 I think we'll get started then. Karen, I see you're connected, which is good so far. I have a backup plan. I should be okay. But just in case I go dark, I'll be calling in instead of letting people issue here. Great. Yeah. It's funny because we've got one today too. I'm wondering if our systems are all getting overtaxed. Okay. Good morning, everyone. We'll do a roll call to confirm our quorum. Commissioner Cameron. Good morning, everyone. I'm here. Commissioner O'Brien. I'm here. Good morning. Good morning, Commissioner Zinica. Good morning. I'm here. Great. Thank you. And then we will get started with today's meeting. As you know, we are doing this virtually again. As we've done since March 14th of 2020 using virtual technology. Many thanks to our IT department to allow us to seamlessly meet since then, given relief that the government offered through an executive order to address the needs of public bodies like ours during the pandemic. We are today already May 6th, 2021. And it is our public meeting 343. With that, we'll get started with the minutes. Commissioner O'Brien. Madam Chair, there are two sets of minutes in the packet today, January 14th, January 28th. I think we have arrived. I think the group that's been working on these has spent a lot of time trying to get them concise for covering it up. I think they did a great job. I would move to the first instance that we approved the minutes for January 14th, 2021, subject to any necessary corrections for typogram or material matters. Any questions or recommended edits? Oh, did I hear a second? I'm sorry. I second that. I second right now. Thank you. Edits, questions, comments. All right. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. And I vote yes. Zivian, 4-0. Thank you. Commissioner. And further, Madam Chair, I move the minutes from January 28th, 2021. Any needed typographical changes for non-material matters? I have a second. Second. Thank you, Commissioner. Any questions, edits, suggested changes? All right. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. And I vote yes. 4-0. Thank you. Before I turn it over to item number three, just a reminder today that we do have a very robust agenda, all which deserve equal amount of attention. We expect to go into the afternoon. We'll have our community mitigation grant discussion this afternoon. So forgive me, but I will try to keep us on the schedule that Marianne, with her magic, devised for us. And I think, Commissioner, she'd probably agree. We want to make sure that we're not so exhausted that we can't give the items that Joe presented to us the right attention. So with that soft warning, Executive Director Wells. Good morning, Madam Chair, members of the commission. As a preliminary matter, I'd like to start off with a staff introduction. We have a new member of the MGC staff. And I saw her earlier, so I know her camera work. So there she is. Hello. So we have Marie Claire, Flores Peugeot. And I'm not sure if you go by Marie Claire or Marie. So please let us know. I know you're on mute right now. But I just wanted to personally welcome you to the team here. We're very excited to have you on board. I'm going to turn it over to Mark to give just a little bit of an introduction and to explain as research manager for the research and responsible gaming side of the house what you're going to be doing. So welcome. And I'll turn it over to Mark. Great. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners. I am really excited about this. This is, I think, a great step forward for the commission and especially for our small research and responsible gaming team. Marie Claire is joining us. She started on Monday. Prior to joining us, she worked at the Center for Substance Use and Addiction in Ottawa, Canada. She did a variety of different tasks there. A lot of project management. She's done a fair share of qualitative and quantitative research. She's done work in translating some of the research that's been done out of that group. Probably the most notable project that Marie Claire had done was on doing the project management for the development of lower risk gambling guidelines. I've mentioned that to, I think at different meetings, but the lower risk gambling guidelines is something that we're really excited to launch later this summer, probably earlier fall as soon as they're ready. But having Marie Claire sort of grounding in that will I think be a great assistance to us as we roll those out. At the commission, a lot of what I just said that she's been doing in her previous employment, she'll be doing for us. I think the two main things are knowledge translation. So how do we take the growing body of research we have and mobilize it, make it understandable and plain speech to the stakeholders and people that just really need to understand it. Marie Claire is also going to help me in a lot of the contract management and administration. Making sure that our contracts are done on time, make sure that deliverables are arriving, make sure that they're going through the appropriate research review process and make sure that they're deployed as soon as they're ready to get it up. It's exciting work, it's a new position and I look forward to working with you. Good morning Marie Claire. Good morning. Thank you very much for the introduction. I am very happy to be here. And as it was mentioned, from my experience developing the lower race gambling guidelines, I got exposed to some of the great research that's been coming out of Massachusetts. A lot of it has been very impressed by that. And so I'm very happy to be joining the MGC team and I look forward to working with many of you. Well, welcome. I know that I think probably you're going to be meeting with each commissioner. I know I'm going to see you tomorrow. So we won't go on today about all the questions we have for you. We'll save them for our individual meetings. But commissioners, I think we can all join me in a warm welcome to Marie Claire. I'm sorry that it's not in person. And also I want to note that when Mark said he's very excited. You may not always be able to tell that from the demeanor in virtual. Mark is very excited about you arriving. So welcome, welcome, welcome. Thank you, Karen. Thank you and so nice to see you. Thanks, Karen. Absolutely. Next I'm also going to turn it over to Mark. He's going to give us just an update on what he's been doing in conjunction with Singapore and some exciting work there have been doing in collaboration. So I'll turn it over to Mark just to give you an update on that. Yeah, thank you. So I was invited for a two year appointment to the Singapore National Council for National Health Problems Program. They have an international advisory panel. The NCQG is funded by and closely affiliated with the Singapore Ministry of Social and Family Development. So the international advisory panel or IAP every couple of years they invite just a few people to come share their knowledge, share their experience to help Singapore develop innovative, informed, responsible gaming tools and projects. And so I'm in the middle of my two year term with the IAP. I'm joined by Dr. Sally Gainsbury who is an associate professor of psychology at the University of Sydney and Paul Smith who used to be with the British Columbia Lottery Corporation as their director of responsible gaming that retired and started a group called Sustainable Gaming. Commissioner Zuniga, I know you're probably familiar with both of those individuals. So back in, I think it was August of 19, I was invited to Singapore for a conference that was actually sponsored by the Ministry of Social and Family Development but it kicked off my term with this IAP. And in March, I was supposed to return to Singapore for a seminar for the IAP but it was held virtually. So every two years that they host a seminar that pulls together the casinos that are in Singapore and a variety of other government and social service agency stakeholders. So during the latest IAP seminar, I provided a presentation both on her magic study which was really well received as well as another study or another project on Play My Way. Play My Way actually was something that I talked about when I was out there in 2019. In 2020, Marina Bay Sands which is one of the two casinos that there launched a program that looks very similar to Play My Way. It's a pre-commitment program. They call it No My Play. The other casino in Singapore resorts World Sentosa in February of 2020 and then expanded it in February of 2021 started a program again, really similar to ours called Managed Gameplay. You know, I think it's a great example of both how we're bringing our experience, our expertise to a jurisdiction that's a long ways away but there's enough similarities that I think that it translates really well. I think it's also a really good opportunity for us, for me to have a better understanding of kind of how has other jurisdictions taken some of this technology and really run with it and things that we can learn from it but also new and innovative things and research that are currently underway. I think this is a small enough field in terms of responsible gaming and problem gambling that if we really have an obligation, we really have a great opportunity to learn from one another. And I think our relationship with Singapore is a great example of that. You know, there's other examples too. I just, I won't go into any detail but we've been really closely affiliated with British Columbia, the British Columbia Lottery Corporation and Play My Way. Last month I did some consulting or advising I guess really for Jamaica and if they're looking at establishing a voluntary self-exclusion program and I actually did some advising of them a couple of years ago too, pre-pandemic but you know, it's, again, it's a small world. It's a big world but it's a small world when it comes to some of this work. And as you know, we've also been in a variety of ways working with Japan in a variety of settings and I know Commissioner Zuniga, you recently did a training for them but we have frequent contact with them on a lot of different levels as they're looking at, I think in some ways mirroring what we've done in Massachusetts and Japan as they launch casino gambling there. So that's really just, I just wanted to provide a quick update and if you have any questions, let me know. Any questions from the commissioners? You know, I'll just make a comment here as I look back at the years that we've had since implementing these programs. We've seen, we're seeing, I would submit to everyone a shift in the direction that we talk, especially with the tools like Play My Way and Game Sense in other places, more acceptance towards the notion of these tools as what could be available for players for their own benefit completely voluntary, not re-creating some of the mistakes of the past. And I think marks involved many places like Singapore and Japan are a great testament to the beginning and that shift in the industry towards accepting those tools. So I'm really happy that you continue this work mark. It's a great way to bring back best practices that are emerging in other jurisdictions for the benefit of our own programs here because you say it's a small community. And as the industry merges into growth really with the online space with all kinds of potentials for expansion, it's incumbent upon us to continue knowing about all those practices. Mr. Cameron? Yes, Mark, I'm really happy to hear about this relationship. I did not know an awful lot about it that you have. And I just probably don't remember, but the first year we started to commission the International Conference, the Niagara Conference was in Singapore and I did have an opportunity to attend. In particular, I was looking at their investigative methods and because we had yet to set up our regulatory model and they were so helpful to the folks, the agency there in Singapore, really, really helpful and very had a very, they had thought a lot about how they wanted to regulate Singapore, beautiful casinos, by the way, gorgeous. And so I'm really happy that you're continuing that relationship and it is, at this point, we're mature and others can learn from us as well as we continue from the international community. So I appreciate the work you're doing. Thank you. Thank you, Commissioner. Commissioner Bryan, I'll start. Yeah, I'm all set. I hope that COVID gets under control enough for you, Mark, to actually get over to Singapore, like Commissioner Cameron was able to do. He did go in 2019, right, Mark? Yeah, but to get back, that's actually how I learned about his most recent work, Commissioner Cameron, is because I think Mark and I were speaking, getting ready for something, a different program and all of a sudden he realized that he had miscalculated the time difference and had to jump off the call because he suddenly realized he needed to be in Singapore, like six hours earlier, right, Mark? It's that 12 hours difference, the Singapore's. Yeah, and you had miscalculated, so yeah. Yeah, so nothing else being there in person takes care of those issues, right? But yeah, I think you're right, Commissioner Bryan, Mark is recognized internationally as a leader. That's why we are able to attract the work of Marie Claire here, and Mark continues to be such an influential voice, so I had asked if he would give that update. Thank you, Mark, and we will continue to get your updates, but we get them often through inadvertently through the research of others, and we wanna make sure that we are very aware of exactly what you and your division is doing. So thanks, thanks, Karen. Okay, thank you, and then the last item for the administrative update again is the update from Loretta and Bruce on the COVID protocols and the situation with the casinos on site, so I'll start with Loretta and we'll go through that. Hi, thank you, Karen, and good morning, Kathy, good morning, commissioners. So consistent with the prior updates that I've given in this portion of the commission's meeting, the three licenses are continuing to abide by and dedicate substantial staff and resources to the health and safety measures put into place by the commission, and this also holds true for those areas of the gaming establishments, in particular the restaurants that are governed by the specifications put into place by the governor's office. Many of the safety measures are forward-facing and aimed to protect the public. And as a quick review, even before patrons enter, the property's communications plans educate guests on the measures that they will find when they get there. Signage at the entry points directs guests not to enter if they have any symptoms. And of course, hand sanitizers available throughout, masking is required, no eating in the gaming area, drinking aloud only while seated and actively gaming. Distance in measures and the installation of plexiglass barriers are utilized throughout the properties. Queuing is controlled through signage and floor markings and the enhanced sanitization protocols are in place throughout. And of course, it's the employees at each of the properties who have had their eyes and ears on these measures and have been working to ensure compliance with all of this. It has been a serious and a sustained effort on their part. The properties have also been responsible for measures to protect their employees. And on that front, the same measures that are in place for the front of the house have parallel measures in the back of the house. And that starts with communications with employees. I've been informed that, for instance, that shift meetings are utilized to cover reminder information and updated information before the start of employee shifts. Not surprisingly, there have been employees who have contracted COVID-19. The properties have been diligent about their recording obligations to the Department of Public Health and they have participated in contact tracing efforts. They've also been proactive in continuing to evaluate in real time whether there are additional measures that can be implemented to protect employees. As an example, at one point, there were multiple cocktail servers at Encore that were contracting COVID and the property installed plexiglass between the server stations in the kiosks there where the servers get the beverages. And that is one example of the type of real time evaluation that all three of the properties have been putting into place. The infection rates in the employee populations have always reflected the larger trend in Massachusetts and that holds true now. Currently, the rate in the employee population is trending downward consistent with the statewide trend. The IEB and U as a commission have directed the licensees to continue to assess their measures, the public-facing ones and the employee-facing ones. One update I can give you is that Encore intends to transition away from the non-touch thermal imaging cameras it has used at the public entry points and instead utilize those staff who've been monitoring those stations to assist with social distancing, mask enforcement and ensuring that patients are seated while drinking. This is within the property's ability to do. I think it's appropriate and note that the employees have been instrumental in maintaining patron compliance with the measures. The main point I wanna make is that the licensees and that the employees have worked and are continuing to work really hard in this challenging environment. There's also the vaccination site that is now open at Encore. It's being run by the Cambridge Health Alliance. It's an appointments-based site available to residents and also a convenient way for Encore employees to receive vaccinations as well. Finally, we're aware that the governor recently released information easing restrictions and setting out a timeline for further easing of restrictions subject to public health data. Karen already has a meeting on the calendar, I think next week for our internal restart working group so we can begin to prepare and work in conjunction with the licensees to frame issues for your consideration and potential votes in the weeks ahead. So those are my prepared remarks. I'm happy to try to address any questions you may have. I know that Bruce is also on the call. I know he's prepared to give an operational update. So let me know how you want to see. Before we move on to Bruce, why don't we address Roberta's report? Any questions for Roberta? I have a question about the employee vaccination numbers. Is there anything that Encore is trying to do to incentivize their employees to get vaccinated, be it at their own site or otherwise? I am aware that Encore is taking the management of the appointment system for their employees. They are managing that for their employees. They are certainly encouraging vaccination of their employees and are taking the proactive management role in that and making it available to them. So, I don't know the particulars if they are incentivizing it with time off or ability to do on their ships, but I know that they want their employees to get vaccinated and are taking a proactive role in making that happen. Okay, thanks. Anything else, Commissioner Bryan? No, that was it. Okay, Commissioner Zuniga, do you have a question for Roberta? Yeah, Roberta, tell me if you know this or can get back to the next update, but you mentioned the governor had outlined some steps recently for reopening in anticipation of all the and subject to the data continuing to trend the way it has been trending. But what might it mean for casinos, for our licensees in the short term? Maybe some lifting of the occupancy restrictions or are there other things concretely that you know might be in the short term horizon? So, for the restaurants, the licensees have always followed the governor's guidance, so any changes that the governor has implemented around occupancy for the restaurants, the licensees can adopt those based on the governor's directives. The governor did set out a timeline for the lifting of capacity restrictions around the August 1st date for businesses, but the licensees are operating on the commission's requirements on capacity, so the commission would need to act on those measures, and that's why Karen has convened the working group so we can start preparing and presenting information to you to make appropriate votes and changes as you see fit. Does that answer your question? Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and perhaps the last step of the governor's plan for reopening the phase, I guess phase four, when there's bars and nightclubs, et cetera, none of that is yet allowed to reopen, but the implication would be similar to restaurants, even when that was allowed, the licensees may be in a position to reopen that, so it's operations, is that a fair statement? That would be a fair statement, although for some of the bars and nightclubs, those fall under the commission's restrictions as well, so you would need to consider those in the context of what the governor has done and any particular needs of the casinos, or issues, safety issues that are posed by the casinos themselves. Thank you. Question of Cameron, questions for Director Lillios? No questions, thank you. As always, comprehensive report. Yeah, and good news, correct Commissioner, we continue to appreciate the vigilance, and again, we had the news of, I believe last week at our Monday meeting, which was a little bit of an exception, we had learned that the Encore Boston Harbor had been designated a vaccination site, and it is great when our licensees are able to be such good community partners with the city of Everett in the region, so again, good work on the apartment, sure they'll be reporting to us on it at some point, it's part of their quarterly report. Okay, but then Bruce, operations. Hi Sharon, Commissioner, mine is mostly on occupancy. On occupancy properties, the high occupancy rate was May 1st, this is since our last meeting. On May 1st, MVM had an occupancy rate of 21%, they had a car giveaway again. PPC's occupancy rate, which was on the Kentucky Derby Day, was 15%, and Encore on May 1st had an occupancy rate of 19%, and they had some slot giveaways. I will say since the governor's announcement, our questions about when poker is opening up in this state has increased probably by 30%, everybody's asking us when we're opening up, but that was kind of expected when his statement came out, just to keep you aware that those questions keep arising, they had quieted down when both of the casinos had posted on their websites, the status of poker at their casinos. Karen, that makes sense to put that on the restart committee's agenda. If there's any, I don't know if there's any formal requests from the licensees, but... Not at this point, Madam Chair. Okay, thank you. Thanks, Bruce. Did I hear correct that it was PPC was 15%? Correct, the number seems a little bit lower because we found a flaw in their accounting system, and this is corrected a little bit. Yeah, thank you so much. You're welcome. Any questions for Bruce? I had one question, Madam Chair. Bruce, I know I just saw the notification that you sent around regarding Pennsylvania going back to full occupancy Memorial Day weekend. I wondered if you knew and you may not know whether our numbers are a bit lower than some of the other states. I don't mean the occupancy rates, I mean the attendance itself, the percentage of patrons that are coming back. I just don't know if you have an idea where it's similar or... From what I hear from some of my contacts, they're pretty similar. Those contacts are Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and some of that, we're getting similar numbers. Okay, thank you. You're welcome. Anybody else? Yeah, Loretta, Director Lilios, anything further for Bruce, are you? No. Loretta, you're all set? All set, thank you. As always, thank you. And again, I think these are reports that we should continue to have. So thank you. Second, Director Wells. So that concludes the administrative update. We're ready to go on to the quarterly report from MGE. Great, so we'll move on to item number four. Good morning, Chief Delaney. Good morning, Madam Chair, commissioners, thank you. So up before you, we have MGM's first quarter report. And from MGM, we have with us Seth Stratton, Vice President and Legal Counsel, Daniel Miller, Director of Compliance, and Arlen Carvalho, the Executive Director of Finance. And with that, I will turn it over to Seth. Actually, Joey will be me introducing him. Sure. Good morning, Lady Chair, commissioners. Thank you, Pam, and it's before you today to present our Q1 report. I believe we have our IT kinks worked out now, and I'm gonna be able to share this with you. So, you know, fingers crossed. I'm standing by with a copy just in case. I appreciate that, Joe. All right, can everybody see the PDF of the slides? And I'll put it into... All set, Daniel, good morning. Thank you kindly. And let's quickly put that into full screen mode, yeah. All right, so without further ado, I will turn it over to Arlen to deliver our revenue taxes and unmoderary compliance portions of the slides. Arlen, are you there? Arlen, would you be on mute, or I'm not even... Arlen, I'm not seeing her. I've gotta see if I can track her down. I'm looking as well, Madam Chair. Let's see. Yeah, I'm not seeing her. Is she attending by phone, perhaps? Because if Arlen, if you can hear us and you're on phone, try a star six, correct, Karen? Yes. Star six. If we can't get her, then I'm happy to go through the slide, but it may not be able to offer many answers if you have questions. So do you confirm that Arlen is attending by phone? Yeah, with me. Because Austin might be able to help unmute her if we have the phone number, if Austin's hearing me. Or I could even try. I haven't asked her through message. If she's on, we'll see what the response is. Okay. I was just gonna say, Dan, well, when I was looking for a number, but Dan, why don't you go ahead and then if you wanna walk through and then if there are any questions, we can hopefully get on and we'll call in or we can answer them ourselves. Certainly. So clearly looking at the slide, for our first quarter gaming review for January, just under 14 and a half million, with taxes of 3.6 million due to state. And working in the February, 16 point, almost 16.9 million in revenue with 4.2 million to the state. And then of course had a very good March, which was presented out publicly by yourselves since our best month, I believe, since May of 2019, where we had a revenue of 22 million and was able to pay 5.5 million in taxes to the state for totals of 53.5 million as the quarters revenue and then 13.3 million to the state in tax. I did just see a message from Arlen saying that she's online. Let me see if she can either unmute herself or the... Hi, sorry. There she is. There she is. Good morning, Erin. Hi, good morning. Dan, I'm sorry, I'm not sure where you were at, but I can just go through the entire slide for our gaming revenues. I did go through the slide just at any as you jumped on. If the commissioners have any questions, I would defer them to you too. Arlen may want to repeat the gaming revenue for the March. Yeah, I'll be happy to. Our total gaming revenue for the month of March was 22.1 million and our total taxes were 5.5 million. Ending the entire quarter at 53.4, 53.5 million in gaming revenue and total taxes of 13.4 million. Thank you. We didn't want Dan to take away that good news for you to share. Do you want us to hold our questions? Would that be most helpful, Dan or Seth? Okay, we'll wait for questions to the end of the presentation. Thanks. I'll move on to the next slide for you, Arlen. Correct. Yes, please. Total lottery sales for the three months ending in March of 2020 equal $283,000. That's it. And then, of course, it's back to me for compliance. So looking at the table as we provide it regularly, with January being the highest month of those being able to gain access, the one outlier being the minor that was intercepted gaming. That was one of the incidents that the commission has already given out that the penalty related to previously. So that was one of those particular incidents. But I'm very happy to see the way we're trending clearly with all of the zeros that are on that screen. And then just to give a little background on the other incidents is where there was just gaining access to the floor. Those happened to be families with children that had just finished dining at Chandler. And then as they exited, they stepped onto the floor or they went through the floor to exit. We've remedied that in a couple of fashions. One is we have now chosen Chandler as a location that would be 21 and over. And if there were to be any very rare exceptions to that, then a family would be met by a security officer at the valley entrance, escorted round on the tile. They would obviously experience their dining. And then toward the end, it would be down to the restaurant to let security know again, they need to be escorted back. And then there's one last redundancy. If security were busy, it would be on one of the restaurant staff to walk them back around through the tile. So, but that, like I say, should be a very, very rare occasion. And we'd have to monitor whether we feel that's worth the time anyway. But overall, like I say, as you can see, we're trending in the right direction. Now, regarding our spend update, of course, I would usually hand this back to Arlen. The reason I'm not this time around is sadly we have found a bit of an error in our numbers here. And I did go over this with Joe yesterday. He also brought to my attention that the numbers didn't look correct based on other quarters presented to you. And so we noticed the same with your permission, what we would like to do. We believe this is due to an accounting system conversion. Do a deeper dive offline, get the correct information to commissioners to have. And then ultimately, when we're before you again for our Q2 report on both quarters at the same time so that we can show a better comparison. I know you said about leaving questions at the end, dear lady, but you might want to respond to this one just so I know we're good to continue. I'm happy to have, I know that there'll be questions on the slide. I'm happy to have commissioners if it's helpful commissioners to ask questions now. The only reason why I don't love that is I can't see faces, Dan. So as long as we can always go back to the chart. Thank you. Then I can navigate the question answering a little bit better. Thank you. So we know that as you look at this slide as it sits this information isn't correct. And we understand that looking at it just on face value would probably need us to pick your jaws up off the floor. So we understand and we'll move forward. Thank you. Into employment. I'm also now going to play the part of Jason Randall, our director of HR. Just imagine me about a foot taller and dark brown hair if you would. And so numbers I feel to focus on here would be that the total number of employees for this quarter has increased by roughly 80 team members numbers. As you can see, other numbers have pretty much stayed the same from a percentage standpoint. And unless there are any objections, I can move to the next slide that shows our commitments on the minorities, the women base, the veterans that will show that as well. But the numbers are sitting very, very maintain right now. Not a huge influx in one way or the other, but I'm glad that we are welcoming team members back. And what I'm very much looking forward to is what we'll be able to provide to you for the Q2 report and bring members back. We have to remember that this particular quarter still included January, which we were still under curfew for for most of that time period. But now as things are lifting, of course we can continue in the right time. I think at this point, finally I can hand it off. You don't have to hear me anymore. I give you with no ado, our VP and legal counsel, Seth Stratton. Thank you for that very setting introduction, Daniel. If you could skip to the next slide, thank you. So we had one primary community engagement event, which we're very proud of and Q1. We've had a longstanding partnership with AMR, who is the first primary first responder in Springfield and ambulance operator. They also have been doing, for months now, have been doing the COVID testing at the Eastfield Mall, which is the primary free COVID testing in Western Massachusetts. Car lines, sometimes miles long, several hours of wait in the peak periods. And their staff had been out in the cold doing testing hour after hour, day after day. And so we partnered with AMR to provide a warming tent to provide somewhere where they could take a break, have their lunch in a warm environment. And we partnered with Paul Picnelli who provided the lunches we provided the tent. And it was very well received by AMR and the staff and we were happy to do that. And we're able to do that for several weeks as a thank you to their efforts. So we looked to continue to do things like this and we're happy to report. We'll be looking forward to reporting some of the community engagement that we've now as the warm weather has come and we've added employees will continue to engage in the community as we have in the past. And thanks next slide. So this is some of the fun stuff I always get to report on. We have been in somewhat of a pause obviously over the past year, but there's I think exciting movement on all fronts. 31 Elm in particular is moving forward. The city finished its work. It's my understanding based on conversations both through the city of Springfield and the developer that the financial close and the transfer of the conveyance of the property to the developer will be happening in Q3 this summer. And that will allow once the property is conveyed that will allow the developer to move forward and earnest with their work. More excited to see at the prospect of seeing construction workers and movement on that site across state street from us. And we think it'll be a huge, have a huge impact in downtown Springfield. Walburgers is on track for a May 2021 opening. I know we're in May. So I'll leave it to Walburgers to announce their official opening date and the public relations announcement around that. But it's our understanding that we are on track for a May 2021 opening. We're very excited about that. A lot of buzz in the community, positive buzz for that opening. And then with respect to the armory, still under evaluation in terms of the use based on the phase lifting of COVID restrictions over the next several months as I believe the commission's aware we've had a very successful comedy club in that building in the past as we look toward the post COVID environment. And what the restrictions will be going into the fall. Where we're evaluating a number of different. You know, prospects for that space, but haven't landed on any firm programming. As of the state. And that completes my update. I think. Yes, Damiel, if you remove the slides and any of the three of us can be available for any questions on any of the material presented. Okay. Commissioner Cameron, it looks like you're ready to speak. I am. Daniel question about. I noticed. Obviously that the gaming revenue, which is a good thing increased. In particular in March. But the lottery sales went down. Any, any idea why that would, what happened? I will put that over to Arlen if she has insight on that. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Great. Great information as to what I think it's causing this. But I think it has to do with the change in games. So the lottery has been. Going through changing some of the games that are in the chaos, which. As the inventory moves, he tends to some days. We'll have slots with no games as the inventory is changing. So I think that's causing the delay in sales. But we are getting kind of new games. So I think it's going to be a good idea to go ahead and see where the decline is happening. Great. And, and I'll end, I, I hope when you work on that rounding error or whatever the problem was there, we see some better diversity spend numbers that was somewhat jaw dropping. And, you know, as your spend overall spend, it will spend increases. It would be nice to see that diversity. And I think it's going to increase with it. So I'll wait for that. At the next quarter. Thank you. No problem. Thank you. And it was in seeing those numbers that we started digging and found the issue. So it's, it's important to us as well. Okay. Other questions. I would like to just follow up on that. I'm, I'm, forgive me if I, if I, I'm sure you have worked with director Griffin. But given that as I think a commissioner Cameron said, I was a little jaw dropping. It might be helpful in the, the interim for the two of you to connect director Griffin. And just to, to make sure that we're understanding the, the numbers as we move forward over the next couple of months. So we'll, we'll see this report in the next quarter. Does that make sense? Yes. And sorry, I didn't mean to cut you off. I can facilitate that. Okay. Excellent. I thank you. If you haven't worked with director Griffin. Arlene yet you're in for a treat. So good. I did have the chance to connect with her earlier. So I'm, I'm, I'm happy to, I'm, I'm happy to be with her. I'm, I'm happy to be with her as an intro. So I'll definitely be happy to, to work. Yeah. We move forward. Yeah. And then she can just keep us updated on the, the corrections. Thanks. Other questions to thank you. A couple of questions on that is when you come back and in terms of the next quarter. What I would also love to see just in terms of context is you, you go back so much as into sort of the prior quarters to go back and look at what's going on and what's going on. And then, you know, you can see the stats in terms of. Both diversity in hiring and diversity and spending just contextually to see trends. I mean, obviously 2020 is. Not much of a comparison given what happened. So it'd be very helpful for me anyway, to see at least the 2019s. You're, you know, your first. Full year there. And. And talk to about, I know we've talked about this also, but maybe in a little more discussion too, when you're bringing people back in as we reopen. You know, you know, you know, you know, when you put that number up, it was, you know, slowly going down. And I know you're aware of it and have taken some efforts, but maybe if you can address that a little more specifically, come back. For the Q2. I will definitely get with HR as well to make sure that one, they're available for the next one and two that. We do. You know, speak to what you're asking. So thank you. Great. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you. Just for me quickly yesterday, the year over year. Diversity spend. So that might be helpful to compare notes on that. Okay. Other questions for this. Good report. A big thank you to MGM for its role in the COVID testing. Again, you know. of such great scale in their communities. And they have the capacity to be able to play this important community link. And they've demonstrated that not only do they have the capacity, but they have a willingness. So thank you to all at MGM for that. Okay. So the lack of questions is not a lack of interest. Thank you for the thorough report. Thank you all for your time. Appreciate it. Well, thank you. Okay. Scrolling back to the agenda then. Moving on to item number, sorry, everybody. Item number five, licensing division and division chief Skinner, Mckisha, are you there? You're here. Good morning. Good morning, chair and commissioners and everyone. I just, I want to start by thanking Seth for his note about the Wahlberger surprise grand opening. I was all set to share that and spill the beans as part of my second item on the agenda. And so I'll be careful not to now that I know. So I do have two matters for your consideration today. I'm both involving MGM Springfield. The first item is a request to exempt their graphics designer to position from the service employee licensing requirements. The position works with the creative management team at MGM and is responsible for designing newsletters, articles, posters, brochures, and also video filming and editing. It's an administrative position and has no managerial or supervisory responsibilities. It has no interaction with the gaming floor and therefore no access to secure back of the house areas. No access to confidential or sensitive information. And all these factors support approval of the position graphics designer to as an exempt service employee position. And it's my recommendation that the commission approve MGM's request provided I can satisfy any of your questions, answers answering any of your questions. Questions for Nikisha. Commissioner Cameron. Yep. Chief. It's nice to call you that, Chief Skitter. It's a language that I'm very familiar with. I think this is exactly in line with other exemptions we made and I appreciate the thoughtful research going back over the factors that were considered important in determining whether or not a position is exempt. So I find this one to be certainly in line with others and I agree with the work of your team. So thank you. Thank you. Other questions or comments? Seems to me this is exactly the kind of role that you imagined when the factors were considered. So you do need a vote for this, correct, Chief? Yes. All right. Do I have a motion? Yeah, Madam Chair, I'll be happy to move that the commission exempt the graphics designer to position at MGM Springfield on registration requirements in accordance with 205CMR 134031B for the reasons discussed here today and described in the commissioners. Second. Any questions? Okay. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. I see the tail. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. And I vote yes. So 4-0 Vivian on that. Thank you so much. Commissioner Zuniga, I'm going to warn you you're coming in a little slow. So we'll keep track of you to make sure you don't raise that. I feel as though we're all challenged right now with our systems. Maybe it's the overtaxing of the homes here. So we could hear you clearly. Commissioner Zuniga, it just wasn't your normal cadence. Okay. Thank you. Yeah. Then we're all set on that. But you do have another item for us to skin it. That's right. The second item is a gaming beverage license amendment request involving Walberger Springfield LLC. That's located in a standalone building on MGM property. It was up on one of the slides we saw just a little bit ago. It'll be a new licensed area for MGM with Walberger as a jointly responsible person. The gaming agents division conducted an inspection of the premises, which included a review of the areas where the alcoholic beverages will be stored and secured. And they're satisfied that the premises and all of its conditions meet MGM surveillance, I'm sorry, MGC's surveillance security and integrity standards. MGM and Walbergers have agreed to observe all COVID restrictions as they remain in place, serving alcohol to seated patrons only and not at the bar service area depicted in the floor plan. So I'm happy to recommend the commission approve the request to amend MGM's gaming beverage license. Again, I'm also not going to reveal the brand opening, but that is expected sometime at the end of the month. And I'm happy to take any questions that you have about the request itself or any of the material in your packet. Commissioner Cameron. Yes, I did have one question with regard to this license. I know that this is a joint responsibility between MGM and Walbergers to make sure that they are in compliance with all of our regulations. Has there been conversation with the new Walbergers team? This may be new for them, right, to be part of a casino property. Do they understand their responsibilities as a joint party, would you say? I would say they absolutely do understand. The Walbergers team, both MGM and the Walbergers teams have been very responsive to the requests that come out of licensing and IEB. They are still trying to work very hard to get their staffing prepared and ready to go licensed as appropriate, ready to go for their soft opening and then their grand opening. And so they do understand what their requirements are and how seriously MGC takes their role as a jointly responsible person. Daniel and I have been in close contact over the past couple of weeks to make sure that things are just so before things are set to open. And even before I was comfortable presenting a recommendation to the commission. And I appreciate Daniel for that. Thank you. And if there are any questions too, I know Bruce is, right now he's not here live, but Bruce and team worked in close coordination with Chief Skinner. There's Bruce too, right, Makisha. I think one of the challenges is that it's a standalone building. It almost looks like it's not part of the gaming establishment. Commissioner, I see you nodding your head. Any questions for Nikisha or Bruce on that? This is Loretta. If I could jump in and Gil, you do raise a good point about Walbergers is the I believe it's the first casino environment that they're associated with. And although they are not directly connected to, say the gaming floor by any means, they are a vendor to the casino when they are subject to their employees will be subject to the registration requirements and so forth. So we have met virtually, of course, with their general counsel and with their operational folks. And Nikisha has been and she alluded to in close touch with them about what the registration requirements for their employees mean. And she has coordinated closely with Bruce and Angela and the onsite team around inspections. So I think the communication is in place. I think they have every reason to be aware that this is a different environment and have the information they need to make it a successful, a successful endeavor. Thank you. Compliant endeavor. Yes. Well, Nikisha has made a strong recommendation. Do we have a there's no further discussion? Do we have a motion? Madam Chair, I'm happy to move the commission amend the gaining beverage license issue to blue top redevelopment LLC to add the Walbergers location depicted in the commissioners packet, including all of the particulars contained in the submitted application as a new licensed area. Second. Thank you. And I didn't mean to shorten discussion, but there's an opportunity now for any further questions. I'll set. Okay. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Excuse me. Commissioner Brian. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. And I vote yes. Four zero. Excellent work. Thank you, Nikisha. Excuse me. Thank you, Chair and Commissioners. Thank you. So that concludes all of your work today. Correct? Chief Skinner? You're all set. Oh, she went mute. I'll set. I'm all set. Sorry. Thank you. Okay. Excellent. Then we can move on to. Thank you. Item number six. Good morning, Dr. Lightbaum. Good morning. Today we have on the agenda the approval of the quarterly local aid payments. And for that, I'll turn it over to Chad Bork, our financial analyst. Thank you, Alex. Good morning, Chair and commissioners. So as Alex mentioned, I have today the local aid requests for the quarter ending March 31st. These are payable to each city and town where racing operations are conducted. I do want to make a quick note that on July 2nd of last year, the commission did approve the minimum standards for return of live racing and simulcast wagering, which helped out the handle for this. So it was nice to be able to pay out a little bit more. So the amounts for this quarter were calculated using handles from July, August, and September of 2020. And that said, the amount for the city of Boston is for $183,621.23. The town of Plainville would receive $41,133.46. The town of Random would receive $23,059.09. And the city of Revere would receive $91,809.24. That totals for this quarter of $339,623.02. And in your packet, I provided a breakdown of all the handles and calculations for each city and town. This does ask for a vote. Questions for Chad or Dr. Lightman? Always very clear presentation, Chad, and good news, right, for the community. So an important report. You do need a vote, so if I could have a motion, please. Certainly. Madam Chair, I move that the commission authorize the local aid payments to Boston, Plainville, and Revere and the amounts reflected in the memorandum, including the commissioner's packet and discussed today. Second. Thank you. Any further questions? Okay. Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner Bryan? Aye. Commissioner Ziniga? Aye. And I vote yes. Thank you, Commissioner Ziniga. And I vote yes. So we have a 4-0 for that, Vivian. Thank you. So with that, you're all set now, Dr. Lightman. We can report that we are slightly ahead of schedule. And Mary Ann has suggested that this time we take a short break. Does this make sense before we go to budget, or do we want to go straight on to... Oh, no, it's actually the next report will be from IEB. I don't know if I see Kate right now. Why don't we go ahead with our five-minute break? Does that make sense, Commissioner? Oh, there she is. That's right there. Yeah, she's right there. Commissioner Ziniga, I'm going to turn to you. What's your preference? Break now or go on to suitability? Five-minute breaks. Yes, let's hear this revenue report. Okay. All right, then. It's up to you. I'm okay. Okay, no, you know what? That's fine. Why don't we go ahead and then we'll be sticking kind of to our calculated time. Good morning, Kate. It's nice to see you. It's nice to see you too, Chair and Commissioners. Good morning, everybody. I do have a corporate qualifier for your consideration this morning. It's Ms. Harbour Coe for Plain Ridge Park in her role as Executive Vice President, Chief Legal Officer, and Secretary at PNGI. Ms. Coe has submitted all of the required forms and complied with all of the IEB's requests for supplemental and updated information. The IEB conducted its complete protocol for suitability for Latino qualifiers and confirmed financial stability and integrity, reviewed litigation history, searched criminal history and verified that no prohibited political contributions were made in Massachusetts, and also conducted checks of open source and law enforcement databases as part of the investigation. The team of investigators assigned to this background investigation is Trooper John Morris of the Massachusetts State Police Gaming Enforcement Unit and Financial Investigator Faiso. They're joining me on the call. Should there be any questions? On April 7th of 2021, Ms. Coe was interviewed using virtual technology similar to what we're using today, and she was interviewed by both Trooper Morris and Ms. Soe. She was noted to be cooperative and forthcoming in all aspects of this investigation. And during the interview, Ms. Coe provided her personal history and career path. She obtained an undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan. This was a bachelor's degree in psychology as a natural science and was obtained in 1995. Following obtaining her undergraduate degree, Ms. Coe worked as a paralegal in New York City for a year prior to attending law school. She received her first doctorate in May of 1999 from the Chicago Kent College of Law. And upon completion of her law degree, Ms. Coe took a position for a brief time with a law office of Kenneth Mall, which is located in Chicago, Illinois. She left that firm to pursue a position with WMS Gaming Incorporated, a firm also located in Chicago. And at WMS, she worked as a staff attorney primarily in commercial transactions and did her first introduction into the gaming field. After four years at WMS, Ms. Coe moved to Las Vegas and in August of 2004, she was hired by Aristocrat Technologies. You may be familiar with Aristocrat as a vendor for the Gaming Commission. She joined Aristocrat as Associate General Counsel, and she worked there in commercial transactions as well. In July of 2006 until October of 2007, after leaving Aristocrat, Ms. Coe worked for Harrah's and a contract capacity. She was a contract attorney primarily working on commercial transactions for Harrah's. Later in 2007, Ms. Coe joined Valley Gaming Incorporated, now known as Scientific Games, another name of which the commissures may be familiar. She joined Valley as Assistant General Counsel and remained with Valley during its acquisition by Scientific Games, which occurred on the fall of 2014. In 2017, Ms. Coe left Scientific Games as Deputy General Counsel and then joined Every Payments, another vendor for the Gaming Commission. She joined Every Payments as their Executive Vice President and General Counsel, and Every is licensed currently as a primary gaming vendor in Massachusetts, and in her role at Every, Ms. Coe helped guide the company through its ongoing transition to a full-time casino gaming equipment and payment solutions provider. It should be noted that the IAB previously performed a suitability background review of Ms. Coe and deemed her suitable on June 6th of 2019 as a qualifier in connection with Every's renewal license. After her time at Every, Ms. Coe found her current position with Penn National Gaming Incorporated, and this rounds out 20 years of corporate legal and regulatory compliance experience in the gaming industry for Ms. Coe. In her position at PNGI, Ms. Coe will be responsible for directing the overall operations and the staff of the corporate legal regulatory affairs, risk, and compliance teams. She will be responsible for developing, implementing, and managing operational goals and monitoring achievements of performance and profit objectives, and will also provide general advice to senior management and the Board of Directors on legal and regulatory requirements, corporate governance, as well as other matters. She'll also be responsible for all material litigation and transactions in this new role, and her duties will include meeting with the CEO to plan business objectives and develop overall organizational policies to coordinate functions and operations between all of the divisions and departments within PNGI. At present, Ms. Coe has been qualified in several gaming jurisdictions, primarily in her most recent role with Every. No derogatory information service when we confirmed her current gaming credentials. Ms. Coe has demonstrated to the IEB by clear and convincing evidence that she is suitable, and the IEB recommends that the commission vote to find her suitable as a qualifier for clean, rich part, and I would need to vote on this if there are no questions for me or the rest of the team. Thank you. Thank you, Kate. Questions, commissioners? No. No questions. Commissioner, can't read anything. I guess my only observation would be that she was deemed suitable by IEB in June, correct? Of 2019, correct. Yeah. In connection with Every. Right. In connection with Every. And we were able to achieve some efficiencies, correct, when we do the investigation? Yes. Yes, we were. And my compliments to the investigative team in leveraging the work that was done by their counterparts previously in 2019. Great. Yeah, thank you to Trooper Morrison. I see Faye. Good morning, Faye. Nice to see you. Yeah. Commissioner Cameron. Yep. Madam Chair, I made note of the same point. First of all, another very clean investigation. But the timing is we are really, and maybe it is due to the efficiencies, but this was done in a very timely manner. And during COVID, I do appreciate the team's efforts to get these before us in a timely manner and complete the investigations and in a timely manner. Yeah. It's a big deal. So thank you, Kate. If there are no other questions or comments, we'll need a motion. Okay. Madam Chair, I'm happy to move that the commission issue a positive determination of suitability to Ms. Harper Coe and her capacity as executive vice president, chief legal officer, and secretary to the National Gaming Committee. Second. Thank you. Second. Yeah. Thank you. If there are no further comments or questions, then we'll move the roll call vote. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. And I vote yes. Commissioner Zuniga, I want to give you before we, that's four zero Vivian, but I want to make sure that you're, you know, you're slightly delayed. If for any reason I move on forward on something, just give me a wave because I'll go back to you. We're just, you're just a bit behind and I don't want you to think I'm cutting you off. Okay. Thank you. I can see you really well. I understand that you can hear me a little later, but thank you. Right. And so if we move on, just wave and I'll pause just because I might be slightly ahead of you. Okay. With that, commissioners, I think we will take our short break now before we move on to item number eight. And that's our budget discussion for today. So why don't we, it's now 1116. We'll come back in at 1125. Thank you so much. All right. We'll get started again. We're reconvening meeting 343. It's now just after 1126. We'll get started. And we have now on item number eight of our agenda, chief finance and accounting officer, Derek Bay. You are a good morning with actually as much as I loved Lisa's backdrop, Derek's backdrop actually gets the grand prize. Good morning. Good morning. And thank you for noticing the artwork. A lot of work has gone into that. My daughter is very, very talented. And I have some more I have to hang up. So you'll see that growing as we as we go along here. It challenges director Wells stick sticky note while those are gone. That's right. These, these bring me joy. I think some of those sticky notes provide Carol a little anxiety. Good point. Good point. Good morning. Chief, let's get started with your, your report. And of course, commissioner Zunica, you'll be charming in as well, as well as your team. I'll present. Correct. Good morning, Madam chair and commissioners. I'm joined by Agnes Bolier and Douglas O'Donnell. And we are here to update you on MGC's budget after three quarters of activity in fiscal year 2021. The commission approved an initial budget of 32.4 million in the gaming control fund, an additional 4.6 million from the public health trust fund for the MGC's research responsible gaming program. The budget initially required a 29.67 million dollar assessment on the licensees. And after two quarterly updates, the assessment was reduced to 27.6 million. For this quarterly update, we have revisions to both our spending estimates, as well as our revenue estimates. However, there is no recommendation for a change to the assessment on licensees. For the spending side after three quarters of activity, we're making the following the MGC budget detailed in pages one and two of the memo. And I'm more than happy to answer questions on afterwards, but we'll just go over a brief full of points here. We're decreasing the gaming enforcement units budget by 375,000. We're decreasing our contract employee budget by 100,000, where the AGO spending is slightly lagging. So we're protecting a reversion of 100,000. And we are increasing the independent monitor budget by 424,000. And this is for the invoices that were paid between January 1st and March 31st. And that's revenue neutral because on the revenue side, we're actually increasing our revenue by that amount too. And then we're increasing the IT budget by 250,000. And this is to help us transition to the cloud and provide resources for positions that have been vacant or vacated in our IT office. On the net impact of all these adjustments is an increase of around 119,000. On the revenue side of the budget, we're increasing third quarter revenue estimates by 424,000 for the independent monitor fees that, as I mentioned before, is a direct offset for the spending. But we're also decreasing revenue estimates for licensing fees by approximately 292,000, which we had told you in the first and second quarter, we are keeping a close eye on that, that it was coming in a little lower. And the majority of that's coming from the employee licensing fees lagging. The turnover and hiring rates at the casinos for good reason due to COVID continue to be below previous year's rates. But the net impact of the increase for monitoring fees and decrease in licensing fees is 131,000 increase in revenue projections, which is higher than the 118,000 impact increase in spending projections. So that's why we're not coming to asking for any change to the assessment. At this point, if you have any questions, more than happy to answer them. I know we have Agnes and Doug on as well. So if there's anything I can answer, they'll be able to answer for me. Questions for Derek, commissioners. Commissioner Zuniga, do you want to add in? Yes, if I may. I think this is a great reflection of the prudent practices of Derek and his team. And what he's projecting at this point, what I believe are also prudent decreases and adjustments to the budget line items that he went over. It's also a reflection of what's an usual year in which the revenue projections that we had done, we have been able to rely on prior years slowed down in the form of the licensing fees because of the COVID pandemic. But the good news in my book is that there's no budget revision. We continue to maintain a steady spending and revenue. And I think it's in good shape to finish the year in a similar form. Thank you. Commissioners, questions for Derek or commissioners Zuniga? Or Doug or Agnes, I see Noel too. Hello, everybody. This is just a comment, Madam Chair. I just, I agree with commissioners Zuniga that the prudent practices are obvious and I'm sure our licensees appreciate that too as they have struggled for revenue. So we are cognizant of that as we put our budget together. So I just thank you to the team. Easy to follow, report and understanding exactly why the recommendations are made as they are. So just a thank you. I just want to turn to Executive Director Wells. I don't know if you want to chime in. I think that for me, a notable addition is the support to give IT. Do you want to comment on that? Yes, that I am 100% in support of that position. Our IT team has been working so hard with limited resources. They've had it to support us in this virtual environment on top of this migration to the cloud, which has been really a lot and putting some resources in there I think is a smart move for the agency and a smart move supporting that department. So I'm 100% in support. And I don't know if I see Katrina here. I want to emphasize that many people who look like they're attending are actually working away with an ear to our meeting. They stay available in the event we have questions and people just turn on their video just now. But I do know that Katrina and team have been working tirelessly and so I really endorse that support as well. And for me also, the prudent practices Derek and team are so good about not only communicating with the licensees but keeping us informed along the way. The communication is excellent and I appreciate that Derek very much. I don't need to vote today. This is an update for us and then we'll be going next month into the full budgetary approval process, correct? Correct. First meeting in June. We're on target for that for our first view of the budget and then second meeting in June. Hopefully we'll be able to approve it so that July 1 we just roll forward and get back to somewhat normal. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. If there are no further questions, Commissioner Obrana, are you all set? I'm all set. Thank you. Okay. Excellent. Then she and team, thank you, and we'll move on to the next item. Thank you. Which is, oh my goodness, I'm scrolling ahead. We're moving right into legal. I'm just looking at the time. Outstanding. Todd has got a little bit of a grin there. Outstanding. Doug, it was so nice to see you. I'm so sorry I didn't say hello. Hi. Nice to see you and Agnes. Thank you. You as well. Thank you. Thank you for your good work. Thank you, Agnes. Thank you for your good work. And now moving on then to general counsel. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair. Good morning to everybody. If it's okay, Ms. Terese had to step away momentarily to handle a separate matter. We're prepared to move ahead with 9B. If there's no objection, we can give it into the tribal presentation. And then we'll circle back to A as we go back. Yes. Right. So without further ado, I'd just like to introduce our associate general counsel, Caitlin Monahan, who has done a tremendous amount of work immersing herself in this tribal and will offer an overview. So we're going to go into a PowerPoint commissioners. So we'll probably, you might want to note your questions and then we'll be convened at the end of Caitlin's presentation for questions. Thank you. Good morning, Caitlin. Good morning, everyone. I'm just going to share my screen now. Okay. I just want to confirm that you can all see that. Yes. Yep. Great. Here we go. Here we come. Good afternoon, everyone. Today we will be providing an update regarding the status, the various allegations involving the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe and the Wampanoag tribe of Payhead. Before we start, we would like to note that we will not attempt to predict, project, or handicap the outcomes of any of the cases that we will discuss here today. Rather, we intend to provide a factual overview of where each case stands. One of the reasons we are here today is that the commission has certain obligations regarding tribal matters. In particular, Chapter 23K, Section 67, provides in pertinent part that the commission shall continue to evaluate the status of Indian tribes in the Commonwealth, including without limitation, gaining federal recognition or taking land into trust for tribal economic development. The cases we will be discussing today relate to these issues. Before we delve into the substance of the Mashpee Wampanoag cases, we wanted to provide some backgrounds on the law and jurisprudence that underpin them. The first statute we'd like to speak about is the Indian Reorganization Act. In that act, often called the IRA, authorizes the Secretary of the Interior to acquire land and hold it in trust for purpose of providing land for Indians. But the Secretary's authority under the IRA is Cabins whether a tribe meets the statute's definition of Indian, which is found in Section 19 of the IRA and codified at 25 USC Section 5129. As you will hear, the IRA's definition of Indian is a key part of the Mashpee Wampanoag cases. The IRA includes the three-part definition of the Indian, and you can see that set out in this slide. Specifically, the term Indian as used in this act shall include, one, all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under federal jurisdiction, and two, all persons who are descendants of such members who were on June 1, 1934 residing within the present boundaries of any Indian reservation and shall further include, three, all other persons of one half or more Indian blood. And the sections of the definition that are highlighted on this slide will be addressed in the Mashpee Wampanoag cases. So as you'll see in the first definition, now under federal jurisdiction is sort of a term that requires some explaining, and in the second definition, such members was a term that the cases could deal with. In 2009, the Supreme Court grappled with the question of how to interpret the statutory phrase now under federal jurisdiction in the IRA's first definition of Indian with a focus on how to interpret the term now in that phrase. In the Supreme Court held that the term now under federal jurisdiction in section 479 unambiguously refers to those tribes that were under federal jurisdiction of the United States when the IRA was enacted in 1934. In other words, now means 1934. The majority did not explain, however, how to interpret the term under federal jurisdiction. So in response to Karcheri on March 12, 2014, 2014, the solicitor of the DOI issued a memorandum to the secretary entitled the meaning of under federal jurisdiction for purposes of the Indian Reorganization Act. This is known as the M opinion and the M opinion outlined how to interpret the phrase under federal jurisdiction in the IRA for purposes of determining whether an Indian tribe can demonstrate that it was under federal jurisdiction in 1934. The M opinion sets out a two-part inquiry to determine whether a tribe was under federal jurisdiction. The first part of that into whether the United States had taken an action or series of actions that are sufficient to establish or that generally reflect federal obligations, duties, responsibility for, or authority over the tribe by the federal government. And the second inquiry looks into whether the tribe's jurisdictional status remained intact in 1934. As the science M opinion binds the department and its officials until modified by the solicitor, deputy secretary, or secretary, or is otherwise overruled by the courts. In other words, in determining whether a tribe was under federal jurisdiction in 1934, the DOI must undertake this two-part inquiry as is set out in the M opinion. This brings us to the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe cases, which we have set out in this slide. As we will discuss, each set of cases starts with a record of decision issued by the Bureau of Indian Affairs regarding whether the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe met one of the definitions of Indian under the IRA. Each decision then led to a separate litigation. The first set of cases, the little field cases, deal with how to interpret the second definition of Indian and whether the tribe met that definition. Second set of cases deal with whether the tribe met the first definition of Indian under the IRA, and specifically whether the tribe was under federal jurisdiction as of 1934. Before we get into the details of these cases, however, we want to give you a brief overview of where they stand today. But don't worry, we'll walk through each of them in more detail momentarily. So the first set of cases is the little field cases, and those took place here in Massachusetts and the District of Massachusetts in the First Circuit. Both of those cases have now concluded, and there are two main takeaways from that line of cases. The first relates the statutory interpretation, and in particular, the court determined that the use of the word such of the term such members and the second definition of Indian includes the complete antecedent members of any recognized Indian tribe now under federal jurisdiction. In other words, in order to meet the second definition of Indian, a tribe must have been under federal jurisdiction as of 1934. The second takeaway from the little field cases is that the 2015 ROD was flawed. Because the IRA unambiguously foreclosed the BIA's interpretation of the second definition of Indian in the 2015 ROD, the Secretary lacked authority to take land into trust for the benefit of the tribe. Again, in other words, because the BIA had not interpreted the second definition of Indian correctly, its decision was flawed. The second set of cases we'll discuss are the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe versus Bernhard cases, which took place in Washington, DC. Those cases have also concluded, and again, there are two main takeaways from those cases. The first is that the 2018 ROD was also flawed. And in particular, the court found that the ROD was arbitrary, capricious, and abusive discretion and contrary to law because it did not evaluate the evidence in accordance with the directives of the MEP. And because of that, the 2018 ROD was remanded back to the DOI for thorough reconsideration and reevaluation of the evidence before it. So those RODs remain on remands today, and we are awaiting a new record of decision from the DOI regarding whether the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe meets the first definition of Indian under the IRA, and in turn, whether the lands may remain in trust for the tribe. A temporary stay prohibits the DOI from taking any steps to alter the status quo ante with respect to the land in Mashpee and Taun that was taken in trust in November 2015. And per the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the tribe may not operate an Indian casino without land interest. So now that you understand where the cases stand today, we can go back to the beginning and get into a little more detail of how we got there. So this brings us to September 2015. In September 2015, the Bureau of Indian Affairs issued a record of decision, which we're going to refer to as the 2015 ROD. That ROD announced the DOI's determination that, one, it would acquire in trust the land in Mashpee and Massachusetts that were owned by the tribe. It would proclaim these lands to be the tribe's reservation, and the Mashpee and Taunton sites were eligible for gaming under the initial reservation exception of the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act. So there were a number of issues addressed in that ROD, but there are two that we'll discuss today. One is, to what does the term such or such members in the IRA's second definition of Indian apply, and does the Mashpee and Taunton tribe meet the definition of Indian under the second definition of the IRA? The BIA determined that such or such members refers only to members of any recognized tribe, but not the phrase now under federal jurisdiction, which modifies only the first definition of Indian. This is a little bit complicated, so it makes sense to walk through the definitions of Indian, which are set out in full under the first bullet in the slide. As you can see, the second definition of Indian refers to, quote, all persons who are descendants of such members. There was a question of what such or such members referred to. The BIA determined that the phrase such members referred back only to the phrase all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized tribe, but not to the end of the phrase now under federal jurisdiction. So, using that interpretation, the BIA found that the tribe met the second definition of Indian. In rendering this decision, the DOI did not determine, however, whether the tribe was under federal jurisdiction in 1934, because it didn't think it needed to. So, at that point, the DOI took land into trust for the tribe in November 2015. After the 2015 ROD was issued, a citizen group appealed the land and trust status of the tribe in the federal district court for the district of Massachusetts. That case was Littlefield versus US Department of the Interior. And the issues in that case were the same as the issues in the 2015 ROD. To what does the term such members in the IRA second definition of Indian apply? And does the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe meet the second definition of Indian under the IRA? Judge Young issued his opinion in that case on July 28, 2016. In contrary to the BIA rationale, Judge Young interpreted the term such members to refer back to the full clause in the first definition. So, in other words, it referred back to the phrase all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under federal jurisdiction. The BIA had not determined whether the tribe was under federal jurisdiction in the 2015 ROD. Therefore, based on the 2015 decision, the tribe did not qualify as Indian under the second definition of the IRA. And the secretary lacked the authority to acquire land and trust. The factual question of whether the tribe was under federal jurisdiction in 1934 was not before Judge Young, however. So, upon this finding, Judge Young remanded the 2015 ROD to the DOI with lots of acronyms for further proceedings. Judge Young also clarified after the fact that on remand, the DOI could analyze the tribe's eligibility under the first definition of Indian or reassess eligibility under the second definition of the court's ruling on the proper interpretation of that definition. So, at this point, the tribe appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the first circuit. And then, on February 27, 2020, the first circuit affirmed Judge Young's decision. So, again, in brief, the first circuit agreed that the use of such members in the second definition of Indian included the complete antecedent, members of any recognized Indian tribe now under federal jurisdiction. And the first circuit also agreed that the 2015 ROD was flawed and appropriately remanded. Then, on March 27, 2020, the Secretary of the Interior directed the BIA to rescind the 2015 ROD, whereby the BIA accepted land and to trust the tribe, and to revoke the reservation proclamation. Such action, however, was state by the District Court of the District of D.C., which we'll discuss in a moment. So, in response to Judge Young's remand order, the DOI issued the 2018 ROD on September 7, 2018. And there were also two issues addressed in the 2018 ROD that we'll discuss today. The first was, was the tribe under federal jurisdiction as of 1934? And does the Mashpee Wampanoag tribe meet the first definition of Indian under the IRA? So, now we're switching to the first definition of Indian, whereas in the first set of cases we were dealing with the second definition of Indian. So, applying the M opinion, the DOI concluded that the evidence does not show that the tribe was under federal jurisdiction in 1934, within the meaning of the IRA's first definition of Indian. The DOI also determines that the tribe does not qualify under the second definition, as that definition has been interpreted by the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts. So, the tribe challenged the 2018 ROD in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia. You'll note that they could have, they could have challenged the ROD in the District of Massachusetts, but instead they chose to challenge it in D.C., which the court ultimately determined was appropriate. So, the issues in that case were, was the tribe under federal jurisdiction as of 1934? And does the tribe meet the first definition of Indian under the IRA? So, on June 5, 2020, Judge Friedman found that the 2018 ROD was arbitrary, capricious, and abusive discretion, and contrary to law, because it did not evaluate the evidence in accordance with the directives of the M opinion. Specifically, the judge found that the secretary's incorrect application of the M opinion, evaluating the evidence in isolation, in failing to view the probative evidence in concert, taints every category of evidence that the secretary discussed in the 2018 ROD. He also found that the analysis in the 2018 ROD was inconsistent with the DOI's prior decisions and judicial precedent. So, because of this, Judge Friedman remanded the 2018 ROD to the DOI for a thorough reconsideration and reevaluation of the evidence before it, consistent with this opinion, the 2014 M opinion, and the department's prior decisions applying the M opinion's two-part test. On the same day, Judge Friedman also issued a temporary stay prohibiting the DOI from taking any steps to alter the status quo ante with respect to the land in Mach Pianton that was taken into trust in November 2015. That stay prohibits the DOI from taking any steps to take the land out of trust, or rescinding the proclamation that the trust land is the tribe's reservation. In that state shall last until 14 days after the DOI issues a decision on remand that conforms with the 2014 M opinion. In other words, that stay is still in effect. On August 7, 2020, the DOI and the citizen group filed notices of appeal of Judge Friedman's decision in the Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit. Then, on February 19, 2021, the DOI and the citizen group moved to dismiss their appeals voluntarily, and those appeals were dismissed. So, that all means that Judge Friedman's June 2020 order stands, and the 2018 ROD is flawed and is currently on remand. So, both the Little Field and the DC cases have now concluded, and we are awaiting the DOI's decision on remand from Judge Friedman regarding whether the tribe meets the first definition of Indian under the IRA, and in turn, whether the land in Mach Pianton they remain in trust for the tribe. For the Indian Gaming Regulatory Act, the tribe may not operate in Indian Casino without land in trust. So, this brings us to the end of our presentation regarding the Mach P Wampanoag tribe cases, and our next section is pretty short, so I think it probably makes sense to take questions all together at the end, if that's okay with you. Yes, go right ahead, Kamen. Thank you. Thank you. So, we will next discuss the status of the Wampanoag tribe of Gayhood Litigation. And while that case has quite a long history, we are going to have a brief overview of where it stands today. As you may remember, this is the case in the District of Massachusetts in the First Circuit, in which the parties have disagreed over one, whether federal or state gaming law applies to a gaming facility built by the Wampanoag tribe of Gayhood on Martha's Vineyard, and two, whether the tribe must comply with state and local permitting laws and regulations in the building of a gaming facility. On remand from the First Circuit, Judge Sealer entered a final judgment providing that, one, any gaming facility constructed and operated by the tribe on the land's issue is not subject to state and local laws and regulation concerning gaming, and that any such facility is otherwise subject to state and local regulation, including any applicable permitting requirements. And that decision was entered in 2019. So, the tribe appealed the latter portion of that judgment concerning the permitting issue, because it had already appealed the first part regarding whether the casino is subject to state and local laws concerning gaming. So then, on February 25, 2021, a First Circuit panel affirmed Judge Sealer's judgment, ruling that the tribe had waived its right to appeal the permitting issue. The tribe then moved for a panel rehearing or a hearing en banc, but was denied on April 5, 2021. So, at this point, the tribe may still petition the Supreme Court for a writ of certiori, and it still has time to do that. Regardless, the tribe may move forward with building a Class II gaming facility in line with the aforementioned state and local laws and regulations. And because the tribe intends to build a Class II facility as opposed to a Class III facility, it does not need a compact with a commonwealth to do so. So, I hope this was an informative presentation for the commission, and I'm happy to take any questions that you may have. Great presentation, Caitlin. I'd love to say it's all clear now, but I know that the commissioners are going to have questions. And I think commissioners, this is an opportunity to, you know, ask any fundamental thing here, if you'd like clarification. And because we have the time, you know, to, if you want to build on those fundamental and go through a series of questions. Commissioner Zinneke, I see you nodding your head. Would you like to go first? Yeah, thank you. Thank you, Caitlin, for that great summary. I know you mentioned the intention is not to handicap what's going to happen next. It's tempting to just remind ourselves of where this stands. And if I, if I get this right, it, regarding the MASHP Wampanoag, it now stays with the Department of the Interior for them, because it's been remanded for them to essentially issue another record of decision. That's exactly right. Yes. That addresses the first definition of Indian, which they just didn't, didn't address the first time around. They only went with the second. Exactly. Yeah. But it's now understood by all, by all the process that they should have addressed that, that first part and how they address it is going to be key to the MASHP. Is that a fair statement? I think that's very close. I think because the first circuit interpreted, you know, set out the interpretation of how you need to analyze the first and the second definitions of Indian. The DOI now has an opportunity to do that in line with the first circuit's decision. So yes, what the, what the DOI will presumably do is issue a new ROD in which it analyzes whether the tribe was under federal jurisdiction in 1934. And then in turn, whether it qualifies under the first definition of Indian. Right. And there's, there's no indication in terms of timeline what the, the DOI will do. We know that it's an administration that's perhaps a little bit friendlier to Indian affairs with a new secretary and the new administration. But there's no indication in terms of timing. No, we have not heard of any timeline, but our understanding is that the DOI doesn't intend to sit on it. So perhaps we'll get a decision soon, but we just don't know. Thank you. Other questions. Commissioner Cameron. Yes. Yes. I agree. Excellent presentation. Very, very helpful and timely for us as a commission. So I think what I'm hearing, Caitlin, is that the second definition is really not a standalone, is what the courts have said, right? You really do have to answer the first for it to be complete, correct? I think that's fair to say. The way that the BIA hadn't initially interpreted it, it separated them a little bit more. But based on the first darkest decision, yes, both definitions require a determination that the tribe was under federal jurisdiction in 1934. And you mentioned also that the, the court case, rather the, I know the local neighbors down there were the ones that originally brought that suit, but that has been completed, meaning if the BIA does move as they intend to, we just don't know the timing and they issue a new decision, that could be challenged again, correct? But they would have to bring a new lawsuit in order to do that? That is correct. I believe they would have to bring a new lawsuit related to the new ROD. There's a small chance they could try to tack it on to the case related to the 2015 litigation, but practically, I don't think it would have much of a difference in how the case proceeded. Okay. Thank you. Very helpful. Commissioner Bryan, do you have questions? I don't. Thank you. It was very, very clear presentation, Caitlin. Thank you. My questions were really along the line of Commissioner Cameron's. I'm struggling with the initial decision on the definition of Indian, and it was really helpful how you presented it. So my understanding is, and I think Commissioner Cameron put it as a standalone, that number two and number three couldn't be a standalone. There's really almost subsumed into the definition that's put forth in number one. So if, if logic were extended, then number three would be all of the persons of one half or more Indian blood now under federal jurisdiction. Is that the logic that would extend or no? So I don't think so, because would it be helpful if I put the definition back up on the? Yeah, I'm looking at my other screen, so walk me through. You're going to remember the such first sentence. Yeah, it would be really helpful. The one that links the two. So the first definition is all persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized Indian tribe now under federal jurisdiction, right? The second definition then refers back to the first definition, all persons who are descendants of such members, etc., etc. So it is abundantly clear now, based on the First Circuit's decision that such members refers back to the entire first definition. All persons of Indian descent who are members of any recognized tribe now under federal jurisdiction. That doesn't implicate the third definition. The third definition is a separate definition, which frankly we haven't really dealt with in the Mashpee-Wampanoa cases. And that's really helpful just to walk me back through the language. Good. And then I'm going to ask the process question, which I'll go ahead. It's all going to be back on the Department of the Interior to address what exactly does under federal jurisdiction mean. Now actually, now under federal jurisdiction, their interactions with the tribes, between the U.S. government and the tribes in 1934, where sufficient and what kind of evidence they would rely on to say that was then under federal jurisdiction. That's exactly right. And I think if you look at the DDC case, the DC case, you'll see that the DOI had a lot of evidence in front of it related to the interactions between the tribe and the federal government. The DC court just said was you have the evidence, you interpreted it incorrectly. You didn't look at it all in tandem or in concert. You looked at each piece in isolation and tried to determine whether any one piece meant that you were under federal jurisdiction. So basically go back, look at all the evidence again, look at it in concert, and come back with a new decision. And doesn't this bring Carchieri again all together because the Supreme Court addressed the under federal jurisdiction then, correct? You touched on this in your presentation. So Carchieri was, it discussed that phrase, but in effect it was really limited to the word now, now under federal jurisdiction. And in Carchieri the Supreme Court decided that now meant 1934. They didn't say what under federal jurisdiction meant. So that was an open question that then went to the first circuit. You see that commissioners in again. And I know, I mean, I've tried to stay on top of this and, you know, it is complicated by the next decision. Believe me, I had to read these cases a lot of times to get them all straight in my head. And I don't know if this is a fair question to ask, because we really, I want to point out that we're fulfilling a commitment, a requirement under the statute, which you led with Caitlin and, and thank you, Todd and Caitlin for leading with that, that we have an affirmative obligation to really follow the tribe's status. So thank you. And as Commissioner Cameron points out, it's timely because with the new administration, there may be no insights. We just don't know. And with that, my second question, have at one point there was some legislative proposals. And Caitlin, are you able to speak to that or? Yes, I am. And I'll actually reshare. I have a slide and the appendix on that. Thanks. So yes, there was federal legislation in January 2019 from Representative Keating. And that was a bill titled the Mashpi Wampanoag Tribe Reservation Reaffirmation Act. And that bill would have reaffirmed the tribe's trust land, ratified and confirmed the Secretary's actions, taking the land into trust. Ian precluded the filing of further matters and dismissed pending federal litigation concerning the matter. So basically would have resolved all of these issues in favor of the tribe. That bill was passed in the House in May 2019. And it was received in the Senate, but there was no further activity in the Senate. The Senate did not pass it. The 116th Congress then ended, and we're now in the 117th Congress. And the bill has not been reintroduced in the 117th Congress. So we're keeping an eye on that, whether or not the bill ends up being reintroduced. But as of right now, there is no active legislation. Very helpful. Thank you. Okay, Commissioner Cameron, are you all set? I am. Thank you. Yeah, excellent presentation. Thank you so much. And we know it's a good deal of work and in one of your first assignments, Caitlin. So thank you very thorough. Thank you. It was a pleasure. Right. Thank you so much. I'm looking at our next item. I think we had contemplated lunch now after Caitlin's presentation is Carrie I.C. She's back. So now we could move on to the regulatory matter. Todd. That would be great. Thank you. Thank you. All right. Great. Thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair and commissioners. We have three sections of 205 CMR 146, which are the gaming equipment regulations on the agenda today for a final vote to complete the promulgation process. In your packet, you have 205 CMR 146.13 related to Blackjack table characteristics, 205 CMR 146.49 related to playing cards, and 205 CMR 146.51 related to dealing shoes and automated shuffling devices. I just want to note that if you're looking at your packet, it looks like the first page of section 51 got cut out somehow, but the red line is actually there in the packet. Still, we didn't lose any of the actual changes. So that's still visible there. These changes are administrative in nature and remove references to the six to five Blackjack variation, which we had removed from the rules of the game of Blackjack, so this variation no longer exists. These regulations came before the commission on February 25th, and you voted to begin the promulgation process then. A public hearing was held on April 22nd, presided over by Commissioner Cameron, and we received no comments. We've also received no written comments. So we'd be seeking a vote today on the amended small business impact statement, which is in your packet, as well as the regulations to finalize the process and file these with the Secretary of State. Questions for Kerry? Process is complete. Then we would have the two-part motion. Commissioner, Commissioner O'Brien, our commission is going to go. Looks like you're ready to go. I was ready to move that the commission approved the amended small business impact statement for 205 CMR 146.13, 205 CMR 146.49, and 205 CMR 146.51, as included in the commissioner's packet. Thank you, Commissioner O'Brien. Any questions on this? I'll set. We'll go ahead, then we'll call a vote. Commissioner Cameron? Commissioner O'Brien? Commissioner Zunica? And I vote yes. So 4-0 Vivian, thank you. And the next part? Commissioner Zunica? I further move that the commission approved the amendments to 205 CMR 146.13, 205 CMR 146.49, and 205 CMR 146.51, as reflected in the commissioner's packet, and authorize staff to take all steps necessary to finalize the promulgation process. Second. Thank you. Any questions on this part? All right. We'll move forward. Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Zunica? Aye. Yes, 4-0 Vivian. Thank you. Kerry, thank you for your thorough work on this matter. It's completed the process. And again, thank you to Commissioner Cameron for covering that regulatory hearing. Just going forward, commissioners. Particularly at some point, we will have a new commissioner. I think what my plan would be is to have us be on the commissioners to be on a list, and it will just be a revolving list to cover for the regulatory hearings. I think that's an opportunity for the commissioners to participate. We often don't get any public comments, but it is part of the process. And Kerry and team welcome the opportunity to work with all of us. So, General Counsel Grossman will put that system in place. Probably Jamie will set it up, and we'll have that coverage just be on a revolving basis. Does that make sense? Great. Great. Thank you so much. And if somebody can't cover, then another will cover. We'll just figure it out. Okay. Excellent. So, I think, if I'm correct, and again, I've got a little bit of a slide issue here. Our next item is number 10. We are ahead of schedule, but it is 12-13. Should we continue the community? Oh, I see commissioners are saying no. Lunch break would be appropriate. Okay. That's what I wondered. So, we're ahead on our lunch break here in a better place than 120, right? So, we'll have our lunch now, and it is 12-15, a half hour. Is that sufficient? Okay. So, we'll return at 12-45. Executive Director Wells, does that work for your team? I believe so. Okay. See you all at 12-45, and we're looking forward to the community mitigation grants to all of the team for your presentations this morning. Thank you so much. Okay. I think we can get started. We're reconvening. The Massachusetts Gaming Commission is reconvening from its lunch break for our public meeting number 343. I'll just confirm that we're all here. Commissioner Cameron? Good afternoon. I'm here. Commissioner Bryan. I am here. And Commissioner Zuniga. So, we're all set to move forward, and remarkably ahead of schedule, Joe. So, you have our full and wide awake attention. Introduce Chief Delaney, our Chief of our Community Affairs Division. Thank you. Thank you, Madam Chair and Commissioners. I'm sure I will ruin the track record of us being ahead of schedule with this presentation. So, for your consideration today, we have 10 community mitigation fund grant applications. Four of them are specific impacts. We have one community planning grant, three transportation planning grants, and two transportation construction grants. And just before we get started, I'd like to once again thank the review team for all of its hard work in pulling together these recommendations. Specifically, I'd like to thank, you know, in no particular order, Mary Thurlow, Enrique Zuniga, Joe Griffin, Kate Hardigan, Kari Therese, Kanya Perez, Teresa Fiori, and Crystal Howard. This group has worked really well together this year. They've been very flexible in, you know, their availability to meet on short notice and have met all of the deadlines that we've needed to keep this process moving forward. So, today, we'll first go over the remaining specific impact grants. And then, as I understand it, the Commission would then like to vote all of the specific impact grants, which we have said, we had seven from the previous meeting plus the four from today. Then after we do that, we'll proceed with the other applications and review those. And I think the intent there is then to wait until the next meeting to vote all the remainder of the applications. So, if we do, in fact, get through all of the 10 applications today, there will be eight remaining applications to be reviewed at the May 20th meeting. So, unless there are any questions on process or anything of that nature, we can jump right into the application. There's only one process question. Before we get started with our business, and that is congratulations to Mary Thurlow. She is a second time grandmother. Now we can start. Yes, now we can start. Congratulations. That's wonderful. Yes. Now we can start the official business. So, thank you, Jim. Okay. So, the first application in front of you is the Everett Police Department supplemental personnel and operational funds. So, Everett PD is seeking $215,000 for additional late night patrols and the purchase of vehicles for the Everett police officers assigned to the Gaming Enforcement Unit. The city has demonstrated a clear nexus to the casino as evidenced by an increase in late night calls. However, the review team did not agree that the request for vehicles was commensurate with the impact associated with the casino. So, back in 2020, the city was awarded a grant for late night patrols, which we were kind of expecting would be used as a test case, really, to see how that went. Now, of course, with the casino closures last year and then the reduced hours, the city has only very recently started to use these funds. So, we don't really have a whole lot of information on how that's going so far. But the review team agreed that providing these funds will help address an impact of the casino and we do recommend funding that portion of the project. The review team reviewed the request for the six vehicles to be used by the Everett police assigned to the GEU. While the review team agreed that there is some need for members of this unit to be able to leave the casino to attend court, conduct surveillance, and other activities, the request seemed a little bit out of line with the frequency of the purposes stated for the vehicle use. Therefore, the review team is recommending the purchase of one vehicle rather than the six requested. And this request was supported by Encore in their response to the applications. So, for these reasons, we are recommending partial funding of this grant in a total amount of $70,000. And with that, I'll open that up to any questions from the commission. Commissioner has questions for Joe. Commissioner Cameron. Thank you. But we did have the benefit of a two by two. So, really got to discuss this matter and every other matter in depth and to really learn about the rationale of the team and in hearing how much work went in, how much they thought about prior, you know, precedent, what we've done with others. I thought that it was well researched. The decision was really sound on this one. And I agree that the vehicle, the needs of the unit members to attend outside training in court, the one vehicle is commensurate with those needs. Commissioner, Brian, did you have any comments or questions on this one? No, I didn't. I was briefed on it recently by Joe and the team and I agree with their conclusion. Yeah, and I want to encourage the commissioners. The briefings are excellent, but if in any way you raised a question that might actually benefit the folks who aren't there, such as myself or whatever, we'd appreciate sharing those questions because it might spark an issue for us. That's the case with all of our briefings. Right, guys? So, can I just ask, they wanted, how much does it, there were a fleet of six cars and what are they purchasing for cars? What would they ask? What is the kind of vehicle? I just wanted to know. Do they say? Kate, do you recall what type of vehicles they asked for? I'm not sure they specify particularly. They didn't specify, Chair, however, because we know that some of the uses here and that one of the uses may be in an investigative context, I would suspect that they will be what's referred to in one of the other applications as soft cars or unmarked or undercovered vehicles. That would be harder to detect than unmarked. So the balance is going to cover their car. I was just looking at the math. Okay. Yeah, so their original request for the six vehicles was $174,000 for the six vehicles. So a little under $30,000 per vehicle, $29,000 per vehicle. Thank you. And typically, Madam Chair, they go out to bid every year. They put the specifications for what they'll need in a vehicle and there are a couple of companies that will reply to the bid and typically police agencies will go with the below bid. The only other thing I would point out is something that I think I pointed out last in our last meeting on last Monday is where they're where we are providing especially straightforward salary or it's it's overtime but dollars to cover the cost of overtime or salaries for the enforcement officers. It's not a requirement in our guidelines but we are encouraging training as well and I would have loved to have seen in this application a request to compliment the request. It could have been more money but it would have complimented that we are paying for the overtime and we could cover some training costs. I think that not only strengthens the application from my perspective, otherwise I'm all sat on this one. Okay. So the next application that we have is Foxboro Police Department for some of their operational costs. They are requesting $283,000 for three particular items. The first item are some pedestrian crosswalk lights on Room 140 which is sort of a downtown Foxboro. They were looking for three undercover vehicles or soft vehicles as they're calling them. And then they have a request for some police training including the overtime necessary to backfill those people when they're off at training. So Foxboro has presented significant data to us showing increases in calls for service at the hotels in Foxboro and an increase in traffic accidents and traffic numbers on Route 1 since the opening of the casino. So the review team certainly agreed that that establishes the appropriate nexus to the casino. With respect to the pedestrian crosswalk lights, however, the town really was not able to provide us with any relevant information regarding the connection between Route 140 in downtown Foxboro and Plain Ridge Park. Route 140 runs kind of northeast to southeast to kind of northwest through the city, through the town. And it was not really a major route that goes to PPC. Route 1 and 495 are sort of the two major routes of the I-95 connecting into 495. The town did submit us some traffic data, but the traffic data that's submitted showed that traffic levels are fairly constant and none of that data predated the opening of the casino. So it was hard for us to say, you know, that there's been an increase in traffic or accidents or anything of that nature. So with respect to the pedestrian crosswalk lights, we love the idea of these things, but we have to have that nexus to the casino in order to recommend them. And so we are not recommending that portion of this application. With respect to the undercover vehicles, you know, the review team felt that this request was not really proportional to the impact of the casino. Now, three vehicles may be perfectly appropriate, maybe a perfectly appropriate number, you know, for the Foxboro PD and its entirety, but we do have to keep in mind, again, that community mitigation funds are designed to offset the costs associated with the casino. Now, regardless of the presence of the casino, Foxboro would still be grappling with many of the issues that they identified in their application. And while the review team agreed that Foxboro made a connection to the casino, that in and of itself doesn't mean that the community mitigation fund should then be sort of funding this the entire program. Now, of course, it's not truly possible to pinpoint the exact cost of the impact. So the review team does have to use its judgment and trying to parse out the appropriate level of costs associated with the casino. So in this case, again, with respect to the vehicles, the review team is recommending the purchase of one vehicle at a cost of $34,000. And similar to the analysis on the vehicles, the review team took the same approach with training requests. While we're very supportive of police training, the requests seem to be out of line a little bit with the proportion of the costs, again, that could be associated with the casino. And similar to that vehicle request, the review team needed to use its judgment to try to figure out what percentage of the costs could be attributable to the casino. And with that said, we came down at recommending sending one member to the accident reconstruction training, three members to the implicit bias training, and three members to the human trafficking training for total costs, including the back, the overtime backfill of $47,000 for that piece of it. Plain Ridge Park Casino was given the opportunity to comment on this application. And they did not, they wrote back to us, but didn't have any particular comments on the application. So the review team recommends the award of this grant to the town of Foxboro and the amount of $81,000 for the police training piece and for the purchase of one undercover vehicle. And with that, I will open this one up to any questions. Yes, I had a, I guess a clarification and in discussing this, because I also agree that training is critical for police departments and these trainings, all three of them are really pertinent trainings. What is different about this request is they are also requesting the backfill overtime. So you send that person to training and then another officer has to cover that shift. So it's not just a training cost they're asking us for, it is, it is a two-part, you know, it's the officer in training and it's the officer to backfill, which is many police departments do not operate that way that they're able to train and still cover without an overtime. Maybe it's the size of Foxboro review contract, who knows, but, but I think that's what made this a particularly more expensive and it was important to use the nexus to the casino and I think these numbers are more in line, knowing that we're also agreeing to that backfill as well with the training. So I thought the team thought that out rationally as well and came up with an inappropriate decision. Commission, thank you and that was very helpful for me, Commissioner Cameron, to understand that backfill practice isn't necessarily uniform across police departments. Commissioner Zunica, do you have any questions? I know that you were involved, but do you want to have any commentary and provide commentary? Yeah, I was, I was wondering whether to make this comment now or or frankly at the beginning or at the end. Just as a reminder for all of us, what we're seeing today are perhaps some of the grant requests where the review team agreed at some level, but then, you know, not entirely on all of the components or as Joe mentions, the proportionality of the impact relative to the, you know, attributable to the casino relative to the request. Because we this year we're taking some of the grants in one meeting and some of the other ones at a later meeting and we're doing this on a rolling basis. Effectively what the grants, the grant requests that were easier to examine because they were straightforward already came before us in the early meetings. And because what where we struggled a little bit with how to substantiate that proportionality, if you will. And that next is to the casino, we went back with questions and maybe had a second meeting, etc. So what we're about to see as evidence in the last two summaries that Joe went are these notions of partial funding perhaps because of those those questions that he outlines. The next is versus the proportionality. In the case of Pogsboro, they are, you know, able to substantiate notions to the activity on route one, but when it came to route the route, is it 140 or 147 that goes in the other direction of the town right into the center of town, it's 147. The next is a lot less clear and that's why the partial funding here is the recommendation 140 140. Yeah, we're 140 140. That's really helpful. I know that, Joey, you live with proportionality when you briefed me. And I understand that that's the challenge in the nexus has been a continuing challenge, right. Commissioner Brian. No, I agree with everything that you said. I was on the briefing with Commissioner Cameron, and, you know, she pointed out how the backfilling is not, you know, necessarily part of the course, but then Kate pointed out smaller departments will sometimes have these arrangements of backfilling depending on what it is. So I think the recommendation is appropriate. So I did need clarification on the location of the traffic crossing. And so Joe has emphasized that it's not route one where the hotels are, where there may be some more casino pedestrians who are going in because we would want to make sure that they had safe cross locks in that nexus would be clear. But it really is quite removed from that location, as I understand, and Joe provided a helpful map at the time. So I do think that probably that difficult link to the nexus with right now hasn't been achieved. Well, I'll tell you, I do think that it's really great that they ask for training dollars and that they, particularly with respect to human trafficking, you know, to the extent there's even a little bit of evidence of that, although our public safety research has been quite clean. We want to make sure that the police departments have those tools. I am a little disappointed to not be able to ensure implicit bias training for the entire department when they've asked because it just seems that that would be something that any member of the department that shows up at the casinos, we would want them to have that training as a tool. I understand the other might be more specialized, but then I did understand the proportionality argument that Joe laid out. I could offer to them that there's very good implicit bias training available online that would not require anyone to be probably off on their duty. I can't say how they run their departments, but certainly it's a tool that's very accessible and we've been the beneficiaries of that training. That doesn't necessarily mean that in-person training doesn't offer something different, but it is available. So I appreciate the request and I also appreciate the review team's analysis with a little bit of a lump in my throat. I think, you know, there's no question, you know, when we see these applications, we'd love to fund them all in full, you know, for the most part. You know, these are usually well thought out applications and they're good projects and they're things that we'd love to do, but you know, that part of our charge and part of the law is that we have to make that nexus to the casino. So that kind of ties our hands a little bit. Commissioner Zuniga, you agree with that on the training part? Yeah. Okay, any other questions on this one? Thank you. Okay, the next one is the Springfield Blueprint Implementation. This is a specific impact grant as well. It's not a public safety grant. So the city is requesting $400,000 for the implementation of the Springfield Blueprint. The Springfield Blueprint was a document that was developed a few years ago to try to guide development in the city and one of the main areas that had identified, obviously, what they're calling the casino impact zone. So, you know, when MGM was built, it was expected that it would be a catalyst for the redevelopment of properties in the vicinity of the casino. Now, the city did present us some pretty significant information in its application that demonstrated that that really has not happened. And in fact, there are numerous properties around the casino that are sort of lying fallow and deteriorating, some to the point of foreclosure. You know, because of the prices paid by MGM to acquire the casino site, which were at kind of an inflated basis, the landowners in the area have developed unrealistic expectations about the value of their own properties and the rents that they could hope to get, which has kind of led to some of this some of these issues of vacancies and deteriorating properties. So the review team certainly agreed that attempting to address this type of impact is appropriate use of the community mitigation funds. Last year, we gave the City of Springfield a grant to develop a master plan for that casino impact zone, which they completed earlier this year and was just recently voted by the Springfield City Council. Now, this grant will advance that master plan by focusing on civic improvements in the casino impact zone, which includes the design of landscaping, hardscaping, streetscaping, lighting, park improvements, infrastructure and things of that nature. In parallel to that, the City will be utilizing its own funding to continue some of the other efforts in the area, such as they're looking to acquire some of those foreclosed properties that they can then put out to developers to redevelop. They already own some properties there. There's the church that's located there on Court Square that they want to put that out to bid for redevelopment. So they're going to continue to work on those while these funds would work towards that, those civic improvements. And the review team certainly believes that this approach will help address the impacts to the area and establish improvements that will make the area more attractive to developers down the road. MGM was also fully supportive of awarding this grant. And so therefore the review team recommends awarding a grant in the amount of $400,000 to the City for this blueprint implementation. I'll open this one up for questions. Commissioner Brown, do you want to, do you have any questions on this? So you won't set. No, I'm all set. I remember during the briefing, I remember the furniture store guy in the back who held out for a long time. And I wasn't shocked to hear that some of the butters and people in the area were doing the same thing. So I think it's appropriate. I think it's good money spent for them to come up with a plan and improve what they can. Excellent. Commissioner Zunika. Yeah, thank you. Perhaps a little of my own experience with reading and discussing this grant request is appropriate. When I first read it, my impression was that there was just a lot of words, really, a lot of planning, terminology, and etc. And I had this feeling of, and I think it was also shared by the review team, this feeling of, you know, where is the deliverable? Where are we going to see some concrete steps? And through the back and forth with the city, that became more clear, which Joe articulated, and it boils down to the notion that there's the need, which we all agree with, to try to tackle some of the difficulties that the city is undergoing with the butters and the like in multiple ways. So even though it may seem that there's just a lot of planning, because now this is the second grant, there's, in my opinion, there's both the realization that it's needed and the shorter term horizon that there's more concrete steps. I'm curious as to what the next year's requests are going to be relative to these efforts, but I think altogether they're very worthwhile efforts on part of the city to really try to lean on landowners, the butters, etc., to improve the area. So I agree appropriate use of money to be used in this way. And I'm all set. I think it's very clear and it's impact very clear. Thank you, Joe. Do you want to continue? Yes. So the final specific impact grant is the West Springfield police and fire slash EMS request. So they are asking for $200,000 to offset the costs of public safety personnel that were hired in anticipation of the MGM casino opening. So just a little bit of background on this. Back in 2020, we awarded West Springfield a grant of the amount of $200,000 for public safety costs with the understanding that it was a one-time grant and that any future requests would need to be based on the approved look-back study that was being conducted at that time. I think I've described it a little bit last year as it was a little bit of a leap of faith on what they had done for hiring and the costs. And we agreed that it was appropriate, but we said if there were any other requests, we need hard data to back that up. So the look-back study was completed in November of 2020 and it did conclude that public safety costs associated with MGM impacts exceeds the $375,000 in payments that West Springfield receives as part of its surrounding community agreement. Now the study did also indicate that West Springfield overshot the mark in their hiring of 16 additional personnel, but concluded that MGM's impacts are responsible for just under 50% of the costs of those personnel. I think the actual number is 49.7% is what is attributable to MGM. So in essence, what they're really saying is West Springfield probably should have hired eight personnel rather than the 16 that they did. So without getting into too much math here, the look-back study identified about $585,000 in public safety costs that they would attribute to MGM's impacts for fiscal year 2022. Now the town disagreed with that and characterized those costs as more like $652,000 taking into account some inflation and salaries and things of that nature. Now if you subtract out the $375,000 they receive under the surrounding community agreement, that leaves a delta of either $210,000 or $277,000 depending upon which set of numbers you believe, which is to us is essentially irrelevant since the ask is $200,000. It works for either set of numbers, so we're not really particularly concerned with which number is the absolute right number. So given this evidence, the review team agrees that West Springfield has demonstrated a casino related impact and put a dollar value to it and recommends that West Springfield be awarded a grant in the amount of $200,000. Now I think we need to note here that MGM did not support this application. They believed that a flawed rationale was used in the development of the costs and they also believe that MGM's operation is not resulting in that negative impacts to West Springfield. But that statement is a statement. So absent any data to the contrary, the review team felt that the decision needed to be based on the data that we had in front of us, which was the look back study that showed a negative impact. So that's how we kind of got to the recommendation of the $200,000 for West Springfield and I'll open this one up for questions. Yes, I thought an important piece of information was this look back study was required and MGM picked the firm and they paid for it. So to me that was a relevant piece of information and you know I think in this case we don't have to necessarily put our weight in what MGM says or West Springfield because we have a reputable study that demonstrates the impacts. So I think the team was smart to look at this $200,000 number which was the request and say look it doesn't take into account either either side West Springfield or MGM but it is those are the numbers based on the based on the look back which you told them that's what we'd be relying on for any further moneys. So I'm in agreement with this one as well. Commissioner O'Brien or Commissioner Zanucka, do you want to weigh in? Commissioner O'Brien? No, I would agree with what Commissioner Cameron said. I remember that we delayed voting on this last year because we wanted the information and you have an objective party coming in with information that backs up the request right now so I think it's appropriate. Commissioner Zanucka, you're nodding your head. Do you want to add? I'll set. I'm all set as well and thank you Commissioner Cameron for the recap on the independence of the third party review. Okay, so that concludes the specific impact grant applications so at this point if you wanted to do the votes on those we could do that or if you want me to just continue with my presentations till we're done and then we can go back whatever your preference is. Commissioners, I think we agreed at the last meeting that and I originally mean that we would like to vote on sort of categories and this concludes what I refer to as the public safety specific intent right is what we call it. I don't believe I saw this in the motions that are always prepared just for us as kind of a tool right? Do you want to vote singularly on each of them or because they do have different recommendations would that be best? I see Commissioner Cameron maybe nodding her head or should we go on mass individually? I was just going to say last year we we did vote everything kind of on mass but I'd leave that up to Todd on what his recommendation would be to do it. I know on the workforce ones we did vote them individually. Well I always invite that because that would give the commissioners the opportunity to vote against a recommendation individually if they would like. I'm not hearing in our discussion anything that would flag that we don't have a consensus with the review team but I don't want to presume that ever. So commissioners. I'm finding the way I just sense a matter of process if we were to vote them the prior ones individually I think to go back into the prior memo to look back at which I don't have in front of me to to have the amounts and whatnot specifically but I can do that in shorter. Commissioner Cameron. I don't have a preference either. I do take your point though that it does give us an opportunity to speak on each one and maybe there would be a dissent although I agree that we didn't seem to we didn't hear any during our discussion. I'm looking to go back because I don't have it. I don't have each memo. So I have the April 26th memo in front of me here. I could either share that and we can walk through it or I can just read off what the particular numbers are that we're recommending. I'm comfortable with the process where we have a motion and that we start with a motion to adopt the following and then on a line by line we'll take a vote if we have that if we have them the individual items just so that it's we're presenting because next year it could be based on a dollar issue right commissioners in the go which is what you're alluding to. So Commissioner O'Brien are you comfortable with that on process? Yeah fine. I have the same issue everyone else does. I don't have a breakdown. Joe could share his screen and we don't have to put that. Is it okay if we do one motion with each and then we'll just individually vote and then we'll finalize to say that. It doesn't sound like any of us are really taking issue with the specific impact. Okay absolutely. So we'll run through. Do I have a motion? We'll just take an overriding motion and then run through individually on a vote. Specific impact. That's the language we should use on this. Yeah okay. So we're waiting for the individual numbers. Okay so everybody seeing my screen yes? Yes yes. Okay so on Everett Fire Department we're recommending a grant in the amount of $157,000. So Madam Chair I would move that the commission approve the award of the specific impact grant from the Community Medication Fund or the CD of Everett in the amount of $157,000 for the purposes described in the commissioners packet from the last meeting and discussed here today and that the commission staff be authorized to execute the grant instrument commemorating the award in accordance with 205CMR 153.04. Second. Second. Second. Okay. All those in favor? Okay I guess I have to do roll call don't I? I just not see you. Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner Bryan? Aye. Commissioner Zinica? He's really frozen now. It was a it was a slow. Aye. There we go and oh yes perhaps we can do. I'm wondering if Joe can do all of the numbers and then we can do an omnibus motion that just references how we laid them out for this specific impact and then just do one more motion at the end. Okay. Let's just speed it up a little bit I know I know that the internet's a little laggy so. Okay so all right I'll lay out all of them so the next one City of Everett again for the streetlight smart controls we're recommending a grant in the amount of $30,000 for that one. The Hamden County District Attorney's Office we are recommending a grant in the amount of $75,000 for that one. The Hamden County Sheriff's Department we are recommending a grants in the amount of $400,000. The Plainville Police Department we're recommending a grant in the amount of $95,500. Springfield Fire Department we're recommending a grant in the amount of $22,000. Springfield Police Department we're recommending a grant in the amount of $22,500. Okay and that's the final one from last meeting so and then let me just share though this this meetings we'll just walk through those last. Given my internet connection I think someone else should make the motions. Try this one more time sorry about that. Okay so the next one we're recommending Everett Police Department we're recommending a grant in the amount of $70,000 for Foxboro Foxboro we're recommending a grant in the amount of $81,000. That was Foxboro PD correct Foxboro PD yes yeah Springfield Blueprint Implementation we're recommending a grant in the amount of $400,000 and on West Springfield Police and Fire we're recommending a grant in the amount of $200,000. That's all of the specific impacts yeah sure. Madam Chair I move that the commission approve the awards of the specific impact grants discussed on April 26 and today and also included in a respective packets for those dates. Those grants will be coming from the Community Mitigation Fund in the amounts set forth in the packets and is summarized by Joe Delaney at this meeting for the purposes that are described in the commissioner's packets and the submitted applications the commission and that commission staff be authorized to execute grant instruments commemorating the awards in accordance with 205 CMR 153.04. Second my only discussion would be I want to reserve always the right for us to vote on these line by line and if there's anyone here who has any comment or concern about something specific you can you can vote that but I'm not I'm detecting a consensus so we'll move forward with a roll call vote and then we'll figure out process going forward on this okay excellent commissioner cary I commission no brian I commission is indica I and I vote yes thank you 40 Vivian and we'll just make sure to record that properly in our minutes thanks Joe what's next okay so we are into the transportation planning category we've got three transportation planning grants the first one is in chickpea in chickpea center they want to do some work looking at their streetscapes in the center so they're requesting $200,000 to design streetscape improvements in downtown chickpea it would also include complete streets concepts to improve the flow and safety of all modes of travel including pedestrians bicycles vehicles and public transit so the original environmental impact report for the mgm project projected that about four and a half percent of the traffic from the casino would travel through chickpea on local streets with most of that going through chickpea center there are also many mgm employees that reside in chickpea the commute to the facility and surveys done by the city indicate that many of chickpea's residents are patrons of mgm as well so the review team agreed that these demonstrated an impact on the city of chickpea so now the city will use these funds to hire a consultant to evaluate downtown chickpea and propose conceptual designs and recommendations it will also include a robust public participation process the review team agreed you know that these types of projects that improve the flow and safety of multiple modes of travel will address negative impacts while also encouraging alternative modes of transportation to and from mgm which helps support the notion of transportation demand management which you was a requirement of mgm's permits so all of these transportation planning and construction applications were forwarded not only to our licensees but also to mass dot for their opinion on the efficacy of the applications so in this case both mgm and mass dot were fully supportive of this application and therefore we recommend that chickpea be awarded a grant in the amount of $200,000 for its streetscape improvement project and with that I will open this one up to questions questions on this is nika did you have any comment no I think as as Joe mentioned um you know it's it's it's a great project I think it will go a long way to improving the um the general feel of the chickpea downtown and there's enough traffic there through employees and patrons that can be attributable to the casino um and it merits this funding I agree appropriate use of mitigation monies I'll say okay thank you uh moving on to the next one is the everett mystic river walk um everett is requesting $200,000 to advance design of a section of the mystic river walk uh to complete a missing section of the walkway between mystic view park and room 16 let me just um quickly see if I can share um this is my favorite part of community mitigation uh fund application review when Joe brings us to the yeah uh let me just open up uh google maps real that's really helpful um and I will zoom in so you can see where on core boston harbour is and we have the gateway center here which is where the target and cost go and all of those are so on core is um walkways connected over through here and there's a series of paths and walkways through this area what we have is a little gap right up here from these walkways up to some existing connections underneath the the bridge that goes over the maldon river so it's essentially this sort of a line right through here is what they want to do it's a little bit of a challenging site because there's some uh there's some wetlands and there's um you know you can see there's a little brook here and some wetlands but you can see these little pathways here these are are underpasses underneath route 16 that allow people on bikes to get you know up and down from the bridge and use the bike lanes and so on so this would make this connection through here um which is right now if you want to go out there you have to go out on to route 16 and through sand tilly circle and it's you know kind of worth your life and what you'll see over here is we've got wellington t station is right here and just zooming out you have this whole area up here of many uh large apartment and condo complexes you have uh um name of it is escaping the station landing over here which has multiple multiple uh apartment uses and things and condos again and then you go further down and there's there's some very large developments in this area and obviously some huge uh residential neighborhoods again this is what i'm probably belaboring the point but you know we love um projects like this that will you know close in these gaps in these walkways and create this really great network where people can safely use these bike paths and walkways and make their way to the casino or otherwise so um we really we really like um a project like this again boncourt and mass dot were fully supportive of the project and um so therefore we recommend uh the two on questions for jillan the river walk commission kim yeah i agree i love the google maps and they'll build a little a little boardwalk over those wetlands like they do on the golf course it uses the bike trails on the cape and um it'll be it'll be excellent for those folks to be able to take their bikes or walk uh over there so i i think this is a really good use of the mitigation rooms any any other comments or questions for jill commissioners i'm gonna guide you i agree with these kinds of projects sorry no no you're not frozen sorry i thought you were you're good we can hear you continue okay yeah so um i like like everyone else i i like these kinds of projects it's all about improving the network of uh bike and um i have this image in my mind um about the the bike rack in an anchor boss on harbor by the employee entrance when near near the inauguration there were just dozens and dozens of bikes of people who had employees who had done out there using a bike it was of course a very nice weather time although that doesn't necessarily mean that it's not used in the winter so i think it's these kinds of projects that are a great alternative to the traffic all around it and i'm glad that they're we're helping the effort that's ongoing and and similarly mass dot supports this application as well oh yeah absolutely yeah it was recently in the boston globe on um their magazine on places to live and and in its category for housing prices effort ranked number one for the north um and they mentioned i don't know if you saw the article but they mentioned um how many employees of anchor boss and harbor want to live in everett and i suspect the more we make um biking accessible um it will only make it more attractive in from medford and the surrounding areas so uh that that that's uh was a very positive article for um the impact of um casino so on that community no further comments or questions on that one all right moving ahead moving moving right along uh the next one is uh lin is requesting some money to design some traffic and safety improvements at boston street and hamilton so they're requesting two hundred thousand dollars for this project the intent of the project is to decrease the number and severity of crashes at that location improve traffic operations and also improve access to the northern strand community trail um so this this uh you know right off the bat we are we are not recommending uh funding for this project um and i want to give some some good background on why why we got to that point with this um firstly you know the impact of casino related traffic on the city of lin um is minor uh according to the original environmental impact report document it was estimated that about 10 of the traffic to and from the casino would be from areas sort of north and east of the facility um about nine percent of that traffic was expected to use route one with about one percent using the local roads to the northeast such as route one a and route 107 uh with an average daily trip generation of about 24 thousand vehicles a day um at on core boston harbour um about 24 hundred of those would expect be expected to go to those points north and east of the site with the vast majority of these going up route one you know so about 2160 vehicles per day up route one now route one doesn't pass through lin proper um it sort of goes up along one side of it and we certainly would expect that some casino related traffic using group one could be coming from or passing through lin but you know trying to look at sort of a worst case estimate we believe that a maximum amount of vehicles that would pass through lin uh or come from lin uh to or from the casino might be as much as maybe 450 vehicles per day so that would be 225 going to the facility 225 coming back and it's also expected that this traffic would generally use the major routes in and out of a town such as um route 107 and uh and 1a and again i'm going to share my my google maps again um just so you can get an idea of what we're talking about so the intersectioning question is right up here where it's that you see west lin there there are these two streets that come together here this is hamilton this is boston street and um i'll zoom in just a little bit um now you can see the encore casino is down here and as the crow flies that's uh about eight or nine miles from the facility and you can see here you know traffic coming out of encore to that sort of northeast area would tend to use route 16 and it would either get on route one north or continue over to route 1a and you can see here 1a goes up along the coast 107 comes up this way um you know to be using this intersection to access encore just seems quite unlikely um and again just sort of uh just zooming in on this a little bit um you know this is the intersection here um and this of course the northern strand trail does run right here which ultimately comes down through uh everett and and eventually we'll be coming to the site but again we're talking about a about a nine mile bike ride from this location and we can't really put our fingers on what improvements to how improvements to this intersection would either encourage more traffic to use the northern strand that just you know the connections just didn't seem to be there for us um so yeah you know with respect to this particular application oh you know in previous grant rounds um the commission did accept that there would be some minor impacts to the city streets due to due to traffic and we did award the city a couple of grants to uh study certain improvements that could be done but at that time you know we viewed those as as kind of seed money to start the process on some very large projects for example we gave them money last year for the route 107 project and the route 107 project is a I think a 30 million dollar project that you know well we'll have some ancillary benefits to casino uh traffic the major benefit is truly to the to the city and so we felt again that providing some seed money to get those projects started was appropriate but that was really about all that we could um uh sort of justify now with respect to this particular application um we couldn't see how there would be an appreciable amount of traffic using these particular streets um it is a heavily traveled intersection there's about 20 000 vehicles per day that use that intersection um but we didn't we just didn't believe that the casino traffic would make up anything more than a really de minimis portion of the traffic on that road and we also we were intrigued by the connection to the northern strand but we also didn't see how improvements to the intersection would material materially affect the use of the northern strand um so with respect to on core they did support this project they usually do support projects for communities nearby but mass dot did have some reservations about this project particularly with the proposed project cost and also the fact that the project cannot be initiated uh in the MPO process so essentially for these reasons we are not recommending funding for this project and with that i'll open this one up for questions first looks like i'm seeing satisfied i i'll just add probably probably what everyone's thinking is that i i i feel that the review team really thoroughly considered uh this application and i appreciate you know you're really thinking about the potential for the the bike trail to come through um right it's always hard to turn down an application but i i felt very comfortable with your your thought process and your recommendation and respect both on cars and mass dots um input so you know and again we would love to fund all of these projects you know i there are a few projects that we've seen that didn't have some merit to them but um you know again we are sort of bound by that uh edict that we have to find that nexus to the casino and next year too joe i'm sure when you put out the guidelines and the applications you'll be doing your you know outreach and always communities that think they they may have a valid application have the opportunity to to speak with the group and and you'll probably do that same kind of training that you did this year so um you know i guess i would say perhaps there's another application in the future for lin but this one you know i feel that your your recommendation is is is very well supported okay um so the next one is um another project in everett on the northern strand uh some trail lighting improvements um so everett's requesting 135 000 for the installation of lighting on the northern strand community trail from its current terminus at wellington ave north up to the river breed district um so just a little bit of background on this last year we gave everett a grant to extend the northern strand from its current terminus down uh to the project site to the encore site um and that portion of the project will include lighting um so encore built an overflow parking lot up in the river green area for both employees and for overflow parking from the casino which is serviced by a shuttle bus but the thought there was that if some lighting could be provided on the northern strand trail up to that location it would make it more of a 24 hour transportation corridor rather than just being used uh during during the daylight hours um and of course we always agree that any anything that will improve the the bicycle pedestrian network has a good potential to take some vehicles off the road which will ultimately help traffic overall in the area and the traffic to the casino as well now this project was actually constructed last year um the project ran into some change orders and cost overruns for which the city had not budgeted um so the total cost of the project came to about 452 thousand dollars with 135 thousand and change orders so the city is requesting our funds just for those uh change orders that they ran into and this amounts to about 30 percent of the total construction cost uh which falls well within our guidelines of not funding more than one-third of the project costs so that so you know the review team felt that this project you know in conjunction with the northern strand extension down to the on-course site will improve access to the river green area and reduce use of single octopus vehicles um the project is completely consistent with the other bike and pedestrian projects that have been funded in the area um which will ultimately complete an extensive network of bike and pedestrian options for getting to and from the casino and again both on-core and mass dot were uh fully supportive of this project um therefore we're recommending uh fully funding this project at 135 thousand dollars so i hope when this one comes yeah i agree with the team this is an appropriate use for the uh mitigation monies i think everyone's nodding their heads uh great endorsement by um on-court boston however uh just to uh i think the statement was that would be um has the opportunity to make substantial and lasting improvements to our area this project is what it could lead to significant reach on improvement in the future so i'm bringing endorsement okay okay so the next one is uh sitting a spring field um this is for some uh roadway resurfacing and complete streets improvements again a transportation construction project um so springfield requesting 200 000 dollars for resurfacing and complete streets improvements on dwight street and hamden street in springfield in downtown springfield so dwight street is a major uh primarily stealth bound route from i 291 in downtown spring two downtown springfield um you know a substantial amount of traffic from i 90 westbound uses 291 and dwight street to access the casino you know if you if you continue on 291 you have to do a merge onto 91 and then cross three lanes of traffic to make the exit and i think people who are in the know uh will often take that dwight street i know i've used it numerous times myself and i think most of the commissioners have as well in going out to springfield um so we certainly agreed that the amount of traffic that uses dwight street constitutes an impact of the casino so the project will not only improve the pavement structure on the streets but it will also incorporate complete streets elements um you know improving access for all modes of transportation uh not only vehicles but pedestrians bicycles public transit um and one nice thing about this project is you know mgm did a whole bunch of these complete streets improvements to main street state street colombus have um you know dwight street being another major route this will bring that sort of up to that same standard that mgm was was required to do on those streets um which again will just improve overall transportation um the 200 000 request is uh exactly one third of the total project cost of six hundred thousand dollars which is in line with our guidelines and also both mgm and mass dot are fully supportive of this project and so we are recommending awarding uh the 200 000 dollars for this project any questions commissioners just as you said and i saw some heads nodding this is um you know the traffic uh counts don't quite tell the story because if you try to go by what google tells you and go to the casino coming from from route 90 into 91 um that is really difficult and so most people will come and do use dwight street um which perhaps again the figures under count um how important that connection is uh as as you go into the casino if there are no other comments on that um we'll move on to our our last one of the day um which is a this is a community planning grant um and this is the north hampton uh the north hampton live website uh marketing program so north hampton is requesting uh 75 000 to continue um the marketing program uh of the north hampton live website um just again a little bit of uh a deeper background on this um back in 2020 um you know we've awarded grants uh for this platform a couple of different times most recently last year um we did award a grant to north hampton with the understanding that north hampton needed to move this platform towards a self-sustaining model uh you know and while the review team didn't envision funding this project beyond 2020 many of the initiatives that had been planned to make it financially independent were unable to be met uh doing due to the ongoing pandemic you know you know there were restaurants and stores and other things that were all closing up shop and trying to ask merchants for for money under that um atmosphere would be uh extremely difficult if not impossible so we we agreed that um you know just the sort of the timing of this was was was really really difficult um so now the original and continuing purpose of this north hampton live website is to mitigate impacts on north hampton from the development of mgm spring field really by helping north hampton compete against you know the significant marketing resources of mgm you know they it gives them certainly not a voice as as loud as as uh what mgm has with their you know advertising campaigns and others but it does give them a a sort of a fighting chance to uh to you know keep their existing customers and hopefully grow their customer base somewhat um so now north hampton has actually made some strides towards becoming self-sustaining um they did agree to provide uh $25,000 of matching funds towards this grant um so um you know that that's a move in the right direction um and mgm is also supportive of this request um they they sort of contend that that they're really complimentary to a place like north hampton and not really in direct competition but I think we can see that you know uh any competition for sort of entertainment dollars is is competition so but they are definitely supportive of that now because of the difficulties over the last year in obtaining other sources of funding the review team recommends awarding this grant in the amount of $75,000 and again we do expect that north hampton needs to make those efforts to become self-sustaining you know if if um a platform like this needs continual subsidies from the gaming commission you know perhaps the platform isn't as successful as it as it should be so with that we are recommending the 75,000 but we do expect north the north hampton to continue making those efforts to create a financing model that doesn't rely on commission funds you know forever and with that I'll open this one up for any any questions or comments commissioners you know I'll um I'll mention that um in the past I was I would go along with these type of requests mostly as Joe said because had the caveat of it's going to be helping the one-time costs and then the city could take over you know for the longer term but this year is really one that has been has brought a lot of impact I guess to to the restaurant industry and if we can be of some assistance to the city of north hampton I think it's a good way to do it I would agree as well um under the circumstances and with the with the notion that they will at some point become self-sufficient with this I agree with the team's recommendation commissioner brian any thoughts no Joe made the same comments in the briefing which I thought were pretty compelling in terms of you know giving them this for this year with the idea that they would you know when things turn around hopefully over the next coming months that they can look for funding that makes them self-sustaining this is where I probably have to continue to think this through um I was um I'm I guess I wonder if I'm as as if the argument about self-sustaining is as compelling because I do feel as though north hampton which has had always a big tourist draw for its restaurants um you know wakes up after you know the casino is built and when you are trying to line up the marketing dollars against the marketing dollars it's a significant impact on their own budgetary process suddenly they want to make sure that they're not losing any of their their restaurant diners and their visitors to the casino or more appropriately be able to leverage from them you know the the benefit of the casino so I am I I like the idea of supporting the marketing programs of the neighboring towns um in nights I maybe I see them the nexus more clearly so um that will be something we can talk about perhaps in the guidelines going forward maybe I need further clarification and and and to understand um every commissioner's position on this um but I I I do I like this last year and I I like and I'm very pleased that the recommendation is to support it this year and with especially the backdrop of the impact of COVID-19 on the restaurant um industry hi excuse me manager this is joe I just my whole uh system just crashed on me so I had to had to call in oh so maybe you didn't hear that I am my comment so we can discuss them later to my my just practically trying now I think that just a comment for everybody supports your recommendation and everybody seems to really support it particularly because the the notion of Northampton becoming so self-sustaining in the future on their marketing and I guess I I just expressed a viewpoint that's slightly different but but I'm open to being convinced otherwise I just um for this I'm very pleased that this recommendation stands as is to support Northampton yes well and there he is again I'm back what a funny day huh we've all had our our tech issues Eileen and you've done very well today Gail occasionally it's been a little bit so slow down too must be must be May 6 huh 2021 so I haven't had that happen before though where I mean the I did it completely shut off I and it was gone it was gone completely wow you know I've frozen up before but never had it completely cut off like that yeah and then you called in and then it it came back interesting yeah well the mysteries so I think um I I think there are no further questions on this one but we are not taking a vote today because we know that there'll be other proposals in the various categories and we'll do our voting for category yep we will have I said we have eight more to get through uh at the next meeting uh hopefully um we have one more follow-up uh so close Kathy so close he froze in a way that's not his best you think I think we got the gist of what he was saying though but you know he's finishing up those last eight and we'll be ready to go and there he is this oh that's excellent okay so um I think then that concludes uh Chief Delaney's report for today right and um I and I want to just praise the entire review team and of course give a big shout out to to Mary and Fania for their continuing support of Joe Joe's good work so thank you uh commissioners you're all set I just in case you freeze again Joe thank you so much well thank you and I'll go give my wi-fi a rest okay I think everybody is should put their devices to sleep shortly after this meeting so um in terms of our agenda that brings us to item number 11 are there any commissioner updates no okay then we'll move on there's no other business then um the only thing I should know for other businesses today apparently is national nurse day and I think all of us can some day some moment today recognizes the nurses in our lives and also the just the global effort that nurses have made this last year so just an acknowledgement and a big thank you to the entire team to Executive Director Wells and to Vivian who is probably thinking this has been a good long reading thank you Vivian so with that commissioners do you have anything you'd like to add would you like to move motion to adjourn second excellent thank you commissioners I appreciate all your good work and in your support commissioner Cameron hi commissioner Brian hi commissioner Zinica and thank you Kathy I thank you okay and I vote yes Vivian have a good day everyone thank you