 Good morning. We want to call to order the public meeting number 254. First we have the approval of the minutes. Commissioner Stebbins. I move to approve the minutes of the October 11th 2018 regular Commission meeting as included in your packet subject to any immaterial corrections or grammatical changes. Second bad. Discussion. All in favor. Aye. 4-0. Next we'll move on to our administrative update. Executive Director Bergerian. Good morning commissioners. Good morning. Just by way of procedure we have a a sub-superson doing our streaming today. John is here in place of Mike who's out today and just for the speakers not commissioners if we could just reintroduce ourselves it helps John so for the record I am Ed Bedrosian the executive director. I have a couple of items one I have a general update and the second we have a budget closeout that Commissioner Zuniga is going to substitute for our CFAO who is out today but by way of a general update I did want to give you an update on our win suitability review investigation and where we stand. The Investigations and Enforcement Bureau is completing its report. Once the report is complete there are a few more procedural steps before an actual hearing in the report to be made public. I want to outline those steps for you. First the commissioners individually will be provided a copy of the report along with the exhibits. We anticipate that will consist of hundreds of pages of documents. As a licensee win LLC representatives will also be entitled to copy the report and exhibits. Simultaneously the IEB and win will prepare their presentations for hearing in front of the Commission. The legal division also will review the report for any redactions and conformance with the public records law and this is consistent with the Commission's previous practices. Once all this pre-hearing preparation is done and you as commissioners have had time to hear and decide any pre-trial motions and time individually to read the reports and necessary exhibits and the parties are adequately prepared for their presentations. The legal division headed by General Counsel Blue will work to schedule the actual hearing. It would be at the beginning of the actual hearing that the report with any redactions would be made public. With all that in mind I anticipate and hope that we can have any pre-hearing motions again if any heard sometime in November with the actual hearing happening sometime the first two weeks of December. So that is, that's my update. Okay. Absent any questions of which I would probably be vague and refer you back to my update. I will turn the physical update over to commissioners. I believe this is the exact same way we've held adjudicatory hearings in the past. This is the process. Yeah, well that I can confirm. Yes, that's that that I can confirm. Yes, we're we are being consistent with our adjudicatory hearing process in the past. And there were some motions that had to be dealt with ahead of time. General Counsel, you were here for all of them? There are from time to time. It's not guaranteed that there will need to be any motions to be heard but we will make sure we allow time for that if they do if they're filed and you do need to consider them. Okay. Thank you. All right. Thank you. Thanks. Now over to me I suppose. Good morning. I'm just going to be giving the update on behalf of our director or CFO Derek Lennon who's not here today because of disability really. But with me are going to be Agnes Bolio and Doug Adonal who can help me either answer questions or clarify anything that I cannot. Including the packet is a memo from director Lennon in a format that we've seen in the past summarizing the results of the fiscal year 2018 that ended in June 30th of 2018. Through just as a brief reminder, through the first three quarters of fiscal year 18, this commission approved a budget of $30,960,000 for the gaming control fund and projected a revenue of $30,360,000. Based on the recommendations of the finance office, the budget at the time of the third quarter was relying on at least 600,000 in reversions to bridge the gap between the budget and anticipated revenues. The gaming control fund is composed of various spending categories and I'll remind us and the public that some of them are both regulatory and statutory in nature. We don't control all of the costs. There's funding for the Attorney General's office. There's indirect costs related to some of our expenditures and there's ABCC costs that the gaming control also funds. Similarly, our costs, our overall costs include all those efforts of the research and responsible gaming arena. So the chart on page two of the memorandum shows the spending and variance on each of the categories. The gaming control fund under spent its budget by $1,360,000. At the same time, there were revenues that exceeded projections in terms of, I believe, some additional vendor licensing that we anticipated to the tune of $174,000. And when we coupled these two figures with the net of the 600,000 built-in deficit that we had anticipated as of the third quarter, these all results in a $947,000 overage that we can revert back to the licensees for the overall for the year. So there's a couple of reasons these figures came in that way. I'll just remind my commissioners that my fellow commissioners that there's costs that came in greater that we initially anticipated, mostly in the legal arena. And we've talked about that, of course, plenty in the past. There were a number of costs that were going to be unique on the eve of the opening of MGM. And some of those costs came in as lower than we anticipated. We made these revisions along the way in the year and those costs did not, some of them costs, those costs did not come to fruition. So our regulations describe how the commission assesses its operational costs, including any kind of any increases or decreases at the end of the year. That would be 205 CMR 120105, which is also part of the memorandum. And therefore the FY18 surplus funds will be credited against FY19 assessments, some of which we started to do on the licensees in the same way that they were in the same proportion that they were assessed in fiscal year 18. The chart that explains that detail is included in the memo that adds up to the $947,361 and the duration of among the licensees. So I want to stop there and let you ask any questions or have my colleagues expound on anything that I that you think I missed. Questions? I had one. ABCC had some additional costs this year. I'm trying to recall the top of page two on the memo. Yes. Yeah, I'll let me let me let me answer that. And I if I'm mistaken or please expound Agnes, like many other costs related to the opening of MGM, we initially were conservative at the beginning of the year and decided to make these additional provisions along the way during the year. How that translates out that translated maybe the difference that we are seeing here. Right. Previously there was only one employee and I believe they added an additional employee with that the fringe and indirect costs that go with it for inflating exponentially as well. And I believe there was also another vehicle involved for their travel back and forth between the facilities. So with their additional responsibilities with the opening of MGM, right, the additional. Thank you. Is it fair to say that this was a one time search? I believe so, yes. We might go back to the level funding in the coming months. Thank you. Yeah, I would point out they were very instrumental partners at the opening. They are present on weekends, high times and stuff like that. And it really helped us, you know, complete both our missions. Right. I remember you talking about the partnerships up there during the opening, the rush to get ready. So that makes sense. And you know what, let me also mention we had early, early discussions with them. This was with our prior executive director today relative to the overall funding for them on an ongoing basis. And that was at a level that we've maintained the one employee over at PPC. But given the opening and everything that was described, there's a recognition that there need to be there needed to be additional resources that again will be smoothed out over time to the same level. Thank you. Other questions to emphasize. I mentioned the legal fees increases that was offset in many ways by some of those expenditures, not at the level anticipated mostly along the lines of Attorney General's office and state police. But those have been themselves revisions that we had increased. So in an interesting way, we ended up spending at those levels as originally anticipated. Do we have a motion? Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the MGC's fiscal year 2018 budget closeout report is included in the packet. Further discussion? All in favor? Aye. Passes four to zero. Next, we move on to research and responsible gaming director van der Linden. Thank you. Good job. Good morning, commissioners. Good morning. Why don't we just go for the record, go down the line and just introduce ourselves. Mark van der Linden, director of research and responsible gaming. Christopher Bruce and the crime analysis consultant to the commission. Detective Lieutenant Brian Connors. I'm the commanding officer of the gaming enforcement unit. State police. Lieutenant Tim Bevin, state police commanding officer, G.U. Springfield. All right. Thank you. So Christopher Bruce today will present to you the baseline study assessing the impact of gambling and safety in Massachusetts towns and cities. It's a baseline analysis of crimes, calls for service and collision data in the communities near MGM Springfield. In 2014, the MGC began working with Mr. Bruce to design a process to assess changes in crimes, calls for service and collisions in communities likely to be affected by the opening of Massachusetts new casinos. Work began in 2015 with a baseline analysis of the Plainville area where Plain Ridge Park Casino opened in June of 2015. We had subsequent reports at six months at one year and a two year post opening that measured changes against that baseline. Our attention now turns to the Springfield area where MGM opened in August. As he'll describe in much greater detail, Mr. Bruce worked with local law enforcement in the Springfield and designated surrounding communities to build a baseline of existing crimes, calls for service and collisions. I would be remiss without noting that this report and any of this work would not be possible had we not the cooperation, collaboration and really overall enthusiasm of the Springfield Police Department and the surrounding police departments to pull together this data and report it out as it's being presented to you today. So a sincere and heartfelt thank you to those agencies. On a final note, and before I turn it over to Christopher, many studies have attempted to study the effects of gambling on overall serious crime rates. Hardly any have attempted to analyze more specific and minute changes, including following the opening of casinos, including variations by hour by month and by season, changes in patterns of hotspots and in non crime activities such as collisions and calls for service. But these were the questions that the Massachusetts Gaming Commission was asking. And it's with with those questions and with the expertise that we have at the table and in the communities that we're working that we can answer those questions. We're analyzing public safety at a level of detail that will actually help police agencies anticipate and respond to emerging changes and patterns. So with that, I'll turn it over to Mr. Bruce. Thank you. It's good to be here again. I want to emphasize that this is the baseline report. So there's no real conclusions to draw yet on as to the impact of MGM Springfield just yet, but I'll report on the the methodology I used to collect the data and what the at least the baseline data can tell us about what's going on in the the MGM Springfield area. In the Plainville project, there were six participating communities. This one involves 11 participating communities in the surrounding area. And as you can see them all on the map here, the that's the scope of the project has been quite a bit larger than the the previous efforts and has required a lot more work with data collection and the compilation of the statistics and so forth. As Mark indicated, in the Plainville project, we're following the same basic template that we used with Plainville starting with the baseline report and then moving on to considerations of what's happened after three months, six months, maybe a nine month, depending on after the six month period, we see a lot of changes, right? And then a one year period and we'll make a decision, I suppose, after that as to how often to keep evaluating. Just like in in Plainville, I visited each of the participating agencies and I established a connection to their records management and CAT systems with their permission. It introduced a data extraction tool and downloaded key data that allowed me to identify to map hotspots and identify the basic characteristics of crime collisions and calls for service in the agencies going back seven years, which is two more years and we were able to do for Plainville. So we were able to calculate a smoother average, I suppose, in the in the Springfield area. No personal identifying information or narrative information was collected from any of the agencies, which limits some analysis possibilities, but as obviously makes everybody more comfortable with the collection of the data set. The data from the individual agencies was fused into a master database, which I then calculated the statistics and did the analysis, making things a little bit easier than the Plainville project. Every single one of the agencies in the Springfield areas on the same records management and CAD vendor, CAD being the location where the calls for service are stored and the records management system where the crime reports are stored, but they all use the same vendor, so there was no issue translating different conventions from different systems. But obviously the overall volume of agencies, plus some quirks for this particular vendor, did introduce some difficulties and that I had to overcome, but everything ended up fine in the end. So we got all the data into a centralized database. A screenshot here shows an extraction from the main incident table for the combined agencies, and from there I was able to calculate the various figures that appear in the report. Some broad figures, there are again 11 participating agencies representing a total population of just over 400,000 residents based on 2016 census figures, a total area of just over 250 square miles. Together over the seven-year period that makes up the baseline period, these agencies made over 100,000 arrests, 103,822 arrests. They had over 350,000 non-arrest crime incidents, more than 3 million calls for service and 89,000 traffic collisions. There were 187,000, just over 187,000 unique addresses at which crimes occurred in this area, of which I was able to achieve so far a geocoding rate, meaning I was able to actually plot on the map 90% of those addresses, which is a reasonably high percentage for a data set like this. There's always going to be some junk addresses in any crime and call for service data set. Now, there are a lot of statistics in the report. Every agency is broken down individually with its crime and calls for service and traffic collision statistics. I obviously have not, I'm not going to present all of those here to you today. They're in the written report for everybody to take a look at. But some notes on just the general statistics that you'll see in the report, and this is just a sample extraction on the screen here, of what I did was look at the last couple of years worth of data and then calculate an average for the past seven years. I also calculated the standard deviation of the average, which is basically, it tells us on average how much from year to year does the, does this crime or this category deviate from its average? The coefficient of variation, which you see in the fourth or fifth column there, tells us how much over the seven-year period this crime typically varies on roughly a scale of zero to one. So zero would indicate a very predictable, unvarying set of statistics for a particular crime and a score of close to one would indicate it's all over the place from year to year and that's very difficult to predict. So basically the smaller that number, the easier it is to identify when something changes. When an external element is introduced and causes the crime or the call for service to increase or decrease below the threshold that we would expect for that. So that's all presented in there. There's a final figure that I'm introducing in this report for the first time, the slope as a percentage of the mean. This is basically a, it gives you a sense of how the crime or the category has been trending over the over the seven-year period that we have the data for. This is important because in the Plainville area things had been very static for the previous five years. Most of the crimes and the calls for service we looked at, you know they'd fluctuated from year to year, but they weren't going anywhere before the introduction of Plain Ridge Park. In this case, many of the crime categories, the call for service categories in the Springfield area had been trending downward in the seven-year period leading up to the introduction of MGM Springfield. With the exception of traffic collisions, which had been generally increasing in the area. So for those reasons, we have to analyze any changes on the basis of what the trend looked like prior to the introduction of MGM and not just the overall average of the statistics, if that makes sense. So when that SPM is high, it indicates that category had been trending significantly upward or downward. And as an example, here's some, what a trend line looks like for a slope as a percentage of the mean of plus five percent and negative fifteen percent over that period. You can say, you know, a negative fifteen percent, that's a pretty strong slope that we have to consider. So even if crime were to even out at that point, it might be considered a change rather than simply a manifestation of a previous average. Christopher, can I go back just for a clarifying question on a couple of slides ago? The figures you mentioned are the aggregate of all the eleven communities. Yes, yes, these over the seven years, over the seven years. Okay. So within the report, they're broken down into the individual communities as well. Here are the the overall violent property, violent property crime and total crime and crash averages per year among the the participating communities. And as you can see, Springfield itself being the the urban core of this area with the largest population of the communities really dominates the statistics. It accounts for well over half of the the numbers during this period, at least for crime, for crime, violent crime, property crime. It accounts for about forty percent and total crime about half and for crashes about one third of the total crashes that we see in this area. So Springfield itself really is going to to lead any major statistical increases we see here, which is why, of course, it makes it's important to break it down by the individual communities and individual areas separately so that there are changes if they have any, don't get lost in the overall totals that that Springfield support reports. Obviously, there's a number of state patrolled highways and roads that intersect this area, many of which will serve as carriers to and from MGM Springfield and thus might see increased traffic and thus might see increased traffic issues and traffic collisions. So state police data is is equally important to this effort. The local communities tend to take most of the crime reports in the area, but for collisions and other calls for service, the state police data set is extremely important. And as you can see from these figures on all of the roads, almost all of the roads, over the the reporting period, the collision total has been increasing throughout the area, which could be signs of any number of it's been increasing really in throughout Massachusetts during this period. So there are many causes for that lower gasoline prices driving a higher greater driving behavior, continued economic development of the area, bringing more cars into the area and so forth. So MGM Springfield might be a participant in that overall increase that we've been seeing over the last seven years bringing more cars to the area. That doesn't mean the rate is higher, doesn't mean the risk of collisions is higher necessarily. But with you know, hopefully be able to get some figures to help temper this analysis with with calculations of rates. Now one of the things that Yeah, quick question on this slide. I'm assuming so when you're talking about crashes along I-91 it's literally I-91 from the tip of Northampton. Yeah, these are within the the 11 communities. Is it possible to extract out of that like how much is happening, say on I-91 through each of those communities we have a couple of issues that we're dealing with and be interesting to see are they predominantly in Holyoke, they predominantly in Springfield or predominantly in Northampton. Yes, the state police the state police data not only identifies the community in which the crash occurred but also the specific location. So we'll be able to identify increases by the actual section of road. Okay. And yeah. Can I also ask, so the slope in this in this chart they're all positive and that's an indication of increases just like you said. Are there are they large enough? You mentioned the 15% in a prior slide that was definitely a trend. Just help me understand order of magnitude here. They're modest, they're a modest increase over the seven year period. So yet not so much that that that it's it's a really stark trend. A single more recent year, for instance, 2016, I think. 2016 and 17 together were the highest years in the data set for the past seven years. 2016 on some sections of road and 2017 on others. It's the slope is small enough that a single year could have influenced you know the overall direction of the slope. So yeah, I did emphasize that it's been increasing in the area, but I wouldn't I wouldn't say that it's a a stark increase. I'd have to actually calculate the p value, but it's not an increase in overwhelming increase until we get to a slope. SPM of around 10%. Now, one of the things I'm interested in looking at in the surrounding area is what happens at places where people are likely to get on and off the highways on the way to and from MGM Springfield. And this map here shows the exits and the radiuses around the exits in which we find hotels, restaurants and gasoline stations to and from on major travel routes to and from MGM Springfield. You can also see the travel routes themselves plotted on the map. I took I seated the area as far away as 100 miles with a bunch of different sample starting points and then saw what Google maps recommended as travel routes. Not everybody uses that, but I used it as sort of a proxy is what people would be using as a decision making tool for how they travel to and from the casino. And then identified the places within those travel routes that might likely see increased traffic again to and from MGM Springfield. So we'll be looking at specifically things that are used by travelers gas stations, convenience stores, hotels and restaurants within those exit radiuses to see if we see any increases in activity there. This map here indicates what was happening in Springfield among certain crimes, four different crimes just in the last three months of 2017. And you can see that the dots are so numerous you can't even really pick out individual crimes, which is sort of the overall purpose of this map. This is to emphasize that in the radius around where MGM Springfield is located, you know, because of economics and geography and a number of other issues, Springfield has had some challenges dealing with crime in that area. It's gotten better over the seven-year period that I analyzed, but obviously we can see that the area is something of a hotspot. Now it's possible that the presence of the casino and the legitimate activity that it draws, as well as the extra law enforcement presence in the area, serves as a suppressive effect to much of the activity that we see here on this map and other types of crimes as well. It's also possible that all the extra people in the area, you know, may cause certain crimes to increase just as a, on the basis of the number of potential targets alone. And so, you know, we have to be prepared to analyze either possibility. There are mechanisms by which crime could increase. There are mechanisms by which it could decrease. And so, and some individual crimes might increase and some might decrease. So it's important in the immediate area and the neighborhood surrounding the casino to take a really close look at what happens and what we can both credit and not to the presence of MGM Springfield. Based on my work with other analysts around the country, what I asked them for examples of the types of crimes that had increased in their areas after the introduction of casinos, you know, they offered some feedback to me about what types of specific locations we should look at. And they mentioned things like hotels, restaurants, gas stations, convenience stores, pawn shops, and social service facilities within the immediate area of the casinos. And so I also mapped those and I identified certain areas, certain businesses and business types around the MGM Springfield area that again it would be important to measure specifically what happens there after the three months and so forth post casino period. And so that brings me to the specific evaluation plan. In December, shortly after the, well, the three month period is up at the end of November around Thanksgiving. So about mid December after the agencies have had enough time to properly code the incidents that have been reported during that period, I'll revisit them and collect the data for that three month period and then issue a report obviously about what changes we've seen in the Springfield area since then. It's important to note of course that regardless of the presence of a new facility like a casino, some crimes will increase, some crimes will decrease in any data set that you take from a police agency for a three month period. And so those in any increases or decreases we see by themselves won't necessarily indicate a causal relationship to MGM Springfield. That's why it'll be very important to do a much further analysis of those increases to see if we see any evidence that ties it into the casino specifically. And obviously we've had some experience doing that because of the Plainville project. So hopefully we'll be able to determine if any, on any increases that we see what the, what the cause is and whether we can attribute it to MGM Springfield or not. We'll, and then we'll be looking obviously as Mark said, not just for, you know, broad statistical changes but what we see down to the micro level hotspot and with a particular focus again on those travel routes, those exit areas and the particular business types around the casino that we might hypothesize and increase that. We'll be working, I'll be working very closely of course with the gaming enforcement unit which has been fantastic about providing data in the past and with the agencies in the area and particularly the crime analysis unit at the Springfield Police Department. If there's one major difference in this project versus the Plainville project it's that the central agency here has a very robust and well trained and well staffed crime analysis unit led by Bill Schwartz who is in the room here and I'm not just saying this because he's in the room. They really have done a fantastic job Bill has in particular getting that agency up to speed with modern crime analysis and I have every confidence that any trends that we do see after the introduction of the casino will be able to fully analyze with the support of that unit and I really look forward to working with them closely on the upcoming project. That is my report unless there are any additional questions. I had just a couple of quick questions. Christopher thank you for this. I think it is as you reminded us it's an important understand this is a baseline. This is everything assessed before MGM opened. A quick question on your kind of property map where you listed hotels gas stations upon shops and social services. Obviously there's a gas station right across the street from MGM. Didn't want to take that one in consideration because of its proximity. My apologies if one didn't appear on the map I might have something might have gone wrong. My data file and I didn't geocode it obviously. I don't know why it would have appeared there. I'll have to go back to my data set and make sure that I've captured them all. I'm sure that people at Pride wanted to have some sense. Thank you for that. I don't know why that wouldn't have been there. Two quick questions going into your the full report. Page three the executive summary down in the bottom you talked about possible statistics collected that the report does not cover. I was wondering if you could just kind of shed some light on maybe what the statistics are what you didn't fold into. One of the things I tried to emphasize in the report is that the most important thing about this project or this part of the project is that I have a baseline data set. It's not necessarily the statistics themselves that can be calculated from the data set because I could have sliced the data 100 different ways. But the fact that data exists. And so once we have the post casino data I'll be able to compare changes in categories that I didn't necessarily include in this report just on the interest of space. I mean I could have made this report a thousand pages with all of the different categories. So some of the things that aren't in there I didn't do much in the baseline data set when it comes to demographic information about offenders and victims. I didn't go into a lot of detail about origin points for offenders in the area but all these are things that I'll be analyzing after we have the post casino data set. So for instance if we identify an increase in crime and it turns out that most of the offenders or a significantly higher percentage of offenders for that crime are coming to the area from outside the 11 communities that might be an indication of a casino related involvement. But I didn't again for interest of space I just didn't bother to do a baseline analysis of those origin points. Stolen property types I didn't really include in here. The data isn't great in that particular category although it might be good enough to identify major changes in it but I didn't think it was worth creating a section of the report for it. So those types of things there say I guess maybe in this report I don't have an exhaustive list of the fields that I collected but most of the statistics that I did provide in here are from the offense tables alone which includes the offense type, the time and the location and the what's it going to say that I thought I had another field there but I forgot what it is. But I didn't include a lot of statistics on the other data tables again includes people, property and vehicles that are involved in crime. So let me just build on that. So even though you did not do it for this report you'll have the data capability. Yeah, exactly that in the future if we hypothesize or if you hypothesize that there's this outside flow of people you could go back and corroborate whether that was also existing in the past or not precisely yet. For instance in the Plainville area when we saw an increase in credit card fraud it became really important to look at the origin points of offenders and the specific types of properties that were being purchased with stolen credit cards. Ahead of time if I had offered the types of properties being stolen for every type of crime it would have just ballooned the report into thousands of pages but once we know that there's something to look at the data is there to do that additional analysis. That's important. I would also just add you know kudos to you and Mark and Brian and Tim and to you Commissioner Cameron this is a big effort to get all the hosts and surrounding communities law enforcement agencies to work together. It's great that they're all in the same vendor which makes the data collection be simple but it's kudos for getting that kind of cooperation up front. Now the surrounding agencies have all been fantastic you know that they asked the questions that they should ask but once they were satisfied with the security and confidentiality of the data processes they were all very cooperative and I have good people at each one of the 11 agencies that I can rely on when I have a question or when I need to look at a particular category further they can do more analysis with their own data set than I can with what I've collected and it's nice to have that kind of relationship with all of the agencies involved. Yeah I would just love to expound upon that because it really is interesting and unique. You know I've presented at conferences as you have on this topic and one of the things I'm asked is how did you get the police departments to participate they all tell us they're so busy they don't have time and because without a baseline it's very hard to then determine what has changed and as we all know from our hearings this was one of the major concerns right citizens were worried about crime if a casino were to come. So you know when we started this project I think some the research team probably didn't have the rights you know folks to move forward on this I said well let's just start with all the police chiefs let's just ask for their help which is what we did we went down and invited all the police chiefs down in Plain Ridge and they were just excellent first of all it's nice when you ask and don't say we need you to do X Y and Z but one of the chiefs recommended Christopher Bruce for this project and he has been invaluable first of all he had worked at many of the police departments in Massachusetts so we had a working relationship trusted relationship not easy for police departments state police and all of these surrounding communities around Springfield and Plain Ridge to turn over their data to someone that is a big ask and making sure it's secure and used properly as you pointed out you can cut data in a lot of ways and make it say different things so that relationship was critical and I just want to thank all of the police departments and to watch the level of engagement to me has been just satisfying I mean they have all of them in a room talking about the issues what what do we anticipate and the idea one of the things that I find most interesting about this project is real time information so every three months we know exactly what's happening brainstorming by the chiefs by the other police executives and really the ability to to change a strategy and not wait till something becomes a bigger issue than it than it has to be so that part has been terrific and I just can't thank all the agencies enough for their participation and their enthusiasm about this project they see the value and not just because it's written on a piece of paper for research but the ability to share data information and solve problems which is you know what what people are looking for so thank you and thanks to everyone else that has participated in this project it really is gratified thank you commissioner yeah I think that's critical that the real time mitigation if you will the ability to address if there's a hotspot that we can identify early on and and and and you know have the rest of it you look into it or what not leverage the existing police efforts that locally obviously I can't be faster than the you know the crime analysis unit at the springfield police department itself and and that that's again the great part about this project they've they've got a unit there that can that can be literally tracking real time changes in a way that I can't so that you know I think it's important to keep that in mind there they're constantly responding well in between the data sets that I'm able to collect and I think we have some representatives here from springfield I'd love to give them an opportunity to talk about the collaboration and some of the efforts that are being made the other thing I've been really impressed with are the efforts with all of the agencies involved springfield state police working together to really keep springfield and the whole metro district safe so if you if you you're here you drove all the way down from springfield I'd love you to take a minute and talk about that grab a microphone just introduce yourself for the record good morning commissioners my name Ryan walsh I'm the civilian public information officer for the springfield police department I'm here with our director of crime analysis Bill Schwartz commissioner barberry sends his regrets for not being able to attend he's in Plymouth today one of our officers is receiving the medal of valor from the massachusetts police association which which he really wanted to attend so thanks for having us here yes speaking about the gaming enforcement unit one thing our officers tell us all the time across the state the relationship between the local police department and the state police may not be that wonderful in springfield for years it's been completely the opposite the working relationship there with our c three programs across the city utilizing resources together whether it's canines are just working together on in the c pack unit in the district attorney's office the relationship was there beforehand and everything I've heard from lieutenant acres from our police department is that they don't consider themselves state police and springfield police there they are the gaming enforcement unit and work together work together as one team and it's going extremely well so far what the commissioner has done since and leading up to when the casino is opening is look at our metro unit and start to expand the there was a c three south end unit before of about ten officers knowing that we're going to see a hundred thousand plus visitors to the city he expanded that into the metro unit with forty officers and supervisors he added kiosk which is based on if you see them down in new york city and Times Square at far ends of the metro unit which are staffed by officers at peak hours and they are doing walking posts as well we added a metro substation right across from the mass mutual center where the events are so the officers will go directly to that substation as opposed to springfield police headquarters and many of them are out on foot most of their time when they're working the commissioner's approach is high visibility and high approach ability for officers in the metro unit even this morning as we're here at this meeting they're announcing a regional visitor center right at the corner of court street in bluestrand and way where there will be a police presence there at peak hours and high events right a block away from where mgm springfield begins so far it's working extremely well obviously there are some things that they anticipated in the metro unit whether it's amusement parks nfl games when you add 100,000 people down there at all times a day 24 7 there are some things you anticipate but many of them have been planned and pre-planned for our metro unit so far is just doing an outstanding job we also have cameras external cameras on all of mgm's buildings our real-time analysis center is able to monitor those at any time as well as at our kiosk and all throughout downtown so if you come to a real-time analysis center they can pop up the cameras outside mgm if there's any sort of incident issue whatever there may be they're able to alert the officers both our metro unit and the gaming enforcement unit to be able to separate from potential bad guy and the civilians so that the officers come prepared with that information when they arrive or possibly a route of travel whatever it may be commissioner stebbins spoke with spoke about pride a minute ago we're currently working on a volunteer pilot with pride where our real-time cameras will be able to be utilized at all of their gas stations externally and internally which would be a big assistance is one of the highest foot traffic prides is the one right next to the casino there but springfield as a whole the commissioners been there since June of 2014 and crime continues continues to drop it's just spectacular it's dropped by about a third of part one overall crime since the commissioners took over and we continue to see some of that data continuously going down springfields 33 square miles where in my backyard you see a mountain you see deer you see frogs whatever it may be so it's a unique city but we've seen nothing but positives downtown in our metro unit after five before MGM open the workers anyone else couldn't wait to get out of town you could see tumbleweed on a on a Monday night at nine o'clock down in springfield and now it's it's the casinos really re-energized the city re-energized the downtown you know the foot traffic the people down there on weeknights weekdays weekends it's really been excited thank you that's important information and again I've been impressed with the coordination that's what's really important to me to see how well these PDs work together and lieutenant babin is here with us lieutenant we're we're fortunate because lieutenant babin headed up the the gaming enforcement unit at plainridge so there were a lot of lessons learned and then he has now taken over as the commanding officer up in springfield with those lessons learned although it in a much different environment lieutenant if you don't mind just just quickly just sharing some of the work that the gaming enforcement working with springfield PD and the state police is doing to echo upon what what ryan said is the cooperative work between the springfield PD and the gaming enforcement unit the metro unit on the perimeter but within the gaming establishment it is the gaming enforcement unit it's made up of both state police and local police as a twenty four seven operation we have plainclothes officers inside we have undercover officers inside ensuring that the the public that's going to visit mgm is going to be in a well policed environment a safe environment we have experienced like any small town all the crime issues including narcotics issues intoxication issues minor issues things but we're very concerning to the commission we've tried to keep a tight handle on that we've had great cooperation from mgm along those lines i know dlt corners and put together a short list of of some of the items to touch on directly that we uh... we've been handling out there i'm glad to answer any specific questions any type of crime that we've had in general it's been a little bit of everything the unit has done a uh... a terrific job uh... with the resources provided by the uh... surveillance and security and mgm dovetailing with the surveillance provided by the city and uh... the metro unit uh... and it is uh... it has been a uh... it's a busy as a lively assignment there's a lot going on there late nights and weekends in particular but uh... overall it is uh... we've created a safe environment we like to think and that's going very well thank you for that lieutenant connors morning commissioners again to echo what what ryan said in its stuff to follow up the pio that very polished and uh... speaks very well but again we have had a very good relationship with springfield police uh... obviously prior to the casino coming but uh... this has gone extremely well uh... i believe i speak for everybody involved uh... from the get-go uh... just by a way of background the relationship very strongly in in may when we brought in the team we identified both state police and springfield police uh... who'd be part of this gaming enforcement unit specific to springfield to the casino there uh... so since may they've been training uh... obviously gaming is new in massachusetts uh... everybody needs to get up to speed as to uh... certain areas to cover the mass general laws uh... mgc rules and regulations we had a mini academy if you will state police and springfield police always a great opportunity for the troopers in the uh... detectives uh... in the springfield we've led by lieutenant acres to get to know each other to be in a classroom setting for a period of time and that just doubled right into the opening of uh... mgm springfield in uh... in august and since then the unit has been doing tremendous work uh... extremely proud of the work that they've done it really is a partnership those the group that has really gelled very nicely uh... and they take it very seriously their active their proactive they have a vested interest in seeing this work for mgm for the gaming commission and for the city of springfield uh... can say enough about the work that they've that they've done we have a number of stakeholders uh... the great as you mentioned as far as lieutenant bavin coming to us from from plainridge uh... and taking on the role leading out in mgm springfield he knew the partnerships that we had to make and uh... immediately turn to getting those partnerships in place uh... specifically with the springfield's metro unit uh... there in valuable service to us when we have uh... there are times when things get uh... get uh... get busy there and we need some extra assistance or even just some logistical assistance the metro unit is right there and that that relationship appears to be working extremely well as well on operational basis uh... we also have the springfield barracks uh... that uh... is within an hour within a mile or so away from the facility they've been on site assisting whatever possible times that we need as well uh... as lieutenant bavin mentioned the relationship with mgm security the surveillance in their management is critical to the successful operation that we have here and we've worked uh... hand in hand with them uh... they've done a very good job uh... in the two months that is a daily uh... evaluation and uh... process that we're evaluating the relationship how best to we serve each each entity on site there some of the other stakeholders that uh... we've talked about of the abcc uh... lieutenant bavin has also attending meetings with the u.s attorney's office liaison with the secret service we do deal with uh... counterfeit uh... money uh... fairly consistently uh... we liaison directly with the secret service and conduct further investigations on any uh... confidential i mean uh... counterfeit money that that's been seized a tf other federal agencies that we do liaison with on a continuous basis so it is a robust program and and lieutenant bavin is uh... is leading sort of the boots on the ground experience out there for us as the tenant bavin said that it has been a very busy two months for us uh... in the gaming enforcement unit it has gone extremely well it's great that the the facility is is packed the attendance is up uh... and we have a particular role that we have to fill on a daily basis and i think the team has done uh... phenomenal job again it's a daily evaluation process whether it's for staffing uh... protocols how do we handle certain situations that is an ongoing although we come with the experience from plain ridge this clearly is a different facility specifically with table games and it's uh... it's a major city so those challenges uh... uh... something that we've we've taken taken uh... willingly and gladly and uh... we'll see if we will continue to foster those relationships and i think with springfield police it'll uh... it'll only get stronger thanks and i know our gaming agents play a role as well right there's a a good relationship there they went through the academy with you those folks they did and that was a great opportunity for them to everybody to get to know each other uh... obviously were physically located in the same space out in springfield we pushed for that interaction back and forth there are there a major resource for us and vice versa uh... they come with uh... an incredible amount of experience wide-ranging experience in the gaming world we've said to our president make sure you you're picking their brain because uh... they're vital source in there right there and uh... it's it's a it's a very good uh... team concept that we've been going on can i can i mention something uh... this this is all great and and i am uh... i'm reminded of something that it's a bit of a flipside to all of these uh... a few months ago uh... our partners at uh... dph who do a lot of work at the community level identified some concern uh... from some community some in the community uh... relative to uh... the notion that additional police presence might bring in uh... perhaps uh... more attention or perhaps uh... more tension with some minority groups uh... you mentioned you did mention uh... approachability in this uh... in this aspect and you expand on that with that concern at least in in some people's minds as to what you know additional police presence does uh... yeah i mean that's not something that's been brought to our attention in terms of the casino at all uh... it's the commissioners belief is if you have presence and visibility out there and our police department is largest or the most uh... as the highest minority rate in the entire so you're not just seeing white officers out on the corner uh... our officers are about thirty percent hispanic uh... about ten percent black as well as uh... white so when you're talking about that in springfield i don't know if it necessary plays the same role with the uh... demographics uh... but the commissioners vision is that police officers out there visible approachable so that people are not only safe but they can feel safe and it's strategy that's work elsewhere in places like new york city when they're in time square where there's just a lot of foot traffic ultimately when people see officers uh... the commissioners vision is that they will not obviously be more safe but they will feel safe as well anything else i i just want to i think i heard the coordination with the a g's office i just noticed in my notes uh... that that is correct and also the hand in county district attorney's office i mean that we we do work hand-in-hand with them uh... on a daily basis and uh... the gaming enforcement division of the attorney general's office handles uh... the majority of the investigation of the arrests uh... criminal prosecutions although the hamlin county da's office is also very hands-on uh... in those relationships have gone extremely well in these regional meetings christopher can attest to uh... all of those folks are represented at the meetings and it really is uh... you know it's my old line of work so it's it's nice for me to to be around that these kinds of meetings but real brainstorming you know they talk about okay this is what we see happening what are we going to do about this and just strategies and and certainly without our uh... state local partners that that wouldn't happen is effectively so thank you to everyone who's participating anything else next we have uh... director griffin with workforce supplier and diversity developments uh... before we do that what let's give them time to set up will take a five minute break great we will uh... resume our meeting at this time director griffin good morning good morning so i'm here to talk to you about uh... affirmative action program for equal opportunity for goods and services uh... that is required uh... to be submitted by each licensee and uh... this is for minority women and veteran business enterprises identified in chapter twenty three case section twenty one for the provision of goods and services procured by the gaming establishment there are also several license conditions uh... these requirements uh... uh... indicate that each licensee shall identify specific goals uh... expressed as an overall program and a specific uh... value of the contracts for minority business enterprises uh... women business enterprises and veteran business enterprises additionally uh... license conditions sixteen indicates that this licensee on corbaust and harbour shall submit a plan to identify local vendors so with these uh... uh... i requested this plan on june twenty second within uh... ninety days as required by uh... law and uh... on corbaust and harbour responded appropriately and submitted this plan uh... and we're here to talk about this plan today we posted the plan for public comment on october fourth and uh... until october nineteen and we've received uh... three letters within that uh... time period uh... we received in your packet a letter from uh... mayor d maria from the city of everett uh... supporting the plan and we received a letter from the center for women and enterprise uh... also seeming and supportive of the plan and uh... further commenting that the goals set forth in the proposal are in keeping with other efforts within the state and we received a third letter from an individual who indicated that perhaps uh... this increase scrutiny on on corbaust and harbour is positive uh... and it seemed to me to be supportive of the plan additionally we received another letter uh... from the hispanic american institute uh... after the deadline uh... so i did want to it is not in your packet because we were not able to post in time we will include it uh... will revise the packet uh... and include it later and we'll talk a little bit about the letter but first uh... i'd be remiss without introducing my guests here so i have uh... to my immediate right david granada director procurement for on corbaust and harbour and uh... nadiuska ballard and procurement manager and jackie crumb uh... you know very well i'll talk just a little bit about the uh... well no i think i'll i'll go into uh... my uh... comments about the plan i actually found this plan to be uh... very strong i looked at the first version you have the track changes version uh... in front of you and uh... on court increase their diversity goals when they heard that the state was uh... prepared to increase their goals in f y nineteen uh... so you'll see the increased goals uh... this plan includes detailed discretionary spend uh... for the project uh... it includes uh... target local spending amounts for the host and surrounding community it also includes the timing of the procurement uh... you'll notice uh... i think it's uh... appendix a exhibit a rather exhibit a gives some an itemized list of spend and the timing uh... and that is also posted on their website it also includes and a community engagement strategy utilizing local diverse uh... business groups the commission's own vendor advisory group which is also composed of various state and local business groups and so uh... i thought uh... on court did a great job in incorporating some changes and uh... and i'm talking about outreach and and uh... the sharing of information about the rp sometimes that is half the battle is knowing when the contracts are going out uh... so i will uh... maybe before i open it up for questions i wanted to go over this uh... new letter from the hispanic american institute because i think there were some uh... noteworthy uh... things that we should discuss so uh... the hispanic american institute indicates that uh... uh... they would uh... support uh... activating the gaming commission's vendor advisory team uh... and suggest uh... a little bit more information about its mission uh... you'll notice that the vendor advisory team is noted on page six i think perhaps we could uh... include a little bit more information about of the makeup and uh... the mission of the vendor advisory team and i could certainly share the information and uh... the hispanic american institute also indicates that like some more information about the art rfp process more definition and transparency as to the source selection criteria and i wanted to uh... because i think this is important uh... turn it over to david to respond to this uh... for this particular point yes so good morning again commissioners morning on uh... exhibit a hispanic american institute is looking for more granularity on the process exhibit a is is illustrative this is not the complete list i was uh... really trying to keep it to one page but there's actually uh... seventy six different discrete commodities that we list on our website on the vendor opportunities website uh... and as you can see it's it's very granular it's that we didn't just say food and beverage or we didn't say maintenance materials we really got into the details and looking left to right we also spent some sometime talking about what our criteria might be some types of commodities if we're looking to supplement our electricians and our plumbers they need to be licensed we indicate which ones would be on call or twenty four by seven uh... to the right you can see that we talk about the actual timing of the opportunity and then to address more specifically the hispanic american institute's comment uh... if you note the three-foot notes at the bottom uh... we took some time to add a little bit of color to what we were saying up in the table above so we do talk in footnote two about a lot of our criteria for our decision-making is obviously the quality of the product or service the cost which is always important and for an operation like ours like mgm's and operations of that scale the scale of the suppliers operation you know the ability to deliver product in volumes and certain frequencies so we we think with exhibit a we're addressing some of the uh... request for granularity uh... from uh... from nature's organization okay and we tried to create a lot of information on the one one-sheet of paper so it says a lot uh... another comment uh... that i wanted to raise uh... wonder if you will consider hosting bidders conferences where the upcoming rfps are discussed in the requirements explained uh... we we will uh... we refer to them as walk-throughs and uh... so it's a standard practice in in procurement industry now you don't necessarily do walk-throughs when you are are p being a box of widgets but certainly uh... as an example when we start talking about pest control and we start talking about services uh... across three million square feet what we will typically do is we will in advance or or or when the rfps going out will schedule a walk through where all the bidders are there they all get to walk the space as their questions see the back of house hallways uh... and what's good about that process is everybody is getting the same information uh... naughty and i have worked together for years and uh... we also have a uh... practice uh... where during the rfp process if somebody asks us a question hey i don't understand requirement number four when we respond we respond to all of the bidders because we want again uh... really level playing field and everybody has access to the same so that's just an example okay great uh... were there any other the comments that you wanted to uh... we do not intend to do a set aside uh... we feel very strongly that there are very strong and the east of the the bs out there uh... as well as uh... businesses in our our hosts and surrounding community that can win meaningful business from us because of the quality of their operation and uh... a set aside is uh... i don't think does anybody any good i thought we would what we want to do is we want to create access access as will describe in this plan is really how we intend to drive business awards uh... and will will talk a little bit later about that but we really think truly that if we can cast our net wide enough and give that access and those solicitations to dramatically higher vendor base then we think very simply that will just uh... exponentially increase the awards so there there there's the human factor in the human bandwidth and again we'll talk about it a little bit later that if we can overcome it with technology which we can because we're already starting to do it i i could i could rfp something to a thousand vendors with me not the concern that we would never be able to disseminate that information can i be a little bit more than that uh... thank you for that explanation uh... uh... at least anecdotally i i know that access not withstanding uh... the requirements of an rfp the connection maybe one thing and and knowing that something's coming up is is is great but for a small business and this is true also for you know some minority uh... and women businesses it could be daunting to respond to a number of prerequisites some of which are directly from from the licensing process so i recognize that you know part of it is systematic but it could be daunting to respond to them and then maybe that person the small business person says i'm gonna have to pass because i don't know about you know all these prerequisites just to be able to respond uh... what can you tell us in that that's that's alluded to or described in the plan relative to trying to overcome if anything that at least perception barrier that somebody is just simply not able to scale up or spend a lot of time responding to many prerequisites if you will at the moment that it comes to the art to that of rfp well i think there's two there's two ways to address it one is and and i know that mgm was actually successful in springfield doing this so we uh... we talk to a lot of the same vendors uh... granger wb granger big company that sells everything uh... uh... mgm granger approached mgm months ago about their tier two so basically what they're doing is granger is sourcing from local and certified diverse firms and uh... mgm is benefiting from that because they're buying through those firms but granger acts as uh... i guess that uh... council a inability to scale and protect the customer so we do a lot of business with granger as well and we've had those same conversations even within i think the last week or two we uh... we had them in our offices so we think one way to approach it very simply is to uh... for things for for types of commodities where we need that scale an alternative is to buy through a bigger partner who themselves have a very strong plan with certified firms the fact that the second thing we do is and we we discussed that later in this plan is uh... in our rfp process when we are awarding business to a big could be a fortune fifty company we have very specific utilization goals that we that we will typically ask for so i believe it's exhibit b is the writer to our rfp document and this really is verbatim uh... when we are peace something this exhibit b is is an attachment to every one of those solicitations and uh... as we did during our construction phase in our design phase uh... we we push these these firms uh... these are not checkbox i checkbox items in the contract that uh... contract sign it's filed we drive them because our our name is on this week we've made commitments and representations to our our our neighbors and the commonwealth and and we intend to hit them and uh... so nobody said it's easy we can't say your utilization goal for mb ease is fifteen percent and then we just sit back and watch them do it typically you have to chase you have to drive and uh... it's why we're actively recruiting for diversity manager right now because we're gonna need a a very aggressive pitbull to ensure that these things are actually done and that's how we're gonna succeed hopefully and just to add to that the the other thing that's really important is david not his group is focused on this a lot recently it's been affairs in education up front making sure that people are aware of what those prerequisites are right from the get-go so that they can prepare themselves for when we do go out yes the the uh... the exhibit a though we keep referring to it as the opportunity matrix has really been well received because it's not uh... it's not big it's specific it's seventy six commodities there's requirements there's timing we hand them out at all of our vendor fairs we not is going to talk in a minute about uh... some of our outreach activities and also about our spend objectives but we we finished uh... a fair yesterday down at the royal sinesta in in cambridge and so we regrouped after that and we started looking at all the registrations in the walk-up traffic to all these events that we've either hosted or attended and in the last six months were approaching thirteen hundred uh... individual businesses and or business owners met personally one-on-one meetings eyeball to eyeball talking about their firm's capabilities and how can we partner uh... it's really been and we intend to keep doing these were not doing it till opening uh... we're separately uh... trying to build an organization were interviewing madly and hiring people and so the more folks we can add to our team the deeper we can go out in these ongoing initiatives would you like to generally uh... and i would like to thank jill by the way jill has uh... really been invaluable the difference between our our first iteration of second we've gotten wonderful guidance and uh... so i want to thank you for helping us navigate through this so as i alluded to a little little while ago uh... we the the the emphasis for us is uh... is threefold it's identifying those firms it's soliciting those firms across a much wider base than than a typical kerman organization might do so and obviously the real objective is to award meaningful and ongoing business uh... it's it's just an exercise if that's not the end result so we kind of work backwards from if the goal is really awards how do we increase awards we we feel we increase awards by increasing solicitation how do we increase solicitation we do that going out and identifying all those firms so that's why for the last six months we've really been holding these fairs and we've been attending uh... g&e msdc events uh... nadia was in framingham friday uh... four hundred uh... wbs uh... we've presented to the uh... the north shore latino business community and so a lot of a lot of that was with an eye towards identifying those firms and uh... so those of the three key objectives uh... we've worked very closely with uh... john's uh... sdl office we've worked very closely with uh... g&e and c w a and we have ongoing meetings with the chambers of commerce too we've invited the chambers to all of our vendor fairs they've attended pretty much all of them and uh... it's been very successful because we're we're helping the chambers reach deeper into their communities uh... we have tables at each event for the mgc and for uh... the c w a and and all of the different diversity organizations with an eye towards using it as an opportunity to explain to people the benefits of certification that go far beyond doing business with on court just opens up doors to state and federal spending that would otherwise not exist and we encourage at each of these events right at the beginning visit our partners they're sitting back there in the corner and and understand the value here with that that those of them the major objectives uh... those are some of the the uh... high-level outreach that we've done and the chambers that we're working with and so with that i will introduce nadia ballard morning she'll talk about our spend objectives so i'm going to talk about the spent object objectives and then david's going to explain how we plan on achieving them we have established two types of commitments to create economic opportunity the first one is diversity uh... we have committed to spending eight percent of our discretionary spend with minority business enterprises and the fourteen percent of our discretionary spend with woman business enterprises wbs and three percent of the discretionary spend with veteran business enterprises utilize the commonwealth of massachusetts definitions of and the ease the bbc bbc and like david said a more detailed description of that discretionary spenders attachment or host and surrounded commitments uh... ten million dollars annually with ever based vendors twenty million dollars annually with boston based vendors ten million dollars annually with summer bill summer bills based vendors ten million annually molden based vendors ten million annually with metford based vendors and two point five million dollars annually with chelsea based vendors excuse me i'm sorry i had a quick question i know that uh... you know ever through metford came as came through as a result of the host and surrounding community agreements but i couldn't go back and discern with the two point five million dollar commitment to chelsea came from went through the arbiter's agreement between on-core and chelsea but i'm trying to figure out not saying it's a bad thing but i'm just trying to figure out and know where the others came from i'm trying to figure out with that one right and as you'll recall chelsea actually didn't sign the surrounding community agreement with us that went through the arbitration process i believe that that was a commitment that we've made to them as a as a subsequent to subsequent discussions so i had given uh... a few minutes ago the the three main objectives that at a high level uh... really on on page two the plan objectives is getting just a little bit more granular in some of the things that we're doing to identify those firms we do have a an on-core boston harbor website uh... as i mentioned there's a vendor opportunities uh... with it within that so there's there's the ability there to register as a as somebody that's interested in doing business on court so they can provide their their vendor information they can indicate with the their uh... certified diverse firm they have the ability to tell us what their general product or service offering is so we have that website within that website is this opportunities matrix which is our attached exhibit we do meet with these groups on a regular basis of the spanish american institute uh... the chambers we actually uh... it was a very interesting meeting of i think it was maybe about two months ago we had all seven of the chambers we invited them there to really just have an open discussion about how we should we should up approach our upcoming fairs uh... or vendor fairs so it's very interesting to get all the chambers because didn't necessarily agree on everything but we said hey folks we can do we can do fairs that are open to everybody all commodities all categories just big really huge events or we could tailor them specifically to the categories and commodities that maybe are more prevalent in your community and that's how we ended up dividing the fairs up into uh... food and beverage fair in this city and a maintenance materials fair in that city so it's very interesting to sit down with all these chambers and uh... ask them for meaningful input and how we should approach this thing so these fairs were really a reflection of how we wanted to do it but also how each of the our our our host and surrounding communities preferred to do it as well uh... we've had ongoing meetings with the urban league for i don't know years it's been it's been going on for a while mostly focused on workforce development but with us now hitting a point where we're really going to begin our our true r of p process as we and approach two thousand nineteen uh... we're going to expand that into these are going to be uh... regularly scheduled either is it monthly quarterly so we're probably going to do them monthly we're probably going to have our first one within the next month depending on how many vendors we're able to capture will decide whether we want to do them monthly or quarterly so it'll be our first one discussing vendors but it will be uh... one of many that have been going on on the workforce side uh... page three northeastern's event these these were some of the uh... the events that we had attended and or hosted as as of when i had submitted the plan to jail and we then uh... again that was this was mid-september we talked about our upcoming community outreach activities most of which have already now occurred so with that i'll give the floor back to nadia to describe a lot of the things that we've done okay mid-september so like david said uh... we have been meeting with vendors since march uh... we're very first vendor fair was march seventeen that could be wrong on the date uh... and we were able to capture about three hundred and fifty vendors during that event although it was a snow day which was wonderful that that many people actually showed up and uh... we were able to meet them uh... we learned a few things from that one there was a lot of uh... vendors that attended and at the time there was a small group of us uh... so we were not able to meet with three hundred and fifty vendors although we tried to so we decided to split them into smaller vendor fairs commodity based and have the appropriate people attend each one of them which is what we've done in the past few weeks uh... in the past few weeks i want to say we've been able to meet close to i think you have the number four about four hundred four hundred vendors uh... and we've been able to engage with them directly and also have the people there that are looking for certain types of services and products uh... so i think it's been beneficial for us and for them to actually have the face to face time with the end user and be able to present uh... their products uh... we did allow them a one-on-one meeting uh... they were prescheduled so they were able to come in bring their products present to them and show them uh... what they can do for us we haven't awarded any business yet we're in the process of our peen right now so this is the perfect time to find this vendors try to work with them and try to get them where they need to be where we can actually purchase from them uh... a lot of the vendors that i have attended the events are minority firms woman-owned firms in a few veteran firms uh... so we're hoping that you know working with them uh... might be able to get them to like they've said point where we can actually purchase directly from them and not have to go through a bigger company so that they can be first-tier diversity versus second-tier we uh... we have been able to put this together by the way with the help of uh... a lot of our partners i have to mention them the gnmsdc has been absolutely great they actually help us put together all do you want to say that acronym not everyone knows the great it's a great and new england minority diversity council uh... the woman uh... here we go thank you the center for women enterprise uh... the supply the commonwealth supply diversity office uh... the hispanic american institute and the north shore latino business association and the chambers yep and the chambers they were uh... great help to us they have been great partners uh... they were able to get most of these vendors to our vendor fairs uh... it's invaluable to us uh... in trying to meet and achieve our goals i think that is pretty much it on the vendor fairs back to me uh... the only thing i would add uh... to what nadia said is uh... we took uh... it was kind of a speed dating approach so all of our fairs we uh... so people would come to the front desk which we had staffed with folks and uh... we would award them a uh... not award them we would uh... assigned them a time slot and they were seven minute intervals and we wanted them to be longer but we wanted to be able to talk to folks so the the structure for all of these things was we would have somebody on the microphone calling out the time so we would say one minutes ago and then the next uh... minute we would say okay the the ten twenty two a m meetings are now starting please approach your table so it was very structured but it was a it was a way to really get folks to speak to those business at the event in cambridge yesterday we had limo companies talking to our director of transportation and our limousine manager they were talking to the right folks so so that was one benefit to the uh... to the format that we chose okay so with that these outreaches will continue we we've uncovered some wonderful relationships are ready uh... we don't want to name uh... the vendor but we have uh... a certified wb e based in massachusetts i don't believe they're in a serenity community but the massachusetts based certified where we've identified them for about six or seven hundred thousand dollars of spend in the next hopefully next two or three weeks i think they're going for licensing right now but it's somebody that we met at one of these events and they said here's what we do and we said wow that's what we're looking for and they scaled it was interesting in that we had to we have to convince them that the opportunity was real they were concerned that that oh on core they have relationships maybe out in los vegas we would never have a shot at this so not even i spent a fair amount of time explaining uh... we're from massachusetts we're not we're not here from vegas i've lived on the north shore for twenty years uh... ninety some odd percent of our staff is born within probably twenty miles of where we're sitting right now we had to convince them that this was not an exercise and just using them as leverage and we said but you can't participate if you're not willing to go through the registration process and give us a meaningful bit and they did it and that's just the first of many hopefully it's a big piece of business solicitation is the uh... is the second objective i i i discussed a little while ago when a buyer is overseeing an rfp they're just these built-in limitations i mean how many bids can you give meaningful attention to me maybe ten maybe twelve that's even high for some things depending on the complexity of it so there's this built-in throttle coming right out of the gate where uh... you're limiting who you're sending it to just because you have to so working backwards as i had mentioned before where okay if the if the goals awards working backwards from that how do we solicit more and it's when i wrote this thing the salvia s he said is that a word i call i'd refer to it is templatized he's and you know he's like really is that when i said i don't know but i put it in quotes just in case but it's a templatized approach where we send an rfp out we will say here's the thing here's the widget that we're looking for and you have to put your sk u-number in this box and you have to put your proposed unit price in that box and your unit of measure in that box by taking that approach which is really just here's the format of the rfp please ensure that you respond and put the information in the right place now you can just step back in technology and we're doing it this is not speculative uh... can just take all of that information and run it through very simple that says this is the lowest proposal this is the second one this is the third one this is the eighty second lowest proposal we would uh... that's what i would refer to it i guess is the heavy lifting so it still allows us to make the decision with the human element but it allows us very quickly to broadcast this thing very widely and then say okay so which which one of these are from our host of commanding of the community which one's an mbe of ebbe of wbe so we've done this we did this at the last place that we worked we actually have the tool at the tiny url hoping which i'm looking at tomorrow so we have the tool where when we work previously we have the tool today we intend to use it and we think we can really broadcast these things very widely i think i kind of morphed right into three i think i talked about how we overcome those limitations on page seven uh... greater visibility leads to greater awards one of the things that we've explored and i don't know i hope we're going to be able to do it but we've explored linking networks so i've spoken to john Fitzpatrick about about the uh... their database and some of the other diversity databases and everybody's giving me notes here sorry see if i didn't get notes i'd be speaking yesterday we're going to look at a bunch of technology potential solutions some of it may be linking networks and some of it may very simply just be uh... plugging plugging a link to our site onto some of our partners websites people can click and say what's on court bidding right now and i'll hand it back over to not enough for organizational support uh... so the plan is currently being led dave was a director of procurement myself manager and then we also have the full support overseeing your leadership leadership team and that is comprised of president bob the salvia or general counsel jacquie crumb uh... our executive vice president of operations brian goldbrands and our chief financial officer franquecella uh... this group will comprise the organizational steering committee mandate of the steering committee is to ensure that the commitments we've made in this plan at the highest visibility within our organization and to take the necessary steps as needed to ensure that the plans objectives are achieved we're about nine months away from opening and we'd like they've said we're still in the process of hiring interviewing people uh... we're hoping that our team is going to be about ten to fifteen we're currently at nine hoping to get more in the next few weeks by the end of hoping to be fully staffed by the end of the fourth quarter of twenty eighteen uh... and like that like they've mentioned we're also in the process of looking and interviewing hoping to find a procurement diversity manager to directly lead all aspects of this plan that i'm going to turn it over to david again and i'll i'll i'll go uh... diversity development assistance we're on page eight i'll go through that quickly some of some of these items i think we've already discussed uh... we are uh... we are having conversations with companies like ranger to partner at a tier two level that's one example we're pushing in our contracts for utilization goals which again uh... we need to then sometimes chase folks but that's the way at the end of the day that you do hit your numbers and we've got good experience doing that in the previous phases so we intend to do that as well operationally and we're also now thinking about mentoring programs we were doing some things on the workforce development size to partner uh... at ever high school and other organizations and and we're now putting thought into how can we do that on the vendor side as well if we are helping high school and college kids with their career paths and uh... alternatives and uh... etc etc we feel strongly we can do the same thing on the vendor side as well which might be uh... partnering with our executive chef joe lebowitz or our director of facilities who's who has a very big building that he needs to keep heated and cooled and clean etc so we're looking now at doing things like that and modeling them after what we've done in other areas of our business uh... uh... i guess that's it really i don't want to i don't want to be repeating myself but it's really about identifying them soliciting them awarding them and giving advanced visibility through any number of means to either show them what what we feel the criteria is to show them when the opportunity timing is to continue our meetings with the hispanic american institute and others and really just keep driving the program uh... well well beyond opening and uh... i'll open it up to questions so with commissioners yeah i had a thank you both for your presentation had a couple of questions in a few comments you know what's it what's interesting is mgm through all of its host and surrounding community agreements uh... put a tremendous priority and focus on hire non-courses placed through host and surrounding community it's a tremendous value on local business and it's interesting because you regional employment has kind of a regional focus purchasing small business relationships can actually impact all corners of the commonwealth which is kind of interesting even though obviously there's there's also very concentrated focus on the companies in the host and surrounding communities uh... just a couple of notes you know the the vendor advisory task force which the commissioners worked with an organized i'm glad to see them referenced in the plan they can obviously be a great source of not only helping you find potential vendors but also providing a lot of technical assistance financial resources to uh... i think your point to help a company get the contract maintain the contract and business at a capacity level to maintain the contract very interested in you know pleased to see parts of the plan talking about mentoring the small and diverse local vendors that's key you know you talk about it a lot about meaningful and ongoing business relationship and that doesn't stop the war going through some of the other pieces went back and looked at the host and surrounding community agreements uh... you also made commitments to purchase local gift certificates from local businesses we did uh... i think more than for example was like twenty five thousand dollars i do look at that figure is being in addition to what you plan to spend that is our intent separate but i'm wondering if you if you're doing this whole procurement process in introducing yourself to the community are you publicizing that the fact of making the fact of where to a business that you get introduced to that as a salon has any other type of business that may not have that direct uh... bit of a good relationship with you but saying you might be a great candidate for us to buy some gift certificates from and i'm just trying think of how you were kind of formalizing that process i think it can contribute to your mb and wb and bb spend i think that's important but uh... that was kind of a piece of the plan it's not significant dollars and maybe significant dollars to a local company but that's a piece of the plan i'd love to have you kind of go back and just shore up because again it was laid out in your host and surrounding community yes it's it's it's definitely it's incremental to everything discussed here and uh... the further support of that is i was not even aware of the gift certificates until about a week or two ago when somebody said okay by the way so uh... it absolutely is incremental and i think to your point commissioner we can uh... we can and should think carefully about how we buy them because uh... it it can contribute to the spirit of this uh... even though it's aside from the goals that we've already said so it was a new revelation for me but well i'm actually working with jackie's team on that right now as far as how we're going to utilize them also again just referencing the host and surrounding community agreements the old terminology but there was talk making sure that businesses are quote-unquote win-certified not quite sure what that meant but is that helping with building the level of capacity or is it just making sure that obviously small businesses have a vendor capacity or performance level that you expect i think when we were talking about win-certified and we'll now say uncle boston harbour certified what we mean is that they go through the vendor registration process uh... and meet the requirements that we have internally for insurance and other things so the key that's been one of the key messaging points during these vendor fairs is to let them know what we require in house as well as the uh... gaming commissions requirements so it's a two-step process and gc registration followed by us i had uh... one question it seems like you've uh... you've made up a really strong very strong effort on the front end uh... to recruit and to encourage make the make the contacts in the communities i'm wondering if you have a mechanism on the back end for those firms who may have been unsuccessful to receive some feedback uh... and you know you were really strong in a bc but there are others that may have been stronger and dn e and and and that does two things that it gives folks the opportunity to improve and secondly keeps them engaged you know lots of times if someone's unsuccessful they said that said i'm done i'm never applying again and if you had a mechanism like that i think that could be helpful as well yeah that's that's great and and and uh... full honestly no i had not put a lot of thought into that uh... we do we do have a requirement where we uh... we will respond to every somebody that submitted a proposal will will say sorry we've chosen somebody else so what we will will never do is not ever get back to them but now i had not put thought into that and i think i think it's a good idea i think that's something we can develop because it can tell these interested businesses uh... where they need to shore things up or maybe partner with somebody else you know so i think that's great feedback will will work that into it anything else believe we have to vote on this plan let me just make uh... an overall comment along the lines of what you introduced this overall plan director and i think uh... it's clearly been a lot of thought uh... put into this there's a lot of uh... uh... tactics that we've heard from uh... all the work uh... that you've done prior to this you know with the uh... accident committee and others i think uh... it is the document reads well because it's straightforward as as is your your approach and i and i really look forward to uh... a lot of these uh... coming to provision i like your at the anecdote that you uh... that you mentioned which was perhaps a little bit of the question i had about these mbd that thought that or or wb that thought that the opportunity was going to be for others in elsewhere but uh... but to the extent that you can make those conversations that much more uh... ubiquitous or more more more uh... recurring uh... maybe maybe that anecdote uh... will become uh... an occasion to be you know repeated and what not and and and that's really where the opportunity comes up for for all those businesses i think that's a challenge for the whole diversity community i've heard that from uh... peter and others and that's part of our job is to say this is real and then demonstrated by worrying that we're definitely willing to work with them it is the process it's definitely the perception of a smaller business they're not going to be able to be up to the scale of what we're looking for uh... but we are working with them and encouraging them explaining to them that they have a chance just like anyone else madam chair i would move that uh... the commission approved the uh... supplier diversity in commitment plan is provided by on core boston harbour uh... is included in the packet with a couple of kind of follow-up items with respect to their plan first that uh... it's such appropriate time that they share with us their plan or strategies to address this issue around the local purchasing of gift certificates secondly to the degree that they want to report back to us i think on your suggestion about uh... working with vendors that might not be chosen i think that's a interesting strategy to build upon and uh... thirdly that uh... she said during the process of hiring a diversity manager i would invite uh... director griffin at some point to one give us an opportunity to meet that diversity manager hiring you know report at any point i think as you see fit uh... to talk about that individual's work and how you're progressing on the some of the person further discussion all in favor for zero thank you very much thank you for your time you thank you director griffin do we have one more item there morning commissioners good morning morning is it still morning it is not one uh... so actually i'm here i just have a brief update for you introduce crystal crystal howard our manager workforce supplier and diversity hello again good afternoon alright we're on the right foot now so uh... i just wanted to give you a little update about an event that we're going to be hosting here at the commission on november fifth it's uh... it will support the efforts of art all three licensees in their goals toward attaining their vendor contracts and procurements with veteran-owned businesses primarily uh... to bid the dates actually ideal because this uh... occurs in tandem with national veterans small business week which actually runs the fifth to the ninth and this that's on the fifth as i said so we're purposing this event primarily as a catalyst to spark greater awareness among the entire veteran community not just the small business owners who've been identified uh... so we're inviting all organizations and entities that deal with veterans as a whole at all and it just to make sure that they have the knowledge of what happens here what the casino's goals are and actually uh... osd will be here to provide some information just in general about getting certified as a vbhe so it's an opportunity for them to work with state contracts in general not just us so uh... that will actually take place from one thirty five uh... november fifth right here in this room uh... there will also be each licensee will get a chance to present actually what we just heard is a really good example hopefully to just energize the room and tell them of some of these vbs were having really great opportunities but also to give an awareness of their opportunities that are upcoming or some events vendor fares that they have that they could engage some of their veteran contacts in uh... and then there will be a resource fair portion of sorts where they can just network with other individuals in the room see what they do for veterans how they could communicate and contact on some of this initiative in the future uh... yeah so actually we've heard that the interest in appreciation from the casinos themselves pretty high in this event they've determined that it's important to them and that it would be a good resource for some of the issues that they've been having in that realm anyway i think that's it do you have any questions uh... yeah just curious uh... the flyer doesn't identify an RSVP and i don't think you should but do you have a sense as to whether uh... there's already some people we did we sent an actual invitation out on monday this was really just an awareness piece for you guys the invitation has uh... you just contact me so if you guys want copy of that invitation i can send it to you we have it in flyer form and digital form uh... we had a pretty great list commissioner sevens was actually really helpful with convening some veteran partners jill obviously had a lot of contacts as well uh... and it's growing as we go through the week we've seen more interest we've gotten more names and we just keep pushing it out there will be a reminder invite as well so if you think of anyone or you have a contact you think should be in that room i would be willing to get this out to commissioners in iga's point uh... what we can do is uh... put that information out on the website again so that people who are listening know who to contact and it is on social media might got it up tuesday on all of our social media many people make it sounds like an excellent idea thank you both thank you next we are moving on to uh... on bonds on budsman the ember and he's got a number of items and a number of uh... thank you very much commissioners uh... today first on the agenda that we're continuing our review of the two thousand nineteen community mitigation fund guidelines uh... for our next funding round which begins on february first of two thousand nineteen uh... i'm joined here by uh... construction project oversight manager joe delaney staff attorney kary teresy director of workforce development jill griffin and mary thurlow our community mitigation fund program directors so full team here today so our review today uh... is part of our effort to publish guidelines for the two thousand nineteen program by the first uh... first week of december uh... the commission as you know uh... met on september thirteenth develop a list of questions to consider in reviewing the fund uh... since that time we've met with the local community mitigation advisory committee uh... in region b once unfortunately although our meetings uh... have been scheduled with region a in the subcommittee on community mitigation we've been unable to meet due to some quorum issues but we're going to continue to try to meet uh... we have meeting scheduled in november for a and b uh... and the subcommittee of community mitigation in the gaming policy advisory committee uh... as you know this is a really really robust way of taking a look at the fund each year but we we find it very very valuable we get a lot of very good input from all of our local and state partners uh... i'd like to thank all those members for a lot of the good advice they provided today so what we're trying to do is we're not trying to finalize the guidelines and there's sort of many uh... with quite some ways to go before we finalize those in december but what we're trying to do is get some consensus just on the discussion draft of the guidelines that doesn't mean we're making final determinations regarding what will be in the guidelines but it's really just a draft to solicit more discussion of items that are outstanding and indeed just because we include something in the draft guidelines that doesn't necessarily even mean uh... that something will be funded in the end uh... as you know it's a very exhaustive review process for all applications that we receive uh... the process that we are engaged in is very similar to what we did last year last year we sent it out to uh... the public uh... to get comments and then we reconvened to to consider all the comments before we issued the guidelines so if we can get approval for the discussion draft today i'd recommend the commission uh... put forward this draft for a comment period to end on on monday november nineteenth that's right before the thanksgiving holiday so uh... the goal would be to come back to the commission at the december sixth meeting so the communities would have roughly about two months to put together their applications before the statutory february first application deadline uh... what we have today in the packet will most likely not be the final guidelines will probably do some board smithing even without comments uh... what the draft is meant to do is provide you very significant detail regarding all the concepts that were entertaining for the two thousand nineteen uh... fund uh... the first item uh... that i'll just mention is that should we continue to have an overall limit for the fund each year in order to be conservative week we take a look at uh... available funding and what we should put out there for uh... projected targeted spending even though we put out a projected targeted spending each year uh... in reality we have awarded less uh... then the targets the each year uh... last year we were awarded pretty significantly less uh... we as you as i just mentioned it's pretty exhaustive process but we have to make sure that we're fulfilling the statute and that all applications all the applications that we receive uh... they always look like very very good projects as you know but the thing that we have to make certain is that the the projects are directly connected to the to the casino and uh... for purposes related to that to fulfill the statute so currently there's approximately uh... five point two million dollars that's uh... remains unallocated from previous years in addition to that we have we are estimating that approximately one and a half million dollars will be generated by mgm springfield uh... this fall up until december thirty first of this year uh... again we take the conservative approach when we're allocating funds for the uh... for the upcoming year we stop counting funds uh... basically as of december thirty first of the prior year uh... just to make sure that we don't run over uh... the one thing that perhaps is maybe not as conservative as previous years we held back amounts for future funding rounds in previous years this year we're recommending that we can spend the full amount uh... outstanding uh... or at least we could target that spending with the anticipation that we will uh... have further revenues generated as a result of the category one uh... facilities so in other words that full amount would be the five point two minus the plus the one point five the five point two plus the one point five so six point seven yes six point seven but obviously mgm springfield continues to generate revenues so there'll be more monies that go into the fund based on our conservative approach we could spend that much but in reality we probably won't so one thing i will mention that five point two million uh... figure there is an asterisk on that we currently have one item that is on hold uh... we reviewed a springfield application relative to the focus springfield site and we put that on hold the commission said basically at the time that we would award no more than three hundred thousand dollars but there were significant issues involving the uh... anti-aid provision of the constitution that we had to take a look at the status of that is that we have had discussions with the city of springfield and we're awaiting a further narrative for them on a different approach on how they would uh... take a look at the impact that uh... that they believe is being caused uh... in that corner of the mgm springfield project uh... i don't have those uh... documents today but we're expecting them soon but they're still there though right they're still there uh... and uh... in the location if they're still there in that location to the best of uh... my knowledge uh... i don't believe that there's been any action to move to move them to move them as of now uh... so we just mentioned the total amount of funding that's six point seven which is the five point two old and one point five of new last year when we did the guidelines the commission included a statement of intent in its guidelines in the statement basically said that in future years we would consider breaking up the fund uh... by region as we will have new revenues in from mgm springfield new revenues that are anticipated from the encore boss in harbor facility what we heard from our dialogue with our with our local partners is that both in region a in region b there's an appetite for us to take a look at the fund uh... as as separate funds within the overall community mitigation fund in essence uh... western mass money mgm springfield generated money could be allocated to the western mass region and then uh... similarly money in eastern mass would be dedicated to uh... eastern mass purposes at the time we we said that well uh... there is this is a statewide program we also have to account for the category two impacts uh... because that their method of payment they don't pay into the mitigation fund an ongoing basement basis category two is you know goes for the horse race development fund and for local aid so what we have in your uh... program in the drab program would be the first year of that regional allocation and so what we're recommending is that we split up uh... this the funding so if we take uh... but i just keep it's easier to explain this by way of example so if we have five point two million dollars and we anticipate that we spend about two hundred thousand dollars off the top for the category two impacts uh... bizarre spending is roughly been about one seventy on average are around there so if we allocate two hundred thousand dollars for a category two impacts that leaves you about five million dollars and so if we split that up that five million dollars of the existing funds we would have two point five million dollars available to spend in the east and two point five to spend in the west with the exception that we have one point five from new monies that we could then add to western mass so with that region allocation we could do two point five in the east and four point though in the west but that does take into account that because mgs brinkfield is operational it is generating new types of impacts i don't know if you have any questions on that just so i'm been privy to the conversations in the feedback of this from the western mass group on this on this topic i just want to be correct in assuming that if something happened in region c eighty five million dollar license fee if it was a warden region c is allocated to community mitigation fund your so your plan might be to take whatever region c licensee contributes that would be used to address community mitigation needs that that's exactly right so we would take a look at it that you would have a portion of the initial funding so they're not like correct around for a pot so the initial funding could come out of the license fees and if you if we did have a region c the funds that would be generated by a region c facility could be kept within the region c area one thing i will mention is just like last year we allocated two hundred thousand dollars uh... for technical assistance program in the event that the tribal facility moves forward and that money's already been accounted for so it's not new monies but we will we recommend that we continue that program into next year uh... those funds would not be a eligible or available for technical assistance uh... unless the commission makes a separate vote to free those dollars up based on the determination uh... that the construction of a facility may may occur in the next fiscal year so that also addresses that that particular need uh... can i just mention uh... i uh... i was initially and this i'm going back years initially reluctant and the notion of splitting a fund like this just from the soul theory that it diminishes flexibility for a state agency and we are a state agency to really look at statewide uh... priorities uh... but fast forward to what to today and i think there's a lot of uh... virtue if you will or a lot of uh... business case to split it in some way that is equitable and rational and uh... and and really whatever money comes out of that region will go to him to to mitigate the impacts from that region uh... appears to be really a lot of local uh... partners uh... c s equitable there's a long history of uh... the western mass uh... region feeling like money from that region it's uh... disproportionately spent uh... elsewhere notably in the east and i understand that they understand there will be different monies coming from each region at least if the projection spent out uh... like uh... like their uh... projected to be so i think uh... this this is a really important year in which we would make that move that as we are beginning the operational phase would be the time to to entertain it and to do it uh... something tells me that with this document you will get that much more input in this in this regard but i think that with a small caveat of at least uh... uh... carving out a reasonable amount for the category two uh... that the splitting up of of the of the regions would ultimately make economic sense yeah i i would i would agree i i had some concerns about it at the outset but i think through going through a few rounds of this we've gained a level of experience of what expectations are you know revenue generated already kind of seeing communities in the region looking for have certain expectations about what the fun could be used for so i think it's a little more comfortable with it again now kind of having a couple years under our belt you know what they will notice that we included language to make sure that the commission has the discretion if it's necessary to not uh... very closely abide by those targeted spending we very very much view those allocations as targets it's you know it's quite clear that we have ongoing relationships with all of these communities so if we don't adhere to those targets will definitely here about it in all of our local meetings so if we if we if we don't adhere to those targets in any one year there's a language in this draft that says that we would try to then make it up in future years through some way shape form or manner but we also have the ability to look back at this policy every single year the guidelines are done every year so we want to make sure that we are addressing the needs that we were told to address but try to do it fairly between the regions and i think that this uh... uh... at least this draft as of now knowing what we know uh... goes a long way to do and i suppose that at least in theory we could be in a situation where you know on a steady state a few years from now where we may be facing real pressure to fund a project in one region uh... that might be in the overall less meritorious than a project in another region only because well the funding has been segregated but i think as commissioner stevens was saying with experience that we have the process that you've put together with all the team about you know being really diligent about uh... matching an impact to a uh... to the casino and whatnot this this effort is really this this probability would be at least minimized uh... in terms of you know funding less meritorious projects i agree i think uh... it's in keeping with the legislation which is one license to each region so this really does follow that theory and make sense right as for some of the other recommendations uh... you'll see that a number of the recommendations have not really changed since last year there are a number of programs that we included in last year in previous years grants uh... specific impact grants transportation planning grants uh... nontransportation planning grants and then reserves reserves that we awarded in our first year we continue to allow those we haven't made traumatic changes in those we still have the specific impact grants the one thing i will know is that now that mgm springfield is operational we have now expanded the eligibility for the purposes of the specific impacts to cover both operational related and construction related impacts and this will be the last year where you have both uh... because uh... we have some construction impacts that have occurred that perhaps would be the subject of an application uh... in eastern mass we continue with the restriction that we only have construction related impacts uh... because obviously they're still in construction the one exception that i will state to that is that uh... in eastern mass similar to what we did in region b last year uh... we state that uh... police training costs could be eligible last year we funded a grant for the springfield police department that enabled uh... some of uh... their members to put fully participate in the gaming enforcement unit and then other folks to get trained to then fill their spots in in the springfield pd and basically what we're doing is an apples the apples comparison between that program uh... in western mass and eligibility for ever for this upcoming year uh... so that is one notable exception uh... for the uh... the prohibition against doing operational related impacts uh... in eastern mass uh... we uh... still have workforce pilot programs at three hundred thousand i do know that this continues to be in area of great interests in all of the regions there's a lot of support for workforce pilot programs undoubtedly will get some comments uh... to this uh... during our during our reviews the thought of keeping it at that same level is that hey we will receive those comments as part of our reviews one of the other things that we have to think about is that there is a gaming economic development fund out there and the gaming economic development fund uh... list a number of eligible purposes and and job training is sort of squarely within the gaming economic development fund uh... also both host communities will have and have significant resources to bring to bear uh... as a result of their uh... their agreements uh... to potentially dedicate to workforce development that doesn't say that we can't consider an increase to this amount uh... come the december application but at least as of now that is some of the thought that went into that status quo uh... operation but i don't know if jill if you wanted it if the commission would be interested in a sort of a very brief summary of some of the successes to date uh... we know that uh... we've had a lot of interactions with our grantees we do have our western mass grantees coming in in november i'll give you highlights uh... in western mass cumulatively the program served two hundred and nineteen individuals in f y eighteen and we're starting to see some exciting results now the mgm is opening you know for example the uh... the scholarships seventy two scholarships were awarded uh... the gaming school had uh... eighty six percent completion rate eighty one percent were hired by mgm and uh... eighty six point seven of those individuals in the gaming school were new to gaming uh... so that was really exciting uh... additionally we have individuals who were part of the adult basic education program both english language and uh... high school equivalency over a hundred individuals and starting to see some gains there uh... we have a accelerated high school equivalency that's uh... smaller program thirty two individuals five received their high-sets uh... high school equivalency and a pilot line cook training is starting uh... we're started uh... and they hope to actually uh... expand that next fiscal and then in eastern mass their efforts have really focused on spreading the word and they launched a new casino career advisors network uh... which is composed of career centers community-based organizations in metro north boston and workforce regions of the uh... metro north and boston workforce regions they've met five times with on core boston harbor they're learning all about the uh... jobs and and requirements and they also have a pilot culinary program has a high placement rate as well uh... additionally they have uh... outreach uh... over four hundred individuals have received in-depth service like career counseling or industry orientation uh... application assistance that sort of thing those are just the highlights will certainly uh... share more as the word comes in just to interject i think what's been interesting about the workforce development pilot money has been seen in the last two years how our funds are being leveraged by the applicants to again tap into other monies might be existing i know mark van der linden and i are talking with in terms of looking into the research agenda trying to actually figure out what communities are experience in terms of the workforce impact talking with both local and statewide stakeholders to figure out what data we can look at so as it moves along it's gonna it's obviously having some good results but hopefully we'll get some data that we can go back and look at see what direct impacts we're having as well uh... continue on next category transportation planning we're not recommending uh... much change here there was a question that we talked about in september which is should we expand our transportation planning grants to include uh... the construction costs of transportation projects for the first year and i think uh... at this point our answer is no with a caveat i'll talk about it and new proposal for a new subset of a program but i think our answer is is no for the reason that there will be a lot of evaluation of the transportation system uh... over the course of this next year there are a number of different look back requirements in all this running community agreements in addition our section sixty one findings mass dot section sixty one findings there's going to be a tremendous amount of review of how the transportation system is accommodating mgm sprinkler related traffic given uh... that those outstanding reviews we thought it would probably be wise before we started jumping into paying for uh... actual uh... transportation basically roadway projects and similarly out here in region a we're still in the process of constructing the facility and we won't know the impacts of uh... of the mitigation uh... that they've agreed to for for quite some time however you know i we have always focused on what do we need to do to make sure that we are ready in the event uh... that there are any impacts beyond what we've anticipated and um... what we did what we're doing with transportation planning is getting ready and the uh... the new proposal that i'll talk to talk about in a in a little bit is also something that could be put into that same category uh... mention the tribal impact grants uh... no change there we would continue with that two hundred thousand nontransportation planning grants uh... we recommend that we continue with that program uh... but with one minor change uh... currently we allow funds to be used for nontransportation planning and and uh... they're really useful when it comes to economic development planning we would specify we're recommending specifying in the guidelines is that planning would also include activities such as uh... providing technical assistance and promotion of uh... groups of area businesses not singular businesses but groups of area businesses and what that could do is that could uh... help prevent uh... issues or remedy any issues uh... if there are any uh... impacts from that mgms break facility or indeed the acorb facility on area businesses that we could try to see what we can do to promote uh... those area business to make sure that they succeed uh... and it we know that mgms breakfield is is uh... doing a lot of that work as well but the grants uh... what we're specifying is that they could be expanded for this purpose so john remind me we we we need to put this out for comment correct this one make sure i don't know commissioners if you've all had a chance to review this if you have any additional question for john i think this is a very good first draft to to put together it's uh... it's an incremental effort like uh... like you've done in the past to build on essentially what what we've done to this day and we and we look forward to hearing from the local community mitigation committees and others relative to uh... then once we get out for comment we come back in front of commission for a more in-depth discussion of the vote makes sense good work uh... and there's uh... the transit projects of regional significance there's some detail in the guidelines that describe that but if anybody needs further input on that i can i can certainly thank you great work as usual alright good so at this point we'll move on to the uh... region a local mitigation advisory committee appointments yes so we continue to try to make sure that we uh... get our local committees uh... fully membered up uh... if that's a word so i just recently the commission made some appointments uh... we had a ever chamber of commerce representative callin kelly uh... it was one of our recent appointments unfortunately due to some work constraints he is uh... due to move on we really thank him very much for all of his assistance that he is uh... provided uh... and then we are recommending one new member which is the economic development spot a regional economic development spot we're asking the commission to approve a person uh... by the name of mr david bankrupt uh... david works currently in mass development he is the senior vice president of community development for mass development uh... in this position he's worked in the in the greater boston region he's responsible for the he's brownfields pre-development co-working and transfer transfer transformative development initiatives uh... he joined mass development in nineteen ninety nine i've been telling folks in the office that i've known david for about twenty years but i guess upon reflection i've known david for closer to thirty years uh... since we both worked in housing at the beginning of our careers so anyway uh... we look forward to his expertise uh... also the expertise from vincen panzini who would be the new chamber of commerce representative from ever mister panzini was he was born and raised in ever and graduate graduated from ever high school he began working right out of high school uh... in the banking and related technical areas and itself for twenty one years he was educated at bentley university with a bachelor's degree in management uh... in nineteen eighty seven mister panzini opened up financial advisor practice and ever and began a thirty one career uh... your career in that field he has been particularly active in the ever chamber of commerce and this year he is president uh... so we think that we would be well served by these new appointees uh... madam chair and move that the commission approved the uh... appointments of mister panzini mister bankrupt to the region a local community mitigation advisory committee any further discussion all in favor four zero thank you commissioners my final item is uh... relates to a filing deadline that is coming up there is a a deadline for filing of legislation by state agencies uh... that filing deadline is the first wednesday in november which this year would be november seven uh... included in your packet are two pieces of legislation that we had filed in previous years enact relative divorce racing and wagering uh... in the second piece of legislation is uh... an act to enable municipal and regional planning agency employees to fully participate in gaming policy advisory committees we just start with this later one uh... we worked uh... with the state ethics commission craft this language and basically what it would do is it would enable a lot of our local partners to fully participate in our advisory committees uh... right now there is a danger that if you are a municipal employee or regional planning agency employee that you could potentially be uh... in violation of the conflict of interest law by participating in providing advice and basically what it is is that when you participate on our advisory committees you become a special state employee and so there could be a potential conflict if your local area duties also involve gaming related duties uh... the ethics commission i think they felt very comfortable proposing legislation that would enable those local partners uh... to fully advise the commission as special state employees but they would uh... be able to do their local duties at the same time one thing that we will want to do is we will want to continue to work with the ethics commission on the language uh... we were unsuccessful at getting this this thing through this past year and perhaps one of the obstacles might be that uh... we try to amend uh... mgl chapter twenty three k which is the gaming statute uh... there is a lot of hesitancy about opening up that statute so potentially we could craft language to accomplish the same mission in another uh... method in addition i i think we've had some conversations about expanding uh... the the reach of this legislation to maybe cover cover some of our other advisory committees and i i think that we could accomplish that same thing through conversations with the ethics commission uh... by the time we have hearings in in the spring march or able uh... as of now we need it we still need to do those conversations uh... the next piece of legislation i'll ask uh... general counsel blue to help me with this one but uh... this is our course racing and wagering legislation uh... as you know the situation with uh... with racing and simulcasting every year uh... there's an open question about what will happen as uh... as there are certain deadlines that are imposed by the legislature we had an extension of simulcasting law right at the deadline this this past year that has been extended till july thirty first of next year of uh... two thousand and nineteen uh... it might be a very important thing for us to seek out uh... all of the members that will have uh... hand in looking at uh... racing legislation as early as we possibly can given that that deadline and that we can go work with them as as much as we possibly and i'll let general counsel blue uh... talk about the more specifics that legislation but i also wanted to just put it in context that we have these two pieces of legislation but there are other pieces of gaming related legislation that are very likely in the next legislative session and uh... specifically as you're aware of the supreme court earlier this year uh... they uh... had a case that involves sports gambling uh... and as a result there has been a lot of movement in other states uh... to develop legislation authorizing sports betting uh... since the supreme court decision a number of other states such as delaware mississippi new jersey was virginia and rhod Island have acted to legalize sports betting uh... at the close of formal legislative sessions here in massachusetts in july there's a lot of dialogue about what massachusetts would do in the wake of that supreme court decision uh... chairman joseph wagger of the joint committee on a kind of economic development and merging technologies set at the time quote we will get about the work of this quickly so that when we do convene for the two thousand nineteen two thousand twenty uh... session we can be ready to go as you were the commission issued it's white paper on sports betting in february of this year undoubtedly we will continue to need to be prepared to provide expertise and input as the legislature intense intensifies its review of the sports betting issue together with the july thirty first two thousand nineteen expiration of the racing statutes the commission may be quite busy early next year and on the legislative front with that alternative general counsel good afternoon commissioners uh... the racing bill that is in your packet is essentially what we filed last year we made a couple of minor tweaks to it will be changed uh... a shall to amade to give the commission more flexibility but generally the basis of the bill is that there is not a lot of definition in it uh... it does require the commission to draft a lot of regulations to determine how licenses are awarded what has to be filed uh... whether the commission wants to address issues like simulcasting and live racing separately however the commission wanted to do that so it is essentially the same bill i would imagine that we are going to get comments on it like we have in previous years and hopefully this year we're racing at least on the thoroughbred side looks like it's starting to end uh... perhaps we'll get more input from the stakeholders in thoroughbred racing in you know maybe get some support there so so it is essentially the same but we were certainly open to discussing it and making changes in it were appropriate i i would i've for a while completely understand it's the same bill we have filed and appreciate the tweaks to it again as you pointed out as we heard on monday there may be no thoroughbred racing in massachusetts after june i think of twenty nineteen so i'd love to find a way for us in the stakeholders to finally be able to have a singular voice uh... in talking to the legislature and you know that might mean i think and also to john's point of getting the stakeholders together so that we're going to uh... the legislative leadership with one voice how best we can do that i don't know but i think it's incumbent upon us to try you know to that end i i i don't think there's any new changes that i can see in the in the proposed bill uh... i would emphasize and i know we've done it in the past it's just not are very clear in the proposed letter that we have here sort of like the background and it doesn't have to be lengthy what has brought us now to this place this is really now the third time that uh... that we've done this filing or you may even be the fourth because uh... the gaming act requires to look at the at the state of the simulcasting and racing statutes which were set to expire the gaming act in the originally in fourteen or fifteen in twenty fourteen twenty fourteen prior to that expiration we filed uh... bills accordingly and the legislature has instead extended the simulcasting statute the one set to expire now for three times and my guess is that uh... you know they they uh... don't quite recognize uh... and i would blame them for that that you know the levers of the uh... racehorse development fund and the many other moving parts uh... work together and to the point that you've made earlier there needs to be you know a number of things in place uh... one of one of those is at least some business certainty into uh... what uh... regulatory framework might look like i feel that you know our our bill is flexible enough to provide that uh... you know they would still have to be a number of answers uh... number of uh... details to be filled in uh... but uh... i really think that this year is important more than ever to make the context that a one-year extension is in my opinion simply not gonna cut it uh... because the very likelihood that uh... there might not even be a track to conduct two or four or six racing days you know just just just to draw on some other purposes uh... i really hope that they that we don't find ourselves in a situation in the at the end of july or june or at the end of the legislative session where you know some people begin to pay attention they have many other priorities that's for sure but i really think that the context of these expiring uh... statutes that have only been extended is important to educate uh... uh... people up there as to what needs to be done i really think this needs attention i think if there's a legitimate proposal which we hear about but it has not happened yet hear about from a number of different sources if something like that comes to fruition there probably would be the uh... more interest in taking this matter seriously so i don't think this requires a vote but you understand that this is the legislation will revive and pursue monitor on sports yes anything else on that topic thank you both very much we'll move on to commissioner updates any updates hearing none uh... do we have uh... a motion to adjourn uh... so moved all in favor we're adjourned thank you