 Thank you commissioners. Normally the job of calling these means to order is that of the their statutory designated chair. Obviously with the resignation late yesterday of Chairman Crosby that's not able to happen so I am calling this means order. Before we go any further I'd like to thank Chairman for his service to the Commission and the Commonwealth. He was indeed the first chairperson the first employee of the Commission and has served for a long time so thank him and wish him well. Having said that there there will be some business to attend to. I am going to suggest that the Commission among yourselves now designate a interim or acting chair which will help facilitate the continuing ongoing business of the Commission. Once you do that I also have some suggestions on a few minor changes and just the not the structure of the agenda today but I would suggest the first item of business would be working out the interim chair chairpersonship. Good morning commissioners. The first order of business as Executive Director Bedurgin said is to pick an interim chair. The purpose of an interim chair is to serve in that position until a statutory permanent chair is selected. We have this we didn't put this on the agenda today obviously because we didn't know we were going to be doing this so if you could discuss amongst yourselves here and come to a consensus as to who you would like to designate as interim chair that would be excellent then we will move forward in the meeting and that person will continue with the conduct of the meeting. Well yeah before we get into that I also would like to thank Chairman Crosby for his service certainly respect his decision and just just just one of one of his accomplishments his contributions to the Commission I thought that was really noteworthy is his he was such a champion of diversion diversity and inclusion and that's within our organization as well as with all our licensees and folks getting jobs in this industry so I just I always found that noteworthy that he was such a champion there and I just wanted to mention that and again wish him well. I would echo that and thank him for his service certainly appreciated the opportunity to work with him over the last few years and to your point his efforts to focus on diversity as well as working through the change in the gaming statute which I think allows a lot more residents in Massachusetts to access the career ladder in gaming certainly that was a multi-year effort and involved a lot of outreach and a lot of partnering with stakeholders so it's enjoyed the chance to work with him on on that issue but certainly wish him well also. You know I wanted to reference a little bit the statement from Steve Crosby yesterday I agree with that statement in terms of the frustration I feel this is a frustrating situation I think I sharing the sadness in the way in which some comments get taken and are used to essentially try to undermine the work that we that we do but I respect his decision I think it's all for the for the better the work of the commission continues we've done this before this has always been a team effort we've been in a situation like this for commissioners I think we will we will easily continue in that in that way I also want to just to say in terms of Steve on a personal note I think that when when the I believe that in the near future when the legacy of Steve is is written in a more holistic way this the headline of this morning is really just going to be a footnote because of all the contributions that we know he has he has made but especially because of his unwavering belief and actions of the mission and values of this of this agency there are too many to to try to put in here I just wanted to leave it at that I did not have the opportunity to work with him as long as the other commissioners here I also was struck by his enthusiasm for the work of the commission I respect his decision and I look forward to working the four of us to keep marching forward with the work of the commission as Enrique pointed out all of us if we've worked well as a team and certainly include our newest commissioner in that comment but moving ahead with you know the business of the agency which not only with number of decisions lie ahead of us but also our continuing obligation to monitor and regulate our two existing licensees who are responsible for employing 3,500 residents in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts we've all taken a our own opportunity at various times to to chair meetings so certainly view us as a team and all of us having an ability to to step up and be leaders but I know we need to find somebody to to sit is temporary chair I would certainly encourage Commissioner Cameron to think about that from the perspective that I think her background in the state police is obviously made her a pretty good task master not that she's had to task master me at any point but again I just think again all of us have certainly had the opportunity to chair meetings there's more of it that goes beyond that part of it is having a good working relationship with the executive director who reports to all of us but to possibly also make his life a little bit easier to be helpful for him to have a good point of contact and one commissioner who can kind of direct his activities with Commissioner Cameron I don't know if you've given it any thought but I certainly would feel comfortable with you is interim acting whatever type of title we want Commissioner you're going to force me to give it some thought I think yeah would you like to be nominated Commissioner I agree with that I agree with that Commissioner just kind of cut rates and I agree with with all the comments made here I think there's unanimity in in the suggestion that Commissioner Cameron take over as the interim slash acting commissioner in this case I don't know if it's appropriate to thank you but but I do I'm grateful for your confidence and and you know if this is what you want I'm happy to step in and in an interim role and and keep the keep it rolling keep the work going one thing I think would be important for me to point out frankly and I wanted your thoughts if you know we're very close we're here with today we will speak about a pending matter and that's we're very close although none of us have seen a report that is coming it's coming sometime in October to the best of my knowledge although we'll get a better update from the team here and I as one commissioner you know with the years of experience and investigations I would not be speaking about this matter publicly frankly I look forward to a report and a hearing and I know this team will make good decisions I think anyone of us could have done this stepped in as an interim but I do appreciate your confidence let me then move that the Commission select Commissioner Gail Cameron to act Commissioners we did not post this for a vote so I think the best way to do this is by consensus and then if we want to come back at the next meeting into a formal vote we can do that okay well it appears then that we do have a consensus so let's let's proceed accordingly okay I think now we'll turn this back over to Executive Direct Director Bedrosian you didn't get a chance to complete your comments before we get into the agenda yeah so after my comments I'm going to suggest you do the approval of minutes which you would normally do I do suggest changing up the agenda a little bit obviously we have some folks who I think are interested in items that are later on the agenda and in respect to their time I would suggest that we move those items are generally under the legal division with the general council blue so I would suggest we move those items up after the approval of minutes one couple of issues I'm going to suggest general council blue give her update on the wind resorts hearing process which will be an oral briefing to the commissioner we are taking the encore request for non disclosure agreement off the agenda I want to be very clear there are issues that we need to look at that are boilerplate to all our non disclosure agreements that affect operating issues with our licensee so it is not just particular this one they are across the board we need to go back and look at those that's why we're taking that off the agenda for now and then after we did the wind resorts hearing process I'm going to suggest we discuss matter 7a the request to reopen Regency I know there are people who are very interested in our here on that after that if we could take a break I just want to then I could talk to staff and figure out the rest of the agenda depending upon where we are we have some guests the time frames and stuff like that so that would be in short order that'd be my suggestions well I think that's that's appropriate so why don't we move on to approval of the minutes commissioner Stevens sure madam chair and move the commission approved the minutes from our September 13th 2018 meeting is included in the packet subject to any immaterial or grammatical changes second but any discussion all in favor I for zero for for the for the minutes so next we will move on to item seven which is the legal division general council blue thank you commissioners the the first matter before you in the section today is a brief discussion of the adjudicatory process we think that it's an appropriate time to just give an overview of how we think the adjudicatory process will work when you take the wind matter before you so the proceeding will be an adjudicatory proceeding we have rules for that commission rules as well as general adjudicatory proceeding rules in the common well the commission's rules are at 205 CMR 101 this particular matter under our regulations is a matter that comes before the commission in the first instance so there's no hearing officer involved you sit as a panel in full to hear the matter and come to a decision the difference here between an adjudicatory proceeding and a public meeting or what some people also think of as a public hearing is that in an adjudicatory proceeding there are witnesses they're under oath you take testimony both oral and documentary there will be exhibits that you will consider there will be a somewhat more formal process but it is not like a public hearing where people just get up and speak and not like our general public meeting the with the testimony taking part of this process will be public so people members of the public can see it but the deliberations will be afterwards and they will be in private the way the process will generally work it similarly to what we have done in the past with suitability hearings that's the most common kind of adjudicatory proceeding that we've had the IEB will present its report then when we'll be able to put on testimony they may have witnesses they may have documents both parties can submit exhibits and they will be marked and they will be included in the record along with anything else any oral testimony the commissioners can ask questions of any participant any anyone from the commission staff anyone from the wind group they will all be represented by attorneys attorneys can ask questions of the witnesses as well all of as I said before all the testimony evidence has taken in public so that it will be available for you to to see and for others to watch at some point when you believe that you are done taking testimony and I that process can take as long as you needed to take the hearing itself can be adjourned it can take place in small parts over several days it can take place all in one day whichever whichever the commission is comfortable with when you are comfortable that you have taken all the testimony that you want to take you will adjourn the proceeding you will then retire to deliberate in private you can also take as long as you feel necessary to deliberate in private and you will deliberate until you come to a decision that you are comfortable with once you come to that decision it will be put in writing that you will then get to review and approve and once you're comfortable with that decision then that will be made public I would imagine that that written decision will probably be drafted a week or so after you finish your deliberations and you'll have it for your review that's been the general time frame that we that we've had but as I said before you can take as long as you need to deliberate and you can do it in you know in separate sessions you can do it in long sessions whatever is is the commission's desire to do so that's the general overview if there's any questions I'm happy to answer them so I believe it's very similar to what we've done in the past but it's certainly a good idea to refresh our memory on an adjudicatory procedure yes it should be very much like what you've done before yeah for the RFA one process when we examine the suitability of of the applicants at the time those were all done in adjudicatory most not all of them most there were a few that we did in a public meeting that's right and they were you know a little quicker and a little simpler but the majority of them were done in an adjudicatory proceeding yes I was also thinking of the raising appeals that get to us only after they have been through the hearing officer which we deliberate in in private but issue the written decision and you know yeah it's it's also important for everybody to know that we've done that a number of times that's right any other questions back to executive director for Georgian sure so the import of this is I wanted not only you but the public and stakeholders to be aware of how this process would play out so I will tell you as I told you in the past in terms of an update staff is working hard we are staff is they are getting towards the end of this investigation they understand time is the urgency and to be clear and hopefully to state the obvious nothing that has transpired in the last 24 hours is going to slow staff down they'll continue to work as aggressively and as quickly as possible is there a sense of timing I think there was a reference to October do we have any kind of sense of when might the report be forthcoming or I I can tell you that just repeat staff is working hard they would like to get this completed there are many many many stakeholders who would like to see this completed also and we recognize that so we are just working as hard as we can yeah I think from a standpoint of the Commission we are certainly understand that investigations are not always easy to predict the ending but I nothing has changed since you briefed us to two weeks ago and said that we were very close to ending that investigation that is pleading that is correct okay that's anything else okay thank you thank you going to move on to the request to reopen Regency discussion if you recall commissioners in July we came before you with a request to consider reopening Regency along with with some other matters you instructed staff to draft a response to that request and we have in fact drafted it there is a response in your packet the response deals with two of the questions that were raised in the request the first is whether the Commission has the ability to just reconsider its prior decision and the second question which is could you award the license without going through the competitive process the letter that we have in the packet talks about the fact that there is no process for reconsideration and if the Commission wanted to consider that they would need to think about what that process could look like and then we would have to draft regulations and promulgate them and then on the second question about whether you could award a license without going through the competitive process right now there is a there is a very detailed process in your regulations and in fact that the statute seems to imply that there would be a competitive process so we created one in accordance with the statute if the Commission wish to change that process it would be along the same lines you would need to consider what that would look like the circumstances in which you would invoke that process and then what regulations you would use to support that so both of those responses are in this letter obviously the Regency applicant at the time has raised other issues we have not addressed any of those I did in the memo that I put in the Commission packet in July in which you looked at include a number of items the Commission might want to consider so those issues and that discussion is something that the Commission can have if they want to continue just discussing it if I could just add attorneys app felon for Saras who represent Mr. Blumen Mg and E have are here I'm sure they'd love to talk we told this wasn't the time there may be a time down the line but just to say they have been passionate advocates for Mr. Bloom and their client in this matter and they have been respectful of the process with the general council blue and myself so it also they have made me aware that there's a representative from senator Brady's office here senator Brady has been supportive of the process to reopen Regency and economic development in Brockton so I want to acknowledge those folks just a couple of quick questions one is this response I mean I know we wanted to tackle this in two pieces one be respectful excuse me one be respectful and respond to the original letter that we received second piece of that being how we would have a conversation about the future of Regency or what to do with respect to Regency is this reply gone out officially and I see it's dated today yeah it has not we want your guidance if you're comfortable with it we will issue it okay obviously they raised a number of issues in the letter kind of give us your thinking as to why you wanted to specifically pull out what I think or two of the bigger issues that they raised with us and why maybe you didn't address some of the others well when we talked last time as a commission those were the two most prominent issues that the commission asked to address first the other issues that were raised in their letter problem I would say require more input whether it be research certainly more input from the commission as to how you want to proceed but definitely more research perhaps some input from outside consultants so we didn't before we proceed down that path we want to make sure that as commissioners you were comfortable with that and you wanted to instruct us as to how to proceed well I I just wanted to mention or follow up on the notion of the competitive process presumption that's in the statute and hence in our regulations I think that's that's something that we should continue to follow I don't see us necessarily changing regulations in the near future I maybe I'm only speaking for myself here you know in order to accommodate this request I think we should think about the things that we discussed last time we we we did this maybe in July there were important matters in my opinion like a new market assessment or a review of conditions changed in general not just in Massachusetts but you know in the in the New England market that really might affect what really is behind this that the request to rethink this in a in a fundamental way so I would be in in in favor of really proceeding with either consultants procurements or what have you relative to initially making an assessment of these of this market we have a lot more data points actually some of them coming from our own licensees we had initial projections in the in the during when we award the licenses those numbers you know have come in slightly below in some cases are recouping in other cases all of that could be looked at in order for us to begin to really think in terms of moving forward I think the letter is consistent with what we talked about at the last meeting in terms of staying focused on sort of the two procedural questions about what they asked the Commission to do in the letter I to the extent you need a motion can certainly move at the conclusion of comments that we approve sending this letter out I think it is responsive to the letter in that regard in terms of see regency in particular it's it's obviously an open question and I think in the future absolutely we bring forward a more detailed discussion about what steps to take I think today the question before us is really this letter and whether it's appropriate to send it out as a response and I think this is the appropriate response to the letter Commissioner I think what you just spoke about was included in the I believe the 14 points that the general the the original points that we could consider I've had a chance to review that list yes and also the list of comments which are pro and con as far as you know reopening and the Brockton license so I it made me think that it would be appropriate I would like to hear from the public I think any decision we make we always make a better decision when we know what the region is thinking what the people are thinking so I would love to suggest that we take we take those those points and we get them out for public comment and so many points to consider and that would help us in our decision with next steps with regard to this yeah I would just add you know I I went back and looked at that same memo that laid out a lot of the questions we should consider some of those I think are somewhat mirrored by our response in that some of the points that General Counsel Blu raised had to do with the process looking to change our process and what we're specifically spelling out here is that we're not a big fan of changing the process which the statute was pretty clear about you know I also would like to kind of look at a new market assessment of the region I also think it's it's worthy of having a conversation with some of our federal government counterparts they're obviously pursuing legislation which could have a big impact on what happens in region C I think if you were responsible of us to have a conversation with our colleagues it's nice when every arm of government is talking to each other they could give us an idea of you know what their proposed legislation intends to do what that might mean kind of you know would hate to ask them to speculate on what can transpire in DC because that's a bigger question but you know to get a full view of what activity is also taking place with respect to our colleagues in federal government would it be appropriate to I would love to check with our General Counsel on a time frame because there's so many voluminous list of issues to consider for public comment and then take this conversation up maybe after those conversations with partners federal partners and come back with with comments because we have not put this this item out for comment that's right and then take up this discussion at a further date would that make sense that that makes sense to me I actually I should come back to agree with Commissioner Bryant's point about at least for the short term the answer to this letter seems very much appropriate and you know to me anyway we have a motion I actually you can just instruct us Chuck me to send it out that was your instruction from last time so I think in terms of comments it's a it's a long list I think there's a lot of potential stakeholders I would suggest roughly 45 days we'll put together the usual request for comments we'll attach the list and we'll gather them and try to break them into portions in terms of what they might be responding to I think it would in to let the public know the more precise their comments are and the more information they can share with us the more helpful it will be to us so you know if we can get a lot of good thoughtful thinking from the public on these comments that would that would be great so it sounds like we don't need a motion we can just instruct now for a vote either so yeah right consensus yeah there we go great we will send it out thank you thank you I believe at this point we finished with all the items on number seven and we will take take a 10-minute break thank you okay we'll resume our meeting at this time and next on the agenda will be on Budsman's the ember good morning commissioners before I begin I also want to express my well wishes to former chairman Crosby I'm sure that my fellow staff members share in these well wishes with that commissioners up for consideration is a plan by the city of Lynn to utilize its 2017 transportation planning grant to catalog and evaluate the city's traffic signal systems and to identify necessary improvements needed to optimize traffic operations improve safety for all modes and determine appropriate near-term and long-range signal improvement strategies required as a result of anticipated traffic generated by the ongoing construction for the casino and anticipated future casino generated traffic joining me here today is Joe Delaney construction project oversight manager and Mary Thurlow program manager also available today is Richard Benevento transportation consultant for the city of Lynn and the president of a world tech engineering LLC to answer any questions you may have by way of background the commission authorized a community mitigation fund transportation planning grant for up to one hundred thousand dollars in 2017 for a transportation study or studies to assist Lynn in planning to avoid or lessen potential traffic impacts related to the development of Encore Boston Harbor at the time of the review of Lynn's 2017 application the mitigation fund review team memorandum stated that in order to help Lynn plan to avoid or lessen potential traffic impacts from the win now Encore Boston Harbor facility the review team recommends that the commission authorized an additional hundred thousand dollars for one or two non-fairy related transportation planning studies subject to the condition that that first Lynn would have to consult with the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and Commission staff on how such funds would be best utilized to lessen any casino related impacts on Lynn traffic I'm glad to report that the city has met with Mastat and Mastat has provided a letter of support which is included in your packet although the Commission has given the staff the authority to approve this use without further commission approval we bring this this item to the Commission for two reasons first based on the 2018 CMF application rounds it was expected that the city was planning to prioritize this study for a route 107 study second staff has questioned whether the new planned use of funds a citywide review of traffic signal systems has a sufficient nexus to impacts that may be caused by the Encore Boston Harbor casino in order to receive further information demonstrating this nexus commission staff held conversations first with city staff and then with Mr. DeVento staff asked Lynn to provide this further information and writing which is included in your packet based on the information provided and Mastat's recommendation we believe that the Commission should approve or allow the Commission staff to authorize the city of Lynn's request to utilize this funding for the traffic signal inventory we believe that Lynn has sufficiently demonstrated the nexus between the proposed mitigation measure and the potential for traffic related impacts on Lynn so let me turn to Joe Delaney to provide you with some more specifics about the location of the signals being studied when we first went through this application we were a little bit concerned about the the the traffic signals being sort of broadly all over the city and and whether or not this had that connection to the casino that we were looking at world tech engineering submitted a letter to us with some additional information and there's a couple of figures in there one of which shows the average daily traffic on some of these corridors and also another one that shows the locations of the traffic signals and what we saw there was that really the main routes that would lead down towards the casino from the north and from the west you know that those traffic signals the vast majority of them are on those corridors and that even if there's you know if there's a few outliers you know studying those is not you know really detrimental to the whole project and we felt that that those routes were the main routes down to the casino and that that justification was there yes you know I first want to compliment I know this has been a a long process in terms of trying to work with the city of Lynn and try to assess what the impacts are and I know we'd been through a couple of rounds with the with the mitigation grant funding I personally am happy to see that the city kind of took a wider view of this and certainly came up with a very strategic approach to figuring out how to how to deal with traffic something as simple as assessing when lights turn green and others turn red as well as the equipment but I think this proposals a lot more thorough it takes a look at impact now potentially what impact could be so I certainly support your recommendation anyone else yeah I would agree very well thought out and strong recommendation based on you know good information so do we have a motion madam chair I will move that the commission approved the request from Lynn relative to the community mitigation fund award to be used in the manner described here today second any further discussion all in favor I for zero thank you very much thank you that concludes my report sorry we'll invite you back to give us the results right so next on the agenda is research and responsible gaming director van der linden good morning good morning morning Cameron congratulations I am Mark van der linden director of research and responsible gaming I am joined by doctors Sarah Nelson John and I can never pronounce your last name click I almost got it and and doctor Debbie the plant we began working with the Cambridge Health Alliance Division on addiction roughly I would say three years ago maybe three and a half years ago as playing rich park casino open to evaluate a number of our responsible gaming programs including the voluntary self exclusion program which is what they will they will present findings from that evaluation to you today as required by statute so this is this is a direction by statute that we implement a voluntary self exclusion program this program is here to assist patrons who recognize that they have experienced a loss of control over their gambling and wish to invoke external controls I want to emphasize this is the voluntary self exclusion program it's an individual who steps forward and voluntarily enrolls in this program and not be confused with the exclusion program individuals utilizing this service can select a duration it can be anywhere from six months to five years if they've completed that shorter duration they are offered an opportunity to enroll in the lifetime program but must complete a shorter duration first once on the list they cannot collect any winnings or recover any losses from any gaming activity at a Massachusetts gaming establishment for the duration of that period at any time after the exclusion of the selected duration they may request to have their name removed from the list by doing so they would also need to complete a brief reinstatement session the purpose of this reinstatement session is to cover such topics as safe gambling tips the risks and responsibilities of gambling as well as referral or access to additional help should they should they wish to access that that last piece what I'm talking about this reinstatement session is not covered in the evaluation but it's a it's a component a required component by regulation in in massachusetts regulations many states almost any state that offers voluntary self or offers casino state regulated gambling offers some form of voluntary self exclusion massachusetts when we began contemplating this this program chose to do what we call an engaged approach ensuring that patrons obtain the assistance needed that they're responded to and respectful timely and discrete manner and that they feel supported I hope that that is that is what is conveyed through the findings of the evaluation that that will be presented to you today but it's a it's an aspect or an element of this program that that I feel incredibly strongly about this is not an administrative process this is something that that we want the patrons who are have the courage that are stepping forward to enroll in this program that they're saying that stepping forward and saying I have a problem and I wish to enroll in this program we want them to feel the support that they that they deserve so with that I will turn it over to Dr. Nelson good morning I want to thank members of the commission for the invitation here today to discuss our findings of the study of the Massachusetts voluntary self exclusion program today will be presenting the findings of a study that was conducted over a little over two plus years of the voluntary self exclusion program and that study included surveys with self excluders at the time of enrollment as well as six to twelve months after enrollment we also collected and analyzed some data on from their applications as well as data from their check-ins with the mass council on compulsive gambling and their player card data the the purpose of the study was to evaluate voluntary self exclusion we can't do this with an experimental research design as much as we would like to and that's because we can't randomly assign people to enroll in self exclusion or not they we have to give them that opportunity to self exclude so the next best way to do that is to assess the experiences of all of those who enroll in the voluntary self exclusion program our specific goals related to that purpose are spelled out on this slide here we've organized the findings throughout the study throughout the slide set based on these these goals so we want to understand excuse me skip my apologize we want to understand enrollment trends across time and place understand who signs up for self exclusion and why they're signing up for self exclusion evaluate their satisfaction with the program and their experiences examine outcomes for enrollees at about six to twelve months after their enrollment in self exclusion and then examine whether enrollment in mass self exclusion is a gateway to treatment so quickly and Mark covered some of this I just want to give a brief overview of what we know about voluntary self exclusion going into this evaluation self exclusion has been around for probably a couple decades now it's been implemented by both governments and casinos across the globe it allows individuals to ban themselves from entering specific casinos or regions casinos in regions for a specified period of time patrons agree not to enter the casino and the casinos agree that they'll remove the individual if they're caught and they'll also remove them from marketing materials past research suggests that ball voluntary self exclusion is associated with some changes in gambling behavior some positive changes and problems among enrollees and and I would note here that there's been an evolution of self exclusion over time when when we started looking at self exclusion it was a very punitive process where people who were caught were charged with trespassing as part of that agreement and we've transitioned now to a more supportive or treatment oriented program that you know provides some resources and help where it's needed and doesn't punish people who are caught on the gaming floor so in massachusetts at the time of the evaluation people who self excluded had three locations where they could self exclude they could do that down at plainridge park casino at the mass council and compulsive gambling which at the time was was still in boston or the mass gaming commission mark talked about the periods of exclusion there's for initial enrollment at 6 12 36 or 60 months after that initial enrollment period if they want to re-enroll there is the lifetime opportunity there exclusion covers all of the massachusetts casinos again at the time of the the evaluation it was just plainridge park obviously now that that's changed those who are caught are escorted from the premises and forfeit any money wagered and to be removed from voluntary self exclusion enrollees had to go through an exit interview process otherwise they were still self excluded and this slide shows a timeline of our study activities and how things changed over time in the study so vse enrollment began june 25 of 2015 the study did not begin until november so what we did with the help of the mass gaming commission was to provide a release a contact release form so that enrollees who weren't who came into vse between june and november would if they allowed us would have the opportunity to enroll in the study retroactively once the study began study began we had irb approval in the middle of november november 25 we trained the game sense advisors who were the the primary point of contact with voluntary self excluders and did all of our enrollment early on so we went down we did the training we kicked off november 25 at that point the study began we division staff myself included began going back to those who had released their contact info to try to enroll them in the study retroactively and the game sense agents began enrolling people who showed up down at Plain Ridge Park we went from november through march this initial study period with I think the game sense and agents only enrolled three vse's in the study so we recognized pretty early on I think December January that some changes needed to happen we met with with mark and members of the game sense agents to discuss some changes that we could make modifications to the protocol we put those in place that irb approval and those changes started on march 1st we got rid of the randomization vse's who came in either had the opportunity to be in the the names escaping me standard procedure versus an enhanced procedure for enrollment and so we took the randomization out because game sense agents recognized that basically everyone was getting the enhanced protocol so we took that out as well as we brought back in or reintroduced the ability for enrollees to either enroll in the moment of self exclusion or to release their contact info and we would follow up with them later to try to get them enrolled in the study baseline enrollment ended november of 2017 and we continued doing follow-up interviews through may 24th of 2018 this slide shows the the breakout of enrollment I won't spend a lot of time on this slide unless there are questions but we had 22 who enrolled in the study at the time of enrollment the the rest were enrolled with division contacts and follow-up later on we got 64 completed baseline surveys out of the 263 first-time enrollees and 47 completed a follow-up and this slide kind of merges the last two so the the blue is the retroactive enrollment for all of those who enrolled before the study had started but released their contact info the red is the initial study phase where we we saw a drop in enrollment on site and then the green is the the longer period there's the modified period where we allowed enrollment on site and off site through follow-up by the division and the top bar there blue is the total enrollment over time the red is the GSA is enrolling on site and then green is division and the bottom the purple excuse me is those who had released but never got never completed a baseline and just to be clear that's enrollment into the study yeah oh sorry yeah enrollment into the study not enrollment in enrollment into the program is is predominantly done by a game sense advisors roughly 90% today maybe you maybe you mentioned this but what percentage of people enrolled relative to those who enrolled in the study 24.3% so lower than we would have hoped but you know it was much lower and that's why we made some changes to the protocol this is enrollment in the baseline survey in the follow-up interview we collected additional records in order to to have full information on the 263 enrollees in some areas have you done other studies similar to this and other jurisdictions we did a previous evaluation for Missouri numbers similar enrollment numbers I don't know exactly off the top of my head but I do know having been involved in that the protocol was a little bit different so the Missouri Gaming Commission collected the contact info they were responsible for vetting it there was a long delay between phase one and phase two of that study where we actually doing follow-up which impacted our results we were actually cold calling people up to 10 years after they had enrolled in the self-exclusion program itself and I think it was around a quarter of the folks that we contacted thank you and this slide just shows our retention rate for those 64 who completed a baseline 47 completed a follow-up survey for us and this slide's a little bit hard we had some animations that didn't make it in but the the larger blue circle there the 263 are the first time self-excluders who we had application data there's some survey questions and some other measures in the application itself that we were able to analyze for the full sample the the top left blue circle there is enrollees who had player card data that we could analyze moving around to the top right are enrollees who had agreed to a one-week check-in with the mass counsel who were able to provide us with the data of those check-ins and in the bottom right there are the enrollees who completed the baseline study for us and there's obviously a some overlap between those groups so the slide here shows the trends in enrollment across time we had anticipated enrollment would drop off at a certain point and we didn't end up seeing that throughout the study period it was about one to two enrollments per week VSE enrollments now not study enrollments thank you Debbie so this is from the beginning the opening of Plain Ridge Park June of 2015 through the end of November 2017 when we completed our study enrollment this shows cumulative enrollment across time how many enrollments occurred at Plain Ridge Park with the game sense advisors and how many occurred with gaming agents and as Mark just said a few minutes ago a little over 90% were with game sense advisors and then this is the same data presented a little bit differently so instead of cumulative over time this shows the monthly variability there wasn't much of a trend line here obviously it started off high right when the casino opened we had some anecdotal evidence of people who were had enrolled previously to other casinos who came right in immediately upon opening and excluded themselves and then some variability over time and then peeking again towards the end of enrollment any idea why it peaked again toward the end good question I had a similar question I don't have a good answer I don't know if Mark knows maybe at that time if there was any additional promotional efforts going on or game sense advisors doing anything different that might have increased it yeah you know it's it's in the range of responsible gaming education week and that perhaps there were additional efforts to promote that we we always we always pay attention to that but maybe it resulted in additional enrollments in the program thanks you think you know the other thing to recognize here is in the enrollment numbers are low so it's tough to get a trend line you know you're going to see a lot of variability when when you're looking at such small numbers each month thank you John this figure simply shows which term self exclusion enrollees chose they were able to enroll for six months 12 months 36 months or 60 months upon their initial enrollment the most common initial enrollment term was five years that was selected by about 41% of initial enrollees you'll see that on this chart one enrollment was listed as lifetime even though it appeared to be a first enrollment this might have been a special case in general is as Mark noted lifetime enrollments are not in loud allowed until an enrollee has served an initial term is there a I'm trying to think of what our neighboring states to in terms of VSEs do and I know they don't offer as many options so are we expecting that some people who came in initially signed up for the term they might already be under in another state that's maybe why these two are more popular than the other ones yes and I have some of that data later on there was a significant portion of enrollees who were already enrolled in self-exclusion in Connecticut or other states so we'll look at that in a minute and there were several folks who during our study period signed up for the five year or signed up for six months went through the six months and immediately signed up for a lifetime term so they chose that shortest term in order to be able to sign up presumably for a lifetime as quickly as possible this is the geographic distribution of enrollees and again this is all enrollees the majority were residents of Massachusetts about 66% and most of these lived in the eastern half of the state however more than a quarter were residents of Rhode Island and then there were also a small percentage that lived in Connecticut and New Hampshire there was were no enrollees who are residents of Plainville itself where the Plain Ridge Park Casino is located but you do see kind of a cluster at least in the eastern mass so the take-home points in terms of understanding and enrollment trends across time and place first of all by the end of the study enrollment rates as John mentioned had not leveled off as we expected so some of our previous work suggests some adaptation there and we have not seen that yet at least during the term of the study the most popular enrollment term again was was five years and that point that most enrollees lived in eastern Massachusetts but we've got almost more than a quarter that are from Rhode Island that are coming up to self-exclude so our second goal was to understand who signs up for self-exclusion and why this is important because knowing who you're serving can help a program tailor itself to better meet the needs of that population we list the demographics of the population of self-exclusion enrollees here this is based on the entire population 97% were non-Hispanic 79% were white 58% were male and they tended to be in their 40s although female enrollees were older than male enrollees 57% were employed full-time 59% had a household income of $50,000 greater and 36% were married while 20% were divorced or separated and there's more detail about these demographics in the report itself and how they compare to Massachusetts census numbers so application questions asked enrollees about gambling behavior and one of those questions was about their frequency of gambling at different locations you'll see on this slide there are only 167 respondents and you're going to see this throughout because basically with application data there are a couple different versions of the application that were in play throughout the study and so we have missing data there as well so this is based on 167 self-excluders about 30% of these enrollees reported gambling a couple of times a week at Plain Ridge Park Casino leading up to their exclusion and more than 70% had frequented casinos or slots parlors in neighboring states within the past year we also learned that most enrollees had placed their last bet within a week of signing up for Massachusetts self-exclusion there was a small subset that came up and signed up for self-exclusion and had not gambled at all in more than a year so this is a group of people who were kind of doing the rounds essentially so either they had already self-excluded in Connecticut or other places and showed up on day one to exclude Plain Ridge Park when it opened so so most of them had placed their last bet that week and then they came in and self-excluded correct do we know if is that common or it's hard to tell I don't know if it's common across studies I haven't seen that level of detail there I know from kind of the responses again the the game sense agents that many of their self-exclusions they were dealing in essence with people in crisis so it was people who were reacting to something that was happening there I don't know the numbers on that you know I had expected to see many more enrollments coming through the gaming commissioner or going people going to the mass council and compulsive gambling vast vast majority of them happened at the casino and I think that they because they were at the casino gambled realized that it was beyond their control and then wish to enroll in the program so this figure is showing percentiles for the total amount that enrollees reported losing in the past year and the maximum amount they reported losing in one day and this is also out of application data and the past year amount is shown on the left axis and the one-day amount is shown on the right access access and I think the point on this chart is less the absolute amounts but the shape of the graph that you see so in both cases a few enrollees reported substantially greater losses than the rest of the sample so you have this subset that was gambling and losing very high amounts compared to even the rest of the sample of self excluders it's also important to note in terms of financial variables that 88 percent of this sample of enrollees is 122 to 129 also endorsed needing to get more money in the middle of a gambling outing at some point in the past year so the question is asking did you ever have to kind of get up in the middle of your gambling session to go get more money and 88% said they had done that in the past year doctor I am I wonder if something like this could be analyzed if there's enough data to be analyzed relative to income not just the losses if I lose a thousand dollars that it's it's a lot more significant depending on the income that I had it's an important question the problem with our data is the income question was asked with categories and ranges so it would be difficult but you could probably do kind of a more general look at that we did not do that what we did do is we looked at player card data to see if we saw a similar pattern between self-reported information and what we saw from the player cards and when we look at player card data the picture is similar so this is that the 91 people who use their player cards in the year before exclusion and in this case what we're looking at the blue line shows the average total amount enrollees wager per day and the red line shows the average total amount they lost per day and again the shape of the curves are telling a story there's a subset of enrollees here who are experiencing again significantly heavy heavier wagering and greater losses than others and just so I get the graphs right so when we're looking at the 95th percentile we're talking about really 5% of the people yeah correct you don't need to see all the information on this figure it's in your packet it shows what games the enrollees in our baseline sample reported gambling on the blue bars show the percent of respondents who reported playing the game at all in the past year and then the red bar shows the percent of those players who engaged with the game who were playing it on a weekly basis or more the main point here is not surprisingly gambling machines at slot parlors or casinos in addition to being the most commonly played game also had the largest percentage of players who played weekly or more is among self-excluders the figure also shows that many of the game types that were less prevalent in this sample so not that many people were playing them nevertheless those who played them were playing them quite frequently on average enrollees who completed our baseline survey had engaged in between three and four different types of gambling during the year prior to enrollment can you help me understand all you a bit more about the next after the casinos playing the lottery there's these large discrepancy between those weekly or what's what what is the inside in this case for the lottery so for the lottery what it's telling you is that just under 80% say that in the past year they've played the lottery and it's telling you of those 80% about 38% play it weekly or more often okay so most of them are gonna look you know you've got the ones on the bottom are the most prevalent things that people do so you've got the blue bars that are the highest but as you move up not very many people reported that they engaged in day trading but a significant of proportion proportion of those who said they did did it weekly or more often and those figures I'm sorry just to go back one or two slides those figures included only expenditures at the casino or all or all all this is this is all gambling for them okay this is interesting it's supported by the Sigma data as well that it's less about the type of gambling and more about the number of forms of gambling that people engage in so it relates to to problem gambling and if you're interested in that we have several papers on kind of that involvement effect as well so also not surprisingly given most past work on people who sign up for self-exclusion this figure shows how many gambling disorder criteria and rollies in our baseline sample endorsed and overall 92% of self-exclusion and rollies who completed the baseline survey qualified for past year gambling disorder this is similar to rates we see in other studies we also in the application itself it included a screener for gambling disorder that didn't have all of these criteria but had three criteria and even within that full sample you're seeing that the vast majority qualify for gambling disorder or are likely to and I think one thing that's really important here is the sample of enrollees who completed the baseline survey also reported on their physical and mental health and while they rated their physical health health as on average good close to 25% rated their mental health as poor and another 25% rated it as only fair so you have a good proportion of people here who are suffering from mental health issues potentially beyond their gambling problems how is mental health assessed in this case this is simply two questions that are self-reported they are taken from the composite international diagnostic interview but just as kind of screener questions generally just how would you rate your mental health currently it's interesting that people were peers pretty honest about that tend to be there's a gender difference but people do tend to be fairly honest on mental health questions as long as they know it's not something that's going to be used in some way it's a gender difference explain that one or do you have any guess I don't know I don't have it on that I don't know whether it came out in this study but I know in general women are more likely to report those issues and more likely potentially to seek treatment for them that was my guess too reasons for gambling this was also in the application itself and in general close to 60% report gambling to have a good time more than three quarters for the excitement they get but you also see that 45% endorse gambling to get the money they needed and more than a third were endorsing gambling because they felt sad or depressed so these questions they could endorse as many or as few as they wanted I would find this really this specific slide this specific information really helpful as we we consider programmatic or communication planning moving forward ways and these paths towards towards problem gambling are really important before I forget is there anywhere in the study that you looked at how people gamble whether they gamble alone or with friends I'm going to let you know in this notion of whether it's a fun activity or or or sad to be by themselves yeah we I don't think we asked that specifically in either interview but you will see here on the reasons for gambling the the least endorsed were because it was an important part of my social life and because others around me were gambling and then we asked both this slide shows kind of the first choice options we asked why are you signing up for the voluntary self-exclusion program and then we also followed up with an open response question that said why are you signing up for the program today this slide is showing that the more general answers so they selected from a list of reasons and most enrollees really endorsed individual reasons for enrollment as opposed to reasons that indicated being influenced by others or signing up to improve relationships with others so more than 80% of enrollees indicated that they signed up for financial reasons and more than 70% indicated that they signed up because they were unable to control their gambling and in their open responses that same kind of theme came out that they really they felt they could no longer control their gambling despite that most enrollees also indicated that they intended to quit all gambling upon enrollment and that kind of becomes important when we look at what they were actually able to accomplish as well so you've got 70% who are planning to quit all gambling pretty much cold turkey upon enrollment so really quickly take home points in terms of who's signing up they tend to be non Hispanic white and in their 40s now this is specific to the Plain Ridge Park Casino in that area almost everybody as Mark said is signing up at the Casino most enrollees are gambling frequently both at Plain Ridge Park and elsewhere there's a subset that has not gambled in over a year but there's also a subset that's gambling and losing significantly more money than others and many enrollees are experiencing not only significant gambling related problems but also mental health issues and there are reasons for enrollment tend to involve an inability to control their gambling can I just ask from that sub bullet the second subset of gambling from they tend to lose significantly more money than others while enrolling I'm sorry after they have been no this is still before we're about to switch over to after yep this is kind of what they look the snapshot when they enroll so the third goal we're looking at the satisfaction and experiences of enrollees with the program itself so part of the unique components of the Massachusetts version of self exclusion is that enrollees are offered a one week check in call if they accept a Massachusetts Council on compulsive gambling staff member will attempt to reach them and check in on how they're doing and whether they need any additional resources and we see that about one quarter of enrollees agreed to this call upon enrollment and Mass Council staff were able to reach about 75% of those who agreed when we examine data from the 46 enrollees who completed a follow-up interview with us about six months after enrollment 76% reported that they had participated in voluntary self exclusion in other states prior to enrolling in the Massachusetts program and among those folks 83% indicated that their experience with the Massachusetts program was better than their experience with the other programs those who chose to provide other comments about this noted that the other programs felt more like law enforcement and that this program felt more supportive to them that's an excellent number 83% Wow caveat it's 83% of the 46 who did the right but it's very positive yes and we're really seeing you know in terms of self-reported satisfaction it's high so so more than 75% of self-exclusion enrollees who completed the baseline interview were extremely satisfied with their enrollment experience another 20% reported being very satisfied in addition to rating the program highly what you see here the vast majority of enrollees also had really favorable impressions of the GSA's now you have a little bit of a self selection effect here I'm guessing the people who were not as satisfied with the GSA's were less likely to enroll in the study and this is from the baseline interview so you do have that effect going on at follow-up the numbers declined somewhat but the question was slightly different because it was satisfaction with the program whereas at enrollment all they know is the enrollment process but it's still among those who completed the follow-up interview and rated their satisfaction it's still quite high they're very or extremely satisfied on average when we asked how the program had helped people enrollees who completed the follow-up interview indicated that the risk of being caught was a deterrent for them and multiple respondents also indicated that the support that the program and the game sense agents provided was important to them only 63% of follow-up respondents chose to provide any suggestions for improving the program those who did suggested more follow-up and check-ins from the program better advertising offering a single regional VSE program and providing more sign-up opportunities that were away from the gaming floor and the casinos in terms of that first bit it's interesting that only 25% agreed to a check-in call but you see a lot of them wishing they had had one and so I'm not sure how you you work with that but but giving people more opportunities to sign up for that follow-up as they enroll could there be the phone call as opposed to other avenues of support oh great great point could it I was thinking maybe it was too close the one week being such a close proximity maybe people come to appreciate it after you know that's possible I believe I'd have to check in with with the game sense advisors but I also believe it was a checkbox kind of on the application and it may have been people who were kind of I don't want to share my data with a bunch of people didn't realize this was a question more about just do you want somebody to check in with you so it might be more how that's portrayed to them so this diagram is showing self reported violations so people in our follow-up sample ten of them reported having returned to Plain Ridge Park during their exclusion period and seven of those reported trying to enter the gambling floor of those seven one did not end up actually entering I guess they just thought about it to entered once to entered twice one entered three times and one entered six times that's not on the chart and two were caught one was told to leave the first and only time he tried to enter the other was identified by a game sense advisor on one of the two occasions that he tried to enter and removed by staff these numbers are too small to really do anything with in terms of the numbers that we're seeing here take home points enrollees in general are satisfied with the program they appreciate the extra support it provided and again only a quarter of enrollees agreed to a one-week check-in upon enrollment but many follow-up respondents wish there had been more check-ins provided so our fourth goal was to examine enrollee outcomes looking at variables we measured both at baseline and at follow-up and here we're examining intentions compared to post-enrollment behavior so as I mentioned you've got more than 60 percent even of our follow-up sample who intended to quit all gambling upon enrollment that's the blue box on the left and only about one-third of those succeeded when we followed up with them so 10 of the 29 enrollees who intended to quit either just casino gambling or intended just to quit gambling at Plain Ridge Park had more success again very small numbers though we're looking at two of five who intended to quit but continued casino gambling and only one of the five who intended to quit gambling at Plain Ridge Park returned and I think part of the point here is thinking about when enrollees are intending to quit all gambling if there's a way to help them kind of figure out what they need to do to help them along that path because many of them are saying I don't have any control of my game over my gambling self-exclusion is not a treatment program and so how do you take that next step for them getting the help they need to be able to accomplish those goals or to set maybe more reasonable goals for them going forward yeah I would say it reinforces the idea or the importance of some type of therapeutic intervention or treatment following enrollment this is not treatment and that even if people have the intention of quitting altogether that's a really big decision for many of these folks and it would additional support is really important thanks mark mirroring findings from other self exclusion studies across enrollees who completed the follow-up survey their frequency of gambling both at Plain Ridge Park and other casinos decreased significantly from baseline to follow-up gambling at Plain Ridge Park had the greatest decrease at follow-up enrollees were gambling more frequently at neighboring casinos than at Plain Ridge Park obviously but frequency were decreased if you can see decreases were significant across the board when asked to report their own perceived changes in gambling as the figure shows about a third indicated that they were not gambling now but had been gambling prior to self-exclusion enrollment and an additional 48% about half indicated they were gambling less now than when they enrolled in that category about gambling less now going back to the previous chart that's that whole array of from charity to sports betting in the office everything else it's not just strictly casino yes and if that's in the report because of time I didn't go into it but they're decreasing pretty much you know their biggest decreases are on slots and table games but they're also decreasing other games as well and the follow-up sample were less likely to endorse every single one of the DSM gambling disorder criteria at follow-up than at baseline so 41 of the 46 in the follow-up sample qualified for gambling disorder at baseline that's 89% and only 18 enrollees qualified at follow-up 39% what is that you say what was that what does that tell us well we looked at this two ways one thing it tells us some people are stopping gambling and so they don't report gambling disorder symptoms when they're in an abstinence period but we also looked at this among the people who are still gambling and they also experienced significant decreases in all of these criteria so it's possible that they're these are the people who are no longer gambling at Plain Ridge Park but are still playing the lottery or doing something that perhaps is this a speculation but is perhaps less difficult to control for them okay I think in general you know our research the research in general in the gambling field shows that that there's natural recovery that there are people who are able to control their gambling there are people who have a much harder time doing that and we're not yet very good at predicting who's who so who really needs to be a kind of go on an abstinence path versus kind of a harm reduction path so the the idea of natural recovery is basically somebody remits but don't doesn't seek out treat additional treatment and and I think that enrollment in the voluntary self-exclusion program without seeking treatment would still be considered that would be considered natural recovery correct what do you think I think that's an open question but it would not count as treatment so Debbie microphone next I think it's an interesting question what role does voluntary self-exclusion play for individuals that have no intention of accessing additional help is this this in and of itself an important intervention that they can stand alone and still provide evidence of support or help to people and that's the last thing we get into a little bit too trying to look at the small numbers but trying to look at treatment so this slide shows that they also appear to have improved in terms of their mental health in the follow-up sample so their self-reported mental health goes up and also information I didn't report on earlier their depression and anxiety scores go down significantly so we're seeing improvements in gambling behavior gambling problems and mental health the gambling behavior and gambling problems have been studied and found before with other self-exclusion programs there's been less work looking at actual more general mental health and the more major the change the enrollees intended to make the less successful they appeared to be at accomplishing that change with the caveat that this is based on the small follow-up sample so the more the more they wanted to change the less successful they were it's not wanted so this is the people who said I want to quit all gambling when I enroll those people who wanted to quit all gambling were less successful quitting all gambling than people who said I want to stop gambling at Plain Ridge Park or I want to just I want to stop gambling at casinos so so our last goal was really to test a specific hypothesis about treatment and our idea was that enrollment and self-exclusion could serve as a gateway to further treatment for people with gambling problems and this hypothesis was based on our past work with the Missouri self-exclusion program where we did find there was there were a lot of enrollees who had never sought treatment before who ended up seeking treatment after enrollment so that's what we were looking at and and initially the results look promising we have 41% of our follow-up respondents who indicated specifically that the self-exclusion program influenced them to seek additional help the picture is more complicated than that when we look at what our sample reported at baseline this is at enrollment 68% had already talked to a doctor or other professional about problems with gambling 48% had previously called a gambling help line 22% within the past year and 54% had sought help for gambling problems and reported previous treatment for a mental health or substance use problem so this figure also shows just the different types of treatment that they had attended prior to enrollment and really outpatient mental health treatment was the most common followed by gambling treatment and financial counseling and the point here is that a good portion of our sample was already in some form of treatment at baseline so if we look at that in more detail and yes with small numbers I think I had this animated before but what we're looking at in this chart is specifically gambling treatment gambling treatment seeking so like calling the help line or attending gambler's anonymous before and after self-exclusion enrollment so that top left box has 11 people in it nine of them didn't seek gambling treatment before and didn't seek gambling treatment after and you have to who had never sought gambling treatment who went on to exhibit some kind of treatment seeking after enrollment and then you can follow the boxes down as well but you've got 24 in that middle box where you've got no gambling treatment but some kind of treatment seeking or gambler's anonymous prior to self-exclusion enrollment and 14 of those kind of continue with that and some of them don't seek some of them do more importantly if you switch that box out and you're looking at treatment more generally because we know a lot of people with gambling problems don't necessarily end up in gambling treatment they may be in treatment for substance use problems they may be in treatment for mental health problems and they may address some of their gambling issues during that treatment the picture you're really seeing here and again it's very hard with without animation to see but it's that you have people who are already in treatment who stay in treatment and that's a significant portion of what we're seeing but you do have a subset who has had treatment in their lifetime is not engaged with treatment in the past year and then goes back to some form of treatment after enrollment so the speculation here again based on a small number is that self-exclusion might be providing a nudge for those people who are already engaged in some way with treatment previously so it might and that would explain some of the comments we got about seeking additional help like oh I went back to my counselor or oh I went back to gambler's anonymous so obviously you look at that as a positive right right so it's a different we're starting with a different sample than we expected that the self-excluders we saw in Massachusetts were already treatment engaged in a way we hadn't seen before and and that that also matches with people who are you know you've got this large majority of our follow-up sample who was already engaged with self-exclusion in other states you know because of the proximity of some of these other casinos so enrollment does not appear to serve as a gateway to treatment primarily because there was a high number of enrollees already engaged in treatment and more enrollees were engaged in some way in mental health substance use or gambling services after enrollment than in the year prior to it again based on a small sample there are big limitations to this study that we shouldn't ignore first and foremost the study design limits the ability to draw causal conclusions and this is a general problem with almost any study of a self-exclusion program you can't randomly assign people to self-exclusion in general you can randomly assign people to different features of self-exclusion programs and that might be something to pursue in the future to see if certain aspects of the program are having more efficacy than others the recruitment rate was low so we ended up with a 24% recruitment rate so you've got a self-selected sample in many ways we attempted to compensate for this by using additional data sources wherever we could and we have missing data kind of through throughout the database that we had and we go into more detail on that in the report as well I'm going to skip the slide because it's in your packets and it's text heavy and go straight into program recommendation so we had sets of recommendations for the program for the data systems themselves and for evaluation of the program the first is to publicize the program more widely throughout the state this is based on the comments that are in the report from many of the self-excluders which were that they did not learn about the self-exclusion program until they spoke to a game-sense advisor also specifically collaborating with substance use and mental health treatment organizations to publicize the program so as I said many people with gambling problems are in treatment for something else so if there's a way to have even more publicity around the program in those settings that could be helpful consider making one week check-in calls a standard part of the program not optional at the very least making sure to offer these calls and describe their purpose explicitly to every enrollee so making sure that's a clear piece of the program and the fourth one is to inter include motivational interviewing training for program staff and the rationale behind this is that thought about people who want to just quit all all gambling and potentially having a little you know a small brief intervention that takes place there in terms of helping people with their goals or those pieces as well conducting an assessment of treatment history and enrollment goals with enrollees at the time of enrollment that kind of goes hand in hand with that motivational interviewing piece so in terms of where they're at in that process provide resources for gambling treatment and other forms of mental health and substance use treatment in enrollees region so even if our sample was self-selected and we had a small sample it's a quarter of the self-exclusion enrollees who were in our sample and many of them are reporting mental health issues that were beyond gambling problems including Rhode Island as a region for which resources are provided a quarter of enrollees came from Rhode Island and finally considering offering regional VSE and making VSE enrollment available through gambling substance use and mental health treatment providers I know very few people signed up that either the gaming commission or the mass council but if it had been you know very easily easy to sign up at your substance use program or at your mental health program that might have increased those numbers can I ask you when you do the follow-up call so you ask if they're willing to take them do you find the best time of day to reach out to them I'm seeing if you get a cold call on something that you don't want other people to know about they're not going to want to engage right two separate things we didn't do the the one week check-in calls were part of the program that was mass council and then we did six month interviews and John can speak to the six month interview portion yeah so we've done a lot of these these interviews with various populations that are difficult to follow and and we try our best to vary both who's calling by gender sometimes we find they're more receptive to one versus the other so we vary that over time if we're not getting a response and we also did nights and weekends so we tried to to provide as many opportunities for follow-up as possible but do you determine the variant that they ask you there any opportunity for them to say you know I'd rather talk to a woman you know after five o'clock I'd please don't call me during the day yes so early on we did not ask that question we did make a modification to the the release form and all the the game sense advisors were asking that question probably from about month four on what's the best time of day what are the best days of the week to try to reach you to make our lives easier so that we could schedule appropriately so I was interested in your motivational interviewing training so we're really trying to get those folks that are interviewing to influence have a greater influence on the recipients right maybe talk to them about realistic goals or how how successful the weekly calls are something along those lines is that what we're referring to I think with the motivational interviewing part of it is and again for this is a voluntary program so it's for people who are interested and I think the game sense advisors kind of gauge this pretty quickly but if the game sense advisors have that training to be able to engage at enrollment when people are sitting in their office for potentially you know an hour or more to go through this process and to be able to have those tools as they're having a conversation with them if those issues are coming up anyway to engage in a way that can be helpful as a brief intervention that could be useful so the good news is that motivational interviewing is a part of every game sense advisors sort of core training that they receive I think that you know it's something that you need to practice too and I think that sort of ongoing training in motivational enhancement or motivational interviewing absolutely makes sense and I've had the training and to me it's about kind of tapping into people's motivations for change what is it about that about this that makes you you want to change and it's mostly asking people questions and setting realistic goals I think goes hand in hand with that too and the data nerd in me says that's also something you'd want to evaluate so maybe you give half of the game sense advisors a booster course in their motivational interviewing and you're looking at people's reactions and how that because there could be this is not self-exclusion is not treatment and it shouldn't be portrayed as if it is so there is a fine line there but kind of evaluating whether that is helping speaking of data nerds so so data systems recommendations these these ones are really more kind of set up and supported within the report itself so we just had some recommendations related to the application itself making it feed into a relational database so everything could be linked more easily and more efficiently for evaluation purposes setting up the application in a way that really has it feed directly into that database and we have some specific recommendations about how the questions are set up so that you really can't not answer by accident and then creating a data system that can kind of generate reports automatically because you know we can go through and we can do this two year evaluation but it's great if you can get some kind of evaluatory information on a more ongoing basis and if you have kind of a database set up they can kick out more automated automated reports that can help you so as Mark said we didn't really get into the exit interviews because a lot of them hadn't happened as our study was wrapping up but for continuing evaluation we suggest really formalizing the information collected during both check-in calls and the exit interviews collecting a standardized set of information about outcomes for all enrollees at that time so then even if you're not conducting another study like this you have some outcome information that you're getting at least for the people who are coming off the list and then include key domains of interest as mandatory components of the application throughout so you've got a baseline and an exit interview for comparison tracking information about the resources that are shared with enrollees to really look more at that treatment engagement since that is something that the program hopes this engaged process will help with and finally examining program features that might be particularly effective at facilitating change and this is where if you really want to look at causality you've got to figure out how to do some kind of experiment where you're randomly assigning people to different versions if you have features that you think might be particularly effective. Once again I just want to thank the commissioners for taking the time to invite us to speak today also want to thank Mark and the Massachusetts Council on Compulsive Gambling for their collaboration on the initial design of the study and most importantly the game the game sense advisors for their tireless work implementing the study and the voluntary self-exclusion program participants who took the time to answer our questions and participate in the study. Thank you. And as well as Teresa Fiore who's really the kind of the hands-on program manager for the gaming commission in this. Mark I had three quick questions and I'm assuming when you're say continuing evaluation recommendations you're going to continue to roll this out obviously now that MGM has come online. Do you have a plan for tracking the success of the program is potentially more people from Western Mass even out into New York or Vermont or anywhere else might be getting to take advantage of the program and how is when you look at research but secondly how you look at the rollout of VSE can you take some of these recommendations in hand and make changes to the program. Yeah you know VSE we are talking about relatively small numbers right now I think we have over 300 people right now but commissioners Iniga and I were at MGM yesterday it seems like that the rate is increasing it's it's on a standard day one to two per day from MGM I think is what was reported to us yesterday this list will eventually have thousands of people on it and that's pretty standard if you look at state by state continuous improvement of the program I think these are these are great recommendations and I think that they're very doable for us to implement so I really appreciate that. We continue to gather data of program enrollees so we will have that we don't have a formal evaluation under way of the voluntary self exclusion program right now I think that it's something that that would be interesting to continue to pursue and use the recommendations of how we continue that evaluation moving forward if it comes down to a matter of timing and budget and that sort of thing at this point down to two other just quick points I'd welcome the chance to see whether we can collect information whether somebody is a veteran as they're logging their information and we know that's another vulnerable population but too I think you know beginning days of the commission we heard stories of if you wanted to sign up for BSE you had to walk through the gaming floor past everything that would tempt you to register and it's more of an acknowledgement of the great work that you've done and Teresa have done and Mass Council has done that yes you can still sign up at the casino but I think the extra effort needs to be acknowledged that and you shared this with me and head of Springfield is that the team was going proactively to gamblers anonymous meetings to give people the option of signing up right there so I think there's a a shout out and kudos to you and the team for that response you got of what a positive experience it has been for the people that make a pretty brave and bold decision to do this yeah I agree you know I want to do more I really believe that we need to have more designated agents as we call them in the communities around we're around the state but especially around where our casinos are to enroll people through different different avenues and that could be strengthened a lot there was the recommendation of the regional voluntary self-exclusion approach and that there's been a lot of discussions with surrounding states it was led by chairman Crosby we will continue to to do that work to see that through I think that's a huge piece and it's reflected in here so many people have enrolled in other states why are we making them go through process after process after process just to make sure that as gaming expands that they they are safe or on this list yeah yeah I was actually that's well said and I was I had a question I realized that maybe this was not necessarily part of the study but one of the some of the features one of the big barriers towards this this regional effort has been that we have different features between around regulations and statutes and approach a real simple and straightforward one for example is just the terms we have the six month one three five and lifetime and have to go through one before you go through lifetime and just I'll just say that other states have sometimes very different one and five and lifetime or just five and lifetime without the prerequisite is there anything from this study that you would say you know if you did one thing or another relative to options versus broadly is there anything that you could you could comment on do you mean general take homes or is there something specific about terms that you're asking the general take homes but I was I was thinking specifically if there's there's at least two things in this narrow topic of giving the the giving people a number of options to to sign up for it right at the same time we want to make this regional effort and just many options are actually a barrier towards that whole effort so if you had to guess as to what might be overall more effective would you want to have to give people more options or less but a more widely I guess three thoughts come to mind one is you can look at that data and it seems important to have the two ends of our spectrum so the six month and the five year the lifetime piece I know our past work with Missouri when we evaluated it that program required lifetime and people did kind of have regrets and issues so it really hasn't been evaluated but but there still is that question about whether you would want to have lifetime be it first enrollment or not but my third thought is for a regional program would it be possible instead of trying to to change our terms without evidence one way or the other to really make it so that you know the gaming commissions within each of the neighboring states within new england somehow have the capability to sign people up for as many of these programs as so if I go into the Connecticut gaming commission and say I want to sign up for the massachusetts the Connecticut and the new hampshire self-exclusion programs can I do that if there were the capability to do that then I believe that's the the direction that's the direction we're going yeah still there there's these thought process that we ought to have a form that's as common as possible relative to options just for the management of the program but but but I know that's not necessarily yeah I mean the terms you've got a little bit over 40 percent choosing the five year you've got your next highest is 12 months with a little bit over 30 percent choosing that and then a little over 15 percent chose six months and 10 percent chose three years I think really positive results from this study and I think they're really good sound recommendations to move forward and make it stronger so I thank all of you for for coming in thanks thank you thank you next we have workforce supplier and diversity development director griffin is your team here or should we take a short break I know hearing that we're going to go for another hour we're going to take a five minute break thank you we're ready to resume our meeting and with that our item is workforce supplier and diversity development director griffin good afternoon commissioners good afternoon yeah 1201 first I would like to extend my regards and express gratitude for the work of chairman Crosby especially regarding the chairman's champion related to diversity and inclusion and access to good quality jobs so I just wanted to start that way and I'll just add so in November just to give a little bit of background and then I'll introduce our guests who are here today in November of 2017 in response to gaming commission RFP to assist with construction diversity recruitment efforts for the casinos the northeast center for trades women's equity was awarded a grant from the commission to launch a first of its kind statewide recruitment initiative to encourage more women to pursue a career in the union building trades the build a life campaign was kicked off in massachusetts with the hope of encouraging women to consider a career in the building trades in addition to the broad advertising campaign comprehensive website featuring careers in various trades a critical initiative within the campaign to help women gather the career information that they needed has been the trades women Tuesday programs offered in both Boston and Springfield I'm going to have them talk a little bit more about that this initiative initially largely funded by the massachusetts gaming commission is the result of a unique collaboration of dedicated organizations that have joined forces to address the chronic challenge I'd like to acknowledge the massachusetts convention center authority the massachusetts department of transportation our licensees and host and surrounding communities there are additional partners that I'll have folks acknowledge here so we have some members of the northeast center for trade women's equity here today to provide you a one-year update of the program and before I introduce them I'd like to be the first to congratulate them for being the successful bidders for this year's $50,000 diversity grant so that's true that's a big a no and we hope that this highly tangible long-term solution will be a catalyst for a future of economic opportunity for women so with those remarks I'd like to introduce Kate Harrison who's the pipeline navigator and staff person for the northeast center for trades women equity and Susan Moyer board member of ncte also co-founder of the policy group on trades women's issues thanks to the commissioners and thank you Jill for allowing us the opportunity to be here to present our progress today so it's been one year since we launched a build a life that works campaign to encourage women to pursue careers in the building trades and as Jill explained it's a partnership between many key partners but the gaming commission being a big one also the metro building trades and it's designed to address the need for eligible women workers in the pipeline to union apprenticeship so that we can get more women working to build the casino projects and other massachusetts projects so we began doing outreach to women last september 2017 with our very first trades women tuesday event in roxbury and what the trades women tuesday is it's an event where it's an open house where women can come in and get information about how to get started in the union building and but the website has been a really big way that women are are connecting with us in these days we're getting 75 to 100 new website contacts a month one of the main priorities of this campaign is to share the uh career opportunities in the union trades with women of color and we've been doing that 75 of the women who attend our tradesmen tuesday events are women of color 50 of them are african-american and you can see on the slide the specific racial and ethnic breakdown but we're happy to see that that we're reaching our target there target audience kate um which which is great i mean that was obviously one of the major goals behind the program um i'm sure for jill's benefit and elaine's benefit do you ask folks how they heard about the program through any or the events through any number of means be it social media or they're seeing the flyers or how are how are they learning about trades women tuesdays for the most part um so we do ask that question and the responses are pretty varied um which i see is meaning that we need to keep up all different forms of outreach people um report that they've seen the flyers a lot of people um hear about us through the transit ads so we put up um bus shelter ads and um inside of buses ads inside of the buses and those were very effective and i'd say would be the biggest source of how folks heard about us but also they could say through uh friends word of mouth programs just aside from the transit ads it's pretty spread okay like i like the ones um on construction sites and i look at one every day right out of you know right next door um which i think it's great too yeah we have um our our ads up on the job site screens or the bunting that goes around yeah construction sites so in regard to our preliminary results um one big thing that we did this year was develop an automated database to track and sort these these inquiries these interested women um so we now have a pretty robust sales force system that can automatically determine a woman's eligibility for apprenticeship it sends out automated email communication and um it allows us to keep records of women's progress in the pipeline from being just that interested woman to someone who's applied to apprenticeship so on and so forth um through our outreach this year we identified 238 women who are actually eligible so the system supported us doing that identification and those 238 women are really um they're in good hands now because we have their information they're regularly updated with opportunities um and they're they're in the pipeline they're on track to to union careers um and we keep the line of communication open with these women so they all have my contact information my phone number in my email and as a pipeline navigator i'm the central point of contact for their questions because um it is a complicated system to apply to a specific trade union apprenticeship program and so without um having a point of contact um and without other portions of the build a life campaign like the website where we have frequently asked questions um it really it could be difficult for for women to be successful but with our support it's they have all they need uh retention how are we doing with retention um i know that sometimes an issue in non-traditional fields uh can you tell me once they start the internship are they or the apprenticeship rather are they are they staying with it so i don't i would say i don't think we're we're there to gathering data on retention yet um all right we'll talk more about next step soon but the next step is determining um who has applied and been accepted to these apprenticeship programs um because the timeline for applying and getting started in their apprenticeship program is actually pretty long it can take up to a year just for the program that you're interested in to um to open up to so that's that's on the horizon for sure soon to tell yeah um so we already are seeing um i mentioned we are going to be figuring out who's who's being accepted where who's starting work where um and Susan will talk more about that soon but um i can say anecdotally meaning through self-reporting um women are being accepted to apprenticeship and we've seen since women start work with the sheet metal workers the laborers the carpenters and the painters and um looking forward to seeing the data that comes from our formal uh outcome evaluation survey which is going out soon i'd like to mention that this campaign is actually an award-winning campaign so a few months back in may um Commissioner Stebbins was accepted the rose off award for excellence in marketing um campaigns that promote diversity along with the marketing campaign k h j marketing which put together all the um really slick graphics for us and um outreach materials um so that's great accomplishment and we've received significant press on the bill the live campaign in no small part uh thanks to um press guru elaine driscoe from mass gaming commission she's been very very supportive in helping us put together press releases and get the word out um we've been featured in major media outlets including the boston globe the wall street journal um and most recently uh cnbc national news network and we've also been in some local news stations have done interviews with our featured trades women and we've been in um trade publications and other other uh press outlets but we have i believe the cnbc news clip queued up so we could play the video now and share up next closing the gap big new casinos are rising above the state of massachusetts but to get their gaming license they had to commit to women in hard hats i'm contessa brewer i have more details coming up on nightly business report and finally tonight we've been telling you about the shortage of skilled construction workers across the country well now one project in massachusetts has set out to address the skills gap and also the gender gap contessa brewer is in the bay state for us tonight rising across from the boston skyline a new casino takes shape thanks to thousands of construction workers we do the heating and cooling hvac for the building savi mandority is one of 328 women working construction at on core boston harbour but it's taken her 10 years to reach her goal journeyman pipefitter i would let them know that it's a great opportunity it's great benefits um it's not as it's not hard as people view it as women with just as hard workers men on the job site as well we lace our boots in time just the same way as they do now she's the face of a statewide initiative to recruit women into construction in order to make this work you have to have a kick ass champion and you got to kick these doors down the massachusetts gaming commission has been instrumental following a mandate by the legislature to increase workforce diversity it requires these casinos to put women in six point nine percent of the construction jobs that's more than double the national average and the commission is tough about enforcing it we go union by union contractor by contractor do you have the have you met the target and if you're an outlier somebody else is doing eight percent women and you're only doing zero percent women we call you out but they soon realized there simply weren't enough skilled trades women to meet those goals so the commission partnered with unions casinos and nonprofits to get more women in the pipeline it's been very hard it takes a considered effort and it really takes a partnership with the local trade unions as well as the contractors they have to push these requirements down to their subcontractors and it can be in many cases more expensive because you're taking inexperienced labor and you're putting them on the site and you're making sure that you train them up but we've made that investment is has our partners in the western part of the state mgm springfield will open its casino doors in mid august its construction workforce exceeded the diversity requirement employing seven and a half percent women including an all-female demolition team it's important to get um a woman's perspective on every aspect of the job whether it's the office or on the construction site on core boston harvard just hit the seven percent mark last month a milestone achievement for the newly renamed project struggling to emerge from the shadow of a me too scandal and gulfing its former ceo steve win and threatening the status of its gaming license but its president expects a high return on investment made in the diversity initiative i think we'll wind up with a better work environment and a better place for our guests to enjoy because they'll look around and see that we are really reflective of today's society the recruitment efforts also focus on hiring workers of color and veterans and as a journey worker once they reach that level they can make 90 thousand dollars a year so it can be a life-changing experience not only for the individual but the communities in which they live it actually leads to economics stability and security for everybody 10 years ago savi was making minimum wage and living with her father today i just bought a house would you have ever been able to do that on what you were earning not at all no the statewide campaign aims to see 20 women employing construction by 2020 a lofty goal but the winds of change are blowing in massachusetts in everett contessa brewer nightly business so um we are really excited that we're going to be going into another grant year with funding from the mass gaming commission um and i'm actually going to turn it over to susan moyer to tell you guys more about um what's coming up next and where we're headed thank you um thanks kate and jill and elaine and jenny is somewhere and all the other people who have made this happen susan turn on your microphone here you go is it on i don't think it's on yeah gotta do a hard question or use my i need someone younger and stronger how about that one that was okay um so um as kate said uh we wanted to report on what our next steps are and also provide a little larger context um commissioner bryan we want to share with you particularly what we've been doing here and the impact it has had so our and our next steps we're expanding our tradeswoman tuesday as a result of this funding we're going to be able to expand our straight trade woman tuesday um we're going to continue in springfield even though the casino is open we're going to move into waster we're working with a community labor coalition there which includes coughlin electric you saw you might have seen it going went by pretty fast a woman working for coughlin electric at mgm uh at on core actually that was in the video um and we're going to include uh expand to the south coast there are building pathway pre-apprenticeship programs in both those localities so it provides an opportunity to let the get the word out for women at the opportunity to be a union building trades worker is there but also it provides they have the infrastructure for the pipeline to move women into pre-apprenticeship um we're going to be documenting and sharing the best practices and outreach and recruitment um with particularly for those localities and beyond massachusetts how do we actually get the women what we have been able to substantiate with the program we've done with the with the partnership we've had with the gaming commission is we've killed the myth that women don't want this job we've absolutely killed that every time that kate pulls together a trade woman tuesday we have 20 to 40 women show up in western mass we started slow but we've built up for that every time we go someplace and provide women with the information that there is an opportunity in this work the women show up the next step is to move them through that pipeline as we like to say it is not true that women would like a bum to wipe a bum for $15 when they're up to have an opportunity to dig a ditch for $35 an hour and that is the option that these women are looking at low wage dirty heavy work with with no future no pensions oftentimes no benefits versus doing a very similar kind of work with a real career and a future and women will come out so we're documenting and sharing those best practices and as kate noted here we're in the final stage of an outcome evaluation design like final stage like it was supposed to launch it within the next couple of days where we're going to be following up with the over 700 women who've been in contact with other than the 230 odd woman who actually have met the qualifications to begin to answer the questions that you ask commissioner are women applying are they getting in the door where are the doors closed and where are they open have a better sense of women how women are going to proceed through this pipeline it was very interesting to watch the previous presentation because you know i was one of the authors of the 2009 study of the impact of gaming in the state and one of the things that is remarkable about our statute is that demonstrated by the last presentation this is not about controlling gambling among compulsive gamblers in our casinos this is about the social benefits of addressing compulsive gambling throughout the commonwealth this project is in the same vein it is not simply about getting enough women so that we can say hey yay yay we did great at the casinos it is really about addressing the long-term policy failure of the doors that were closed to women in these in these careers in the union building trades so what we've done in addition to the pipe the pipeline was a new project we just started a year ago the need for the pipeline was demonstrated by the lack of supply when we were trying to get women into the casinos we had exhausted through the demand strategy that we have built with the casinos and i do want to mention the umass building authority which has also been a very strong development and ownership partner with us what we've been able to demonstrate through these two uh very strong partnerships in our targeted projects is that uh demand demand equaling jobs we believe is really if not the driver of retention a critical driver of retention when people can't they get all kind of workforce development industry is strewn with examples of training people where they couldn't get the jobs you don't have retention if people don't get the jobs so what we've done is we put women to work over 100 women at mgm in springfield 350 i think almost 350 now women are working at everett this is groundbreaking this has never happened in the history in the history of the construction industry to have that many women working on a particular pro on this project what we've also done there is we have tested and identified best practices so it was a little comment that just the the comment that um on core had just reached seven percent that was very uh time uh in a particular point in time at the particular point where they came out and they did that video we were engaged in a process through our access and opportunity committee with the partners on why the numbers had dropped at on core the numbers had been seven percent at on core for a long time and all of a sudden over the course of our regular access and opportunity committees meetings where we closely examine and monitor the data as commissioner um cross be explained we saw this drop why were we getting this drop and through that partnership through that learning process that we do through the access and opportunity committee we realized that overtime had gone up at the on core job saturday work had gone up and on core at our suggestion went back and took a snapshot of monday through friday versus saturday guess what was happening on saturdays white men were working on saturdays the foreman were choosing who got the overtime and we had a significant drop in diversity both gender and racial diversity on saturdays once we identified that on core engaged in a process with their subcontractors with their foreman and the number has gone up that's the kind of deep participatory work that we have been able to do through these partnerships i want to say that um none of this happens without commission across be it is a great loss for us we know that the commitment is broad based through the commissioners through the staff and the in the gaming commission um we know that this work is going to continue but in 2014 when we went to commission across be and we said this is what you got jill was just recently on board your diversity plans are going to come from your developers they're going to be boilerplate diversity plans that's what always happens and women are going to be way down the bottom this is what you can do to make this work and he and jill and others on the staff worked with uh the licensees and you got diversity plans that really spoke to this long term policy failure a 30 year failure to open up these jobs to women 50 of the workers the women workers in this industry of women of color it addresses both gender and race you have been wildly successful because of steve's leadership from the gift he really carried this he carried it to you he carried it to the staff what we have done here is just it's world shaking we are carrying this well beyond the casino we have a new partner i don't know if i i don't know it's millennium partners with lince of garage that uh the millennium partners has a 12 percent target for the new project and they are committed to making that 12 percent women's hours on that project when they did uh when the uh leadership of millennium partners did their first about a month ago did their first pre-construction meeting with their subcontractors two of their first three slides were based on the work that we've done here on how important it is to bring gender diversity to this population how there are written best practices we're going to we're going to launch our revised best practices next week finishing the job based on the work that we have done here in this partnership uh we've been invited to go out let's get more from the captors and i are going to portland oregon um next month um to show them what we've done we've been invited to british columbia which has a whole new initiative they're like yes we want to get women to work and we have no idea how to do it we can go out and say we actually can tell you how to do it because we've done it here and we've proven it works um one other additional thing is that we don't have the juice to tell the licensees that their permanent construction crews should be 20 percent women we've said it to them we've mentioned it to them it's not written down anyway that they have to do it but the goal they have the women working there now they could make a decision every casino is can is a is an ongoing construction project construction never stops they have the juice to make the choice to have 20 percent women on their permanent construction crews i leave you with that because that would be an outstanding contribution to our goal of 20 percent women by 2020 we have 20 percent in a couple places a couple of the couple of the subcontractors on your licensees jobs have reached 20 percent we've had 20 percent at the cement mason's we have 20 percent women apprentices in the eight excuse me 18 18 percent women apprentices at the laborers now 12 percent women apprentices in the ironworks and that's because the casinos have demanded women to do these jobs so we look forward to continuing this with you into the long-term future and express our specific appreciation to Commissioner Crosby for his service for his long-time public service to the commonwealth and to the commission and the commissioners for the work that you've done to make this successful thank you very much thank you thanks and i also want to acknowledge Commissioner Stebbins who's been a strong supporter in this whole initiative he came out to join us on tradeswoman tuesday uh in springsfield it was awesome apparently and keeps up to date on my reports and we i just thank you and thank all the commissioners for your support in the first year getting this off the ground well and just a reminder i think our october aoc meeting which is our last out in springfield is not only going to be a wrap-up of mgm's work but it's also i think there's going to be an event mgm is hosting to celebrate the diversity success that they've had through construction so i know all my colleagues are invited as well as any staff that wish to attend but uh um hopefully we can use that event as an opportunity to keep spreading that message around western max so keep the ball rolling mgm uh it's part of the mgm's soft launch they had a contractors night one of the contractors won you know i should have said more about how we're getting money we're getting money from everybody one of the contractors um won a substantial amount of money that night i was in a meeting with her unrelated to this the next day and i said well the only reason you're making it's a woman-owned company so everybody's going to know what it is the only reason you're making uh you're making your numbers out there is because of the work we've done together and two days after that she donated the winnings to the northeast center of tradeswoman that's awesome great story so you're also lucky not just hard we're also lucky good social policy brings luck it's not no thank you for all your work it's not you've you've also contributed quite a bit to this effort uh we know um and you and many others uh in those aoc meetings that um you know the hard work happens month to month day to day and um and we also want to thank you and the enthusiasm and the uh never say die attitude is really apparent i loved your story on overtime i've experienced the same thing in policing and we had to put a new policy in where we went down the list everyone had an opportunity in order to to work the overtime and that really helped but you you're right you have to identify the issue first which you were able to do so that's um i'm sure that call was an interesting one right but thank you great presentation thanks for all your work and it is uh it's a it's a tremendous initiative and you pointed it out it's not just the casinos these women will have uh good paying union jobs uh moving forward in all the projects so thanks thank you thank you very much thank you and now we have um special guests from Cambridge college oh oh oh watch the picture watch the water okay commissioners um as you are aware a strong priority of the gaming law is a focus on employment opportunities for the under and unemployed and jobs with career advancements for massachusetts residents the dealer position at a casino is one of those great opportunities the basic requirements include an eighth grade level math competency must be 18 at least on the side of the state and be willing to work weekends holidays and have a great personality i mean with those basic requirements you can be successful so with the joint goal of ensuring that massachusetts residents are prepared for these new careers in the commonwealth on august 24th of this year the commission licensed the first gaming school in greater boston um to prepare for the expected spring hiring of more than 1 000 dealers to fill out the um on core boston harbour gaming staff um on core boston harbour and cambridge college announced in mid september the first session of bet on you the dealer school at cambridge college um at their new facility in charlestown and i had the um pleasure to join them for the ribbon cutting at their gorgeous new facility um the collaboration is known as the greater boston gaming career institute so um i'd like to acknowledge in the back row we have um jackie crumb um doug williams uh vice president table games um jenny peterson who i think you all know director of employment um and here um in the row next to me president deborah jackson of cambridge college philip page vice president of strategic partnerships and mark rotundo vp of innovation and strategic initiatives i think i got your titles right um so i'm going to turn it over to president jackson thank you so much jill i had a big smile when you announced the approval of the first ever we're very excited very proud of that so first of all good afternoon commissioners very nice to be here and uh thank you for inviting us here to give you an update on the new greater boston gaming career institute we debated that title for a long time because pretty long but we decided it said what we needed to say about it at cambridge college i want to first start by acknowledging the commission and the members of your staff who provided such essential guidance to our team throughout this entire process of us securing certification and assuring that we're meeting all of the requirements of having a gaming school and we worked very closely with your team and we worked very hard to make sure we're being responsive and so we're very pleased with the outcome i want to especially acknowledge of course jill griffin who's sitting right next to me and the wonderful partnership she formed with our team but also paul connelly director of licensing and william curtis your licensing manager i also want to thank members of the executive office of education the metro north regional employment board boston private industry council for their help in shaping the institutes approach especially around student engagement and as you know we're helping with pipeline development and also the provision of scholarships and so the partnership with each of those organizations as well has been also very important to the outcome as jill mentioned we had a ribbon-cutting ceremony to launch the institute on september 27 there was just enthusiasm in the room from everyone who participated but most especially from the instructors and the students i'll reference that a little bit later in my in my presentation and it was really wonderful to see and wonderful to experience so i also want to note that we're very proud of the partnership we have with on core to deliver this at this institute they've worked very closely with us every step of the way you'll hear more from my team about how they were involved but their engagement has been so instrumental in us reaching this point also they were very responsive to our concerns we had very specific concerns about the students what they would experience what it would be like when they finish and go into the casinos we raise those issues with on core and every step of the way we felt that they were responsive they tried to work with us and we ended up addressing and resolving uh some you know many of many of our concerns coming out of the gate on cambridge college's role in this i want to tell you a little bit about cambridge college uh just so you know the context in which this gaming institute is operating we are a private non-profit nationally accredited higher institution higher education institution we offer undergraduate school and we also offer three graduate schools one in psychology and counseling we have a graduate school of management and a graduate school of education we began nearly 50 years ago with a mission and based on a premise and a belief that everyone should have an opportunity to pursue higher education so the college was founded with the purpose of opening the front door to that opportunity and providing any adult willing interested motivated willing to do the work motivated to secure uh something greater for themselves and their family to pursue higher education ours is an access mission we believe that opportunity should be available to you no matter your age no your gender your race your background and so it was on that basis that cambridge college has founded and on that basis that we exist today and i say that to you because the partnership and our decision to do that was because we felt this aligned with our mission if we didn't think this opportunity was mission based we would not have pursued it so i wanted to say that we feel very felt very strongly about this over the course of our 50 years we have graduated over 36 000 students we have 36 000 alumni these alumni have come out of one of our four schools and they've gone on to become some of the finest teachers in boston public schools some of the finest counselors and community service organizations throughout the commonwealth some of the most incredible managers in hospitals health care institutions biotech organizations financial institutions we are so proud we produced the finest but in addition to that we're also proud of the fact that we believe we send graduates out into the world and mostly into this community with a commitment to social justice it is part of our fabric it is included in the way we teach our students and the way they engage in the classrooms and that is a belief that you have a duty and a responsibility when you secure this credential to go out and help continue to change the world and make it a better place our students are our schools operate in four locations sorry five locations boston springfield laurence and also in portorico in california we currently have about 3500 students significant number of students the average age of our students is 36 years old they're experienced they're motivated they're for the most part working adults who are balancing family responsibilities work responsibilities and pursuing their education so you can imagine for us they are superheroes they're really phenomenal that they are able to do all that and walk in every night with a smile 57 percent of our students are based in boston nearly 75 percent are women and over half of our students are students of color so diversity is an important core value for us over 50 percent of our students are first in their family to pursue a degree and so it's a phenomenal moment when they walk across the stage in in june uh every one of them has at least uh four five sometimes 10 people in the audience because the grandparents come the cousins come everyone comes to see that person who is first in the family who in in that walk they change the future of the entire family uh we also serve veterans and 80 percent of our students are financially eligible which tells you something about their background um as an institution in addition to providing degrees because our four schools are degree granting schools we've also over these many years developed a number of certificate programs uh programs that provide you with an opportunity to get a credential a piece of paper that the world recognizes and that the market recognizes that says we've acquired a skill that makes me now marketable here is the certification to that that attest to that and now i'm ready for employment and we see this partnership as fitting so nicely with that dimension of cambridge college as well uh we had a few key principles when we entered this partnership which we feel we've been able to achieve in the partnership with on core one was our commitment to diversity and access uh and affordability we went back and forth about what the tuition would be on this and we finally worked out a number that was viable for us but we also felt would be accessible for our students and we made the commitment to diversity and that's manifesting itself in the way we recruit uh the way interviews are conducted what we're looking for when we interview those students and making sure we have those balance that balance we want it to be clear across the board that we're preparing these folks for careers and we've been using that word career instead of job it's not just a job and you're bouncing from it is a career we met people who were in management roles at on core who started out at one of the tables so there's a model for that and we wanted to make sure the potential students were aware of that and this whole idea of providing options for future future opportunities we had a shared commitment to serving the communities in the greater boston area and those neighborhoods and finally uh to having an impact a positive impact on our economic development in the region and so we feel again this program supports all of those and we're very proud of that uh as you'll hear from mark and philip of the results of what our students look like you'll hear that so this partnership has been one that for us has been really successful and i want to again acknowledge uh in on core but especially a few members of their staff jenny peterson who's with us today director of employment dug williams vice president of table games uh who also is with us today and of course the president of on core boston harbour bob de salvia who unfortunately as you know was not able to join us today i want to close with a story if you will about the day of the ribbon cutting one of my favorite things as president to do as president is to walk around and talk to students it's how i know whether or not we're doing our job it's how i know whether or not um they feel that they are getting what they believe they're going to get and coming to the institution uh i sometimes walk around and look at them and then i stop them in the hall and i just have casual conversations with them it's a way of me getting the heartbeat of the institution so i was really excited uh the morning of the ribbon cutting to learn that our first class was starting that morning at eight and the ribbon cutting would be occurring after that and that students were going to stay so when i walked into the room cameras were there but most importantly there were tables and i turned to philip and i said so what's going on at the tables he said those are the students from our eight o'clock session they stayed for the ribbon cutting so after we finished the program i had a chance to walk around to every table introduce myself to every one of the students and to uh hear their stories and by the time i got to the end i turned to one of my colleagues i said this is such a good thing that we've done because what i saw were women people of color from all ethnic backgrounds it was visual it was visible that we achieved our diversity interest but what i heard from them was how excited they were about this opportunity how much they appreciate it in our remarks describing it as a career how they felt affirmed about them pursuing something that really mattered and then they talked about how wonderful the space was and i wanted to acknowledge and note that too and we heard from some of the on-course staff that we probably had the best uh career training space in the country it is quite beautiful so i want to close by saying those comments and those testimonies from our students have said to me we did the right thing and we're doing a good thing and opening and launching and running this career institute gaming career institute so i again want to thank you for your support for your confidence in cambridge college and uh for allowing us this opportunity which would not have happened without your approval uh finally i want to invite you to come visit us and to see the space because i think you will leave with a smile on your face about what we're doing and how the program in the space uh is a reflection of our respect for the students who have come to secure these credentials thank you for allowing me to speak today i think they do thanks i want to introduce now and i think you've met them already uh they've been here several times two of my vice presidents mark and uh rotundo to my far right and philip page and just to note um both of them will be embarrassed that i said this on the record but uh these two gentlemen are uh incredible and have from start to finish made this a vision become a reality and they have dotted every eye and crossed every t and assured that the partnerships with you and with on core have and with the other organizations i mentioned have all been wonderful every step of the way so i want to acknowledge and thank them for the work they've done they they as i like to say they do all the work and then they wind me up and allow me to come out and talk about it so thank you philip and mark thank you president jackson um good afternoon commissioners good afternoon mark and i are very excited to share where we are with the gaming school and so the presentation will walk through will detail sort of how we got there what was involved in setting it up what was involved in outreach and ultimately what we experienced in terms of the end result of having students come so i'll walk you through all of that starting first with just their reflection of the timeline i think it's important in appreciating all that was done how quickly everything came together and i think to echo debbers president jackson's sentiment it was in large part because of the nature of the partnership the team from on core boston harbour were phenomenal to work with every step of the way and they helped us really understand what it was that we needed to do to to bring this all together and the support from the gaming commission jill paul bill was just phenomenal in getting to that to that finish line so so there's much appreciation on our part there so in march 2018 we created the partnership informal terms with with boston on core boston harbour and named the greater boston gaming career institute by july we were prepared to submit a draft certification application to the mass gaming commission working very closely with paul connelly and and bill were then able to flesh that out and present a final draft certification two weeks later by august 15th and we are very proud that by august 24th we were able to receive our certification and be prepared to go um one of the things that is important to note as we as we move forward with the the shaping of the school is that the conversation about what were the defining parameters was something that we did have very many detailed conversations with bob the salvia o jenny peterson and the members of of on core boston harbour and what we wanted to do is to make sure that the school at the end of the day prepared these students in the best possible way to be successful in in being employed at on core boston harbour that's that's the end goal so the defining parameters started there but then included all of these other elements of commitment to recruiting diverse and local students um ensuring that affordability was was front and center with regards to the cost of entering that scholarship options we as many as we could make available as well as many as we can identify and and direct students to that would be something that would be important to make sure we established making sure as is consistent with the college practices for our students outside of the program that they were accessible and flexible in time of day and day of the week in terms of the students being able to attend a big opportunity presented self to make sure that we had the strongest curriculum possible and the relationship with on core boston harbour enabled us to acquire the atlantic cape community college curriculum which is which is the gold standard for um gaming school curriculum and finally but not least is making sure that not only did you have the curriculum but you had the best quality talent to teach the material and working with on core boston harbour to make sure that all of the instructions and instructors and professionals associated with the program would be top notch and not only in terms of what they taught around the games but their understanding of what was important to be hired to be to be a successful employee at on core boston harbour the academic program itself again shaped with a lot of input in fact um significant input and helpful advice from Doug Williams at on core boston harbour is shaped has come to be shaped this way this fall term with a we focused on blackjack and poker as the two core games that were delivered in the fall term understanding the greatest need that the casino would have the program is structured that we have a weekday format and week and format the weekday format has three time periods eight to twelve one to five and six to ten giving folks an opportunity to attend and engage depending on what their lives were um or encompassed by within that the blackjack program would run nine weeks and the poker program would run fourteen weeks and this runs parallel with the expectation for the amount of hours that each of those programs are required by by the commission rules the weekend program schedule runs almost a full day from eight to four thirty and it's only blackjack right now and it's nine weeks um and that's a matter of fitting the time in the amount of time we have in that fall semester all of the programs include responsible gaming cpr and customer service training um so we don't actually even call it a dealing class because all of this is is part of what you get when you pay your tuition to come to this to the program as part of the experience of being in the class we want to make sure that we added even additional um credibility to the students in their move from being a student to an employee by adding a final capstone that actually includes an interview and audition for the table game which is much in like much in in sync with what would be expected of them making the transition into full-time employment at on course so they'll have an opportunity to audition even before they complete the program as a in fact as a condition of completing the program which would further ensure that they would be ready for the job market when they were done in the spring term we'll begin to introduce additional games backrat craps and some of the novelty carnival games but we will continue to also have poker and blackjack offered then as well philip philip just a quick question is is your recruiting students um obviously there's a bunch of things they think to consider one is uh because of the partnership with on for boston harvard they have priority uh hiring goals for ever in mall mall is that right um so i mean i hope i expect you're keeping all that in mind uh are you looking for or do you express to students kind of what a is there any kind of like base level skills uh you know math skills or something that you're kind of encouraging candidates to have or to be strong in before they start um yes we and jill shared a little bit of that um the the real key parameters for students coming in is that we expect them to be able to to at least perform an eighth grade math level um they have to be 18 years old and older um and and we really want to make sure that they have the the right aptitude for customer friendly engagement so they there's a there's in fact as part of the recruitment process an interview that all students go through who are applying to the school to make sure that they have the capacity and both in terms of language skills and demeanor to be in front of an audience so we are we're looking at all of those parameters in addition to making sure that there's an interest and engagement with the idea of being a being a dealer so those are the core pieces of what we're looking for um obviously these positions are require licensing um how much of that do you try to talk to the students about in advance of having to go through that registry licensing process so for each of the sections that philip has mentioned the three uh weekday sections monday through thursday and the weekend sections we actually performed a 30 minute orientation with all of the students i delivered that orientation to make sure the message was the same to all of the groups we also walked through a student contract which becomes part of the student's record and in each of those we expressed and explained to them the partnership among the three organizations the role of each organization and things like the certificate of good fit and so forth in the licensing so we spent about 30 minutes orienting all of our students and all of those functions and we also have that on our frequently asked questions on the website so there's information even before the students apply that they can they can read and understand these are the requirements or expectations that will be had of that will be had of you in making your transition through the school and then into employment so the so understanding that you have to be licensed understand that there are background checks um things like that are are purposefully given to the students up front so they are fully aware of what's expected of them in making that transition from being a student to being an employee thanks so next what i want to do oops jump ahead is talk a little bit about that outreach and how how that was fashioned and and where we went to realize the kind of engagement that we were looking for from the school standpoint so from a marketing promotion standpoint one of the things that i think was very important for us was ensuring that we were as clear and explicit in the communication to all parties around what the what the program was and what the school had to offer we were tactical in in sharing and making the notion that the experience this experience would be life changing from a career standpoint because it not only was the position itself of being a dealer but where that could potentially take you so that's a part of the experience in the marketing process that we wanted everyone to be to be fully aware of this there were multiple mediums used to present the program and to reach out to the market the starting point would be our website which was cleverly and i think appropriately branded as bet on you and you if you've traveled on any of the public transportation certainly the orange line and seen some of the the signs it's for me it's always encouraging i'm a public tea rider so to see those signs and to see the reaction people get when they read through that is is quite nice the website was designed to be as user friendly as possible providing both a broad overview of the program but the level of detail we thought was appropriate for for students to and prospective students to really be aware of i don't have a link to that right this minute but i would encourage you to to go to bet on you to just sort of explore and test it through it's as user friendly as it could possibly be but the the homepage brings you in tells the story of what it's like to be a dealer with a video of somebody who's made the career we have a directory that is very clear and easy to manage your way through in terms of where the specific information is that you need to apply to understand about scholarships and frequently ask questions as well as policies of the school and we're very clear about making sure people know where we are so we've got that information in terms of where the school is located and who to contact if you have questions or require additional information so in addition to the website we were on radio we were on mbta ads we've done digital websites web search site search optimization as well as print media broadly there certainly was a focus to make sure that the communities both both the host community and surrounding communities that are part of the developed workforce development plan were front and center in that outreach but the breadth of this marketing and promotion strategy i think is is is quite quite impressive sports stations urban stations spanish language stations ethnic papers everywhere and anywhere we could get to the population that we were targeting for for outreach for student population with that the application process the application process for the institute we wanted again to circle back to that notion of making it as easy as possible so it's an online application multiple places on our website where you can click a button and get right to the application the application itself is fairly straightforward and and i think really easy for folks to complete once an application is completed students are invited to come to the institute for an initial admissions interview and to complete the math exam students are given as much time as they need about 20 question math exam again eighth grade level once they've completed that math exam then they move to an interview room where they have a brief conversation with with representatives of the school and in doing that we're able to determine whether or not the student has the capacity to both be successful through the course but also be successful in their pursuit for employment we've had about six sessions at Cambridge College and over 500 students actually came through that process when we when we held those students were notified within 24 hours of that interview so they weren't waiting long before they knew what their status was and we took an approach where the denied students who we thought had potential but were missing on maybe one aspect of the process that we would get back to them inform them of what the issue was and give them information that would potentially help them pursue resources that could possibly get them in on a second go round for the spring accepted students were provided all the registration materials they were given scholarship application information so we made sure that they were directly informed about that opportunity and we encouraged everyone to apply we made sure that the student contract as mark reference was available to them so that they knew that that was something that was going to be required for admission and for acceptance into the program because we wanted to make sure that they were they were really truly committed to understanding what they needed to do to get not only through the program but ultimately to get employment that they weren't halfway through or all the way through and then realizing there was something that they needed to do that wasn't that wasn't clear so we actually had them sign that contract to ensure that they are saying that they they've done that students who are coming in and we recognize that very many people are looking at this as many of the students who came in that they've been out of school for a while just like our students this may be a very pivotal moment in their their family's life history just like our students and so just like our students we made sure that we had our student navigator manager student navigation managers dedicated individuals who were available to these students when they came on campus to walk them through everything from how to properly go through the application process or admissions process on the computer to how to complete their scholarships and then to walk them through what they need to do in terms of coming for enrollment and the day first day of school so there was a lot of a lot of caring and concern provided to every student who came to that point of saying we wanted to be in the in the institute the program size was capped in part to meet occupancy code for the space but also because we wanted to make sure and we needed to make sure that we had enough equipment to manage the number of students the maximum number of students for the fall term the target was about 210 that would have had every seat filled and everyone running around like crazy I'm sure so with with that with all of the work that was done in setting up the outreach and the marketing and promotion we had over 1900 applicants in the course of about four weeks I believe it was that came through so that was really truly amazing 60% of those applicants were male 40% were female 4% veterans as self-reported 41% persons of color and 45% from the host and surrounding communities ever at Malden Boston Cambridge Chelsea Somerville and Medford of those 1900 the enrollment status was that we had 324 accepted applicants these were the applicants who went through the interview past the math test passed the interview and chose to continue down the down the path towards applying that was quite significant for us the total registered for the program out of that 324 with 166 62% of them choosing blackjack 38% choosing poker of that 166 enrolled student population 68% were male 32% were female 3% veterans 49% persons of color and 49% from the host and surrounding communities what's important about this data is that it now gives us an opportunity to shape some of the strategies we will we will employ going forward to make sure that we are not only meeting but exceeding the goals that were set in the workforce development plan and so we recognize that even within this short window we were successful in numbers but we want to make sure that we're also successful in meeting some of the other goals as well and that's that's going to be in very much an intentional part of the long-term strategy for the spring term that's coming up any any idea the discrepancy from those accepted and those entering the program I mean is there interviews with folks to find out why they chose not to continue you may not want to know but it is the number of hours of instruction so you have people who need to make a decision on an opportunity cost am I going to spend 200 hours coming to poker Monday through Thursday or am I going to bypass going and getting overtime to help pay for my family so the number of hours was the number one reasons given by students not tuition not instruction but the number of hours of instruction and your total accepted applicants is that did you cap it because you figured I don't want to accept so many people that I can't get into the program or no we didn't cap our accepted students we literally went through and did a very rigorous interview process and looked at those who were qualified are eligible and as my colleague mentioned for those who didn't pass the math test we actually sent them on a math study packet and we were going to re-interview them after they have passed that or sent them to the community colleges to come back to us thank you I'm curious if you know whether those 20% Asian might be also Cantonese or Chinese Mandarin speakers or is that something you know we don't know which dialect they speak we do know though that there was an organization in the city of Malden who sent many individuals so a community based organization Malden sent many individuals to us and so Malden in terms of our surrounding areas a host community actually came second only to Boston and the number of residents that came in so I also want to share that with regards to the affordability of the school we as I said encouraged every student who was getting through the pipeline no matter where they were in the pipeline that they should apply for the scholarship because they you just never know of that we received 61 total applicants for the Encore Boston Harbor scholarship which as you know it's 50 scholarships for folks applying to the school of the 61 41 were awarded and the what that means is that their income level was within the guidelines of what we set for the scholarship and we had 300% of the poverty level as the ceiling but the majority 51% were at 200% of poverty level so we we recognize that you know it really was serving an important function for very many of these students who were being accepted 50% of that pool was female 62% persons of color and 59% from host and surrounding communities so with that let me move to just sharing a little bit about the location and the layout so to give you a sense of that I think in the first presentation I indicated where we were on the site but Cambridge College's main building is 500 Rutherford Ave the Gaming Career Institute is located at a satellite which is 510 Rutherford Ave so it's a standalone entity within that we have four poker tables four roulette tables 12 blackjack and novelty game novelty game tables and two craps tables and in this next slide you can see the basic layout and positioning of the school as president Jackson noted we're very excited about having the school the gaming institute in this this location and in this this particular site because it is quite attractive if you walk up there the experience for both the instructors and the students I think is is quite profound and in doing so we think it's actually adds another added value for some of the recruitment process that will follow for the spring term certainly you can see in these images here before we had the student students coming in so the next steps for for us includes addressing some of the things that happened or that were at the end result of the fall term we have a waiting list of some students who either were from a timing perspective not able to get in in time to be part of the starting class the programs have a very rigorous and important to be kept timeline for participation so anything beyond that first day would be difficult to bring someone in to meet the hours that were required so we are assessing the waiting list that we have for students to see if it might be possible to even launch a second nine-week blackjack program in November that will end before the start of the spring term we are assessing with the students who are currently enrolled what kind of options we might want to offer for second games for the spring term so that we can be very clear to make sure that those that are in high interest of high interest are available to those students and we will also begin as I shared early earlier on to launch strategic outreach efforts within the community with community organizations to engage the underrepresented groups both in terms of the fall enrollment but also thinking strategically about what we are addressing from the workforce development plan so that is very much a big part of the next steps that we are engaged in and the timeline going forward is as such in October we will work with the team to identify the spring term instructors to make sure that we have a full array of appropriate instructors for the gaming programs that we will be running in November registration will open for the spring term by December we will begin the interviewing process for the new students who are coming in spring term will launch on January 14th and all programs will be completed by April which will give us May and June the opportunity to provide refresher courses for those who are going to be moving then into the employment realm we're very excited about what can happen in the spring term because we learned so much in this fall term execution that not only will we I think be even more effective in reaching our goals but I think we'll probably have bigger smiles on our face at the end of that journey as well so thank you very much for the opportunity to share what we have and we're open for questions yeah just a just a couple of notes and thank you for this presentation I also want to acknowledge not only are you positioning yourself as a solid partner here in Boston Cambridge College Springfield campus has also been a solid partner for our MGM licensee in terms of the apprentice program that you launched there to teach not just MGM employees but other hospitality and tourism workers around the region about the region itself so that's been a tremendous success I was there too and my relationship with Cambridge College goes back even further helping to recruit you guys to downtown Springfield just two other quick questions and I'm glad you highlighted you know launching strategic outreach efforts with community organizations Jill has heard a lot from those organizations so I'm going to offer up her time and talent and hours to help you out with that but also you know keeping in mind and some of this is born out of our experience in Springfield with the gaming school there is that folks obviously have a sincere interest in working for our licensee and at some point pursuing a gaming position career may not be what fits best for them or fits for our licensee but in Springfield we saw some success in helping those people who were really interested in working for a licensee maybe to consider another career path that might best fit their skills so I hope you'll kind of keep that in mind as well there are a number of positions to be filled so you know shepherding students to rethinking that if they hit a point that being a deal it may not work out for them I would encourage you let me assure you in the interview process if we did not accept some they were denied the interview committee literally was writing could be better fit for this and this and that information has been shared with on core we'll continue that and also with the people coming through the school also making sure they're aware so thank you for that suggestion good thank you anything else you know thank you for the presentation those numbers look great and they really do and the enthusiasm and the desire to really help these folks change their life is is terrific and you know it's good that on core is partnering with you with this initiative and we look forward to further updates as as the time gets closer thank you thank you all thank you all I think we're up to uh commissioner updates do we have any updates I I have just one and I'll say it was it was great to be out in Springfield on yesterday to hear my colleague commissioner Zuniga's presentation on the public health trust fund along with dph commissioner Tucker and it was great to see a lot of the local stakeholders who are interested in how that money is going to be expended and how it might help residents from western mass that might find themselves dealing with an addiction issue so yeah that was it was it was a good meeting there's a there's a group that's called a plan for progress they they're very much engaged members of the community the business community the non-profit human service agencies and we were in front of them there's quite a bit of interest in terms of that public health trust fund I think there's there's a lot for for us to think about in terms of going forward for that from that executive committee but it was good to be out there we also took a few key members too of that of that group to a tour of MGM and they were equally impressed with the facility many of the things that you know we all know about some of the back behind the scenes the games and space so it's it was a good day overall I have a couple of things first of all I was fortunate enough to represent us last week in the international gaming regulators conference I've spoken a panel about regulators dilemmas very interesting what the rest of the world is doing I think 76 countries were represented at this conference folks are very interested in what we do around responsible gaming and we had some of our staff work hard on the the statistics committee which really documents who is doing what around the world so if you're going to something new for example your state legislature passes some new piece of gaming and makes it legal well who who does it around the world who does it well who has the experience what are the best practices so Joan Matsumoto was our lead on that project also I want to give kudos as the rest of the the board did to our staff led by commissioner Zuniga who we we we volunteered or maybe I volunteered I asked nicely but we translated that report into Spanish so that the countries in South America Mexico could participate in this project so we got you know credit for that as well but lots of folks interested in in what we're doing secondly I did have an opportunity earlier this week to speak at a conference a women's leadership conference that was hosted by Penn National and the regional chamber and about 90 women about 10 supportive men at the event and you know we shared stories well you know I told a few stories right and but it was really interesting because we talked about some strategies and there's a group of that Penn is doing a national project a women's leadership because frankly they were very honest about the fact that their numbers are not great when it comes to women in leadership positions throughout all their properties and they really do want to address it so they have a leadership program 16 young women at Penn National a part of this program it's it's a you know they have homework assignments they listen to guest speakers books that they read and a very engaged group and one of the things I talked about was not being afraid to try right not being afraid to raise your hand and say yes I'd like to be a leader I'd like to move up and one young woman of color came to me afterwards and said oh my god that's exactly what just happened to me I was a beverage manager when there was an opportunity for food and beverage a larger position she said well I've never done food should I apply and she she actually got the position and she just loves learning the food part of the business and it just was I think it's a good initiative that they've started and it was nice to to be out there I guess it was on Tuesday so just it's just something that I wanted to report it's great anything else do we have a motion to adjourn so moved second adjourned thanks thank you