. I want to remind everybody that as we approach the holidays, we all know they're going to look different to us. But I think many of us can express our thanks for being able to have our jobs and to be able to, for the most part, most of us are able to work safely from home. Today, the national news marks that we have lost 250,000 Americans to this pandemic. It has been an enormously trying year. And to all of you and those who are out in the field, we have folks who are working on the casino floor, our GEU, and our gaming agents. And of course, our horse racing team have been out and about. To all of you, we continue to think of you and wish you well. But of course, we all give thanks for the medical professionals who are right now being taxed. Of course, Massachusetts and across the country, and to all those who are on the front line, including, of course, our first responders, like the state police, and that includes our very own GEU. So as we reflect on a different Thanksgiving, I think I've said it before. The message remains the same, and we express our thanks for all who are doing so much to keep us safe and sound. With that, I think I'll turn now to our minutes. Commissioner Stevens. Sure. Thank you, Madam Chair. In your packet, you have the minutes from the very lengthy August 27th meeting. Thanks, Sharra, for pulling those together. I'd move their approval subject to any corrections for typographical errors or any other non-material matters. Is there a second? I'll second the motion. OK, and if they were of extensive minutes, thank you so much, Sharra, for a very extensive minutes and a well done job. But are there any edits or questions for Sharra or Commissioner Stevens? Yeah, I had one question, Madam Chair, and it is for the 1121-piece portion of the minutes when we talk about the resource development split. And I actually think the health and pension piece changed this year, which is listed as the 4% distribution, which is listed at 4060. Is Dr. Leipzig on? She could probably verify this for me. I'm not sure I saw her. I don't know if I see her today. Well, I am just going to flag that for a possible technical correction. I believe 100% of that went to the Tharbritt health and that one 4% piece. So if I could just hold that to be checked, Commissioner Stevens, and we'll make that technical correction if I'm correct? Sure. I start my notes here. I just wanted to mention it. OK, thank you. That was a big, important change, but also a very complicated discussion. Yes, agreed. No, I totally agree. But I just wanted to flag that, and I'll verify that with Dr. Leipzig. So we would want to make that correction. It really is a correction. Yes. Are there any other edits or questions for Sharra or Commissioner Stevens? I'll start. Then with that amendment for that correction, I'll proceed with the vote. Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Zuniga? Aye. Commissioner Stevens? Aye. And I vote yes, Sharra. Thank you. 5-0 with that correction noted. OK, we're going to continue then to the administrative update. Executive Director Wells, please. Good morning, Madam Chair and members of the commission. Similar to what we've been doing now for weeks, if not months, I'm going to turn it over to Loretta Lilios, our interim director of the IEB, and to Bruce Ban, the assistant director of the IEB, and the head of the gaming agents unit, just to talk about what's going on at the casinos and the updates, particularly in light of the pandemic. So I'll start with Loretta. Thanks, Karen. Good morning, Chair. Good morning, commissioners. At your meeting two weeks ago, you adopted COVID-19 related health and safety measures aimed at ensuring that the licensees comply with the governor's new order, order number 53. And our requirements that you approved that day two weeks ago paralleled the governor's order and went into effect on Friday, November 6. The order was issued in response to evolving health data and trends and have led to adjustments in some of the safety measures to continue to mitigate the risk of transmission of the coronavirus. In essence, the new requirements require the licensees to close to the public and close all activities and services to the public between the hours of 9.30 PM and 5 AM. And they apply to the amenities of the gaming establishments as well. With respect to the restaurant amenities, the governor has allowed diners who are already seated to finish their meals so long as they depart no longer than 10 PM. And that role has been adopted by the commission for the restaurant amenities of the casinos as well. So there have been almost two full weeks of operation under these new measures. And there have been two full weekends of operations under these measures. And from an operational point of view, the licensees have done an excellent job with the 9.30 PM closing. And I also want to recognize the gaming agent staff, the GEU, and our IT who have worked in conjunction with the licensees, including an on-site monitoring capacity to help make this smooth. Remember, these are not establishments that were designed to close on a nightly basis. So it has taken significant adaptability. The licensees have developed and implemented communications program to the public around this on their websites and social media. And they've put plans in place that call for things like public service announcements within the gaming establishment in the period leading up to the closing time, sweeping the floor to prevent guests from further play as they near the closing time. Signage on the gaming tables about the timing of the dealing of the last shoe, verbal announcements from dealers, and so forth. And Mr. Bandt is prepared to give you more details on the specific measures that have proven to be effective. The only issue that I heard about that occurred once and did not reoccur was on the first Saturday night of this order at Encore. There was congestion leading out of the garage at closing time. It was a matter of driving out of the garage and merging onto the street. Folks were in their cars, so there was no health-related concerns. There was not congestion of people outside of their cars. But we've all experienced that snaking through a garage when an event empties out. It's not fun. That has not repeated itself. And GEU is monitoring the closing time and ensuring that traffic control is able to handle that group exit. That's the only issue that I've heard about. The numbers, the occupancy numbers have stayed below the 50% of the reduced occupancy numbers that you have ordered in your requirements. But really, the messages, the licensees are continuing to work very hard at these measures. There continues to be a high degree of cooperation. I'd like to invite Bruce to give you some additional details. And then, of course, we can try to answer anything that you may have. Yes. The licensees have really been doing a fantastic job with getting the casinos cleared and keeping the people socially distant. They've utilized some emergency exits as well to clear the buildings. The turning off of the slot machines to various hours and stuff have helped. So IT has really been a great help with this. And there's been no problems with that. The game closures have gone really smoothly. I was expecting some hiccups with this, but we have not seen any at all. So kudos to the casinos for making this go much smoother than I thought it was going to go. So things have gone very well. If anybody has any questions, Loretta and I will certainly field them. Questions for Loretta and Bruce? Again, I think no comment is good news. Commissioners, we're very pleased with this continuing compliance and appreciate the cooperation of all three licensees around these tough new restrictions, but ones that we are all understanding are being driven by public health metrics. No comments? Thank you for the thorough reports. Thank you, Karen. Thank you. Karen? Pardon me if I was muted. Yeah, so that concludes the administrative update for today. I did want to wish everybody, particularly on our staff, the very happy Thanksgiving. I realize, as Kathy said, this is going to be a different Thanksgiving. But I can't thank the staff enough for the work they've done in this most difficult year. And so I really hope everyone enjoys the holiday coming up. Thanks. Karen, were you going to take this opportunity to make an introduction? I think we're going to do that when Jill does her item in number five. So North, stand by. And just jump in for that. Jumping the gun a little bit. Yeah, that's OK. Thank you so much. We worked the plan there. OK, thank you so much. Then we're continuing on to item number four. Community Affairs Division Chief Delaney, please. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. So up for you today, we have on course third quarter report. As you remember, we gave our licensee some relief from the quarterly report requirements when the casinos were shut down. So this is the first quarterly report since they reopened. And with that, I will now turn it over to Jackie Crum, Senior Vice President and General Counsel for Encore for Encore's third quarter report. Thank you, Joe, and good morning, commissioners. So while I look forward to our presentation about the quarter, which was a very good quarter, I wanted to echo Loretta's statements earlier. As you know, our world changed yet again this month. And I'd like to thank the commission and the staff, Executive Director Well. Loretta, you've got so many titles. Now I don't know which one you would prefer me to use. Ruth Stone, Lewis Burke, Captain Connors, the GU, Katrina and IT team, to name just a few. But helping us discover how we can actually open and close a building that was never designed to be opened or closed. I'd also be remiss if I didn't thank our employees, who have once again demonstrated that they can be nimble and adaptable. With that, let's talk about the past. So I'm going to try to share this PowerPoint presentation. And Jackie, just a reminder, I think when you're just a little bit closer to the microphone, we can really hear you clearly. OK. Thank you. Is it sharing? Not quite yet. Yeah, you know, it's not letting me share it. It says there's security issues. Jackie, I've got it loaded up here. I can share it on my end. And you can just cue me to switch. Yeah, let's take a second to get it up. There we go. There we go. Thank you, Joe. And one second. Let me get to the slideshow. I keep trying to control it. And I'll have to step back and let Joe navigate. Thank you. OK, so to talk about the gaming revenue, as I said, we were very proud of what we were able to achieve in the third quarter. As you know, the month of July reflects about two thirds of a month, which is why it's slightly lower than our results in both August and September. You can see that our slots, GGR, increased in July, August, and September, compared to past months. And as a result, we were able to pay up to $28 million in state taxes for the third quarter. So Joe, if we can go to the next slide. Our lottery sales continue to increase, and we continue to engage with the lottery in discussions about how we can promote the lottery. One of the items that we're considering for the next month is to have a giveaway of lottery tickets. I know it's been a popular item at some of the other, some about other licensees. And so we've been talking to them about how we can accomplish that. So lottery sales for the third quarter were $421,804. So on the employment, this chart is a little misleading, and I want to be clear about it. So it says the total number of employees is 3,604. But what that includes is employees who are furloughed, or employees who are hourly employees and who are not receiving, who are not currently receiving any hours. So a more realistic number is 2,600 actively working employees for the third quarter of 2020. So on Massachusetts residents, we are still at the 89% mark. We are still over 86% on local hosts and surrounding communities. We have exceeded our goals for minority and veteran employees and continue to work on making sure we meet our goal for the women employees. So on operating spend, we're continuing to focus on this. Frankly, it was a little bit more difficult because of our closure. But I think we're close to our total, which is our annual goal of 25%. For the third quarter, we were at 21%. This reflected, we met our goal for women's business enterprises. We were slightly below for both minority and veterans business enterprises. But we were still able to spend over $14 million on minority veterans and women business enterprises. On the local spend, again, this is frankly something that's suffered because of our closure. But this is our quarterly spend. These are aspirational goals. They're not requirements. But it is something that we take very seriously and will continue to grow the expenditures in our communities. We will say that we have run into some issues in identifying businesses within these communities and intend to reach out to the communities directly to assist us on a going forward basis in terms of identifying potential businesses that we can do business with. One of the ones that we did want to highlight, and this is maybe one of the good things that has come out of maybe the only good thing that has come out of the pandemic, is that we purchased approximately $110,000 worth of hand sanitizer and other health and safety supplies from Quintana Supply during the third quarter. Jackie, do you happen to know what community they're from? I don't, but I will find out. And was that their primary product, or did they pivot? No, I believe they actually pivoted, and they were very helpful in helping us secure additional supplies. So it was something that they grew their business to adapt to. Excellent. Thank you. So on the compliance side, please to say that we've seen a decreased number of miners who are intercepted, miners at the slots, miners at the table games, miners consuming alcohol. I think one of the primary reasons for this is reinstalled before closure, actually, at very dark machines at each entrance. And our security team calls them sort of toaster machines. And essentially, it allows you to insert the ID, and it gives you a real-time feedback as to whether the ID is fake, whether there are any issues with it. Jackie, can I ask one question about that? I agree that the numbers are improved. They're very good. I didn't know if you had any information on the one miner who was there for two hours and six minutes. And I'll need to verify that this was the miner. But if I'm thinking about the right person, I think this person came onto the gaming floor, was not asked for ID. At the gaming floor appeared to be older than the person seemed to spend some time in one of our restaurants for an extended period of time. Thank you. So in our promotions and marketing, we continue to try. What we launched is what we call the HERO program. And it's a token of our appreciation for everyone who has provided such extraordinary services during this pandemic. So what we've done is we've upgraded any members of the HERO program to our Platinum Tier rewards. And we offer them the amenities that come along with that status. And on special events, we are very proud to say that we received the 2020 James DP Feral Award for Ground Fields Remediation as the project of the year. They recognized, as I look out right now and I see the beautiful water and a living shoreline, they recognized us for our efforts there. This shouldn't be the project of the decade. So one of the ways that we've tried to pivot is we've developed a specialty in what we call micro weddings. These are very, very small events, obviously less than 10. We've had four this year and we've got a few more scheduled. We're really trying to push this out. It's a great way for people who want to celebrate during this time to do so in a safe and inappropriate manner. And finally, what we did, we did a deal where we can now allow our patrons to go online and book a marina reservation. So we realized that our patrons still are very interested in visiting our resort through a waterfront. And this is a way that private vessel owners can make a reservation for a short time, stay at our dock. Jackie, does that include kayaks? As I've said, we will make special exceptions for kayaks. We do not currently have a kayak launch. We'll have to wait for that to last down the road. To that, I'll open it up to any questions. Yeah, I know we asked questions along the way, but commissioners. I'll start with a couple, Jackie. Thank you for that presentation. Just, it's not necessary to go back to the slide, but the slide of employment, you mentioned about 2,600 people, being the most realistic number. But we're looking, of course, at a period of the whole quarter. Is that an average? Is that a midpoint in time? Or is that the most recent number? What else can you tell us about that figure? Sure, so the 2,600 was the average number of actively working employees during the third quarter. Following the additional restrictions, that has had an impact on another approximately 1,000 employees have been impacted by that, whether through furlough or a reduction in hours or they're not receiving hours. Right, and this has been a very fluid situation, needless to say. Can you speak a little bit about what some of the employees that you furlough, what is an expectation if things get eased a little bit more later on? What else can you tell us relative to your process of bringing people back, depending on the circumstances changing? Sure, so what we're trying to do is be incredibly flexible. In addition to, obviously as business demands increase, we'll reopen venues and bring people back. However, what we're also trying to do is reach out to our furloughed employee base. If we do have any open positions, the very first place we look is at our furloughed employees. So we've had a number of employees who've come back from different roles to the extent that they've had the skill set that would fit that role, both on the management level and on the hourly level. And does that mean additional training, I suspect, or some kind of, it is additional training? Yeah, so as we bring people back, but we've also tried, for instance, we have a lot of great talent in the hotel and we're very aware that we'd like to reopen that as soon as possible and we don't wanna lose that talent. So we have tried to move people around so that they are able to provide us services during this time and we've tried not to furlough people if at all possible. Unfortunately, I think every single department has been impacted and so we do have to take that into consideration as well. Well, thank you for that. And it occurs to me that it's quite a challenge to be able to be so flexible and reactive to try to get as many people in the right positions and reacting to the circumstances around you. So thank you for those highlights. And as I said, it's been, our employees have just been incredible. What we're asking them to do and the way they're performing is outstanding. We couldn't be more proud of our employees. Other questions or comments for Jackie? Well, I can just say thank you. On behalf of all of us, Jackie, we're happy to resume this cadence of hearing from you. It's been a difficult period. There will be challenges we know going ahead given the new restrictions, but I think getting these quarterly reports back onto this cadence will be really helpful. And we'll just have to address all the various assumptions that are coming with this particular period. It's gonna be very hard to develop any ideas around trends, et cetera. I think that's, you know, to answer Commissioner Zaniga's question, you know, what have we told employees who are on furlough? We try to communicate with them regularly. We try to tell them, you know, we miss them, which we do. We'd love them to come back. We can't give them any guarantees at this point. And if I may, I should go back to the good news that you started with relative to the revenues. But as you say, Madam Chair, I'm very interested in how those revenues change with the reduction in hours. It's of course something that it's very hard to forecast, but one more reason we appreciate all these quarterly reports. That's right. That's right. So thank you. And we also appreciate you're expressing your gratitude for our team. I know that they were innovative and really helpful for your team. So thank you for that. Congrats. Very much so. Switching off the machines was a huge value add for us. So thank you. Yeah. I don't know if you elaborated on that, but it turns out that we had the ability to do something more than what the licensee could do. It was really helpful and it protected the patrons and allowed for compliance. So all very good news. All right. Thank you so much. I haven't seen your face for a long time, so it's nice to see you. Nice to see you all too. Okay. That concludes our report. Okay. You're up in a little bit. So thank you, Jill. We'll go to number five then. You'll be standing by. You'll be standing by. Thank you. Jill, Director of Workforce Supplier and Diversity Placement. Good morning. There you are, Jill. Good morning. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. Jill, do you want to do the introduction of Nora? Or shall I do that? I know we had sort of connected some emails about the interest. Oh, you're right. You know what? Why don't you do the honors? Okay, I would be happy to do that. So I did want to mention we've got Nora Grouswell is the new property. Grouswell is the new property manager at PPC Plainters Park Casino. So he's replaced Lance George, who has been so successful he was promoted to another position. So I just really wanted to welcome Nora. We had a conversation this week. Great conversation. I'm very excited to work with him. And he comes to us. He had been the general manager of Ameristar Blackhawk. And then prior to joining Penn in 2017, as the AGM of Hollywood Casino at Charlestown Races, he'd worked at Harrison, the Caesars organization, where he served in a variety of roles primarily on the offside of the business. And then during his tenure in Ameristar Blackhawk, he was really a key contributor to integrating the property into the Penn portfolio. And remember the pinnacle merger and that was a big operation for the Penn National Company and he was very successful in that area. So I just want to say hello and welcome to North and we're happy to have you here and just give you an opportunity to say hello to the commissioners. I know you're gonna be meeting with them individually, but just wanted to say hello and thank you. Thank you very much, Executive Director Wells and good morning to you, Madam Chair and the rest of the commissioners. I look forward to working with all of you and taking over the great work that Lance has done, making sure that we uphold the highest standards and the bar that you set for us. It's a pleasure and an honor to operate in the state of Massachusetts and we continue our commitment that have been laid out for us. So thank you so much. I look forward to speaking to the commissioners that I've not yet had the opportunity to speak with one-on-one and thank you again for the very warm welcome. Great. Turn it over to you, Jill. Great, thank you. And let me extend my welcome as well to you as well. We didn't say it, but welcome. We were all careful on our meeting, but welcome, North, thank you. Thank you. Jill. So one of the areas that Plain Ridge Park Casino has really demonstrated their commitment to is diversity and also the procurement of goods and services from local companies. So here to present their new plan, their new procurement diversity plan for operational goods and services is Dana Fortney, the vice president of finance for Plain Ridge Park Casino. And just by way of reference, license condition four of their updated or renewed gaming license award requires that they submit an affirmative marketing program for the provision of goods and services cured by the gaming establishment. And so this plan that you have with you today satisfies that requirement. So I'm gonna turn it over to Dana Fortney to give you a high level overview. Thank you. Thank you, Jill. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. Can everyone hear me? Yeah, good morning, Dana. Perfect. It's a pleasure to be with you this morning to present our updated purchasing practices plan for local and traditionally disadvantaged and diverse businesses. Before I dive into the details that we've edited, I'd like to say thank you to Director Griffin, her team and the commission for their partnership in helping Plain Ridge grow and maintain our diverse spend over the past five years of operations. We've had a great story. In that timeframe, we had an overall diverse spend goal of 21% and we ended at 29%. While it was hard work done by many, the support and continued outreach with potential new vendors has been so helpful for us. Well, on the topic of the past five years, we've grown relationships with many vendors. I can't name them all here, but they include Camelot Enterprises, Mansfield Paper Company, Mac Graphics, Millhench Industrial Supply and Kittridge Food Service. Kittridge is a particularly interesting story that I know we've mentioned to the commission before. Plain Ridge began doing business with them in 2015 and through our company's diversity program, which I'll touch on here shortly, Kittridge is now a vendor for over 10 casinos in the Penn National portfolio. They are also now the preferred distributor of food and beverage smallwares in the Eastern region. With that, I'll move on to the edits that we've made to the plan. To start, we remove some language throughout the document that focused on pre-opening spend as it's no longer relevant. We also rearranged a few sections to better the overall flow. In the introduction, we added some wording around our focus on diversity, as well as stating our continued commitment to our goals. Those goals are 6% for minority on businesses, 12% for women-owned businesses and 3% for veteran-owned businesses. In the reporting schedule section, we updated the events in which we focused our outreach efforts over the first five years. Some highlights in this list are that we've been a member of multiple regional chambers of commerce, as well as members of the Greater New England Minority Development Council and the Center for Women in Enterprise since 2015. We've also participated in both organizations, expos and conferences over the last five years. One great example I would add for the Center for Women in Enterprise is they held a virtual event on October 6th, and we just picked up a new vendor from them, Boston Building Maintenance or Purify, and they do cleaning relating to COVID. So they are a new segment of that company that has opened up since the pandemic began. Moving on to the section of continued growth of the plan, we highlighted the supplier selection criteria that we use. Our criteria was adopted from the American Gaming Association Standards for the gaming industry. But what I feel is the most important for us to highlight in this section is that we afford diverse vendors with a 5% price consideration over other bits. We want to work with these diverse vendors, and this allows them to have a competitive advantage. In areas of ongoing eligible spend, not much changed here. The section was relocated, but the ongoing eligible needs for us continue to be the same. With the communication strategy section, we highlighted similar organizations that I've mentioned earlier and how we've been able to partner with them to get word out on how to become a vendor with us. Then next is the biggest section that I want to go through with you, and that's the Diversity Committee. We have a company-wide diversity committee for Penn National Gaming that has a commitment on fostering an environment of respect and the unequal opportunity. This committee is focusing on diversity both internally and externally. Eli Heard, as many of you know and have spoken with in the past, is our Regional Director of Strategic Sourcing for the Northeast, and he is a member of the Purchasing Subcommittee. Through the subcommittee, Penn has recently become a member of the National Minority Supplier Development Council. Eli attended the Council's virtual conference just last week, and we're looking forward to the great work that the committee will be doing over the next few years to expand the program. Lastly, we updated the definitions of diverse, the diverse vendors to match those from the Commonwealth's website. So with that, I'll open up to any questions that you may have. Questions for Dana or Jill? Sure, Madam Chair. Just some comments to Dana and a couple of questions. First of all, thanks for Penn National's great work, the great work you've done working with the local chambers of, excuse me, the local chambers of commerce and other organizations that I think hope you be successful. I also thank you for noting the great work that you've done with Kittridge, the great Western Massachusetts Company, Western Mass Business, so I can be proud of that. But what I think it shows is that, the benefits of the gaming statute, when it comes to spending, can impact more businesses across the state. We know employment tends to be more local, but your purchasing can really have an impact statewide and I think the great work that you've done with Kittridge shows that. Just kind of a general question. I think many of us were worried at the introduction of gaming, of whether you would be able to find local vendors and allow them to have the capacity in the overall business sense to keep up with, you know, a company like Penn and our other licensees. What experience are you seeing about some of these small businesses and just their ability to keep up with your guidelines, your requirements? Do they have the technical and business capacity to meet your needs? What's been your overall sense of that over the last year? Yeah, that's a great question. I would say since my time here, we have had vendors that are absolutely ready and prepared, but I also know that prior to my time here, they've grown with us. So maybe we started out our spend small and then as we learned each other and the relationship that we needed to build, we've been able to expand the product lines that we can purchase from them and or the volumes that we're able to purchase from them. So it's been a great way to see them grow right along with us over the last five years, but I can't think of any instance that we've had where, you know, there's a vendor that we've identified that really doesn't have the infrastructure yet to keep up with us. So it's a great question, but it's been a great story. That's great. That's great to hear. Thanks, Dana. If I might add, Dana, that's really impressive that during a pandemic, you're able to pick up a new vendor that specializes in COVID cleaning. Good for that vendor to realize that would be a growing need. And I just think it's really impressive that you were able to identify this vendor and bring them in for this really important piece of cleaning that's so needed right now. So congrats on that, please. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Madam Chair, if I might, one thing I was excited to see in the plan, actually two things, the 5% consideration, price consideration for diverse businesses, I thought was really showed their commitment to diversity in local procurement. But the other area that I was excited to see was the accelerated payment program that they're looking to launch in the future. Credit card payment and immediate or quick payment is very important, especially for smaller businesses. So I thought that was really a great introduction and I look forward to hearing how that goes. Especially during these lean times. Right. I mean, it will make an enormous difference. But commissioners, I think this is a very strong plan and I recommend approval. Patricia, is there anything you wanna add? Yeah, I was just gonna highlight the point that Jill made, which is, sometimes these suppliers and businesses, they operate on very tight margins. So having a consideration like they have done for the small business and diverse business is probably a really important step in significantly increasing that. So I agree with Jill's assessment, overall assessment and Dana, thank you for your great presentation. Then I believe, Jill, you've made your formal recommendation and you are looking for a vote today from the commission. If there are no other questions for Dana, excellent report, Dana, an exciting report. So thank you. And then I would look for a motion. Commissioner Stevens, are you set? Sure, Madam Chair, and first of all, Dana, please thank Eagle Eye for us. We miss seeing him on some of these calls as well, but understand his larger role within the company and that speaks well of his great work and the great success of PPC. Madam Chair, I'd move that the commission approve the diversity plan for the procurement of goods and services at Clean Ridge Park Casino as discussed today. Second. Any questions or comments? Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Zinnega? Aye. Commissioner Stevens? Aye. Yes, thank you, Sharon, 5-0. Thank you. Excellent work, Dana. Jill? Great, commissioners. We'll move on to the regional tourism, marketing and hospitality plan as referenced by the renewal of the category two gaming license. License condition six requires compliance with a regional tourism, marketing and hospitality plan, which shall be subject to approval by an amendment at the direction of the commission. Such plan shall be prepared in furtherance of chapter 23K, section 1-6, and in consultation with the Regional Tourism Council. I'll just report that Clean Ridge submitted a draft updated hospitality plan on September 20th and revised that plan in mid-November following feedback from MGC staff and subsequent meetings with a director, Director Oral of the Mass Office of Travel and Tourism and Martha Sheridan, President and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau. In the plan, Clean Ridge Park Casino pledges to work collaboratively with various entities within the travel and tourism sector of Massachusetts, including the Greater Boston area, Bristol County, Plymouth County, Cape Cod, Metro West and others. I'm gonna introduce you to Michelle Collins, Vice President of Marketing. Thank you. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. Can everyone hear me? Yes, good morning. Yes, good morning, Michelle. It's nice to see everyone. Today I'll be providing an update, as Jill mentioned, on the Marketing and Hospitality Plan in accordance with license condition number six. As noted in the plan that we've provided, we will continue to expand on the initiatives that have been established over the last five years, focusing on leveraging our proximity to the various major attractions as well as supporting other regions and especially local businesses throughout the Commonwealth. I wanna note that during this critical time across Massachusetts and the country, Plain Ridge continues to follow Massachusetts collecting orders and the CDC guidelines for the safety of our guests and employees. We plan to modify this proposal as we work together with the communities to help stop the spread of COVID-19. And to show our commitment, we recently took the Boston Safe and Strong business pledge and we understand that as I do highlight some of these initiatives, we're gonna have to pivot and be creative and make changes as needed. But we understand the importance of travel and tourism and while we're in this pandemic, our focus will be keeping the revenue within our state. We wanna continue to build off the great partnerships and all the efforts we've achieved over the last five years. We'll work collaboratively, as Jill mentioned, travel and tourism sector Massachusetts including the greater Boston area, Bristol County, Plymouth County, Cape Cod, Metro West and the others. As Jill also mentioned, I did have discussions with Executive Director, Keiko Oral from the Office and Travel Tourism as well as Martha Sheridan, President and CEO of the Greater Boston Convention and Visitors Bureau. We had lots of discussions back and forth and we came up with several opportunities that I believe are outside of the box, they're creative and it will really allow us to show our support and expand this initiative across the My Choice database that we have access to. A few of the highlights that I wanna mention that we haven't done in the past and I believe will help us be successful is we will feature local attractions and events on our websites, our social media and in email and flip books and direct mail. What this means is I'll work directly with the office of tourism and the bureaus to identify different events going on throughout the quarter and share that with the community. We will also work to promote the My Local Massachusetts campaign, creating awareness and doing cross marketing efforts that support small local businesses and encourage residents of Massachusetts to eat local, stay local and shop local. We will do this by featuring a display on property of a local retail business, hotel or restaurant offering guests a free play offer or employees a gift card if they bring in their receipt from that local shop during the month that we are displaying. Plain Ridge will work with surrounding attractions and venues within Massachusetts as we always do to develop programs and identify synergies for us to work together. In addition, we understand the importance of keeping our ideas fresh and the need to pivot when necessary and we will meet quarterly with the travel and tourism sector sectors to discuss new ideas and opportunities as we highlighted in this presentation and plan. I do wanna thank Jill for all of her help and support as well as the office of travel and tourism and the regional chambers and the many partnerships that we've developed with hotels, rent them out, it's Patriot Place, the list can go on and on. I think we've had a really successful five years and I look forward to what we can come up with over the next five years. Any questions? Back to report, missioners. Questions, commissioners? Yeah, Madam Chair, I just wanna jump in and thank Michelle. This is an incredible display of leadership on behalf of PPC. I think we've seen it over the last five years. We're looking to see it in the next five years. The ability to understand and recognize how the pandemic has impacted the hospitality sector which everybody is suggesting may take longer to recover than some other industry sectors as we come out of this. But I just got to tip my hat to PPC for the leadership, adjusting this plan again to address the COVID related impacts, but you're continued work with partners at the state and local level, encouraging patrons to buy local and spend locally during this timeframe. I hope you extend that message also to your many, many employees who come from the region. But your involvement in the local mass effort is hopefully a model others will follow. It's great work and I think it just, I mean, really encouraged by the work that the town of Plainville, Rentham and Foxboro have done to really create that region of the state as a destination for local visitors and hopefully one day more out of state visitors to come and experience everything that region has to offer. So congratulations, Michelle, a great plan put together. Thanks for being a leader. And I heartily endorse this new revised plan for their new license period. Thank you, commissioner. Commissioner Cameron, are you leaning in? I was not, but I would echo commissioner Stebbins thoughts that this is difficult to give an enthusiastic report like this, Michelle, it's much appreciated and some of the innovative new things you're putting together as far as spending locally are just terrific. So congratulations. Thank you. Other comments? Again, I echo a big thank you, Michelle. Local, local, local, we like that very much. And I think that for you, North, this really, this report reflects what we saw during the relicensing period, the strength of your organization as a community partner and to use commissioner Stebbins term of leader. So we thank you for that vision and that plan going forward. You have demonstrated to us during the relicensing period, really what a very strong, valuable partner you are to not only the immediate community, but surrounding regions and as demonstrated today, really extends throughout the Commonwealth. So thank you. Thank you. And I guess, Jill, you're making a formal recommendation with respect to this. I hear commissioner Stebbins and commissioner Kamen's endorsements. Yeah, so as evidenced by this plan, Plain Ridge has been a very strong partner to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, especially in the tourism sector. So I recommend strongly approval of this plan. So we'll need to vote. Commissioner Stebbins, do you have a motion? I do, Madam Chair. I move that the commission approve the tourism plan submitted by Plain Ridge Park Casino as discussed here today. Second. Thank you, commissioner O'Brien. Any further questions or comments for either Dana or Michelle, I know this is really Michelle's matter, but okay, commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. Commissioner Stebbins. Aye. Thusiastic yes. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, commissioners. Thank you so much to all of you from PPC North. Welcome. This was your first meeting with us. We're sad that it's not in person, but it almost feels like that. So thank you. Thank you again. Thank you everyone. Okay, moving that on to item number six. Back to you, Joe. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. So today we're asking for a vote on the Community Mitigation Fund Guidelines for 2021. So the last time the commission met on this item, we had just, we had drafted the guidelines and they were opened up for public comment. So we received one set of comments from the Vector Policy Area Planning Council, which we've included in your packet. After we reviewed those comments, which were really a good set of comments, we really cover almost all of the items in that comment really under our guidelines, but they maybe weren't pulled out quite as much as that has been suggested. So we made a couple of very minor tweaks to the guidelines to reflect some of those requests from the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. So the sort of the next steps, again, after we're asking for a vote today on the guidelines and after the vote, the next steps would be we would start our solicitation on Monday for projects under the 2021 guidelines, which is great. We're out a little bit earlier than we have been for the last couple of years, which will give our people putting their applications, they give them a little bit more time to do that. And then what we're doing internally is we're gonna be doing three workshops for potential grantees. The first one will be in the middle of December on December 15th for those communities that still have reserves, unspent reserves with us and what we're hoping to do with that meeting is get everybody together and go over some of the examples of things that people can use that money for. And as, you know, under the guidelines, we're saying that these communities have until the end of calendar year 2021 to program that money to be spent. We're not saying it all has to be out the door, but they have to have a real plan to get that spent. And then in January, we're gonna do two workshops, one particularly for workforce, since that, you know, those workforce grants are very much different from most of our other grants, just in the way that they're managed. So we're gonna do one workshop for the workforce grants and then a second workshop for all of the other grants. And, you know, the idea there is with these workshops is to hopefully get, you know, people maybe to think outside the box a little bit but get a bit more creative on some of their applications. And in, you know, some cases our hope is that we get, you know, some better quality applications by giving people some ideas and some guidance on what we would like to see. And with that, I'll open it up to any questions that the commission may have. And I think Sharra has prepared a motion. Commissioner, do you have questions for Joe or Mary? Madam Chair, just jump in and compliment Joe and his team on the great work they've done to get the guidelines in their new form and fashion, incorporate the very thoughtful feedback we had from our friends at the MAPC and is 12. And I know, Chair, this was a brainstorm of yours to make sure that we reached out to these communities and offered these kind of orientation best practice sessions for them to have a chance to listen into Joe's point to make sure that they can produce good applications that align very well with the guidelines which change from year to year. And again, we want to see successful applications come in when we can. So, good work, Joe. Thank you. Yeah, and I meant to mention Tanya too. My apologies, you're a strong team here. Yeah, I think I went through the guidelines last night and I thought that everything, the changes we discussed and suggested were expected or included, extensive reforms really. And even though they look a lot alike, there are some really thoughtful changes from last year, including the Simple Community Impact Award. The name change means a lot, Joe. When I reread it last night, it meant a lot. So thank you. Other comments, commissioners? My only comment is that I agree, once again, agreeing with Commissioner Steppes. No, just the responsiveness. You're surprised by that? The responsiveness to the needs of the community. It's so apparent in reading this. It's not just, hey, this is the way we do it. We're gonna help you do it better. And of course, the responsiveness to public comments. That brings a lot to people who take the time to put a comment in that it is reflected in the document. So great work to the team. Absolutely. And thank you for sharing the schedule on the workshops. I do hope that they work out well. It's of course a little different virtually. So let's keep our fingers crossed that you get the attendance that you're hoping for. Good. So at this point, it's hard to believe, Mary, that we're at the point where we're adopting these. She's nodding her head. So here we go. I think we need to have a motion. Madam chair, I'd be happy to move that the commission approve the final version of the 2021 Community Mitigation Fund guidelines as provided in the commissioner's packet subject to any grammatical or immaterial changes. Second. Commissioners, you're all set. Commissioner O'Brien and Commissioner Zuniga. Okay. Thank you. All right, then Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. Commissioner Stevens. Aye. Yes, thank you so much. A lot of work and now the next phase, which is also very exciting. Thank you. Thank you, Jeff. Thank you so much for all your hard work. Okay. So we're moving on now to item number seven. That takes care of your director Wells. Thank you. Yes, Madam chair. So I'm going to have director Griffin join me on this presentation. We met earlier this week just to review these items for the presentation here today. So as you know, the commission approved the equity and inclusion action plan that the working group had developed. So we're just here to give you an update on some of the things we're doing. You know, given the early stages of implementing the plan, there's still been some activity there. We just want to let you know what's going on. And provide an opportunity for the commissioners to give us any feedback. Because this can be an ongoing process of commissioners giving us suggestions, ideas, anything that you think we as staff should be doing to forward this agenda. So as you remember, the initial action items had to do with one culture to regulatory review, re customer service for hiring and retention and five procurement practices. So those five items. So Jill and I will tag team kind of those items with you today and some of the things that are going on. Jill's going to start off just talking a little bit about the culture and what actions we've been taking already and some of the planned steps we have for the commission. We'll turn it over to Jill. Hello. Hello again. You'll remember that culture, we focused on training, communications and reporting and celebrating our community. And we have already started implementing some of these ideas and actions. For example, human resources launched diversity trainings on unconscious bias through LinkedIn learning. Staff are also attending an online preventing workplace harassment training in order to ensure that we foster a safe and respectful and inclusive environment. And we fully expect that training and most of these activities will be ongoing. So we'll continue to report to you on these. In terms of communications and reporting, we definitely want to be transparent about our efforts and not only to the commission, but to the staff and to the public. So we will be regularly reporting on our efforts and we'll also utilize the MGC town halls. So for example, on December 4th, we have planned a special town hall featuring guest speaker, Robert Lewis Jr, who's CEO of the base of Boston based non-profit that provides athletic education, career building resources to youth athletes and encourages them to pursue a college degree. And I just want to highlight just a little bit because I'm rather excited about this guest speaker. He's been a leader throughout his life. He grew up in Boston, but from his early career where he founded the Boston Astros, a regional baseball team composed of kids growing up in public housing to in the mid 1980s when he opened the first black health club in Boston for his years working for the city when he founded anti-gang violence prevention initiative called Street Safe or the street worker program later at the Boston Foundation where he created two standing initiatives, Street Safe Boston and Champs Boston to reduce gun violence in Boston and to promote positive youth development through sports trainings. And more recently, his organization called the Base, which really is intended to shift the mindset about what it takes for urban black and Latino youth to succeed. So he utilizes the power and passion of baseball and other sports now to help student athletes find pathways to success on and off the field. So he's going to be talking to us about his experience and life story about growing up as a black man in Boston and will inspire us all I think to leave from where we are. So just wanted to, I guess, drum up a little excitement about that. Director Griffin, I could chime in. I was fortunate enough to visit the base with Director Griffin and it was such an impressive place. I think young people think they go there to improve their baseball skills but they end up with so much more. One of the things that impressed me so much so don't miss this lecture is what I'm trying to say is when we walked in, when a young person who may be training, maybe up at bat swinging, they stop what they're doing, they come over, they take their hat off, they look you in the eye, they shake your hand, it was just so impressive. And the other thing I was impressed with is it started off as baseball and I think some of the girls in the local neighborhood said, hey, we would love to train with maybe softball and so we started a whole program there too. So just really an impressive individual as well as the program itself. These kids end up, he has, and he'll talk about this but he has contacts to these colleges all through New England and he just funnels these young people to get a college degree and they do their training for the SATs right there at the base. They do their homework and just life lessons were just amazing. I actually have not been to such an impressive place. I can't think of another time that I was that impressed with a program like this. So, Jill, I just wanna thank you for taking me there. And secondly, I really look forward to this event. Commissioner Cameron, I forgot about our tour of Boston early on. So thank you for reminding me. And I agree, I'm excited as well. So to move on. Just in terms of the import of this in terms of, it's a real kickoff for the good work that will come out of the framework that was developed and adopted by the commission with the working group. It's an exciting kickoff. We've already had the internal TED talks that were wonderful, but I think this lecture, if we don't call it that, will be just such a gift and such inspiration for all of us. So thank you, Jill. Jill's being a little humble in that she has known this gentleman for so many years that it didn't seem possible. It was over 30 years and I had a chance to meet with him over the phone with Jill and you could just tell what respect he has for Jill. And he's delighted to come and speak with us. And I think in many ways because how much he admires Jill and all that she's accomplished. So there's mutual admiration and respect, but I thank you for arranging it because it really will be a gift in December for all of us. I think my only regret is that it's an internal thing. And I think anybody who's listening from the outside world would love to be able to hear Mr. Lewis speak. So thank you so much. Very, very important outreach on your part. Thank you so much. And the respect is extended to him as well. And just in terms of culture, I'll just say the work is ongoing, but we are talking about talking with human resources and they're talking about launching a newsletter, an internal newsletter that will have all kinds of information and be a real vehicle for information about diversity but also all kinds of information regarding staff communications. And a series of programming to be announced later. Director Wells and I met with HR manager Banda and Tanya Perez and we had some exciting discussions but we really want to announce this at a later time. So we'll keep you posted. But it does include a culture club working group. So we'll say that. And I think Chair Judd Stein mentioned our MGC talks, the first one which featured a discussion on diversity and the real intention of these MGC talks is getting to know your coworkers, getting to know similarities, differences and just to in this day of electronic meetings and HD meetings and Zoom calls, leveraging relationships. And so we hope we did that well. And with that, I'm gonna turn it back over to Director Wells to review the regulatory review. Can I interrupt before you move on from culture? First off, I wanna see if anybody has any questions for Jill on culture because if you remember it's a five point action plan. Well, I just wanted, I had little inspirational language to share because it really brought home this piece of work. I happened to attend a Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce webinar this week. And it was interesting, I'd mentioned it to Karen and Trukti because it really has to do perhaps with moving forward and Enrique, I think you were there too on our space and what it might look like when we return to the office to work, whatever that's going to be and whenever it's gonna be. And so it was a dressing space and the speaker was just captivating. Her name is Elizabeth Lowry and she's with Elkis Manfredi Architect. She's an architect and she started her talk mainly around what will work space look like? What will we be when we are no longer just strictly remote? And she said, and this is what I wanted to share, culture eats strategy for breakfast every day. And so I think that you've started with the number one point. If our culture is strong and inclusive and diverse and respectful, the strategy and all our requirements and responsibilities will fall from there. So I liked culture eats strategy for breakfast. So thank you. That's something I may have to put that up on the wall as a reminder. I love it. I love it. You could see the comments. It was a predominantly female audience and the comments where everybody was quoting it just resonated. There were many great quotes but that's for another day, Jill. I can share them with you with that when I thought you would appreciate. You know, and if I could add to that the way to reinforce and strengthen that culture is precisely what I think we're doing and we're doing well and that is to continue to talk about these to continue with the momentum of, you know the initial energy that the group started with and coming back and reporting and engaging people and generating another working group at Hock as it might need to be. That's what I think really drives the culture and doesn't turn into a flavor of the month type of exercise. This is too important to be perceived or forgotten eventually as just, you know a sign of a passing time. So it's important to keep the commitment and I think it's important to recognize that we will continue to do that as we have been doing. Absolutely. Karen. Okay, so and more on the ops side of us on the fun side, the regulatory review. You know, that's a long-term project as he said in the action plan it would be something out of the regulatory review that the commission would do over three years. There would be items that we would fold into that process to address issues of equity and inclusion. So I'll be working with commissioners Anita to pull that into that review process. Those two items were that the regulations not result in a disproportionate negative impact and it eliminates barriers to opportunities for individuals and or communities of color. So we have obtained some guidance within others in state government on some best practices. So I'm looking forward to the project but that is a more long-term project and more ops project on the volume of regulations that we do have. So I don't know any questions or any questions or thoughts on that because we are gonna start that process relatively soon. So if there are any comments or questions please just let me know. Well, if I may, I just add a little bit from what you already mentioned Karen we have a good template of an approach facilitated by Chair John Stein that from the state. There's things that we will be incorporating relative to a checklist and plan and a form to do a lot of these on a rolling basis is the best way to kind of think about it given that we have a lot of other commitments as well. And we'll come back and hence the long-term nature but the way to do it is start with a group set of regulations and go from there. I think then, and of course for this discussion it's that lens as we consider regulations right now that come before us we should always make sure to have this particular lens on our minds and think about the impact inadvertently a regulation could have with respect to people in communities of color. So the very, I think we've already had some examples of it. So it's purposeful and intentional review. Thanks. So the third item sort of ties in on sort of that upside of the house. That is the customer service. And that's sort of a focus on our policies, procedures, practices, really looking for fair and equitable outcomes and granting accessibility to advance economic prosperity for individuals and communities of color. So, this action item requires a sort of agency wide approach. We've got everyone from our community affairs team to licensing, to legal, to research. We touch a lot of people and communities throughout our organization. So the plan is for each division in the agency to submit some recommendations to the executive director to me on how they can measure success in this area. For example, in responsiveness or completeness in terms of information. So this is an ongoing evaluation of how we do business and it ties in with what we were talking about earlier and culture. So what is our culture and how do we treat people and what is our approach with respect to sort of our outward facing components within our organization. So this concept should be woven through discussions at various meetings at various different levels within the agency. So this is another ongoing long-term project. Any feedback particularly on this item from the commissioners would be most welcome. Now, you know, it's a base discussion or going forward. You know, if there's any interesting models or things we should look at with how other either state agencies, private enterprises are looking at making this accessibility of reality, we would be interested in that. But again, the focus is on our culture and communication, not only within ourselves, but also externally. You know, a good example, I was just listening to Joe Delaney this morning talking about these workshops for people that may be applying for grants. That's a forward-facing great opportunity to advance opportunities within communities of color and give them some feedback on how to apply for grants. So I just thought this morning that's tied in great with what we're doing with the equity and inclusion group. So, you know, commending Joe and getting to that. So that's an open discussion. So welcome any feedback or any comments on what you'd like staff to be doing in that area. Commissioner Wells, it reminds me of when the five of us sat in a room and started to figure out what we should do and commissioners Zuniga and Stebbins will remember this. You know, we put together some guiding principles and this was one that we talked about extensively. So, and how important it was that we were our customer service was top shelf. But I think there's a difference between writing it in a document actually making sure all parts of our agency are doing it, right? I just thank you for understanding how important this is and getting all of our divisions involved and how they can just kind of check to make sure they're doing the best they possibly can with this. It's critical to the organizations. So when I read this, I thought, wow, this goes back to the very beginning but it needs to be revisited and it needs to be something you actually think about, talk about, involve people and not just put it on the wall somewhere, right? Right, right. That's great. You know, and just maybe to add a little bit, it's easier just internally for our different departments and divisions. It's perhaps easier to think that some have more customer service than others. I can think of maybe licensing or investigations but the reality is that everybody has a customer an internal or external customer. Either our peers, the people that we finance the bills that we pay, the budgets that we review, everybody in our organization has a customer and multiple customers in some ways. And with this principle, it's in common upon everybody to think what I'm doing is serving a customer and I should be thinking in those terms when I send my email, when I use the mechanisms that I'm gonna use and in my daily work, et cetera. So looking forward to, I know it's too a little abstract perhaps but looking forward to making sure that that continues to be a change of, or a reinforcement of a culture of customer service. Yeah, Karen, I would just add to that. The great comments by Commissioner Zuniga and the customer facing piece and we know we do have departments that have more interaction with the public and it's great, simple suggestion would be, reach out to them after they've interacted with us. What was their experience like? Can be a quick survey monkey you can talk about will not only get feedback as to how we treated that individual or that small business, but they may also give us some thoughts and ideas on how we can improve our process and this kind of constant re-looking at how we do things and strive for efficiencies. But it can be something as simple as we interacted with you. What was your experience like? How were you treated? It can be a quick simple survey monkey that gives us some immediate feedback as to how we're treating the public, which is important. Excellent, okay. Yeah, I think that's a great idea. Yeah. So, of course, for the expertise of Jill, again through this lens, and we have our secret weapon in Jill, not so secret anymore, but to remind us of making sure we have that intentional lens of looking that somehow inadvertently aren't either promoting opportunities in a way that we could or somehow disadvantaged. So I love, Karen, that already you're taking the step of communicating this message across the divisions. You know, how it gets implemented, it's a big project, but you know, there's going to be incremental progress just by communicating it and just keeping it on your regular monthly check-in and asking folks to report, hey, this is what I did. You know, I mean, this is what we did. We came up with this idea because it will be replicated in different ways throughout the organization. Thank you. Madam Chair, I'd add that our secret weapon, Jill Griffin, has also developed an extensive set of contacts with Chambers of Commerce and businesses who have all wrestled with this question about customer service and getting feedback and, you know, bringing a group together that we've worked with to just kind of share what their experience has been, if that could be a helpful example. That's a great idea. Great idea. Okay, excellent. All right, so I'm real, and I do appreciate the feedback and please feel free, you know, email me, come chat with me any time, you know, either staff or commissioners because I'm really interested in suggestions and ideas on that because it is interwoven with everything you do. And so the next action item has to do with hiring and retention. So Jill will be supporting HR on their on-billing efforts in this area, that this is, as Commissioner Cameron mentioned, you know, the diversity and promotion and diversity had been something that original five commissioners have noted is something important within the agency and we've been working on that since the beginning, but adding Jill to the mix, as you said, the secret weapon and getting some additional resources to help out in that area I think is only going to help us. We've now established a practice of including her in the hiring process for all our new employees, which is great. And she really adds a nice touch to the process and giving us helpful information and insights. And we enjoyed having her in that process personally. And so our goal is to increase diversity in our applicant pools. So I'll turn it over to Jill just to talk a little bit about specifics on what her suggestions have been where we're advertising in some ways that we've been looking to increase our outreach in that area. So it's been my pleasure to work with the human resources team. And even before outreach, I think you all heard human resource manager, Trupde Banda talk about job descriptions and how important it is to really look at the job description and is it written for what you really need, what is required for the job? And when a job description is written so that it is inclusive, it allows for a wider range of different people to more easily see themselves in the position and decide to apply. So that helps with the applicant pool. On the flip side, job descriptions that are not inclusive may limit candidates' interests and make it harder to find a diverse candidate pool. So that's one of the areas that, from the very beginning, human resources pushes the hiring manager to think about, is that really what you need or a requirement of the job? So I think that's important to start with. And I have worked with the team on outreach and recruitment and really focusing on some grassroots or community-based outreach. There's an organization called Get Connected, which is a public relations firm that focuses on connecting people with diverse backgrounds, just everyone, right? They put out information like the top lawyers of color, that sort of thing, and they focus on various industries. Sarah was helpful in connecting actually us to the dinner group, which is a group of 1,500 black men who meet, professional men who meet really to connect with each other. And members range from very senior level established professionals to those who are just entering or beginning their careers. So that's the range of kind of community outreach. We've also, for example, for all three of the positions that we currently have posted, the Boston Bar Association has diversity affinity groups. And for a very small fee, you can post the position with the Boston Bar but also with the black lawyers, the Hispanic lawyers, the Asian American affinity group. So we've done that for these positions. And we've really utilized our internal, and I wanna call out Austin and Sarah on this, our MGC social media. So as always, we send out tweets and Facebook posts but we are tagging various organizations so that people see those posts. We had some suggestions at one of the previous meetings and have posted with the International Association of the Chiefs of Police and the National Organization of Black Law Enforcement Officers. Thank you, Commissioner Cameron. So those, that's kind of at a high level. So we are continuing those efforts and that's it in a nutshell. So we will also, part of this is our licensees recruitment efforts. And so we will also continue to publicly monitor and prioritize the licensees hiring, as you know that we have, you get quarterly reports on those practices and with respect to their commitment and you can see that has continued even through these trying times. And then things in the future, mentoring, development and retention efforts. So we look forward to working on those. So I'll pause at that point. Any comments or questions for Jill? Okay, so the, and then the fifth action is very similar to the procurement practices to reexamine and reevaluate policies, procedures and practices to maximize the MGCs and licensees minority owned business to spend. You know, we've been doing that. Jill's been tracking that on the licensees side. You know, our legal department is commencing just as a normal course of business, a complete review of our procurement procedures. We do have a lot of expertise in our officer or finance team on our procurement procedures generally. But in a review of that, we're gonna be holding Jill so that when we're looking at those processes and procedures, our efforts and diversity spend are included in that evaluation. So, you know, Jill, I'll turn it over to you just to talk about, you know, some of the communications you've been having it, having it internally with other members of our staff, and it's really important. Well, I started with the experts at my first meeting with that was with CFAO Lennon and Agnes who I see on, who's on the call. And I really picked their brains about what the opportunities were. And, you know, maybe some of their struggles and how I could support the finance team generally. And then I've started meeting individually with directors. So I've, you know, really to get an idea of the opportunities in each of the shops and that will continue. And really what some of the challenges might be in terms of procurement with an MBE or even other diverse spend. And then yesterday, we had an incredible meeting with the state supplier diversity office with Bill McAvoy. And really, I think it was almost his entire team. And that's exciting because the governor has recently issued an announcement that the supplier diversity office potentially will be its own secretariat. We'll have a lot more focus and outward attention in terms of outreach. We've recently hired Rob Williams, who's director of diverse and small business engagement. And his job is just that. The Commonwealth Supplier Diversity Office and Bill, director Bill McAvoy have committed to working with us to look at our spend for our projected spend. Six months out and working to recruit or inform diverse businesses about those opportunities. So I think that is really, really valuable and they were really excited to partner with us. So that was yesterday's meeting was just the beginning, but we've already talked about subsequent meetings. Questions for Bill on the diverse spend. I'm so pleased that you met with that group. It's a very innovative team. I know that you've worked with them in the past and I know that they'll be very interested in supporting your efforts here, Jill, so. Thank you. Any other questions? Just a comment, very impressive report. Congratulations to the whole working group and Jill, great work and what added value. It's really, it's really, it's nice to see. And Karen, again, thank you also for putting in the materials that are part of our packet, the statement of purpose that the working group developed. It's a good straightforward roadmap and one that we put you in charge of. So, yes, Enrique, that was good thinking. So we thank you for leading that effort. And I think I know that Enrique, Commissioner Ziniga expressed, you know, the goal is to keep our attention here. I don't think we have one worry with this team on our watch, right? Executive Director Wells and Director Griffin, I think the intention is there and we understand it needs to be a continuing responsibility on everyone's part. So, exciting. I think, Chair, Commissioner Cameron's sentiment. Thank you so much. Great, thank you. And thank you to the whole team that's been working on this. Excellent. That concludes that agenda item and we will keep you posted as part of the plan. You will be getting regular updates from the working group and we'll be giving you more information as we go forward. Thank you. And I didn't mean to cut off if anybody else wanted to say something. Commissioner Stubbins, Brian. No, great work, everybody. Thank you. Excellent. Okay. So, we're on to, I guess it's under Commissioner Updates. Commissioner Ziniga, with respect to the draft annual report. Yes, thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. So, including the packet is the draft of the annual report. I wanted to take a few minutes and speak a little bit about a couple of highlights that I think you've been coming upon us to talk about. Of course, it's being presented as a draft so that even commissioners want to change, edit, update, delete, or expound on anything. We are at a good timeframe to still do it. In the past, we've ended up submitting the report closer to December. I think it's in a good working order at this point with a lot of work that came from a lot of people who are the directors of certain divisions and hence have a different section. But there's still time as we go into production with some nice graphs to edit it if we needed to. So, I'll mention a couple of things. We, for the most part, are following the same format of the same sections that we've had in the past. And of course, this is a very different, a very unique year. As you may have noticed, a couple of comparisons to a prior year where we felt it was necessary to put into context, but there could be, again, more if people felt that it was necessary. I will note a couple of those areas. First thing that comes to mind, this was a very different year, just in terms of a lot of the disbursements that happened that come from casino revenues because there was three months of closure of suspension of operations. So, for example, in raising the disbursements this year, we're almost out of the Race Horse Development Fund. We're almost half of what they were a year ago. And a couple of things happened there. There was live racing that ended prior to the beginning of this fiscal year, in other words, June 30th of 2019. So, there was no disbursements effectively for live racing for thoroughbred during this last fiscal year. In addition to that, there was three months of no funding into the Race Horse Development Fund since March, which was then, you know, by the finance team reacted accordingly and made no disbursements as a result of them. There was decreasing in the number of days, the language because, you know, they were closed. So, we have a year that looks like half of the prior disbursements from about close to 15 million to about 7 million in terms of both disbursements. Diversity has gone up, by the way, and there's a comparison in the chart there from 17% to 21%, but of course we have had a high mark of 25% of our own diversity at our own agency. But I know because of everything that we talked about, there's increased efforts to try to trend that number up with the current vacancies that we have, even though there are not that many. We are silent currently on the diversity and inclusion working group, but we don't have to. And let me just mention a couple of data points. The working group met, I believe, for the first time, even though we talked a little bit about it, met for the first time in late June. The statement of purpose was issued well into this now fiscal year and there's a lot of work that carries. So, for that reason mostly, we are not talking currently about the working group, but we could put a paragraph or a summary of the statement of purpose or whatever the commissioners felt was appropriate. There's usually, there's a section that we have about major milestones and stated for the next fiscal year. And that in the past, as in this year, we usually talk about, so any developments that have already begun to happen effectively for this topic. There's of course a lot of difference in terms of revenues and we do provide some context or the decreasing revenues. A lot of that, for example, did not really affect the community mitigation section. It looks very similar to last year because there was enough funding and the funding cycle of that whole program is not necessarily pegged to the actual revenues that come month to month. There's more of a planning year that happens. So, anyway, those were the highlights I wanted to introduce. I can pause there and take any comments or questions. Mr. Cameron, can you go? May I start, please? Thank you. First of all, thank you. First of all, every year I say this, but I know how much work this is. So I wanna commend you for the work you put in year after year and the team that works with you to get this done. As I was reading it last night, first of all, I came up to the section on recommendations, legal, legislative action. And if you wanna say recommended legislative action, it didn't flow right to me. So I just, recommendations, legislative action, that was just something that caught my eye. Yeah, actually, yeah, that's improper language. It's for or we need to correct that title. Okay, and then in reading that section, I was looking at the horse racing piece and I understand that we're supposed to really outline things that happened this year and it made me think, I don't know that this present commission has really talked about that matter, meaning expiring nature of the horse racing statutes in a permanent manner. And I just wondered if we're just carrying it over or if we, before doing that, if we should just decide if that's still something this commission thinks is relevant. It just, it made me think that I don't think we've talked about this as a commission this year, at all, and I just wondered if that was something we should address. That, yeah, I think you're right in terms of having talked about it this year or not having talked about it. We have in the past and this section has grown over the years. We've submitted a section, you know, this topic in this section pretty much every year since 2016. And you'll notice in the middle of that section how the chapters from 2015, 2016, 17, 18, 19. I do see that, yeah. We've added, you know, that's the part that we've added because the legislature has, well, every year has added a new chapter in terms of addressing these one year at a time. And, you know, we, Yeah, no, I just, I just wondered if this is, yeah, and the other question I had is, I know that we've submitted reports and we're required to do that with recommendations. I just didn't know, and it just struck me when I read this, however, in our opinion, I just wondered if the annual report was the right place to express a commission. I guess when I read that, that's when I thought, wow, I wonder if all five commissioners feel like this is appropriate because this is a different group of commissioners. And secondly, I just wondered, it's a process question. Should we be, you know, talking about opinions in a, in an annual report? Just those two questions, that's all. Yeah, very relevant, thanks for highlighting them. You are correct from the beginning of your remarks that this has been a bit of a carryover. The same recommendations effectively with the slide update of the chapters that have happened, you know, every year effectively. I happen to think, and whether we word it as an our opinion or not, but I do happen to think, and here's the, you know, this is a mechanism to express our opinion in this public meeting, that the horse racing industry would be better off with longer term, with more certainty. And the nature of their extensions, I believe, doesn't quite help much when we know that there are other mechanisms that the legislature itself put in place to help the industry in the race horse development. And we've talked about it. I happen to agree with you. I absolutely agree with you, but my question was just, is this the appropriate way to express our opinion? I guess is what I'm saying. Yeah, well, that's a very valid question. I happen to believe that it's, you know, it's an appropriate place. There could be alternatives. I happen to believe that perhaps not everybody in the legislature is reading these annual reports, sadly, and I think they should. So, you know, where we can inform, you know, if we can do it in multiple ways, talking about it in meetings, putting more statements, position statements, or frankly, deferring to others to do that communication, you know, it's really up to the five of us. I believe that there's a mandate as regulators of racing, same that is very much in parallel from gaming of trying to ensure the viability and sustainability of those two industries. And that's why I think it's appropriate to express it as, you know, as taking a position. But again, happy to take it out if a majority of my colleagues believe that it's inappropriate to talk about it in the end. If I get it right. Mr. O'Brien, I'm sorry. This came up in another conversation that I was having with Todd and Kathy and Karen about how we want to go forward in terms of legislative recommendations and actions because to Gail's point, you know, some of us were not here when some of these earlier recommendations went out. And in terms of an annual report, I think it is a proper topic, but probably better restricted to what was actually done in the past year. And maybe I'm wrong, but I'm looking at some of these in the recommendations for legislative action. And it's a, to your point, it's a carryover and not date specific in terms of what did we specifically do in the last fiscal year or calendar year. So I think a way of addressing what Gail talked about and some of the issues that we talked about on the other meeting was maybe restricting the references in the annual report to really what was time specific for this, for the scope of this report. Because then it is in there, to your point, it's something we are mandated to look at in terms of force racing in particular. But I do think that it's more accurate in terms of what was in the past year. Do you think that applies to, that certainly it might apply to number two, the evolving nature of online gaming, perhaps. But even though there's been a lot of evolution elsewhere, not here. My memory is that we did specifically vote to send a letter to the legislature on the expiration of the force racing and that we asked them to take a more holistic approach. I think there is something relevant to that within this time period also. Yes, I agree that with respect to number one, I think you start, I don't have the document right in front of me Enrique, but I think that you start with the reference of the deadline. And so I think that for a report on the fiscal year activities, that would be appropriate, that in fact we did act on. I have the same concerns with this section because I would say that history is always important if it remains relevant. If it's no longer accurately reflecting our priorities, our policy, our thinking, our opinion, then I don't think it should be included. I think it needs to be accurate, but history is relevant, but I don't think you just roll it over. I have, so I'm looking at that page with a little bit of a different lens and I think that we also have, Todd is going to provide an update on the status of all legislative filings, legislative activity that we have done in the past and where we are. But I think that basically this report, the annual report, I think Gail mentioned it, maybe be focused, and Eileen was also referencing that, should be focused on what actually was done during this fiscal year. I don't believe I've ever had the, a matters come before me where we've talked about online gaming. And that's in number two, and it suggests our opinion. And I can say it may reflect the opinion of the commission at one point in time, but I think it's, I liken it to, if we talked about this device in 2017, the evolutions of this device in three years, this has changed so much and online gaming has changed so much. And we haven't expressed an opinion. I wouldn't want the legislature to pick this document up and see that it's our opinion on something as complex as online gaming and have it not be actually something that we acted on during this period of time. I don't know, Commissioner O'Brien, if you wanted to add in, because I might have cut you off, I'm sorry. No, I think it's accurate. There's also the other reason, obviously, that based on the timing of the legislative session, it may be that that recommendation is also no longer sort of a live issue. So I think if we stick to what was our action within the last year for the report, I do think it satisfies flagging what our positions were, but then it's also consistent with sort of the time restriction on the annual. Well, and it prompted me to think, you know, these are really important issues and maybe this commission needs to talk about them and maybe come up with some fresh ideas about how we can move forward with this. So that was my original thought was, you know, just maybe it's time to revisit these. They're important enough to put in the annual report. I think it's important enough for us to discuss as a commission and make sure we're in agreement A and B. You know, I think things have changed in the last couple of years. Maybe we want to incorporate some of that. And I think to have a point of thought is working on going back, and actually now that I see this, and we were figuring out how to get the best record of what exactly we did. The annual obviously is a great jumping off point then, so that they can give the overview. Some of this may not be relevant, some is fine to repeat, maybe some needs to be tweaked, but it is something that I know Todd and his group is working on so we can all get a refresher on what's out there. That's fine. I seem to be hearing, at least for now, to eliminate number two from that legislative action. And number one also, I wouldn't say it's eliminating. I think we have to review all of this carefully because I think number one states our opinion. And again, I think that's with respect to the filing that's been done in the past, which I think maybe reflect the opinion of the commission in the past, but we haven't really looked at where course racing is right now to really know if our filing would shift. And that's why I asked Todd for that update because it may be that we don't shift, so don't presume anything. It's just that we haven't really reflected on that filing in any kind of a substantive fashion. Then I want all the input from Dr. Lightbound and Commissioner Cameron and the committee need be on our filing. I wonder if the entry phrase that says in accordance with general law chapter 30, section 30 and general law chapter 23K, and then we submit recommendations for legislative action, it probably just needs to be over the past fiscal year, topics upon which this commission submitted recommendations or requests to the legislature included. And then we go through and just make sure what's bulleted here is in fact, and Enrique, even if you're feeling like you'd want people to know the historical topics, I think a broader reference would be in that opening paragraph. If it even said historically, these are the areas that the commission has submitted comments or communications to the legislature and then say specifically this past year and more pointed with these paragraphs. Because then I think I can hear you, Renka, that you're a little hesitant to sort of excise them all together for reference, but maybe that's a good suggestion. Yeah, I think that's a good suggestion. And I am a little reluctant for a couple of things. There are a couple of reasons. Let me just take one at a time or let me stay with racing. The statute mandates that the commission submit a draft 128D, which we did a long time ago. And the legislature hasn't acted on. And I think a lot of what we did discuss and granted at least two of you were not there for those initial discussions. And maybe we really need to go back and have those discussions, but I happen to believe that they are still very much valid, that the statute expired and we submitted what was, I believe, a really good research. A lot of research went into best practices from around the country as to how a racing could be modified, the simulcasting and live racing statutes. So the other thing is, and I'm glad you highlighted the reference, we are required and invited to submit recommendations for legislative action in as per the statute. And although I actually happen, if I remember correctly, that requirement is only once every two years. We have done it every year because it's not limited to every two years, but if I remember correctly, the actual language is that we submit recommendations for legislative action every two years. And so I would not be and have not been shy about expressing our opinion. For sure we need to be all in agreement, but it's at least the majority of us who believe this is our opinion and it still applies and it's still relevant because it happened in last year or not or no longer relevant. But again, I think the online gaming back to another topic has even evolved even more to what I think is embedded in these recommendations. Again, it's my opinion, it may not be that of everybody, but what we've seen around the country is a move towards online, everything online. The commission is going to go, can I interrupt? Yeah, sorry, go ahead, Commissioner O'Brien, before we get into this. Yeah, like it, so I think what we really need to do and please let me know if this is not the consensus we seem to be reaching, which is rewriting that introductory phrase to maybe be even a short paragraph that talks about the fact that we were invited at least every two years or as necessary to give it the opinion on things. Since it's inception, the commission has commented on the following areas, et cetera, so that it's out there for context. And then we really limit the detail below to what was done in the last year. I think that addresses what you're talking about, Enrique, but then also what we're talking about in terms of restricting it to the present. But I think that makes a lot of sense because I do agree with you, Enrique, that the historical piece is important and it's beating the drum. We still think this is important, but that format seems to be a better way to do it. And I think it's important to say maybe the date of when it was expressed because then in fact, I haven't had a chance to express my views or my opinion on the filing and I might be able to persuade you if I think differently. I'm not saying I do, but I just haven't. And so for the word, our opinion, it's just, if we haven't talked about it, it's a little bit, it's difficult to accept, even though I may be entirely in agreement, it's just without really flushing out these complex topics, I can't say I could sign off on it. And I wouldn't wanna be necessarily an obstructionist, but I just wouldn't be able to say, oh yeah, that's my opinion, that's all. Well, whether it's now or at a later meeting, of course, time is now before to ensure that I don't record these. It can be rewritten. I'd say let's have those discussions, let's have those opinions. And let's let them in. Well, I think for purposes of this document though, I just think we rewrite the opening and want to stick to this year. And then we did already have a conversation with Todd and his group about having that detailed conversation about what's been done in the past so that we can determine as a commission now what needs to be discussed again. And do we want the new way to act? And Commissioner Stevens, you're leaning in? Yeah, I've been listening to the good back and forth and first what struck me was the language around the kind of looking back with respect to the racing statutes. And obviously we can't forget our friends on the thoroughbred but I think you could accurately portray that it doesn't necessarily have to be our opinion. We have heard from numerous stakeholders over the last year that there needs to be certainty with the racing statutes. And I think that's, I would feel comfortable being that being language we can fold into at least looking at that legislative review without necessarily expressing an opinion. To the other points that have been made, this review that Todd is doing I think gives us an incredible opportunity at this two-year cycle end of a legislative session coming into a new legislative session with a new group of legislators to think about those proposals. And even if it's updating once that we've suggested before I think now it's the time to do that as they get ready to return to session in January. And I would put racing, the racing statute right at the top of that list with some other priorities but I think to Commissioner O'Brien's point looking at that previous year but I still think we can say we heard from the racing industry that there needs to be some consistency and some expectations around the racing bill. And that's a fact, we did hear that throughout the year. Absolutely. Actually, you know, it is because we have heard that I forged my opinion and we've written this way but we don't have to and we can simply reference their advocacy or comments in the past. Todd, can you give us a date when you'd expect to be able to update us on? I know it's on our agenda setting meeting schedule. I had certainly hoped to be able to do it at your next meeting and that is my goal. I'm trying to just pull together all of the historic letters and filings we've made to make sure you have an accurate picture but at a minimum, I think I can comfortably at least on a high level outline the issues and that have been touched upon in the past and what's still a live issue. Thanks. And I would just suggest if it helps, Todd and you need to break it up into, you know a couple of meetings to give us a chance to focus on a handful of pieces of legislation at a time that I'd be comfortable with that too. Right, and I would ask that in terms of if we are gonna focus on horse racing, that bill I'll need some time to review the bill the legislation that's been filed. I have more understanding it's the horse racing is complicated and that the statute is complicated. I have more understanding than I certainly did last year but I will need some time to think about it. You know, with respect to today's report we came first, I wanna thank all the team that every director that submitted their work I know you did it efficiently through SharePoint. This is our first opportunity to look at this because of the open meeting law restrictions and of course, you know, I have to admit that it was for me, I read the materials last night late into the, really into the morning hours and this was part of it. I need some more time to go through the document. So I know I'm hearing a deadline. I think I'm hearing we're gonna get some updates from Todd at least with respect to legislative initiative. So maybe that will help on this piece. I, my one suggestion would be with respect to rolling over matters again. I don't want there to be a habit of just rolling over something because it's being rolled over. We wanna make sure it's accurate always. But I don't think I saw anything that was historically like inaccurate just because, you know, life changes except for on this page, but I will want to review the document, you know, carefully. I know Karen, I don't think you've had a full opportunity to review it. And I do want the executive director's input too on the annual report. I think, you know, Enrique, so I wanna just get back to your timing. And, you know, obviously this page caught our attention and I wanna hear if there's any other edits that we were thinking about. We just happened to jump on Gail's initial comments. But I'm wondering about your timing, Enrique, because you know, I don't want to hinder your timing. The most important is that we get the content right. So that should drive it. I think in the past, but, you know, the past should not dictate as clearly evidenced by this discussion. It informs. It informs. In the past, yeah, in the past, we have tried to send the report prior to the end of the calendar year when, you know, and around, when people are still around, you know, mid-December. They can get, you know, something, you know, early January at the very latest, but I don't know that that ever really happened. And so we also need some time to go into production with our consultant, with our designer, a graphic consultant, Jack Rabbit, who usually take a review at this juncture when they wanna start reviewing for style and uniformity and things like that once all the content has been done, which is where we find ourselves. Okay. So, and they're really good. They've done it before. So they can turn around things quickly, maybe a couple of weeks to get new graphics, new pictures and produce the report that you have seen in the past. So there's still, I think, time to edit, you know, if it's not substantial. In other words, or rather, even if it's substantial, if we do it, you know, within a week or two, or let's say, you know, for the next meeting. And so, you know, I'd be interested in if, you know, there was good suggestions from Commissioner O'Brien as to kind of like how to address this section that might be a consensus, especially these legislative recommendations for legislative actions. One option, by the way, if all of you are feeling this way, we can simply take it all together because we are required and we'll just have to verify whether that two year requirement, you know, for some reason applies to this year and we did it what we did last year or something like that. I think it's a valid topic for the annual. I just think it needs to be more tailored to the time. And by the way, can I just say, maybe you meant this this way or not, Kathy, but I don't think that even in the legislative recommendations, there's inaccuracies. It is probably the case that they are a little stale, but I think what we reflect here is, you know, is accurate. Well, I'm only looking at number two because I've been working on that topic and I wouldn't say that what's written there reflects the position that the team has been taken. And if that hasn't been conveyed properly to the whole team, see, I wasn't sure where that came from. I had a concern to me, to Karen, are we communicating enough on that particular topic to the whole team to make sure we're all in sync because that just happened to be, it didn't seem consistent with the actually the public position we've been taken. So that's all. So that's what that's I'm going to keep that being inaccurate. But it's not inaccurate so much on the facts or anything like that. It's just, we want to make sure we're all in sync. And but I'm hearing- By the way, this section references a report that was issued us as per the reference in July, 2017, which we did collaborate and was before your time. And again, if we think it's not relevant anymore, I happen to believe that it's still relevant. That special commission that the legislature created, did issue a report which we did collaborate with. We were not part of that commission, but we were, we did a lot of work to inform it. So I'm hearing that in terms of getting edits and reviews and making sure Executive Director Wells has a chance to weigh in that if we were to, we could even convene a special meeting on this if we needed to, to accelerate our review. But within a week to 10 days or up to even two weeks, which would be December 3rd meeting, that wouldn't create a big obstacle for you in terms of getting to your timeline. Is one week a whole lot better than two weeks? Or is that- Well, yeah, one week is better than two, but it's not at the end of the world if we end up convening until December 3rd. I'd like to get a sense as to whether there might be other sections that we need to sort of- I was just going to turn to that too, but I'm just thinking about at least, as I said, I know my review, I would like to review it more carefully, although my review was pretty careful last night. And as I said, I didn't see other items necessarily, but I did want to make sure Karen has a chance to review it fully. Any other suggestions? I had one area that I feel like maybe we want to, you know, toot our horn a little bit more than we do in this draft, which is on page three, the very first bullet, just about the vote to shut down the scope of the establishments, et cetera. There was a tremendous amount of work that it went in from being in particular in this commission and the licensees in terms of coming up with the guidelines for the building. And so it'd be great to have a specific reference in that paragraph to the work and the production of that set of guidelines, because I do think, particularly with the governor, then, you know, the satisfaction with the depth of the guidelines meant they stood on their own. I think that's worth highlighting. I agree. And so maybe you could provide that edit to Enrique. I felt the same way it was accurate, but I do think that it was really something that we can be extremely proud of, that the work of the team to be so thorough in such a complex industry that we got that nod. So, yeah, I like that. You were specifically, I'm sorry, you were specifically talking about which section? On page three, you say the highlights, where you write, during FY20, the commission, and then you number the list, the very first one when you talk about the shutdown and the reopenings, is I can maybe give you a rewrite suggestion or something to consider on number one that pulls in the work that was done on the guidelines. Yeah. And the convening of two working groups, you know, internal and external, I think that that was work that really helped be really seamless in all of this. So, I like that a lot. Sounds good. Now, would you wanna keep it part of the challenge with, and this is totally self-imposed, doesn't have to be this way. I've tried, we tried in the past to keep the letter from the chair, which is where this section is, the major milestones as well as the, for anticipated for next year, to keep them to one page. And so, they don't have to. We could be a lot more inclusive of flesh out a little bit more, a lot of what we did. There might be ways also to just tighten up. If it's really to one page, there might be a way to tighten up other areas so that we stick with that format too. There's probably a way to do that. Yeah. Okay. Madam Chair, just to jump in, first of all, to Commissioner Zunigan, thanks to Commissioner Zunigan, the whole team for their great work pulling this together. I know this is a big task every year. You know, to his point, we want to get it right. We want to have, you know, the best report that we can present in understanding that we're kind of going into a shift, right? There are some legislative members who are leaving. There will be a new group that'll be coming in in January that will want to make sure also get this report to talk about what the commission has been doing. The one thing that stood out for me, and again, Commissioner, you just talked about an effort to kind of keep that first page, the chair's letter and the milestones for next year. Can you reference it in other places on the report? But I'd like to see a little more mentioned being given to the PPC renewal. It started at the beginning of the year. It was a huge team effort even before the COVID piece hit us. It was the first time that we've gone through a licensed renewal. And you can almost say it was an anticipated milestone for 2021, because obviously the official action came in the fiscal year. But I'd love to see that, obviously, under the big dark cloud of COVID. But that was, I think, one of our major milestones for the year, and it truly was a team effort and involved a lot of folks and involved in the very public process. So I don't want that to be lost on the people reading this report. So I'm also willing to help you offer some language on that and pull it maybe in from other sections as well. But I think that was a prominent milestone. We'll ask for this, Collida. Yeah, we are perhaps a little too succinct when we mentioned that relicensing here. I could actually, to Commissioner O'Brien's point, take out a couple of things that elsewhere, like the promulgation of regulations. I think it happens every time, so it's not as relevant to this year and perhaps the more important features of this year and highlight the relicensing and the way we dealt with the closures given the COVID are a lot more relevant. I don't know if we can roll it over into another, that more regular work because we can't discount it, right? If we put that somewhere else in the document. Yeah, yeah, it would, yes. It would be, here's the operating assumption that the majority of people who look through this report will go through the first couple of pages and then the readership would probably drop off or become kind of like more, depending on what somebody might be interested in, let's say. And so we try to use the real estate of the executive summary, if you will, which in our case is the letter from the chair as an introduction of what this report contains and the major milestones anticipated as a window into effectively the year that we already have went through. It's kind of like what is likely gonna be read by somebody who's gonna, you know, I think it's not gonna be a lot of tweaking but just some enhancements, which is good, the fact that we can enhance and highlight some of our team's great work. I think that's excellent, so. So I have a process question because I have been for the most part operating over here as the editor, if you will, with the good work that came from a lot of people. Was, as you suggest, providing language on any of these sections, could we do it outside of a public meeting? Todd, maybe this is a question that we don't have to resolve right now or somebody else takes the comments from my fellow commissioners and incorporates them in a way that is not me, frankly, being, you know, another commissioner who expresses another opinion, by the way, we've worked things. How could we effectuate this? Are we kind of memorializing this public discussion and then when it comes back to us, it will be again. It will be affirmed. Okay, well, so. Does that work, Todd? Yeah, I was gonna say just about the same thing. As long as you're just editing the areas that you're talking about right now, then it's not really expressing an opinion outside of a public meeting. You've already expressed these opinions. Okay. And furthermore, it's just one commissioner communicating with one commissioner at the moment. So that wouldn't be an issue. Okay. So send me the sections that you think and frankly, I'll probably just put them the way they are. Okay. And then the draft would just be like a red line. Right, yes. You would see this. Yeah, by the way, the SharePoint, which you mentioned earlier, that is a tremendous tool. So we keep all the revisions. We can make them, you know. Right. It's just that I think we're not supposed to be participating in that because of the... No, I know, I know. I guess I meant to say that, you know, there's the ability to save and look at the history at any time. Yeah, that's a great. I wish that we could look at it. You know, it would be really helpful, but I understand we can't. So that's the beneficiary of that for right now on RK. So are we... By the way, in the future, there could be two commissioners doing this effort, by the way. Which is really helpful. Yeah. If there's some volunteers, I'm taking a lot of tears. I'm not just one. I'm not just one, you know, Brian. I'm just saying, that's, I deserve that. That's fair. That's fair. We're always, we're still, we're unbound by the decommissioner rule. Any further comments or questions on this? No, great work. Great work. Yeah, great work. Really good work. Thank you. Thanks so much. Good effort. Yeah, well, I think that, you know, that's why for Karen, your team has been contributing. And so I want to make sure that, you know, you've had the chance to also contribute. In other words, you can't escape it either. So thank you so much. I appreciate that. And I think Karen, that the last bit of operational work would be to see if we should try to convene a meeting in between. If commissioners are comfortable, we do have a holiday coming up. I want to be cognizant of that. Otherwise, you know, we would look for December 3rd to be able to bring back what is pretty much a polished, you know, final document for our consideration. And I think that might be, that sounds like it might work for you on me, Kay. I think it will. If we provided that we don't do, you know, a lot of iterations and I don't anticipate them. Right. But if we, if we come with a thought through, you know, alternative to what we've already discussed or anything new that might come up as in actual draft red line language. Yeah. And that could be a very straightforward review, you know, with our time frame. Okay, great. All right, so that's just something for us to chew on. And otherwise maybe we do a one item meeting before December 3rd. You know, that's a Thursday. Maybe it's on the Monday or Tuesday or something. Okay. All right. Other commissioner updates? Madam Chair, I just, I'd like to know. Oh. Nope. I got one too. Okay. You go first. Hope it's not mine. I just wanted to note yesterday I had the great opportunity to sit in with Mark and Teresa, the game sense team, Mass Council and our licensees talking about the, you know, the game sense program. Incredible work still goes on. What amazed me is that they just don't focus on responsible gaming week or, you know, you know, the kind of designated months that we've looked at, but they really have a great conversation about promotional opportunities coming up. You know, things that they can either fix a stick or two or some swag to that aligns with our licensees promotions. And it's just great to see this work still going on and the great cooperation that our licensees offer. So it's a privilege to be invited into those two meetings yesterday and listen to all the good work that's going on. Yeah. Teresa does a great job convening those meetings. I see that North popped in. I don't know North if you were able to join that meeting yesterday, but Commissioner Stebbins points out that the level of cooperation is from all of the licensees on the game sense programs. It's very, it's consistent and appreciated. Thank you. No, I was not able to attend that meeting yesterday, but I did receive your message last night congratulating some of our team members who had been recognized for incorporating the game sense program into their daily responsibilities and made sure that their direct supervisors were aware and that we noted their efforts. That's great. So what North is referring to is you, as you probably remember, are the game sense excellence awards that are done quarterly. And I thought bringing some great good news to North on one of his first days was helpful. So Teresa coordinates that outreach and I get the pleasure of providing it to the general managers who has been identified on the casino employee side as really being a partner of promoting responsible gaming through the game sense program. So that happens quarterly. And I have to say that's actually, when I had a little pause on me writing the handwritten notes and I said to Teresa, I've got those game sense notes available and I like doing it. So it's actually a real treat to be able to send those notes out to the award recipients happens quarterly. So we're delighted North that that's good news for you to spread early on. Absolutely, thank you. Thank you. All right, so I raised my hand not knowing that you had something. I'm sorry, Bruce, but that's really, really important in kudos to Teresa for convening those meetings so consistently and to all the licenses for their cooperation. So I have, nobody else has any other. No, if I could, I just need to leave the meeting. My son needs to be picked up. So I'm just gonna hop off a few minutes or apologies. Thank you so much. You'll hear this through the news. Thank you so much, Tisha, Brian. Good luck to your son. Thanks. So I'm just delighted that the timing worked out that we are able to announce that Governor Baker did appoint a new chair to the gaming policy advisory committee. We refer to SGPAC. Governor Baker appointed last week and it's now something we can share publicly. Meg Mainzer Cohen who has been president and executive director of the Bat Bay Association since 2000 and has an extensive track record of community involvement, most recently having served as chair of the Boston Finance Commission from 2012 until just earlier this year. She also has extensive background with other communities, similar roles. That's the one that she currently holds for the Bat Bay Association. And I am very pleased that to welcome Meg, I've had the pleasure of speaking with her in advance as she considered the opportunity. And I'm even more delighted that she, when she decided to accept that she had recognized that Jill was part of our team because she also has a not surprising and longstanding relationship with Jill. And so again with using Jill as a very much a utility player and with her great external relationship, we aren't going to have Jill work with us on the SGPAC relationship and making sure that that goes forward under the leadership of Chair Mainzer Cohen. So Jill will be, I think you're going to be meeting with Meg tomorrow. And I believe Sarah has been coordinating so there'll be a public announcement of this great news. So we have that leadership in place and we appreciate the governor's office. They were very thoughtful in making this election and we're very lucky. It's a, as you know, a committee that's statutorily mandated. It includes legislative leadership and municipal leadership and community representation through private and public sector. So that's with this chairmanship announced I know that Meg will be able to move forward and convene this important committee that provides, as you know, advice to us and also provides advice to Mark's team because they actually by statute that committee does review the research agenda framework. So we're happy that this work can now launch. So thank you, Jill, for that partnership. My pleasure, thank you. Okay, great, anything else? So I was like... I know we're running a little bit later than anticipated but I have about one more quick update. Okay. Sorry about that. No, no, I attended the symposium for the National Council on Problem Gambling. It ended this last Friday. It was a little bittersweet because this symposium is normally in July in person and it was done now over two different weeks on a Thursday Friday on the last couple of weeks. Of course, everything online via Webex. And there was a session that was, I thought really interesting and one that brings up questions that we should think about. And that is the way companies all together around the country, but some mostly gaming companies are seeing games for fun. Are really targeting and finding customers in a very efficient way, given all the algorithms of social media apps and technology companies that allow to be targeted very efficiently. This brings up a lot of questions or issues relative to responsible gaming, especially with miners. Even interestingly, a lot of the people gaming I've seen just for fun online, the average age is 31 years old. It's not necessarily miners that are doing it. But there's a lot of talk about how marketing is being so effectively targeted at potential customers. There's themes arising again around the country relative to those jurisdictions that have approved sports betting. The marketing has exploded, especially if there are tools that are available online. Because of course, it's a marginal cost for every time that you advertise to a potential customer who all they have to do is pick up their mobile and gamble. Again, there's a lot of trends emerging that we ought to be thinking about in case these were to happen here. So I think there's more for us to learn and talk about, especially when it comes to the topic of targeted marketing, which is happening more and more in a very efficient way. Yeah, you had brought that up with our meeting with Mark, and it sounds fascinating. And I think that we should probably think about our regulatory role on those matters. We talked about it recently to with respect to whether certain communities might be targeted, et cetera. So I think maybe for the Agenda City Meeting, Commissioner, we might wanna think about how do we start to, do we have a role? Do we start to address anything affirmatively? Yep, absolutely. And by the way, I should mention that there's, I was not referring to gambling companies, casino companies targeting people in a way that's concerning. Certainly not here, not to my knowledge. No. But the point is that the industry as a whole, gaming is the precursor. Again, the play for fun, no, not money element or type of games, but they start to get sort of blurry when you put in what we all know about, like the loot boxes or the skins, something that you can trade and becomes valuable, et cetera. But yeah, we should think about how to have a discussion that continues to inform us in this topic, especially as they continue to evolve. My first thought was to think about a particular section of our responsible gaming framework where this could fit. And there is one strategy relative to marketing. Do at least in those discussions. Yeah, at least to be, we should start becoming more and more aware. Why don't we take any formal action at this time? You're right. Really interesting. And thank you for attending that. Yeah, it's really interesting, the trends that you begin to see from one year to the next for recent years, frankly. It's not surprising as well. We had many more commission updates and I was so excited to give mine. Sorry, it was good news. And all of this was actually excellent, good news. So we're ending on a high point. In fact, the whole meeting today, as always, so productive. With that said, is there anything else? Commissioner Cameron, are you all set? I am all set, thank you. Commissioner Stevens, are you all set? I'm all set, Madam Chair. Thanks. And Commissioner Zunick, I'm assuming you're all set. I'm not sure about Commissioner O'Brien. God bless her. She's out navigating the virtual and hybrid world of education. I know many of you have that challenge. I didn't see Sharra, anyone come in today to have to get a sign off on their iPad. No, that was earlier. We love that. So again, commissioners, I know that you want to extend a happy Thanksgiving to our entire team. Let's see, we have so many who have stayed on today. We have 40 members of our team. We know that you're probably listening and working at the same time and tending to all the home responsibilities that you're juggling. So thank you for being part of today's meeting and for all the work that you did to contribute to the success of the meeting. Most of all, I wish you well for next week. It will be a different feel for us as we probably are separated from family in a way that we haven't been for years. But again, this will not be forever. And so take all the precautions that will allow future gatherings to be healthy and safe. Commissioners, would you like to close? No, that's well for it. Happy Thanksgiving to everybody, even if it's either sweet because we're far away from family, but we can connect in ways like this. And that's better than not. So I hope everybody gets to get a little bit of a break and some turkey and celebrate the traditions that we can celebrate. And Commissioner Cameron, Commissioner Stevens. Just well said, happy Thanksgiving. And happy Thanksgiving. Everybody stay safe and healthy. And with that, I move to adjourn. Well, I second that. Thank you, Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. Commissioner Stevens. Aye. And I vote yes. Thank you for, we're zero. Thank you, Shara. And thank you, everyone. Appreciate it.