 Point presentation with you all. We did email this out to everyone last night. So for those folks who were not able to get on the HD meeting and are calling in, you should have this PowerPoint in your inbox. So at least you can follow along at home a little bit. You might not have the exact page numbers lined up, but you'll at least be able to get the gist of what we're saying here. So again, thanks for being here. My count now is we were up over 80 participants. So that's really great news. The more folks that we have here, the better. Very first thing before we get started, I'm going to turn it over to Mary just to go over a little bit of housekeeping on the HD meeting process. Yeah, hi. So this meeting is going to be recorded. We would appreciate it if you would mute yourself. If you're dialing in, you'll need to dial star six to unmute yourself if you have a question. If your bandwidth is creating a problem, please feel free to turn off your video. We don't take offense at not seeing your face. Questions are going to be taken at the end of each section. And please feel free to use the chat function to put your questions in there. And our new program assistant, Lily Wallace, is working in the background. And she is going to be keeping track of the chats for us so we can hopefully answer all your questions. Back to you, Joe. Great, thank you, Mary. So yeah, we will follow along with the chats. If any questions do come up, I have asked our folks just to interrupt me or whoever is speaking, if there's a particular question that pertains to that section. So just a quick overview of the meeting. We started these meetings last year to try to help communities come up with some ideas for community mitigation funds and for project and so on. And we decided to continue with this year. The first thing we'll do is I'll provide just a very brief summary of the community mitigation fund itself. I think most of you have been in this process before. But for those who haven't, it will provide a little bit of background for you. And as we do every year, we make some modifications to our guidelines. And 2022 is no different. So we will give a summary of what's new for 2022. And then we will discuss the individual grant categories. We will go through all of the grant categories just so you know what types of projects fit where. And then for this year, we have some folks from Chelsea and Foxborough and Lynn who are going to talk about some of the applications that they've done with the community mitigation fund over the last few years. And again, hopefully you'll be able to get some good ideas from them perhaps on some of the things you might consider doing for yourselves for the 2022 application. And then after that, we will actually kind of walk through the application form and what the whole process is containing the funds. And then I'm going to discuss this new category that we're talking about. It's not included in the guidelines for this year, but we're talking about for future years called Projects of Regional Significance. And I'll talk a little bit about that at the end. It's not directly pertinent to the 2022 community mitigation fund application, but maybe in years in the future. And again, the whole goal of this is we really want to help our communities and other participants, it's not all communities, in preparing successful applications. So with that, the Community Mitigation Fund itself, Master General Law Chapter 23K, which is the Expanded Gaming Act or as we generally just call it the Gaming Act, that established the Community Mitigation Fund and the language from the law says it's to offset the costs associated with the construction and operation of casinos in Massachusetts. So that's always one of the things that we have to keep in mind. It's to offset those costs that are associated with the casino. So there has to be some kind of link between the impact of the casinos in order to obtain Community Mitigation Funds. So 6.5% of the gaming taxes from the Category 1 facilities go into the fund and the Category 1 facilities are of course MGM and Encore. And this last point I think is very important here. The target for spending for 2022 is $21 million. That is up substantially from what we had available last year. Last year we went out with $12.5 million and part of that reason is our applications last year were down quite significantly from 2020. Now was part of that due to COVID or other factors. We really don't know exactly, but what that did was because we didn't spend money last year, it rolls over into this year. So we do have a substantial amount of money that is available for grants. So again, we're looking for people to be creative. And since there was a lot of money available, we're hoping that we get a good number of grants for this year. And then in red down here, so applications are due by January 31st, 2022. And they have to be submitted through the Combine system. We will talk a little bit about the Combine system later on in this meeting, but that's the process that we must go through. And I think most of the communities are relatively familiar with Combine's. So what's new for 2022? The most significant changes that we have, and we'll talk about each one of these individually, we have some changes to the public safety grants. We also have changes to the community planning grants and also some changes to the workforce grants. And with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Kate Hart again to talk a little bit about the public safety grants and the changes that we have for 2022. Sure, good afternoon, everyone. Nice to see so many people on the call. So as Jill mentioned, there has been a rather major change to the public safety grants just in the structure of how the grants will be construed within the community mitigation framework. This now public safety grants will be their own category for 2022. Previously, public safety grants were a subset of the specific impact grant category, what you would call if you were a prior applicant, but they became such a large part of that category that we've set them into their own category for this year. There are no changes to the basic parameters through these grants. Those remain the same. So if you have prior familiarity, you'll be fine. It should be noted these funds must be used to supplement and not supplant existing funding for your public safety agency. So for example, just as a very hypothetical example on this particular concept, if your city, City Hall has cut some portion of your budget, say as a police department, we can't just replace wholesale that segment of the funding that the city has cut. This will be used to supplant some funding that your department already uses. This is a little bit of a nuanced concept. It's referenced in the regulations. If you have questions, you can feel free to reach out to me and my contact information is at the end of the presentation and I'll have a chance to talk to you again a little bit later on. But so again, they have to be used to supplement and not supplant existing funding. The commission is stressing the availability of these grants in this particular year for training and support of the police reform law and some examples of this, which you may be familiar with our implicit bias training and de-escalation training. These would be along the lines of ICAT training if any of the members of law enforcement agencies are familiar with that training and also crisis intervention training, which focuses on police interactions with individuals in mental health crisis. So those are just some examples of trainings that may be the subject of a grant request by your agency. Great, thanks, Kate. And I think just expanding on the training aspect a little bit, we think it's great that training, it crosses the boundaries quite easily from community to community. You know, there's probably a pretty good likelihood that the communities, the host communities and the surrounding communities of the casinos, particularly police departments and probably some of the fire departments as well, would come into contact with patrons or employees of the casinos since just such a large volume of folks are coming to those facilities. So we think that training is maybe a little bit more broadly based than some of the other, you know, more focused types of things that public safety agencies might look for. So what we're going to... Jo, there is a question in the, a couple of questions in the chat about the public safety grants. If we wanna look at those now or look at them later. Yeah, why don't we take a quick look, see here. Do you want me to read it? Yeah, would you? Okay, so this is, Northampton is in the process of building a first in the Commonwealth Department of Community Care as part of our police reform effort. Would that qualify under this category? It is in effect a new type of public safety department that is a response to the police reform act. Okay, and then one other related to the public safety, question one, two is, does the public safety grant need to explicitly make the tie back to the casino or is training for the force an implicit connection that does not need to be spelled out? So I think on the first point, well, I guess on all of them really, the connection to the casino is an important aspect of that. We can't be funding general municipal purposes. So if a connection can be made back to the casino, I think particularly more in the Northampton case, it's certainly possible that some funding could be provided, but obviously until we see an application, we can't say absolutely for certain, but there does need to be a nexus to the casino. With respect to the second piece of it, our thought is that applicants will still need to show what the impact is. Now, for instance, if there's a community that's directly adjacent to say MGM and the original traffic studies for the project show that 8% of the traffic was going to be going through their community and that there's a high likelihood that there's going to be some interaction between the police or the fire in that community and those patrons or employees that are traveling in that direction, I think that's probably enough to make that case. But there certainly needs to be some evidence, but it doesn't have to say that we've interacted with 198 people that were at the casino, that kind of detail. We just need to know in general, sort of what the likelihood is of that happening. Okay, and there's another question. What is the Bax request per jurisdiction, i.e. Boston? Also for that max amount, I assume you want it shared between fire police and EMS, correct? So we will actually get into the maximum amounts and so a little bit later, but 200,000 is the maximum public safety grant per community and that would go for any or all of those categories. We have had communities come in where they've done police and fire. We've had people do police, fire and EMS. We've had police only, we've had fire only. So it can be any really any or all of the sort of public safety agencies within a community. It's okay. Okay, thanks for those questions. I think that's excellent. Just what we want to hear is people's interest in these. So moving on to the community planning grants, this is a category, just as a little bit of background, in this category, or not just in this category, but in general, the most difficult thing that communities have had to do is make that nexus to the casino. And in doing that, typically we've required some fairly hard data, a traffic study, records of various things to try to do that. And that has been difficult for communities. So when we were doing our guidelines for this year, we said to ourselves, is there a way that we can try to make, try to lessen the burden on our communities to access these funds? So what we did was we went back and we looked at some of the studies that we have done. We have this robust research agenda and looking at the social and economic impacts of gaming. And we looked at this study that was done out at MGM and it was a patron survey. And one of the questions on that survey asked, well, if you as a patron were not going to go to the casino, would you have spent this money that you spent here on something else? And the term that they use is this notion of reallocated spending. And about half of the people said, no, if I didn't go to the casino, I wouldn't spend this money on something else. But about half of them did say that and they said, well, I would have probably spent it on a restaurant or other entertainment opportunities going to the movies or going to see live entertainment somewhere. So essentially, and the other thing is that that our researchers said that it's very difficult to quantify that particular reallocated spending and find a particular impact on a given business. So what we did as a commission was that we stated that the presence of a casino likely has some negative impacts on certain local businesses. And if you look at the guidelines, we go into a lot more depth on that. But on the flip side of that coin, we said, we also know that the gaming establishments provide a lot of opportunities for communities and businesses. Things like the fact that tens of thousands of people are being brought to the area every day or come to the area every day in the areas of the establishments that might not have otherwise been there. And there's thousands of employees who now work and play in the local communities around the casinos. So, and also the casinos themselves spent tens, if not hundreds of millions of dollars a year purchasing goods and equipment. So there are definitely lots of opportunities, but the lack of local funding, most communities aren't ponying up $100,000 to do a study to try to identify these things. So that lack of local funding really hurts the community's ability to take advantage of the casino benefits. We have sort of used this term lost opportunity cost that by not pursuing these potential avenues for the community, that you're losing an opportunity to bring new business to your communities. So again, if you see the terms here, costs, we are relating back to that, what came out of the law that says we have to offset the costs associated with a casino. So we're trying to put these in terms of costs. So now, with that said, applicants still need to identify what the impact of the casino is. You no longer need to go to extraordinary lengths to quantify that impact. And as always, the proposed mitigation must, the proposed project has to mitigate the impact that you define. I mean, for instance, you say that there's a negative impact on local restaurants. Your solution to the problem can't be trying to get people to come to local museums. One has to go directly with the other. So now that is just in the community planning grant category, and we decided that this was sort of the easiest category to implement that with. And we'll see how that works for 2022. And then we'll see where we can go from there. Maybe next year, there's another category that we can look at where we can try to implement the same type of solution to help communities access the funds. So do we have any questions? Come in, Mary, that we should be... We just have one residual. Again, we also understand that crime categories of sex trafficking and sexual assault has become a challenge at the casino and surrounding hotels. Can we apply for funds to mitigate that impact? I guess the shorter answer is you can apply for anything. But yes, last year, and you'll hear later on today when the folks from Foxboro are in, they did apply for a grant to help in that area with some of the hotels in Foxboro. So again, as long as the nexus to the casino is made and the argument is made and is agreed to by the commission, that's certainly an option. Okay, with that, I'm gonna turn it over to Crystal, who's gonna talk a little bit about changes in the workforce grants. So this year, I think the main difference is you probably would recall if you applied in the past two years, we previously had a supplemental bonus potential that was built in and you could apply for one of two of those bonuses. We've removed that. The purpose really is that it's streamlining the award given we've increased the total amount of the award. So you'll notice that we've increased the maximum to 500,000 this year. In previous years, it's been 400, right, Jeff? Yeah, yeah. Okay, I'm not that far removed, but given that the max you could achieve with the bonus prior was 500,000, this actually just, it's bumped it up, it makes it a little bit easier. You no longer have to come in with a requirement. Additionally, one of those bonuses required a collaborative application and in general, the workforce applications already require a consortium approach. So this just streamlines all of that. I think those are the two big pieces. They shouldn't really impact anyone, but if you have any questions, let me know. Otherwise, we can move on. Great, thank you, Crystal. We have another question, which is interesting. It sounds like funds could not be used to assist with the preparation of a new master plan in a host community. And then another comment is, would that need to stay in the training category or could it apply for investigation and enforcement of sex trafficking and support for those service providers that we would be working with? Um, so those are two separate questions, I'm assuming. Yeah, yeah. So the first one regarding the master planning, you know, master planning is typically a, more of a general municipal purpose and not a particular to a casino, although, you know, a casino district in, you know, in the community would be a part of that. But I would say in general, master planning is not a particular, particularly due to a casino related impact. And honestly, on the second piece of that, Kate, maybe you could chime in here. It's sounding awfully detailed there to really get, I think an answer to that question, but Kate, can you weigh in on that? I appreciate the question and I would invite, I don't have the name there, which is showing up as a number, but you certainly can reach out to me with any more detailed inquiries, but just as a kind of a broad answer, you know, training for sex trafficking, human trafficking, as it relates back to the presence of hotels that are patronized by patrons of the casino, certainly was the basis of an award last year. There was also an award for some equipment, as you'll hear from our friends at Foxboro Police, that related to use in enforcement and detection of human trafficking. So it did tie back to the human trafficking and some increased drug activity present at hotels that were linked to the patrons of the casino, frequenting the hotels in surrounding communities. So that's one kind of anecdotal example, but again, I'm happy to have a more detailed conversation in the coming days about any questions. That's an excellent question. Great, thank you, Kate. So there's a few other changes into the guidelines. We won't go into any great detail here, but the specific impact grant, the maximum value of grants remains 500,000, but we did say the communities can provide more than one application because sometimes there's two different agencies within a community that might be managing grants. And we understand that sometimes having them split up between a couple of different folks makes some sense. Under transportation construction, our maximum previously had been $1 million. We've increased that to 1.5. We've heard from our communities that construction costs are going through the roof, so we did increase that. And also the review team will now consider the use of minority women and veteran businesses as an evaluation criteria. We're not establishing our own goals, but we do want to understand what communities would be doing with respect to that. If they're hiring a consultant to do a study, will there be any participation from minority women or veteran firms, that kind of thing. And then also on all of our application forms, we're asking that the grant requests be rounded to the nearest $100. We're trying to get rid of those grants that are $87,342.27. That kind of thing. So we're just asking that you round up to the nearest $100. Okay, so the individual categories, there are eight categories in our guidelines. And I'm not gonna talk about these last two, the Tribal Gaming Technical Assistance Grants and the Emergency Mitigation Grants. Those are, the Tribal Gaming Grants is only gonna come into play in case there's any movement with the Wampanoag Proposed Casino in Taunton. And the Emergency Mitigation Grant would be something that would have an outside of our normal cycle that we're in right now. So it's not really pertinent. So just quickly going through the categories and what's included. So the specific impact grant, essentially at this point, since we've created all of these other categories of grant, this is something that if it doesn't fall on any of the other categories, it would go under specific impact. So this is something if a community finds an impact and defines it and comes to us to mitigate and it doesn't fall within one of our other categories that it would be within the specific impact category. Now, some of these things you see here, these are things that are identified in the law, increased demand of water and sewer systems, impacts from stormwater runoff, stresses on housing stock, increased social service needs, demonstrated impact on public education. These are things that have not really come into us before. But anyways, so this category will be something that really, if it doesn't fall on any other category, this is where it should go. And so public safety grants, turn this back over to Kate to talk about the public safety grant a little bit. So with regard to this particular category, again, its own category this year, a quality for a public safety grant will come for communities that can show an impact by a gaming establishment that has been identified by a community that requires, for example, supplemental training for police fire or emergency medical services for handling patrons from the gaming establishment that may filter into your communities and increased demand on public safety staffing. And you could review the awards from the prior years to see an example of this in the Everett Police Department adding some targeted patrols during the early morning hours after the close of alcohol service at the casino. That was approved in a prior year. So that would be a good example available to review on the Gaming Commission website. Also increased demand on public safety equipment. If you are having more frequent use of your, say, a custody vehicle you're using to transport detainees from your establishment over the court and you can prove an increase that's related back to patrons from the casino entering your community, that potentially is a qualification and also any pedestrian safety improvements. And there are several examples as well on the website of prior grants that were successful. Again, as Joe mentioned and as was asked in the chat, there is one public safety grant per community but that can be shared among a combination of services including police fire and EMS. The maximum grant is $200,000. There is a waiver provision in the regulations not invite people to review that in more detail in the regulations and certainly can reach out to me with any questions on that provision. And again, that public safety funder request must supplement and not supplant existing funding. And again, I welcome questions on that. In terms of the nexus, which Joe briefly discussed, again, proving a nexus here as it connects to training, if you are having an impact in your community that is based on an influx of people who came from the casino and into your community, that's an example of where you may be able to draw a nexus by relying on perhaps some baseline statistics you have or some anecdotal evidence you have that's being recorded into you by your patrol staff. So those are just some examples of how you can draw the nexus with relationship training, which again is a particular emphasis within the guidelines for this particular category this year. Great, thanks, Kate. So the next category, the community planning grants, we talked about this a little bit before on the changes we made, but these grants are typically used to try to leverage the presence of the casino and the gaming establishment for the benefit of the community and things that we've done in the past, economic development studies, we've done land use planning, so marketing plans, promotional plans, tourism plans, things of that nature. And then some of the other things that communities have done is to create training programs for local businesses to try to help them better compete for business at the casino. So things like that, they're all good stuff. And again, I think by making the hurdle a little lower to this, we should hopefully be able to see some good applications in this category. Again, maximum grant is $100,000. And we do ask that folks consult with their regional planning agency on some of these things. And also, not particularly mentioned here, but we mentioned it later, but collaboration with other communities, if someone was considering doing a marketing or a tourism plan, sometimes two or three communities working together might have a little bit more bang for the buck or might have a further reach than maybe a single community doing it. So we always do encourage that. And the transportation planning grants, we've done many of these. And these are typically for traffic studies or preliminary design. We've done some for transit planning. We've looked at some options to provide bus lanes and we actually looked at an option to extend the silver line. Bike path planning, that is something we've done quite a lot of by and design. We've done particularly a lot of work in the communities neighboring on core. There's quite a bike network there and we have actually provided a lot of design and construction funding now towards those efforts. Again, the maximum grant amount is $200,000. And also, again, particularly with traffic studies, consultation with your regional planning agency should happen to make sure that you're working within, I mean, the local planning agency might have some studies that have already been done or this may, your work may piggyback on to some of the things that have been done previously. Joe, we have a couple of questions. Sure. Is there any data that can be shared from MGM casino as to where the visitors are coming from? If a local city could show that a good number of residents visit the area casino that could help explain the impact on public safety or infrastructure. So that is a very good question. I think some of their information, they have shared some of their information with our researchers to do some of our studies, but I think the particular information is maybe guarded under their non-disclosure agreement. Everything in these studies gets anonymized, but we'll give you some links to all of those research, the research agenda studies that have been done. And I'm trying to remember, I think on this patron survey, I think we also did a license plate survey, but it was really to primarily define Massachusetts versus Connecticut versus Rhode Island, that kind of thing. So I'm not sure that that data is directly available or frankly would be made available. Okay, the next question is please, and this is going to combine the two, please explain about consultation with RPA. What specifically does that mean? Can you explain the details of consulting with planning agencies? Yeah, so the regional planning agencies, primarily there's the Pioneer Valley Planning Council West and there's the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission in the East. And what we're suggesting, particularly if you're doing mostly on traffic studies and things of that nature, just giving them a call and telling them about your project a little bit and seeing if they have, they may have done something that was very similar to that or otherwise. And often they're very interested in what communities are doing and they may be able to partner you up with another community or something to that effect. So we just want you to have a conversation with them, let them know what you're thinking and just get their input and just share that with us on what their thoughts are. Okay, how would an applicant tie a tourism plan as opposed to a specific impact on businesses back to the impacts of a casino? Well, I think the notion here is that a tourism plan, you would wanna be targeting patrons and perhaps employees of the gaming facilities to try to encourage them to come to your community. So in the past, we've done some tourism, a couple of communities did some tourism videos and they actually, the casino agreed to run those in the hotel rooms and so on. So when someone comes to their hotel, they see that, hey, nearby we've got these other amenities that we could go visit, that kind of thing. So the connection to the casino was really the, trying to attract probably casino patrons to your community. It's not really just for a broad tourism plan, just in general, it would have to be a bit more targeted. Okay, so transportation construction grants, as we talked about before, we've increased the maximum amount to $1.5 million and the maximum gaming commission contribution per project is one third of the total project cost. So if you had a $4.5 million project, we would pay the $1.5 million. If you had a $3 million project, we'd pay a million. So the maximum is 1.5, but for something smaller than $4.5 million, our contribution would be one third of the cost. And also these projects need to be shoveled ready by the end of June 2023. So we would issue this grant by the end of June 2022. And we would give you a year to get that design finished and have it ready, ready for construction. And again, similar here, we want you to consult with Mass DOT or your regional planning agency, depending upon what's appropriate. On some of these projects, and you'll hear from Chelsea in just a few minutes, they cobbled together a bunch of sources of funds where gaming commission was just one piece of it. So that required coordination amongst a bunch of different entities. And if anyone is planning on building anything like what we have in this picture here, we don't have enough money for that. And then again, we talked about a little bit earlier on regional collaboration, while not a specific category, in the transportation planning and community planning categories, if more than one community works together, there are some regional, there are some bonuses for regional collaboration from, they vary from 10 to $50,000. So if you work with the neighboring community and you each could get a $200,000 transportation planning grant, you could get up to $450,000 if two communities combine and got the bonus for regional collaboration. So we've had a number of cases, Foxborough, Plainville and Rentham work together, Brevere and Saugus have worked together a few times, Springfield and Chickapee work together on one project, and Everett and Somerville have worked together quite a bit. Okay, so workforce development, I'm gonna turn this back over to Crystal. Thanks, Jo. So workforce grant applicants to the community mitigation fund should propose to remedy impacts tied to the casino that may alleviate challenges due to educational robots, training and upskilling, inequities and access to jobs in the industry, resource strains, alleviating general industry challenges to the employment pipeline. So as a reminder, the max grant amount for this application year is 500,000 and applicants really do need to use a consortium approach when they apply. All of that will be addressed as you go through the application itself. Some costs and activities are listed on the slide that we have traditionally approved. A reminder that administrative costs including the budget can not be more than 7.5%, but consulting services, reasonable expenses, to the program materials, training tools, exams, technology, books, last year, tools and materials included, my fives because of the changes during the pandemic with students needing to be online. Personnel costs with certain restrictions have been approved. In general, what people think of for workforce tends to be the adult basic education, the GED assistance and programs of that nature. Those are certainly a key part of the workforce applicants we've received in the past. Other ideas and improved elements are welcome. We'd really like to make sure you're integrating a host of opportunities for individuals at various levels of readiness for the industry's workforce. That could include interview prep, especially with a digital focus. Since the pandemic, a lot of online interviewing has come to play. Reservoir writing and evaluations have certainly been considered in the past. Certifications are often a big part of this. A lot of people might think OSHA or TIPS, but we've approved customer service goals in the past or any other industry certifications that may really give an applicant a leg up. General digital literacy, I think I mentioned. Specific programming, including contextual training is also allowed. English for hospitality training has happened. Culinary training and hotel training are certainly industry related. But thinking outside the box a little bit, their counting training, such as positions, or we've looked at banking training in the past, which can relate to our cage positions in the casinos. Gaming schools are a little less applicable now, but at the time in the past, there were some scholarships and direct interviews in the pipeline really tightened up that application. So considering how those pieces may come together. The programming components do not have to be just training, but you can think recruitment, marketing, tools, trainers, and instructors. Another example might be bus tokens. We've seen that in the past. You know, considering how we're trying to get our applicants programming, making sure that people can actually get to these programs as well. So you can think in that context as far as you need to make sure the program is well rounded. Some questions that have come about, I'd say in the last year or the last few months specifically to me, I can just address right now, programming related to security and surveillance training. Yes, if you can figure out a way of doing that and working with that, that certainly could be part of your application. Can you focus on a specific role or position? Yes, if you can support that the casino is really struggling to get the workforce into those roles. One particular question came about the slot supervisor and whether there might be a way to develop some apprenticeship. Certainly, I would love to consider that as long as you're working together to make sure that that's developed well and that you also have the support of the casinos who would be able to pipeline that apprenticeship. English programming, of course, English is certainly a key element to a lot of these positions. And if you could develop a particular curriculum or there is a curriculum developed, that can definitely be part of the application. Just want to reiterate that you have to ensure that collaborative planning within your region and the educational components, but as well as with the casinos, I sense these themselves. I just got a question yesterday about daycare challenges. Certainly, if you can figure that out, we'd love to consider that. That's always been addressed as an issue, a really challenging issue to overcome, though, and transportation hurdles are also a yes. Crystal, I have a question for you. Yeah. Does the workforce development has to be related with the job that the casino have or can it be training in high demand jobs, AKA STEM related jobs? Okay, that's a great question. I was actually about to address that a little bit. In the past, this is the biggest challenge, I think, you have to make the direct connection and provide supporting evidence that this will impact, has impacts directly related to the casino. Now, what that means is a little different. It's constantly changing, right? So when Encore was opening, the main connect was the direct impact to the local hotel and restaurant industry. So making that connection that backfill was impacted. People were programming a little bit more focused on the hotels and the restaurants, not just on what casino jobs there were. Of course, there are restaurants and hotel jobs at the casinos, but with people shifting out of certain industries and into the casinos at a heavy level, that there was support there to show that. It's been challenging to show that, for example, in we received in the pandemic some inquiry as to whether we could fund hospital jobs or other industries where you're saying STEM here. Now, math is certainly related to some of the casino jobs, but you have to somehow show that this is going to be beneficial to the casino workforce as well as the local workforce. We couldn't really see how exactly those hospital pipeline programming, us funding that, was coming from the casino piece. Although there was a good argument made for the fact that while they couldn't work at the casinos, some of those individuals from the casino workforce were now looking to get into other jobs. If you can make the connection and support that and show us that, we'll certainly consider it. Do I don't know if you want to add to whether STEM, I guess that's the answer, is you have to show the connection. Right, I mean, if a reasonable connection can be made, I mean, if they're in their facilities department, can't find any help and need trained people who can run HVAC systems and other things, then that's fine. STEM, engineering, other things, I mean, they do have some need for engineers at a facility like that, but there really needs to be a demonstrated need at the facility. And we know, I mean, you can just go online to the MGM website or the Encore or the Plainvote website and the things that they're looking for are, cocktail servers, they're looking for food and beverage, they're looking for housekeeping, they're looking for sort of all of those hospitality related type things. And then some like banking type operations, and so on. So, I mean, it's not simply hospitality, but if there are not, if there's not a substantial number of folks looking for work in that area, I think we would be a little bit hard pressed to try to. Right, the general challenge in some of our workforce applications or inquiries in the past has been that they focus on them being workforce development to the local community as opposed to remembering that these are funds directly from the casino and have to be related to the casino. Now, there are, things have changed over time. One of those examples I said before, when we shift to the pandemic zoom mentality, that really required a lot of tech tools and digital literacy that some of our programs didn't have in our, the individuals they were serving just didn't have the access that they needed. And so then the funding mechanism supported being able to have the programming online. So that required approving materials and tools, tech tools that we hadn't approved in the past. As we know, the hospitality workforce is experiencing really different challenges right now. So your application could resonate with those impacts. You just have to make the direct connection to the casinos and stuff. And we've always said that, especially when the casinos first opened, we knew that there was going to be lots and lots of hiring at those facilities and that they would be taking people away from those other jobs and certainly training people to backfill those jobs. We felt definitely made sense. That probably isn't as pertinent today as it was back then when they first opened. Yeah, when five or 6,000 people were migrating from one to the other. So like I said, it has changed over time how you can align this application, but that is a key component of a successful application. All right, great. So let me just stop here for, I'm gonna just stop sharing for just a minute before we get on to our next part. If we have any other questions to answer on sort of that whole first piece of the presentation. Yeah, Jill, there was a question for transportation construction grants. Are these reimbursement grants and do they involve MAST DOT review or construction management? We can structure the payments on these pretty much any way a community needs to, but most communities have done them as a reimbursement. Money's expended up front. We get payment estimates periodically and then we make our payments. Typically they do not require MAST DOT involvement. Some of these projects might be TIP projects, but others may not be. One we did with the city of Springfield, that was just a purely local project. And you're gonna hear from Chelsea coming up, but there was no MAST DOT involvement, I don't think in their project, I could be wrong on that. But they certainly didn't go to MAST DOT for funding on that project. So no, not necessarily, but it's certainly we could supplement funds if there were insufficient funds available on a project that was being funded by MAST DOT or a standalone project. Okay, anything else, Mary? No, I don't see any more. Okay, and all right, so why don't we move on? I'm gonna go back to sharing and we'll move on to our next section, which is we're going to have Alex Trane, the director of the Housing and Community Development Department in Chelsea and Ben Cares, who's a senior planner and project manager in the Department of Housing and Community Development. They're gonna do a presentation on their Beachham and Williams Street improvement project. So Alex and Ben, take it away. Thank you, Joe, and good afternoon, everybody. While we dive into our project this afternoon, the city wants to extend our gratitude to all the commissioners and the MAST game commission for their persistent support of the mitigation of casino impacts and just generally approaching this through a collaborative partnership. It's been something that as many of you know, is a rarity with a lot of state agencies. So we've been very pleased to be able to join and lock steps to work on some of these issues with the commission. So my name's Alex. I'm the director of Housing and Community Development for the city of Chelsea. And I'm joined by Ben Cares, who's our senior planner and project manager, who's responsible for the city infrastructure agenda. So for folks that aren't from the Boston area, the city of Chelsea is in close proximity to Encore Casino, which is situated in the city of Everett. Throughout the course of the last three to four years, the city of Chelsea has collaborated with the city of Everett on the design of infrastructure improvements on many of the major arteries that connect the two communities. So we have been able to focus squarely on the Beach and Williams corridor. If you go over to the next slide, you can kind of talk through the lineage of the project. So the Beach and Williams corridor is a major freight arterial that connects Logan Airport in East Boston, Chelsea and Encore Casino at Everett. The corridor bisects the New England Produce Center and a concentration of food distribution and industrial land uses as well as densely populated residential neighborhoods. So if you're arriving in Boston via Logan Airport and taking a taxi over to Casino, or if you're embarking towards the Casino from a point on the North Shore, you're more likely than not taking the Beach and Williams corridor in order to reach Encore. So in identifying this kind of geographic travel pattern back in 2016, we applied for commission funding through the Community Mitigation Fund to conduct a transportation corridor study. Initially we set out to answer the question of, you know, what will the impact be to this corridor and how can we through a series of robust infrastructure enhancements mitigate and control for those impacts? So that study was done in conjunction with Stantec and Engineering Firm and we were able to both conduct a detailed traffic analysis as well as put forth conceptual design alternatives that re-envisioned the Beach and Williams corridor, the multimodal corridor. If you go out there today, and since I was a kid, it's the Beach and Williams street area. As no sidewalks, it's devoid of any pedestrian amenities. It's inherently unsafe and conditions are rapidly deteriorated. These physical conditions have declined since the Casino opened and we through the study were able to propose interventions to preserve and enhance the functionality of the road. So once that study was published, we put forth the preferred alternative that originated from that careful analysis. Again, we applied in 2018 for commission funding to begin a design and engineering process that culminated with design of utility and streetscape enhancements to revitalize this derelict corridor. As we were designing this project, we recognizing the immense cost of the effort we're actively searching for sources of funding to finance the reconstruction effort. As part of the financing package that Ben will outline later on, we were able to secure two grants in 2020 from the mass gaming commission that played a vital role in ensuring the project viability. Next slide please. So the Beecham Williams corridor is a lateral arterial that connects Chelsea to Everett. On the left-hand side of the map, you can see Encore Casino denoted and the run between Encore Casino and Logan Airport goes right through the heart of this industrial district in Chelsea. But through the study, we engaged a professional consultant to both analyze patterns of traffic, assess safety deficiencies, and put forth recommendations of operational improvements that we could implement through a robust program of infrastructure improvements. Not only was this focused on vehicular traffic, but it was also focused on pedestrian safety, bicyclists, as well as freight movements of many vendors serving the casino traverse the Beecham Williams corridor in order to make deliveries and conduct business. Next slide please. And some of these snapshots from the study include an in-depth analysis of intersections, many of which were identified as being outmoded and unable to sustain the increase in traffic affiliated with the casino, as well as a breakdown of employee trip patterns, as well as resident trip patterns and their nexus with the casino. In Chelsea, the majority of residents currently drive alone, but many of them are reliant on public transit with almost a third of our residents not owning a personal vehicle. This is just opposed against the employment or the employee trip patterns that are seen today, including the fact that almost three quarters of the folks that are employed at the casino are reliant on vehicles. So we immediately knew that with the opening of the casino, new trip generation would trigger traffic, operational issues and congestion that had to be generated. Next slide. And so concurrent with the design process, the casino was slated to open. So before we concluded the design in order to both optimize our design for intersections of the general corridor, as well as to truly gauge the impacts of the casino, we undertook a rigorous data collection and analysis process to demonstrate the impacts the casino was having on the local roadway network. So about six weeks prior to the casino opening, we hired a traffic engineer to collect traffic data in two locations that were identified for particular reasons. One location was identified in order to capture trips that were originating from route one, the major state highway serving the North Shore and connecting in with the casino. And a second location on Williams Street that would be able to capture traffic originating from Logan Airport and heading to the casino. We took about six weeks of baseline data to establish kind of normal conditions for the casino opening. And then we also collected data for a number of weeks after the casino opened. The understanding that usually with the openings of these types of facilities, there's an immediate peak before conditions normalize. We let conditions wind down to some extent and returned that October following the casino opening. We take another round of data collection in order to ascertain the impacts on the traffic network. And throughout this analysis, we found an average daily traffic increase of about 19% that was correlated with the casino. However, this was particularly pronounced on weekends such as Saturday evenings when we saw an 89% increase in traffic as well as during the day on Saturday when we saw a 39% increase in traffic. Quantifying these traffic increases allowed us not only to hone our design, but it was also conducive to our collaboration with the Masked Gaming Commission. We had concrete data that could demonstrate impacts and quantify what the city of Chelsea was experiencing as a result of the facility. Next slide, please. And so with that, I'll turn this over to Ben, our Senior Project Manager who will talk through the design and construction process. Thanks, Alex. So with our sort of work with StandTech and then a separate engineering firm from TEC, we sort of culminated sort of our findings into a design process to sort of get at basically a construction package and an implementation program for the project. And so again, the sort of planning and design processes were funded through some Masked Gaming Commission financing. And so sort of culminating all of those things together, we addressed a lot of the issues that were sort of being drummed up by those analyses. And so for the proposed corridor-wide improvements, we had a pretty specific focus on sort of pedestrian safety. As Alex had alluded to previously, this is a major corridor obviously for vehicular traffic, but with the creation of many jobs sort of at the casino within the city of Everett, there are also other sort of vulnerable populations as well as workforce populations that utilize the corridor in a non-vehicular fashion to bike and to walk to work. And so thinking about improvements for the surface elements for this corridor, a lot of our suggestions sort of culminated to some of those safety features. And sorry, I got distracted by the chat. So it helped us to sort of guide that design process and sort of utilizing that data and building on some of those narratives. Next slide, please. We also wanted to sort of showcase that we did a pretty rigorous community engagement and stakeholder engagement process throughout the design. Obviously when we're utilizing funds from the Mass Gaming Commission and sort of thinking about the casino and the impacts, yes, to communities through the establishment of a casino, but also thinking about sort of what the impacts might be for the local economy as well as sort of individuals located adjacent to the corridor, witnessing potential increases in traffic, but also for residents that may or may not be employed at the casino or traveling to and from the casino, we wanted to include them all in the conversation. And so we felt that it was important to sort of demonstrate to both our grantors but to our community that the use of these funds would be sort of an inclusive process and an inclusive design process. Next slide, please. And so the design process through sort of stakeholder engagement, community engagement, and then working with our engineering consultants did culminate to sort of suggestions of sort of pedestrian safety. The upper two pictures are actually precedent images for sort of concrete sidewalks in industrial areas as well as shared use pathways. And then the bottom two images, the one on the bottom left is actually our brand new sidewalks here on the Beachman-Williams Street Corridor. We had to be sure when we were looking at sort of the financing breakdown for the construction process that we were utilizing the Mass Gaming Commission funds for elements like sidewalks and surface features that helped to address some of those pedestrian and multimodal concerns that we had, especially with increases to traffic and sort of the functionality of intersections. The bottom right is showcasing sort of a cross-section of what will be the Beachman-Williams Street Corridor. We'll be tying up construction this spring and summer. And that is a shared use pathway that sort of 11 and a half to 15 feet sort of asset there, which will help to connect both municipalities, Chelsea and Everett together, but we'll also sort of connect into sort of broader considerations of multimodal connections to and from Everett to Chelsea and to and from the casino itself. Next slide, please. And so, you know, our project, the implementation of our project would not be possible without the Mass Gaming Commission and sort of their finances and the grant program that they've been administering. We did indeed have to cobble together a considerable amount of financing from other resources, but most specifically the Mass Gaming Commission funds were utilized for those surface features and addressing those key concerns that were brought up through the design and planning process, as well as sort of our engagement processes here. So for those of you that are sort of considering financing for considerably high cost infrastructure projects for sort of reference, our project cost was 11.26 million. And so we were able to put together financing from the U.S. Economic Development Administration through a grant program, as well as MWRA, INI financing, ever source and local financing. And so, you know, carefully tracking all of these expenditures within the construction program is something that's really important. If you're considering utilizing Mass Gaming Commission financing, you need to make sure that you're prepared to sort of track all of the expenditures throughout each of those elements of your project that you applied for. So you can see that, you know, with a project like the Beachman-Williams Street Corridor, you have utility improvements, but the Mass Gaming Commission financing is specifically being routed towards those surface features. And so we showcase that in sort of our reports to the Mass Gaming Commission. And with that, I believe we'll turn it over to questions. We just wanted to thank the Mass Gaming Commission for allowing us to present on this project today for the considerable financing that you've granted to our project and for your sort of boots on the ground coordination with us and the site visit that we got this picture taken at. So thank you. Well, thanks, Ben and Alex. Great presentation. Mary, we have any questions from them? Yes, we do. While we're talking transportation, we have one, is design fee eligible for transportation construction grants? No, that would be under the transportation planning grants. So design funds would typically come under transportation planning grants under the construction. Now, we will allow for some construction administration under the transportation construction, but not particularly for design. With regard to public safety grant, are you saying that anything we would do would need to be training regardless of the topic area? No, no, there's multiple things that can be funded under public safety. The commission is just merely highlighting training this year due to the police reform law and some additional training requirements. And it's something that the commissioners feel strongly that we should be financing, but that is certainly not the only type of thing. Equipment can be purchased. Again, additional, if there's additional things that the police departments need to be doing or fire or EMS due to the casino, some of those things can be funded as well. Okay, that's it. Okay, well, thanks, Alex and Ben, that was great. So I'm gonna shift right over to the town of Foxborough. Foxborough's gotten a couple of public safety grants from us. They were, of course, specific impact grants in the last couple of years, but were for public safety. And we have with us Lieutenant Ken Fitzgerald from the Foxborough Police Department. And I'll turn it over to Ken. Thanks, Joe and Mary and everyone of the gaming commission. Hi, everyone, my name's Ken Fitzgerald. I'm a police lieutenant here in Foxborough. I'd never written a grant before I did the first gaming commission grant we wrote two years ago, and somehow I've now become a grant writer. So those of you who may choose to do this, be careful what you wish for. I will say this, the gaming commission is very easy to deal with. It's a very straightforward grant. It's not like dealing with some of the federal DOJ grants and the hiring, the cops hiring grants and the Homeland Security grants. Some of those things that are pretty daunting to deal with and with the expenditures. It's very straightforward, very easy. And this first slide's just a picture of the vehicle we got last year with some money from the gaming commission. Next slide, please. So in last year's grant, we had asked for some traffic safety equipment and we were awarded over $80,000 without money. We bought that pickup truck that was seen before. At the time, we had nothing that could tow our big trailer full of equipment like cones and barricades and things around. We got a new smart radar messaging board unit that you can, it can be towed around and deployed, say road closed or put an arrow up or any other programmable messages and some new traffic cones, barricades, things of that nature for traffic safety issues. Next slide. In this last year, we changed focus on the grant a little bit. We did get another vehicle and I know there was some talk about the human trafficking, sexual exploitation, that sort of thing and this is how some of it ties in and I'll get to how I got there in coming slides but we did get a new unmarked soft vehicle, a non police looking vehicle for some plain clothes and undercover uses. We got a good amount of money for training and that was broken down into three categories, human trafficking, implicit bias and crash investigation and reconstruction. I will tell people who law enforcement folks who are looking for grants. It's tough to, with the training because we don't know what's coming out next year. At the time I wrote this grant, implicit bias was, there was a lot of one day implicit bias classes coming out. It was just after the George Floyd riots and a lot of the real big national police reform type talk and those classes were everywhere. Fast forward six, eight months, the grant process goes through, we get a word of the money, the classes all go away because they've been rolled into in-service. So when you're writing the grant, don't pigeonhole yourself with just one topic, kind of cast a broad net because law enforcement training, it's still a for profit business and you don't know what's gonna be included in next year's in-service run by the state versus what the private vendor's gonna be out there running. And I'll talk about how I got to these things as we go forward here, but human trafficking, implicit bias and crash investigation are all things that we're able to tie a correlation to the casino. Next slide. So when preparing the grant, here's some of the resources that we used. One of the easiest things for any law enforcement agency is your department statistics, your computer dispatch and your records management. I know Boston is on here and the same kind of situation we have, your record software, Mark 45 is different, 43 is different than Hexagon dispatch software. So our dispatch records hold a lot of information, but then our records management holds a lot of information too. So we had to look in both those places to find some numbers for traffic accidents, for motor vehicle stops, traffic complaints, issues at hotels, issues at some of the businesses along route one that leads right to Plain Ridge. I know I didn't mention that earlier. We Fox Brosnack the Plainville and Plain Ridge is the casino that's closest to us. It's about two miles down route one. There's some state statistics. When last year we were looking a lot of the traffic stuff, I got from MassDOT a lot of their, they do quite regularly do traffic surveys and we're able to see the shown increase in traffic on route one, route 140, route 106, all the different roads that lead through Foxboro and ultimately could take somebody to the casino. The two biggest sources of information that we were able to pull from and use directly in the grant application and I'll show that as I move forward, but Christopher Bruce, who's a college professor in Massachusetts, he does a report, I think every year for the gaming commission, that's the link. I don't think you could probably take a picture of it if you need to or write it down, but that's the link. If you search Christopher Bruce Mass Gaming Report on Google, it's gonna come right up and that report's very detailed. It talks about every casino, every impact community. So all the communities like Foxboro that we don't have the casino here, but years ago we signed on the impact agreement saying, hey, there could be an impact because there's a casino nearby. He really breaks it down and two years ago it was mainly, hey, Foxboro's seeing more traffic and more traffic accidents. Last year it was, hey, there's been a spike in issues, calls for service, arrests, crimes reported, that sort of thing at hotels. We have, I think, eight hotels in town. I think Plainville has one and our hotels most of are tied to a certain NFL stadium. So it's a bit of a draw and people come to the area and often they stay here, even though they may go to the casino at some point in their stay, we're housing them here. And it's also a draw to people doing unsavory things too because there's a target audience for them here. People here to gamble, people here to go to a football game or a concert that sort of thing. So his report is unbelievable. You can go in there and literally just copy and paste into certain sections of the grant application talking about the impact and when challenged on this or questioned on it or asked to elaborate, if you are by the gaming commission, it's very easy to go back and say, your expert said this is the problem. And it really just, it seals the case for you that you've correlated back to the casino, whatever the issue is you're looking for funding for. There's also another report was called the problem gaming and impact reports. And that one talks a little bit about correlations to alcohol and drugs problem gambling and the amount of problem gambling that's going on and didn't really help us with a great connection to Foxboro, but just talked about the things that go on, the negative things that go on at a casino. And when the casino is two miles away the people have to come from somewhere to get there. So that was a, that was a easy thing for us. Next slide. So, and just kind of some points in cases people out there who haven't had good success with the gaming grants. Just some basic information of use the statistics that are available to your advantage. You know, in our case, Plain Ridge has been here about eight years and over the past eight years until COVID we were basically, we could show an increase every year in traffic and crime and virtually everything. Now, of course COVID went and screwed that all up. I don't know what this year is gonna look like because obviously 20 and 21 things got real weird. People were at home, there was less traffic, that sort of thing, but it seems to be on the rebound here now. My next bull point of using experiences even if anecdotal comes from the hotel issues. When we were talking about this we talked about some arrests and some encounters with people at some of the hotels who, you know, in conversation with these people it came up that, oh, we're at Plain Ridge, we're coming from Plain Ridge and it's three in the morning and we're back at the hotel and there's a big brawl or something breaks out and, you know, and someone is just happens to provide us that information that they were there. And that was something that we're able to, you know, it's hard to quantify but people of our folks have heard it in the field and we're able to share that with the commission. So they realized that, oh, that is true, these people actually are spending the night, you know, down the street and, you know, sometimes late at night bad things happen. And obviously like Joe and Mary and everyone else here talked about making a connection back to the casino is important. Really it's imperative. In our case, most of what we've had luck with has been the traffic stuff, drugs, alcohol, the human trafficking piece, making a connection that these problems or these issues relate to a 24 hour business that, you know, hosts people all hours of the night, people who may engage in other types of behaviors before or after coming or going for that business. And then a couple of other key points show that this is something you need, not just something you want, speak to the long-term benefits, don't be greedy, I get a little greedy last year. I put in about 240,000, I got 80,000. And then obviously show a benefit to the casino and some of this, I saw an application a few years ago that I think was rejected. And it was some public safety agency asking for a piece of equipment. And it was very proofy worded saying, hey, this thing's old and has high mileage. Well, you need to show more than that. So that was next slide. Yeah, and Ken, just if I could just add in, I think what you said that don't be greedy, I think one of the things that the commission looks at is, especially in more in the surrounding communities, is what percentage of this is due to the casino as opposed to other things. In Foxborough's case, where you do have the stadium and Patriot Place and some other things, we had to look at sort of what was the commission's fair share of that cost. You would have some of these issues regardless of whether there was a casino or not. It's just that the casino is contributing to them. And then we have to figure out what is kind of a fair share. Yeah, and Foxborough's a unique situation. Obviously, we have the big venue. And I think Plainville could probably argue that our big venue brings more trouble to them than their little venue brings to us. But combined, Foxborough, Rentham, Plainville, Mansfield, this area right here, and Mansfield has the Xfinity Center. So there are a lot of things that draw people out here and the casino is just kind of the icing on the cake that we find to some of the people that come out and they're here for a concert. They're here for a show. They're here for a night of drinking. And, oh, hey, there's a casino down the street. So it certainly helps in the application. I apologize. This is a terrible PowerPoint slide, a lot of verbiage. But these are just some quotations from the Christopher Bruce report that I inserted directly into our gaming application. And for example, one of the questions was talking about tell us about the impact to your community. And I said, hey, we have an impact of traffic. And here's the gaming commission's expert saying the types of calls for service to increase are those highly correlated with the number of cars and visitors to community, such as traffic issues, lost property, suspicious activity. And then for the down in 2019, the same different report, he says that Foxboro hutspots seem to be around the stadium and not on routes to Plainville Park Casino. And that was one where I had to go in and kind of argue my point that the stadium is on the only route to Plain Ridge Park Casino. It's on route one where the casino is. So the reports help. They can hurt. But in this was a case where I disagreed with something in there and I put it in just to kind of make our point that, hey, the two buildings are two and a half miles apart on the same road. There's a draw between the two. Next slide. And this is also some of note in the highlighted section. Again, Christopher Bruce's report on the crime and impact to the communities. He shows that he saw a spike in activity at Foxboro hotels. Now, is that spike going to drop with COVID? Who knows? Is the spike to the casino? Who knows? Who knows what it's due to, but we're able to correlate that the expert analyst hired by the gaming commission, he's recognizing there's an increase over the past number of years with problems at the hotel. And what I also would highlight on the bottom, 120% is in the five years since Plain Ridge had open, police reports have gone up 120% of the hotels. So there's certainly some correlate. There's all 120% Plain Ridge Park? Absolutely not. But some percentage of it probably is. Next slide. I apologize. This got cut off a little bit, but so this was an excerpt from the actual application, one of the boxes that I think it's in PDF form. You have to fill it in. And it's asking for documentation or evidence to support the gaming facility caused impact. And I cited in proper college format, I hope. Two of Bruce's reports. And then it goes on to, I make the citation of the actual report, then I put those blurbs you saw previously with the highlighted of what he said. Next slide. And then this is the same thing. This talks about the host agreement impact. I didn't have that. I didn't work in Foxboro back when they originally signed the host agreement a number of years ago. I had to go digging around and get it. And the one sentence excerpt that got us a whole bunch of money a couple of years ago was that right there on the box A describe excerpts from relative sections of your host agreement is the project will increase traffic-related accidents on the roads of the town. And that helped us to get traffic equipment, the cones, the truck, things like that. And then please explain how this was anticipated or not anticipated. And we explained, hey, it was anticipated. But then we can show stats over the past number of years since Plain Ridge Open showing the increase in accidents, in motor vehicle complaints, in drunk driving, things of that nature. Next slide. My contact info, if anyone that's doing this on the public safety side, either police or fire has any questions or wants to see what I've sent in the past couple of years. I'm happy to share it to you. It's my work cell phone. You can call or text or shoot me an email. And one thing I will say about training, again, keep it broad, because we don't know what topics they're going to get cut in and cut out between the state and MPTC and all the private vendors next year. But the gaming commission was good to deal with, because on our end, we have a pretty good training budget. Didn't have an issue necessarily paying for the cost of training for the $200, $300 of class might cost. But one thing I explained to the commission was the killer for us is we're short staffed, probably like everyone else. And for us, it's the overtime replacement. We're basically body for body. If I send an officer to training, it may not cost me overtime to send them. I can send them in lieu of their shift, but it's going to cost me to backfill them. So I could send officers to a free training class, but it's still going to cost us money in that backfill overtime to replace them, to actually get them trained. And that was approved as part of our grant application that we could use the money to backfill when people were going to these approved classes. So like I said, the gaming mission has been good to deal with, pretty easy to deal with. And I'm happy to answer any questions or help anyone if I can get yourself a word and some money. Just don't take it all because I need some this year too. Well, Ken, you did a great job. We're having several people ask for copies of your PowerPoint. So good job. I do have a couple of questions for you guys. How are you able to show the increases while accounting for traffic decreases related to the pandemic, 18 months or so stretch? Did you only use data from the time period of casino opening to start a pandemic? So last year's application was due, I think, December of 20, January 21-ish. So at that point, we were in the first seven or eight months of COVID when I wrote it. So at that point, the latest information we were working with were the 2019 studies because this grant, the grant was written in 2020. So I assume that if you guys hide Mr. Bruce again or whoever to do the similar studies this year, we're going to see those different numbers. Because now at the end of 21, we're going to be writing the grant. We're going to have that full year of 2020. And those studies that came out this past spring, summer, that sort of thing. So that's a little bit of the unknown for us on the traffic end of things. And we know on the police end, we know the calls for service declined, we know arrests, things like that declined. So that's just going to be a unique challenge to this year. But overall, for us, I think we still look at the broad picture of, hey, since Plain Ridge ran in, here's what we've seen. And I would probably write this year's to account for. You know and could expect there was going to be something keeping everyone home for eight months. OK. Thank you. I just want to let the audience know, if you, when you go into the Combi's, we have downloaded our PowerPoint to the application on Combi's. And Ken's PowerPoint is incorporated in our PowerPoint. But also, if there's any other additional information you're going to want, just feel free to give us a call or send us an email. And we're happy to provide whatever we can. And Mary, the PowerPoint, is that going up on our website as well? Oh, yes. Yes. After today, we were going to load it up on the website, too. Yeah. Great. OK. Any other further questions there, Mary, for Ken? No. Well, thank you, Ken. Appreciate your time and putting this together. Great information for everyone, I think. So next up, we have the city of Lynn. They're going to talk about, they've had a few grants with us. They're going to talk. Jamie Marsh is the director of community development there. Jamie doesn't have a PowerPoint for us. So I'm going to stop sharing so everybody can see him. Well, we're a little challenged here at City Hall today. I don't know, old HP, and I have no video as well. Can you hear me? Yeah, we can hear you fine. So thanks, Joe. And thanks for having us. We're happy to participate here on behalf of the city of Lynn. Thank you. We just wanted to give a brief overview of the grants that we've received here in the city of Lynn and give prospective applicants an idea of what they might apply for and some insights into our own experiences applying for these grants. We're not really going to focus on one particular grant. So here in Lynn, we've been fortunate to have received five grants, four of which were based on mitigating increased traffic as a result of the construction and operation of our grant. Our first grant was a $100,000 transportation planning grant, which we utilized to study streamlining ferry service from Lynn to Boston. Our application was based on mitigating increased traffic along Route 1A. I think everybody knows that as the Linway in Lynn, getting people off the road and onto alternative means of transportation. The study helped make the case for bringing ferry service back to the city. Interestingly enough, it was also used to advocate for a $2.2 million MassWorks grant, which is slated to start this spring. I bring that up because, as Joe mentioned, these grants are really seed money. And there always seemed to be jump starting that used to jump start projects, but also jump starting other projects and really lead, for us at least, really lead to additional funding all the time. Our second grant was a $100,000 planning grant. And we utilized for a city-wide study of all Lynn's traffic signal equipment. Literally over 80 different intersections throughout the city were studied. Like the first grant, we made the case that traffic congestion within the city had been exacerbated by the operation of the casino. Upon completion of the study, I'm happy to state, as I mentioned, the city itself budgeted funds to begin the actual repairs of the signals. All aimed at streamlining traffic operations through the city of Lynn and mitigating casino-related impacts. The third and fourth grants, both transportation planning grants totaling $300,000 were utilized to jump start a $37 million TIP project in the city of Lynn along Western Ave. Again, making the case that congestion had increased as a result of encore operations. For this grant, I can really say without hesitation that devoid the mitigation funds, we wouldn't have been able to get this project off the ground. Today, it's the highest scoring transportation project being considered by the Boston MPO for full funding. And the city has also just budgeted $7 million for further design and engineering. It really just wouldn't have happened without this initial seed money from the grant. So with these initial four grants, the real challenge for us was proving harm or proving impact. I think as communities, we all know we're impacted, whether it's small or large, but proving it's the tough part. The most recent grant we received, the one we're currently working on, is being utilized to create a city marketing plan. Unlike the previous grants that were based on transportation related impacts, this grant is based on lost revenue to the city as a result of encore getting into the live entertainment business. And in general, attracting visitors away from Lynn to the casino. The city through my office runs a 2000 seat auditorium and we're now seem to be competing against the casino for shows. We made the case to the commission that every time the casino books a show that may have gone to the Lynn auditorium, it results in thousands of dollars in lost ticket revenue, not only to Lynn auditorium, but also the lost economic spin off to the city itself in restaurants and other retail outlets before and after shows, not to mention lost jobs for bartenders, ushers, ticket takers, mail stacks, it has a huge impact. And the issue we see it is buying power. Our municipal budgets are no match for the casino's buying power when it comes to purchasing and advertising shows or advertising casino as a destination itself. They have a distinct advantage with built-in revenue streams, built-in audiences and deep pockets. We're just unable to compete against them and in a larger sense compete for tourists in their disposable income without advertising funding. We hope the $100,000 in funding we received for showcasing the city in and around Encore, which we plan to advertise, if not in Encore, around Encore, will help to level the playing field a bit and attract people back to communities like Lynn and amenities like the Lynn auditorium. So those are snapshots of the five grants we received here. And Joe, I have to say, we're happy to hear that the burden of quantifying impacts being relaxed because again, from my experience, that's the biggest hurdle to overcome and applying for these planning grants. I think we all know we're impacted in a small way or a large way. It's just hard to prove sometimes. So again, on behalf of the city, thanks for having us participate. Joe, Mary, the commission has been wonderful to work with, always answering questions. We really appreciate these grants. I'm happy to take any questions. Thank you, Jamie. Appreciate those kind words. And I think that was one of the messages that we heard from many of our applicants and our advisory committees, that trying to quantify the impacts was really causing difficulties for communities. So we really did try to address that, at least in the community planning category, at least for this year. So Mary, do we have any questions for Jamie? No, I don't see any. Okay, well, thanks again. So I will go back to sharing our screen and Mary. I'll turn this over to you for our process for obtaining grant funds. And it looks like we are starting to run a little short on time. So we really have to... I'll speed it up. Before I jump into the specifics of the application and naming your RFR, I do wanna suggest a couple of things. And it would be one, the first step I would suggest would be to read the 2022 guidelines. They are on their appendix A of the RFR and that provides a lot of the details that you've been asking about. And so for clarification, I would suggest first, that being done first. The second task would be to read the instructions for the type of grant that you're going to apply for. There are a lot of instructions on the COMBIs RFR. You just need to find the type of grant you're looking for and those instructions are there. When you're filling out your application, we would greatly appreciate it if you would not fill the whole application as see the attached. We would like you to use the application as it is intended and that is to fill in the blocks. And then if you have attachments, then say, then you may have attachments at the back end of the application. But we really would like you to use the form as it's presented. Now on to naming your RFR submission. So the Gaming Commission has started a database and with this database, we need entities to submit the same type of naming sequence for their application when they save it to send it to us. On this, you'll see the second line RFR submission entity type year project name. And then I just did a random Everett SI. SI stands for the specific impact. 22 is the year. Broadway was the, was the description that was on page one. So for this, for saving your RFR submission, we would like you to use this naming sequence and leave it to 20 characters. For your attachments, if you could copy what you did in the first and just put ATT one and go that way, that would be great. Let's see, the reason that coding is important is that this is also gonna coincide with the state contract which will be signed when the grant is signed. And it is a requirement of the Mars ID. This is basically what this is going to be is the Mars ID. All right. This is the abbreviations so that you'd see all the different types of abbreviations available. Okay, next. This year on the first page of the application is a slot for the vendor code. The vendor codes are assigned to the municipalities and each municipality only has one person that is able to submit these RFRs. If you have any questions regarding com buys or are sending in your application, please use the com buys, either send them an email or give them a call. And they will be able to help you. We don't deal with a com buys technology, only com buys does. Next. Impact description. The most critical factor in these applications is to be sure the impact is attributable to the casino. As we've shown earlier, there's many ways to determine these impacts. Here is a list of some of the ways you can show the impacts or do some research to make sure that it's attributable to the casino. Next. Addressing the impacts. Having a proposed scope budget and timeline is very helpful in the analysis of the application. Additionally, a scope budget and timeline is required as in the grants. So in order to release funding, the commission staff reviews and approves the scope budget and timeline prior to the releasing of any funding. And just as a side note, we would appreciate you rounding figures up to the nearest hundred. You do not need to know that it's $83.43. MGC strongly encourages reaching out to the licensee regarding their applications. It could be that the licensees already have done research and something that you're considering applying for. So call to them. They're very helpful. And we, we want to see you reach out to the licensees. Yeah. And Mary, just, just to add in on that. I know last year we did have a few folks say to us that, you know, they really weren't able to get through to the licensees, you know, during the pandemic and so on. I know last year, hopefully was an anomaly. But yeah, we certainly would like, especially if it's something where you're trying to work with the licensee to attract customers or so on to your businesses, having some input from the licensee would be great. Yep. Yep. Okay. Consultation with regional planning authority. This section addresses the regional outfit. Outreach consultation with regional planning authority is required. And we'd like to hear about what communications you've had with the art or the regional planning authority. And any other collaborative partners. There have been a number of studies commissioned by the MGC and the regional planning agencies, which are available on the commission's website, which will help with your development of your application. I'm amazed at the amount of the scope of the information available to communities through the regional planning agency. So we strongly again, encourage you to do that. Next. The administration of funds. This section is very important as the person who was responsible for the administration of funds may be also be the person who needs to submit a quarterly report in the annual report. If they are not listed on the first page of the application, which is the basic data of the, of the grant, please fill in their name here so that we have them on our database. Next, where should the application be sent? It should be sent through combine. In the event that an entity is unable to file an application due to technical problems with combines, we need to receive the application at least by January 30th. The reason being, we have to upload any application that cannot go through combines. And we have to show combines that indeed we did receive the application by the due dates. So the RFR closes on the 31st. And that is why we're saying January 30th for that particular matter, but we don't anticipate there being any problems. But of course, if you do have a problem, please let us know as soon as possible. Next. Okay. And I think Mary also that bottom bullet, you know, you know, combines, the combines folks are the specialists in combines. We are not. So if there's technical issues with combines itself, you really do need to contact them. I mean, you could contact us, but we're not sure that we'll be able to give you the right answer to all of those questions. All right. We did get a couple of questions. Can you provide updated community liaison context for the licensees or tell them that they have to have someone whose job it is to speak with surrounding. Governments. Okay. We will note that. That's it for, okay. Next. Application approval process. Okay. We have a review team of six staff members. We will review and analyze the applications. Additionally, we request evaluations from the light licensees and mass DOT. Mass DOT, of course, is just all the transportation, but the licensees get all applicable applications for their review and comment. Any questions which arise are followed up with a letter to the applicant requesting further clarification. We call this a supplementary information request. The response is generally due within two weeks of the request. In some instances, the review team will request an applicant to participate in a meeting with staff. These are only for clarification purposes. Once the review team has evaluated the applications, the applications then go before the commission for a vote. Last year applications were reviewed by type of application, which enabled us to start the review process of the applications much earlier. Because some funding requests come in and have specific deadlines by which they need the funding in order to run certain programs. I think that's it. Oh, and then here are our resource materials. Please check our website out, which has a large number of research studies. And as noted by the presentation by Lieutenant Fitzgerald, Fox very used a host of studies to develop their application. Okay. Thank you. I guess we'll see if there's any other questions regarding that process. If any of those have any other questions come in. I don't see any other. Okay. So we've only got a couple of minutes left. And I'm just, I just want to go over this real quick. What we're talking about projects of regional significance. Again, one of the things, you know, we, our number of applications was down last year and the, and the amount of grants was down. And, you know, we started thinking about, well, are there some larger projects out there that could use community mitigation funds that we should be thinking about? And initially we said, well, should we make a new category in 2022? And the answer was really no, we need to find out more information. So, so what we did, so what we're going to do is this winter we're going to reach out to the host communities and surrounding communities and talk to them about sort of large scale projects that they have in their communities that might be eligible for some community mitigation funds. And our thought is that these would typically be, you know, large transportation construction or perhaps economic development projects that would require some significant dedication of financial resources to complete. You know, we're thinking, we're looking at things in the sort of the five to the tens of millions of dollars on these projects. And not that the community mitigation fund would be able to fund all of it, but maybe similar to the Chelsea project, we can provide enough funds to bring something over the finish line. So again, we're going to go out to the communities and ask sort of what things are available out there. I mean, there's some things we know about, you know, for instance, out in Springfield, we know that the city bought up a couple of properties right across the street from MGM and wants to see those redeveloped into projects that will be perhaps complimentary to the casino. Some of these historic structures that we know are extremely expensive to prepare and to renovate. So, you know, could community mitigation funds be used for something like that? And the answer is, you know, probably yes. And also, you know, the city is looking at, you know, the Mass Mutual Center and saying, hey, is there something we can do with the entrance to make it align more with MGM? Things like that. In the East, we know that the governor just said that the state's going to finance a bridge across the Mystic River, pedestrian and bicycle connection across the Mystic River, right near the Yonkore Casino. But we're not sure if that includes a connection into the Orange Line right there. And, you know, if that connection to the Orange Line needed to be funded, that might be a $10 or $12 million project unto itself. So, the thought here is that if we're kind of generating some surpluses on these smaller type projects, wouldn't it make sense to try to finance some of these larger projects? So, as I said, we'll go out to the communities over the winter and sit down with them and sort of walk through what might be out there, what could possibly be connected to the casino in some way or another, you know, what kind of costs. And then once we know at least what that tentative universe of projects is, we can then go to our advisory committees and others and talk with a little bit more intelligence about, you know, should we create this new category for these larger projects? So, nothing for this year as far as availability of funds, but something to keep your eyes on potentially in the next year or two. And with that, I'm looking at 259, which means we're one minute under our timeline. So, here is some contact information. I didn't put Crystal's information here. She's not working on the workforce grant. She's transitioned out of that into something else here at the commission. But so I guess any questions with that, you can send those to Mary and we can route those around if need be. And then I guess we'll just open up for any last questions or comments or anything from anyone. Mary, do we have anything in the chat? I don't see anything. I see Kathy has rejoined us here at the end. I was listening all the time. Excellent, excellent, two hour session job. Thank you very much. Thank you, Madam chair. And I guess with no other questions appearing, I guess we will, we will adjourn. I have one, I have one comment. Hey, Bill. I just want to thank everybody on the call. I want to thank everybody working together. My thanks goes out to the members of the gaming commission. You've been very helpful to the city of Boston. So I want to thank you all and I want to wish you a happy holiday. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Bill. Thank you, Bill. All right. Well, thanks everyone so much for coming. It looked like at the peak that I saw, we hit 100 participants, which I think is really great. And I think it's really, really, really great. You know, it shows that there is interest in this program. I'm hoping that what we've done will, will help make it a little bit easier for our applicants, at least in a couple of the categories. And we're really looking forward to seeing what we get in here on January 29th. And I hope that we're successful in getting a lot of good applications. Also have a little bit of fear that we might be overly successful. And if that's the case, I guess that's good too. But anyway, thanks again. And we look forward to hearing from all of you. Getting applications in at the end of January. And happy holidays. Okay. Thank you. Thanks. Bye-bye.