 Good morning, Austin. Thank you, everyone, for accommodating my few minutes of being late this morning. We're calling to order meeting number 272 of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission on Wednesday, June 12th, 2019, at 10 a.m. at our offices at 101 Federal Street here in Boston. As you know, Commissioner Cameron is not here today. We will begin with item two on our agenda. That would be the minutes review, Commissioner Stephens. Good morning, Madam Chair. In your packet, you have the meeting minutes from the May 23rd, 2019 meeting out in Springfield. I would move their approval subject to some just grammatical corrections I can go back over and make with staff. Second that. Any questions or discussion? All in favor? Aye. Opposed? That would be 4-0, Catherine. Thank you. Item number three on the agenda, on Batsman Ziemba, please. Good morning, Chair and Commissioners. Good morning. Good morning. On the agenda today is the latest on the traffic and public safety preparations for the planned opening period for the Encore, Boston, Harbor casino. Encore, Boston, Harbor will give both an update on its plans and will brief the Commission regarding its extensive public outreach activities for the opening. The Commission staff has been working with Encore on its opening preparations for many months. And as the Commission is aware, Encore, Boston, Harbor has already provided briefings on its plans at the May 6th meeting and also at the meeting last week. However, we all know how important this planning is and how important it is for the general public to hear about what it can expect at the opening. Before turning it over to Bob DeSalvio, President of Encore, Boston, Harbor, for the presentations, I would first like to thank the numerous agencies, communities, and individuals that have been part of the planning effort. And with that, let me turn it over to Bob. Thank you, John. Good morning, Madam Chair and Commissioners. Good morning. Nice to be back. I'd like to take a moment and just introduce the whole team that's here. You're going to hear from them at various parts of the presentation today. Of course with me is Jackie Crum, our Senior Vice President General Counsel, and then behind us, Jason Stumpf, our Vice President and CIO. Bill Pangoris, our Director of Casino Finance is here. Ed Collins, our Director of Casino Credit is here. Suzy McDaniel, you'll hear from later, our Vice President of Human Resources. Rich Pryor, Executive Director of Security and Investigations. And Peter Campo, our Director of Construction. Good morning. Good morning. Thank you everyone for being here. Great. And what I'd like to do is double back through the presentation and provide for the commission staff and the public that's watching a general update of where we are right now to get you current on the transportation plan. And then a new item for today is we have some creative we want to show you that's part of the outreach campaign. So I'm going to jump right into that. Let me move towards the first slide. That one right there is perfect. As you know, it's a multimodal transportation plan involving many opportunities for guests to hopefully leave the car at home and try a different method, which is what we've been working on right from the beginning. We have our motor coach program that will operate the shuttle systems in from Wellington and in from Malden Center. The watercraft for the Harbor Premium Water Shuttle Service, our premium park and ride service through the new motor coaches. The local runner that we're running through Everett are all part of the equation along with our ride share program. Let me start with the shuttle bus service. I'm happy to report that the shuttle bus operation is already in full operation. Even though we're not yet open to the public, we had to move significant numbers of new team members back and forth to the to the actual facility. As you know, on June 3rd, we onboarded over 4000 people that were part of the opening and and there was no reason to wait on the service. So we've already motor coaches have been received shuttle services up and running. We completed the improvements that were in both Wellington and Malden Center. And so that's already underway with regard to the water shuttle. Yesterday, the first of our water shuttles arrived at our dock for a test run. The first boat has now gone through its Coast Guard regulatory approval and checklist. And they're finishing up a couple items and then the next two will be finishing up their runs with the Coast Guard and to make sure that they are completely certified. All of that will be done prior to opening. So it looked great. We got some nice photos of the first arrival of the test runs on the shuttle. As far as the ride share, the lot that's across the street from the resort is nearly complete. And so we will have that ride share lot ready for day one. And and our parking plans are now well in place with the arrangements that we've made on the next slide. In terms of premium motor coach service, we will be beginning that service the day that we open. And as you know, we're operating in three locations north, south and west of the resort. All of the agreements are in place in London Derry and in Rockland and Millbury. And coaches are ready and that service will begin as planned. I mentioned earlier the MBTA stations. By the way, they look good. The signage is done. New crosswalk areas, really some nice improvements. In particular, there was quite a bit of work to be done at Wellington and I went and walked it the other day. It looks really good, especially the new signage. We can move to, oh, on grand opening day. I know we talked about this previously. We are going to add Wonderland as a good stop for us because we can intercept quite a few people coming in from the North Shore. So that plan is in play already for opening day. The Encore neighborhood runner is already up and running and going to its three locations. One is the Chelsea Silverline stop. The other is in downtown Everett and the third stop at Rivergreen. I toured the Rivergreen parking lot, parking facility just the other day. It's nearing completion, but the shuttle is already stopping there because we have a number of employees that are walking there because they live close by. So we've already opened the stop even though that overflow parking lot is not yet complete. But it will be complete and ready to go for opening. So that looks good. The next slide shows the route where the neighborhood runner goes to. But that's been very well received already in the community. Employee shuttles, as I mentioned, are all operating fine. The harbor shuttle, we're going to do our own test run on Friday morning with some of our folks on board to run to all three stops. We got the final licenses in play. The dock work has already been done at World Trade Center. And by the end of this week, the dock work that needed to be done at Long Wharf North will be completed as well. So all of that's going well and with the appropriate licenses. And you know where the stops are. This is an important one kind of new information on the maritime traffic plan. Since we've moved into the facility, we're already seeing, you know, obviously there's interest from the boating public about arriving to the facility. And in working with the Coast Guard and law enforcement, we've set up a schedule so that on opening day, they are going to limit the amount of openings on the Alfred Street Bridge. And right now they've committed to just going with 6 a.m. noon, 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. for any larger boats that would need to actually force the opening of the Alfred Street Bridge. So law enforcement, Coast Guard, everyone has been extremely cooperative. And I think that was the right call for that opening day because we know already there's going to be significant amount of traffic. And we're trying not to slow it down any further by the openings of the Alfred Street Bridge. Bob, do you know how long does it take to raise the bridge? You know, I've seen it go up and down a number of times. It's not that long. It's a new bridge, as you know. And so it operates faster than most of the old style draw bridges. If I had to guess, the whole operation is five minutes maybe between up and down. It's pretty quick. So I'm sure they move it as fast as the mechanism can work. Also, as far as maritime traffic goes, the city of Everett just got a new police boat. So that's now sitting at our dock in front of the resort. And they've been doing some training runs in and around. And they're going to work in conjunction with there's really three maritime efforts underway. One is, of course, the Massachusetts State Police. Then Boston Police has their own. As you know, they have significant resources in the harbor. And then Everett added their local boat as well. So all of those maritime resources are going to be in play for day one. Ride share services I mentioned were good to go on the lot across the street. As far as our own operation, we've hired staff. We have different vehicles that we're using. Our service is already up and running. We're testing it as folks come in and out our own staff. We've been picking up at the airport to make sure that we've got that down. Ride share a lot I already mentioned. Lift and Uber, we're in good shape with them. Parking lot access. As you know, we're really promoting folks to find lots and jump on the orange line specifically. And so there are great opportunities all around us. And in particular, over at, we're finding that a lot of people are just going to Sullivan Square T Station and walking. Because it's just gotten that much better in terms of sidewalk, the ADA improvements, the crosswalk. So on a good day, your best bet is to even just get off at Sullivan and walk. It's a very short walk right to the facility. So that's been working out well. On this slide, there's, like I said, there's numerous garages that people can go to all around the region. And we're encouraging folks to do that. The next slide just shows, of course, the transportation network of the T. It really covers us from all over the place. I also sometimes don't mention enough commuter rail options. Anyone coming from the north can get out at Maldon Center and then just jump on our free shuttle right to the facility as well. As you know, we're going to participate in the Blue Bike program. So we've got two stations, one out on the Harbor Walk on the western side of the property near the Gateway Connector. And the other is out in the front of the property near Broadway. So those bikes will be in and up and running for the day we open. The pedestrian connections look great. We had actually Mass Live came out this weekend. We did a walk with Mayor de Maria and walked the entire Gateway Harbor Connection and all the way around the front of the property. So we've been trying to get as much media attention as we can in terms of promoting these, again, different ways to get to the property. But as you can see from this particular slide, you can get right from Broadway, run the whole perimeter of the property, go under the MBTA commuter rail tracks, and then move over to the Gateway Connector. And we've made some beautiful landscape improvements. And of course we were out there visiting on Saturday and looked at the beautiful artwork that the Everett High School students did underneath the train trestle. There was some old graffiti that we had removed. And the senior class at Everett High School, the art program came out and worked with Roger Thomas and our design development team. And they did these gorgeous murals that are now in the walk path for those that happened to crisscross from Gateway over to the property. It was a real source of pride for the Mayor when we took the tour. The grand opening drop off plan, as you know, we're going to use Mystic View Drive. It's a way for us to get from Wellington over to the property very quickly without using Broadway. Those plans are all set. We've worked with DCR on making sure that they're on board and law enforcement. So I think that's a very clever way for us to keep some traffic off of Broadway. So who gets to go on that drop off? Our shuttles. Our shuttles from Wellington. And it will cut out significant time and it will enable us to make a round trip from Wellington to the property and back very quickly. Because we literally eliminate Broadway altogether. And the DCR has been very cooperative and they said, you know, great, we're doing this for the opening day. But if we need it for the opening period or longer, they're certainly willing to work with us. So they've been a great partner. Bob, as you anticipate people lining up for the first day pre-opening, is this kind of the best cue for them to get in? Exactly. If you go to that slide, if you look at kind of where the arrow points right to the port cashier in the front of the property and you start heading first south and then west and then all the way around over to Gateway, that gives us an incredibly long cue. And so we suspect that people will come probably earlier in the morning on Sunday the 23rd. And the idea was to not cue on Broadway to try to avoid that if possible. So we are going to cue around the peninsula and then down through the Gateway connector and heading over that way. But you could literally cue thousands of people on that and have them nowhere near an active roadway. So it's actually the perfect cueing location as far as public safety goes. The operation traffic demand management, you know, signage was a big part of what I had mentioned at previous meetings. If you do drive in and around the area, you will notice many of our way finding signage packages are complete. Specifically the one that gets you off, if you're heading down 93 and get off at exit 31 and come in via the Parkway, Mystic River Parkway, the entire way finding package is done. I looked at it yesterday. They put up the first couple of signs in Sullivan Square. The highway signage is going to go up shortly, so all of those signs hopefully will be up right at opening. And on top of the permanent signs, we have the portable variable message signs in many locations where we can direct people based on current traffic needs. There's a number of those. A big part of what we're doing involves our coordination with law enforcement. As you know, Rich and Jim Falk have been working on this for many, many months. We have significant law enforcement presence, as you can see from this slide. And so they've got this covered every possible which way you can get to and from the resort are going to be covered by one department or another using both the state police and local law enforcement. So we have their full commitment and they will work with us as long as we need them. So whether it's a day, a week, a month, three months, they've committed that all we have to do is ask for the details and they'll be able to help us out. The next slide just shows you the first run of some of the different police details and shows you there are obviously different communities involved. Some are Boston, some are Everett. The next slide shows you all kinds of locations where state police are going to be involved, mainly involving the Parkway and the other surrounding major roadways. The next slide shows you where Medford police details are going to be. The next one is Chelsea and they're covering us to the east. The next slide is our regional highway signage package and again many of them are up and the remaining ones will be put up shortly. And the next slide is a list of all the stakeholders that have been involved. So that's kind of where we are right now in the plan. And John, did you want me to roll and keep going into the communication side? Yeah, if I could just interrupt that last slide which you glossed over quickly. It's a very important slide because it points out the number of hours that you have spent working with these stakeholders. So just so it says that each meeting, you've been meeting bi-weekly since February that involve all partners to ensure the safety and success of our transportation planning. This is just transportation. Each meeting lasts two hours and involves significant input and follow-up through subcommittee discussions. Providing ongoing meaningful opportunities for communication and input allows us to draw from experts in our prospective fields and all the stakeholders listed. So we appreciate all the folks who met regularly and on close leadership. Great. Thank you, Commissioner. So Bob, if you could mention one other thing you were discussing, how we're not only planning for the opening day but really we're looking at the opening period. And perhaps you can just give a little bit more detail to the commission regarding some of the measures that you've put in place to deal with peak traffic periods, for example, your employee shifts. Sure. Sure. Yeah, as you know, we purposely, in going through the environmental process, tried to limit the amount of movement during peak commuter hours. And so that we've actually redid the whole scheduling model inside the resort to try to reduce as much as possible traffic during the peak commuter hours. And that was a key. And it actually, I got to hand it to our operators because it forced them to kind of rethink the way they traditionally would do your normal shifting and bringing in people earlier than normal, bringing in people later than normal. All with the goal in mind is to get people kind of off of those key peak hours. So the operators have been extremely cooperative. The other key is, of course, the use of technology. The interconnect agreement that we have with Boston and Everett is extremely novel in the transportation industry because you have two separate communities that agreed to link their transportation technology assets together in a centralized command center, which is obviously Boston has an extensive command center at their, the BTD headquarters. And the fact that we could get the two communities to work together to actually include that, which involved running an interconnect underneath the Alfred Street Bridge. So we had bridges involved, water involved, a 1600 foot run from Sullivan Square all the way to Bunker Hill Community College. Had to take that all the way down Rutherford Avenue. All new time traffic signals. A very significant transportation technology effort because there's just only so much pavement that you've got out there. And so it's not just a matter of making roads wider. It's how do you do transportation smarter? And that only works if you can buy current technology and you actually get the communities to agree to use it. And we've gotten, and BPD in particular has been a wonderful partner on this. Bill Conroy and the other folks there, Jim Gluley before he left. But that cooperation has carried on from one leader in the department right to the next. So it's been a very impressive effort. Bob, I had a question that pertains to this presentation. Maybe it's also part of the theme of the next one. But just regarding the first opening day, I think it's a great strategy to have the multi-mode that you describe. But could you speak a little bit relative to the flexibility you might have to be able to react? I'll give you a quick example. What if you get a lot of people interested in going on the boats? Let's say, because it's fun to take the boat to, and it's more than you anticipated, let's say. How would you deal with that? A couple things. First of all, the state police is going to be setting up their command center vehicle in the parking lot. The MBTA has been great in working with us. So they're going to have their mobile operations unit there so that they'll be able to really work in concert with all of whether it's local or the state police assets in terms of changing plans or rerouting folks. So part of it is on-the-fly communication. We're going to have additional motor coach assets available so that we could run more people from the stations. And then our operator of the water shuttles has additional boats available. So we've already talked about having some backup available if this is, obviously, as successful as we hope it will be. We also have a fourth boat on order. We started with three, as you know, and there'll be another one joining the fleet. And then they've got additional water assets available as well to add capacity, one of them with a little higher capacity than ours. So we've tried to line up every possible available resource and then we'll be able to call them into play as needed. Thank you. Also on the opening day, one of the things that I was particularly, it was interesting to see that happened at MGM. As people lined up with great expectation relative to the opening, there was all kinds of things going on relative to, for example, people with a sign saying, if you've got to go, let me know, they would stand in line for you for that person to go use a facility in the neighboring businesses. It's just an example of, you know, sort of how to deal with large crowds. Sure. Can you speak a little bit to that? Absolutely. The queuing that Commissioner Steading has also mentioned. Yeah, we're going to set up a program. We wanted to make sure that people could get even something as simple as water and snacks. So I think we picked six locations that run the perimeter of the Harbor Walk. And as people approach that area in the queue, we'll be offering free water and snacks for folks just in case they've been waiting out there for a while. Of course, we would allow them to go inside and use any of the restroom facilities. So, you know, all of that's part of the plan. We'll have security out there. One of the reasons why we, you know, we picked 10 a.m. was to do it, you know, on a day that was relatively slow in terms of normal commuter traffic, hopefully being very, very light. And by going to 10 a.m., we were trying to think about heat of the day. We wanted the opening to occur in the morning so that if people were going to line up, it would be more early morning before it gets too hot. And so we're trying to be cognizant of public safety in particular. And that's why we'll offer, like I said, free water, snacks, use of restrooms. All of that will be part of the equation. Great question, though. Thank you. Bob, a lot of this is obviously geared towards opening day. But tell me what adjustments you might have as it relates to your first Friday and Saturday nights. Sure. So the busiest, what accommodations are you making to accommodate that? We believe we will keep this opening plan pretty much through the whole first week. So we do have an event on the first Saturday after we open on the 29th. We have a show with invited guests in our ballroom and a dinner. It's a dinner show. We know that first weekend will be busy. I'm sure the hotel will be sold out. And we think that will be as busy or close to as that initial Sunday. So the idea is to keep the pressure all the way through that first week with all the additional resources. And then we'll just scope it out as needed. But we've already got the commitments that all we have to do, we have our own internal resources. The real additional resources we need are mainly law enforcement. And they've committed to basically give them some notice and they'll provide the details. It's actually a good time to do this in the summer. You know, while we're not in sort of, you know, other than the big summer events that you know, of course, in Boston, the Esplanade, July 4th. It's a good time to do it. It's a little light in terms of education traffic. The convention market sort of slows down. And so law enforcement's been great. And if we need the details, they'll be able to provide them. Great. Do you want to keep going? So the second part of this plan is outreach. How do we let consumers know what some of these alternates are? So we wanted to show you a few different things. When we look at the objectives of the plan, we broke it up really into three groups. One is the general public that understands that Encore is providing multiple alternate transportation methods. Potential guests, they understand how to get here without using their car. And then guests enjoy a premium experience that begins with a comfortable trip to the resort. That's more focused to the ones that are already booked or we know that are coming. So this is our key message. Encore has carefully planned a variety of transportation options to create a convenient and elevated travel experience for our guests while minimizing disruption to our neighbors. With so many easy ways to get to Encore, why drive? And that's one of the key themes of what we're trying to promote. I wanted to show you some creative executions. So, you know, thinking about consumers and convenience and our five-star experience. These are the kinds of ads that you will see out there where we use arrive, relaxed, arrive, refresh, give people ideas, show them. We're trying to show them in the visuals that these are not your typical transportation methods. I mean, you look at the coaches, they're brand new vehicles, they're wrapped. The water shuttles are amazing. They were over a million dollars a piece. They are luxury motor yachts, not what you would typically find. The premium parking ride service and even the local runner is a gorgeous shuttle vehicle. So, again, we're trying to take our elevated style and service and apply it to transportation. And that's the way we think we can move the needle in terms of ridership. People want it. They want it. They want it comfort. They want convenient. They want it to show up on time and either be free or reasonably priced. And so that's what we were focusing on. The next is a sort of a transportation funnel where we start with mass market education. We get more specific into digital campaigns. And then we go into our program for if you've already made a reservation, we can even pop out instructions for how to get there. The next slide talks about our transportation mix. You can see it's heavy on out of home. Out of home is really big in the Boston market. We're lucky in that between where the roadways are, especially in relationship to where our resort is and the amount of coverage, you really get some cities are just better than others in terms of outdoor, but Boston is really good for this greater Boston because we can cover a lot of folks without home messages. So we're going to use that. We're going to use a lot of programmatic display. In particular, you'll see with the T radio heavy radio campaign and then social and then search engine marketing are all part of it. As we move on to the more of the general public campaign, this is again more of the mass strategy. Just so you understand the seriousness with which we're taking this, just the initial period, we're going to spend over a million dollars in media just on the transportation method, totally separate and apart from our grand opening TV campaign and other things. That buys you a lot of media in a very short window of time. So all of this was, you know, in our business, you don't want to advertise too early because once people start hearing about the resort, they typically want to come. So after doing this for a number of years, you learn that you don't go way out in advance. You just go in that opening period right a week or two before opening. So that's why we've started this now. And then the period right after opening is going to be critical that first 30 days right after we open. And then this campaign will trail on and have legs all the way through the end of the year. Next is our, the next slide talks about our outdoor media strategy in transit. We got MBTA interior cars. We have the live boards at T stations. We've got digital board rotations, some keyboards. There's a great board that we've got right on 93 as you round the corner by Somerville. And that when you look out to the right, if you're traveling north on 93, you can see the resort right to the right. So we've got some great assets that are within close proximity of the resort that I think will be very monumental in terms of getting the message out. Bob, I traveled that route and I did see the billboard this morning. I'm going to be very honest. You have stiff competition today because the other billboard that we also noted is end the drought 123 days since our last championship. So the Bruins are winning today on billboard competition. But if we're lucky, the win will happen tonight and space will be reviewed, be reserved for you tomorrow. Thank you. But it was a stiff competition. Yep. And let the Bruins light shine today. Yes, that would be good for all. Yes. This is the next, this shows you some of the interior car cards inside the MBTA. It's a great opportunity. Obviously you have a captured audience sitting right there in the car. So we've been working with them. The MBTA was a great partner in our recruitment campaign. We found that extremely effective and so we're going to continue working with them. The next is just again some of the King size posters, one magnificent place, many ways to get there, awe inspiring destination, convenient transportation. So we're trying to combine the quality experience with a convenient option for getting to and from. These are the next are the one panel MBTA live boards, arrive pampered, refreshed, relaxed, wide drive, again just hammering home that message all the way through. The general public board see all the different ways to get here opening June 23rd and then we'll we'll roll that campaign and drop the opening right there after opening. Geo targeted messaging. This will be really important in terms of whether it's live radio reports that will work out in conjunction with the stations are social channels, search engine marketing, digital and mobile advertising. And you can see it's not just Boston. We're going all the way through the region. We're covering all the way from whether it's up in New Hampshire or in Maine or Manchester or Springfield Hartford all the way down to Providence. So we we took a very regional approach to the transportation discussion. We're going to have 30 second ads all over. You can see on the radio again going from Boston, the Cape Concord, New Hampshire, Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Providence, Springfield, Worcester. And again, we can tie in the fact that you can use the premium park and ride service and drop your car and then jump on a motor coach to get here. This next one, that's an example of of some messaging. I won't do the radio read, but you can you can actually read the message and it's really good. It's really good. We've worked with an agency that's done a nice job with this. The next page talks about digital. Our digital strategy will work, I think, extremely well. More and more, as you know, marketing campaigns are shifting from traditional media into more digital. Great way to reach some of the younger audiences in particular. So we're going to be aggressive on that. The next are display banner ads. And again, that same messaging that transportation alternatives all the way through. As you can see, it's aggressive. And when I when you talk about that much money for this type of media, you get significant amount of coverage. So people will be seeing this all over the place. Next, the movement paid social ads. Again, reflecting all the transportation routes and then paid search. We obviously we work off of search engine optimization and making sure that we have the proper keywords that will connect the audience right to our messaging. Bob, on the motor coach service. The hours right now are 10 am until 10 pm. And how are you going to be getting those details out for folks? Full on. That's a big part of the transportation campaign. I'm going to, in a little bit, I'm going to talk about the website. What I would encourage the commissioners to do when you get a couple moments, go on to the Encore Boston Harbor website and click the transportation link. And it really gives you a full array of all the different options and how to use them. And it's very, we spent a lot of time thinking about the transportation page. So that's going to be, we'll try to point, you can't say it all, as you know, in an ad. But what you do is try to point people so that they can use the other digital assets to get really deep in terms of learning how to do it. As far as convenience goes on the premium bus program, we're going to have an advanced reservation link. So people will be able to even book a spot for it. That's helpful to know. Thank you. The PR campaign has been extensive. I have to give, I'm going to give a shout out to MassLive. Steph Solis came in and she spent a good couple hours with us over at our station landing office, Jim Falk, myself. And she wrote probably the best transportation story I've seen in years. Then the whole goal was to use the broad reach of MassLive because it's really more of a statewide vehicle to really get those messages out. So we are actually asking the media to help us out in this, in other words, to get the word out the best they can. And so I have to give them a shout out because they did a really good job. And it's important when the media really does help the public. I think we should acknowledge that. Thank you. I was going to ask a question relative to exactly that point. And I'm sorry, I'm making the same comparison to MGM, but that's an important case that we have here. It occurs to me that because of how important it was locally in Springfield, the media really covered a lot of just the news event that it was the MGM opening. And what I recall is there was a real theme in many of those stories, usually an end of, you know, look for alternative modes for opening day, etc. Now I don't know what efforts they did, MGM, that is relative to speaking and creating those stories. But anything else that you can speak to that that maybe just complimenting what you're saying? Sure. We have a very extensive media day planned for the 21st, Friday the 21st. We've gotten a great response to media day and we will be hammering home the message on transportation alternatives. And plus we're, you know, between Michael Weaver and the local team, we are currently offering ourselves up for interviews and in order to get the word out. So I think the media has been very good about this. Obviously transportation traffic planning has been probably the number one item talked about since I've been here for over five years. And it's nice to see that we can use those resources and assets to get the word out. So we're going to continue to hammer that home. And that will be one of the key themes on media day, which is how do you arrive at a luxury resort in a luxurious way that's convenient and affordable. So we'll continue to get that message out there. So it's going to be a combination of PR and paid media. Okay. Thank you. Great. Again, this or other, that's a digital experience that you might see on a mobile device. This is a screenshot of the transportation tab that I mentioned earlier on the website and how to get to Encore Boston Harbor. And then these are the tabs below as you navigate the site, you get to see all the different options. And again, I would encourage you to just go ahead and go through the site, spend a few minutes, look at all the various options. But it really is a very simple, easy navigation tool to pick your method of transportation and figure out a way to go. That's a great shot of one of the new motor coaches. Real time update. This is going to, I think this will work actually quite well. We'll be able to use social media channels to pop out any real time information if we need to redirect traffic or do that. So that will do live updates right through to our Twitter feed. And I believe, of course, I want to talk about this page. We do have a full onsite call center and for those that still want to call in, they'll be able to reach any of our professionals in the call center and they'll be able, they'll be scripted to have all the transportation messaging. And then again, we'll be providing for those that book reservations will be giving them transportation alternatives on how to get to the property. In summary on the last page, this is kind of a one page summary of the entire campaign and how we again broke it up into three sort of sub markets within the funnel, starting with general public probable guest and guest and the tactics that we use against it. But again, you should, you should hopefully have comfort that we have thought this through significantly. We're putting significant dollar resources behind it. And we're going to work with the media to get the word out. And with that, I'll open it up for any questions. Any questions? I'm about to see. That's great. Thank you very much. Great. Thank you for that. Sure. Thank you. Moving on to item number four on the agenda. Administrative update from executive director. Please. Good morning commissioners. Morning. Morning. Chair, I think you have referenced the next important thing happening in Commonwealth today, which is game seven, of course. So go Bruins. Today's meeting is about preparing to open on poor Boston Harbor. But before I get there, I do want to update you on thoroughbred racing in Massachusetts. We've had two weekends of racing so far and we'll have one more at the end of June. We had May 18th and 19th that included a preakness day on Saturday. Director Lightbound gave me some statistics on the 18th attendance was just over 9,000 people on the 19th. It was just under 5,000. And then last weekend, the eighth and ninth was another racing weekend on the eighth, which was the Belmont Day. They had just under 9,000 people in attendance and on the ninth, just over 5,000 people in attendance. There was approximately $2 million in purses dispersed over four days. 11 races each day, including two mass bred races each day. And as I said, the last scheduled day of racing right now at Suffolk Downs is scheduled for June 29th and 30th. So that is a just so we don't forget. And obviously the other thing will need to be a pay attention to in general council blue. And I think was with the horse racing committee yesterday is the legislative efforts that will happen between now and the end of July. As you know, racing legislation expires at the end of July. So we'll have to be in touch with the legislature and see what is going to come up before the end of July. It affects not only racing but simulcasting into the next calendar year. So it's something we'll need to pay attention to and potentially be an active participant. Can I mention something on that? On that note too, after the dust settles a little bit, of course, with all things relative to Angkor, I think it might be really a good exercise to go back and look at some of the statistics that you only summarize for Suffolk Downs but also for some of the breeders funding that we've done. I remembered a letter that we got recently relative to just a number of participants in a breeding race in Finger Lakes. It was very, very low. So it'd be good for us to see how some of those some of that funding has translated into the objectives of the race course. Absolutely. Okay. So as you said, today is about preparing for the opening of Angkor Boston Harbor. And back to presentations. Today you'll hear from directors and they'll hopefully let you know that Angkor is both in substantial compliance with application, license conditions, host and surrounding community agreements and that they are ready to open a game facility subject to a number of events, the most important which would be approved test nights that they successfully conduct next week. At the end of the meeting, we'd ask you to consider appointing a delegate commissioner to observe the test nights with the authority to issue what we call conditional operations certificate which may have conditions attached to it to Windmass LLC doing businesses Angkor Boston Harbor which would be valid until the next full commission meeting at which time would be voted on fully. I want to thank you commissioners for your patience and digesting all of today's materials. They came in very quickly and up until the last minute just due to the nature of getting assurances from communities, state agencies, our licensees. It was a lot of work. I want to thank particularly Janice Riley, Marianne Dooley and Jamie Endes for juggling presentation materials literally until the last minute. Thank you very much. Also, Joan Matsumoto was instrumental in working with directors in her commitment tracking software for months to keep all directors up to date on commitments. So you'll hear from directors on their particular subject matter areas as to preparedness and substantial completion and just a note director Wells will be substituting for licensing director Curtis today. With that I'd like to turn it over to John Siemba who along with Joe Delaney and most importantly supported by Mary Thurlow has done a substantial amount of work in the preparation. And then finally again, go Bruins. So with that, John. Thank you very much Ed. Commissioner is MGL chapter 23 K section 10 C and the commission's regulations 205 CMR 135 and 205 CMR 151 state that the commission may not make a determination that a category one gaming establishment is open for business until the commission has made a number of determinations. The report in your packet details the requirements of these regulations. The report also includes appendices providing further information about specific requirements. Notably, Encore Boston Harbor has included a submission regarding compliance with the conditions of its license. Construction oversight manager Joe Delaney will provide details of compliance with construction requirements and further information regarding compliance with 205 CMR 135. The determinations he will discuss cover the completion of the gaming area and other ancillary entertainment and non-gaming amenities, completion of all the infrastructure improvements, compliance with the terms of the license, commission regulations, post and surrounding community agreements, impacted live entertainment venue agreements, certificates of occupancy and approvals. We will also walk you through 205 CMR 151. But before Joe gets into the details, I'd like to just provide a general context of the determinations that the commission will consider today. In order to evaluate compliance with the construction related requirements, Encore Boston Harbor and commission staff have engaged in a very comprehensive review process described in a memo in your packet entitled Commitment Closeout Update, which Joe will discuss. In addition to this comprehensive review process, Encore Boston Harbor has provided significant support and evidence that it has met the conditions under its license. They submitted, as I mentioned, a detailed memorandum that appears in your packet. The commission's extensive reviews of the project of the last four plus years provide additional evidence that Encore Boston Harbor is in material compliance with the conditions. During that time, Encore Boston Harbor has appeared before the commission 17 times to present its detailed quarterly reports. In addition to the quarterly reports and numerous other commission meetings involving specific issues, the project has also been reviewed at approximately 45 access and opportunity committee meetings. By the proposed opening date, the commission and commission staff will have approved the final design. And get ready for this list, I warn you. The commission and the commission staff will have approved the final design of the project, a detailed schedule of the project, a determination that the project has completed its final stage of construction, the floor plan, the internal controls, the emergency and critical incident response plan, the credit procedures, the gaming beverage license, approval of the slots and slot operations, the inspection following the test days, the approval and updating of the project, section 61, a determination that the total infrastructure is complete, the regional tourism and marketing plan, the war force development plan, the diversity and affirmative marketing plan, the procurement diversity and local business plan, the responsible gaming framework and voluntary self exclusion policy. As I noted when I quoted a similar list in the review for the opening of the MGM Springfield project, that is quite a mouthful, but it goes to state how much work has gone into determining what we need to determine today. Many of these approvals involve the staff review of the application requirements, the RFA-2 requirements, that relate to the topic areas of the clinician approvals. Further, the commission has monitored reviews by other entities, notably the City of Everett Administration, the Everett City Council reviews by other surrounding communities, the MEPA office, the Mass Department of Transportation taken together. There is substantial evidence that Encore has materially complied with the terms of its license. Indeed, as is shown in a document entitled Appendix A, Encore Boston Harbor has not only met commitments made in its RFA-2 document, in many instances it has exceeded them. Perhaps we can get that section on the screen. For some examples during the RFA-2 period, Encore estimated its capital investment at $1.225 billion. We now have a $2.6 billion facility and of that incomparable regulations it's $2.289 billion, pursuant to our regulations. There is an estimate of construction and operation jobs. Construction was tagged at 3,287 of direct jobs created at the Wynn facility during the construction period. And as of last week we had an estimate of 7,354 workers. We had an estimate of 4,382 total employees at the facility during that prior period. And Mr. DeSalvio told us that there is approximately 5,800 either employed or in the works at a meeting just recently. Site cleanup. During that review period there were public reports of $30 million price tag for site cleanup and more recent reports of a $68 million remediation and cleanup plus an additional $14 million on landscaping. Hotel rooms. In the RFA-2 we were promised 505-star luxury rooms each with a square footage of approximately 600 to 2,300 square feet. And the facility today hosts 671 hotel rooms that are at least 600 square feet. And the largest suite is a two-story residence that measures approximately 5,500 square feet. Meeting and conference space we had approximately 35,000 square feet at the time of the RFA-2. Now we have approximately 60,000 square feet. And that facility will host the second largest ballroom in the Boston area. For minority participation there was a statistics of 15.3 of ethnic minorities at the RFA-2 time. And now we have a statistic of 1742 minority workers with a 25.3% diverse workforce by April 30th, 2019. 6.9% women at the time of the RFA-2, 7.2% as of the last accounting. For veterans, 3%. Now approximately 5.4% of the workforce by April 30th. For WBE construction contracts approximately 12.7% of the contracts have been awarded to women business enterprises compared to a roll of 5.4. For responsible gaming, Encore is now a proud member of the Game Sense program. We have a Game Sense Center on site. And Encore Boston Harbor has also entered an agreement with the commission to implement the play management system. And as the commission knows that would allow patrons to provide a very nice budgeting tool. For LEED they promised LEED Gold and every expectation that once the final forms are submitted the facility will be at least LEED Gold. And there is a bright, shiny 688 kilowatt solar voltaic system sitting on the roof of the facility. So further we do note that any determination that Encore is in material compliance for the purposes of its operations certificate reflects only a small portion of its compliance. Consistent with prior practice the commission will continue to review Encore Boston Harbor's progress and meeting all such goals. In standards both in the short term and during the term of the license. Many of the requirements the commission will review today are ongoing requirements that will continue into the operations period. Some conditions will only be able to be met after the operations period begins. And with that as a general background I will turn to Joe, but Joe is joined by Jackie and Bob as we begin the next stage of this review. But before turning this over to Joe I also wanted to thank Janice and Mary Ann and Jamie for all of their patience with me in particular. But for everything that they do every day. And of course I want to give a special thank you to Mary Thurlow and Joe Delaney and Catherine Blue who continue to demonstrate such a high degree of dedication and professionalism in their work. And in overcoming all the challenges that arise and with that let me turn it over to Joe. Thank you commissioners for my presentation today I'm going to walk you through the memo that's in your packet the memo that's entitled determination that the gaming establishment may open for business. I'm just going to try to hit on some of the high points I won't get into every detail there because it is a lengthy memo. The first item is in the memo item a which is compliance under 205 CMR 135. Under 135 there are a number of specific requirements that include proving a project schedule provision of affirmative action and marketing programs submission of quarterly reports and so on. As outlined in the memo on court is in compliance with each of these eight requirements in that section. Under section B of the memo determination of completion of gaming area and other ancillary amenities. We are required to determine that the gaming area and other amenities have been built and are of superior quality. Our review of this John and my review of this focused on the physical construction of the amenities. Bruce Band in his presentation will talk more about the readiness of the gaming floor in the poker room and so on. So Executive Director Bedrosian John Siemba and I performed this determination on June 5th 2019 in those areas of the project that are operating under the temporary certificate of occupancy. And I think I can say with a great degree of certainty that those areas are complete and are of superior quality. We do need to do some final inspections on those areas that were not included in the temporary certificate of occupancy such as the retail spaces and a couple of the food and beverage elements. Item C in the memo determination of completion of all infrastructure improvements. We are required to determine that all on and off site infrastructure improvements have been completed. All off site infrastructure work is substantially complete. We're pleased to inform you that we have received approval letters from all the required entities. Those being the City of Everett Public Works Department City of Boston Transportation Department Mass DOT and Massport. I'd really like to thank all of the people from these agencies who work closely with us and on poor in obtaining all of these necessary approvals. They were great to work with and you know we were working right up to the very last minute but we do have all those approvals in hand. There is some additional on site work to be completed between now in the opening. Some of the outdoor patio areas landscaping line striping some final paving you know it's really you know final final kinds of things that are that are remain to be done. And we do expect all of that work will be complete before opening. Item D is the opportunity to inspect to determine compliance. As John indicated early we perform numerous compliance related activities on site which included weekly and monthly meetings with on course staff weekly site walks schedule reviews and many other oversight functions. But one of the main things that we used in determining compliance was the commitment tracking system that was developed by on core. In fact this system drove a lot of the work that we have recently completed like the design approval and section 61 revisions. I would like to spend a couple of minutes here just to describe the system and how it was utilized. Once the on core project received all of its approvals from all the necessary agencies. There were numerous documents that had specific requirements that on core must comply with. These include the RFA to the gaming license hosting surrounding community agreements the MEPA documents all local permits etc. The on core team reviewed all of these documents and when broken down into their individual components there are over 2,250 commitments of which approximately 1900 need to be completed before opening. In order to effectively track these the on core team developed a system by which each commitment was issued a unique identifier and was tracked using various spreadsheets and document management software. Each individual commitment was assigned to a team member who then assembled the necessary documentation to demonstrate with compliance with the commitment. And then periodically a package of these commitments would be compiled and then submitted to us for review. The first set of these completed commitments was sent to us in December 2018 and we've been churning through those ever since to where we are today. The internal review process first involved my review of the commitment in the backup documentation to make a determination whether or not the commitment was adequately addressed. In certain instances I would request that additional information be provided to better document compliance with the commitment. And depending upon the list I might have asked for additional information on as many as 5 to 10% of those individual commitments. After my review John would then perform a spot check of my work and reevaluate some of these just to make sure I was doing that we were all in agreement. So to date I have looked at all of the 2,250 commitments and have not found any issues that would materially impact the project opening. With that said I performed the detail review on about 2,100 of these which leaves us about 150 to go between now and the opening. Now given this sheer volume of commitments to review the final completion of some of these items may not happen until the days and weeks after the project opens. For example many of the offsite infrastructure improvements require as built drawings to finally close out the commitment. So this work won't necessarily be complete until some time after opening but we do know that the improvement itself has been completed as fully operational. So in this case we're not talking about performance we're just talking about the compilation of the documentation. So far we have identified a few commitments that may not be complete at the project opening. We're still working with Encore to close these out but they could potentially spill over until after opening. We'll be summarizing these before the operations permit is issued because we're still trying to work through them and think most of them will be done before opening. But if there are any left over at the end the commission may need to place a condition on the operations permit to ensure that those items are completed. With all that said I really want to thank Peter Campo and his team and particularly Kim Ripley who I work very closely with in this whole process for the development and use of this system. It's allowed us to efficiently review and evaluate compliance with literally thousands of items by compiling and storing all of the documentation in one place. So on item E is compliance with the gaming license and the RFA too. John addressed these items in his opening remarks so I don't need to go over those again. Compliance with the host community agreement enclosed in your packet is a letter from the city of Everett regarding Encore's compliance with the host community agreement stating that they're in material compliance with that. Of course the city has been actively involved in this project in the design review permitting construction from the very start. Item G compliance with surrounding community agreements in this presentation we're only going to talk about compliance with the pre opening requirements of the surrounding community agreements. There are lots of ongoing things that will have to take place over the 15 year duration of the license. And these generally revolve around pre opening payments as well as outreach to the surrounding communities to identify local bidding opportunities workforce opportunities and other business opportunities. So in your packets is a chart showing all of the pre opening payments that have been made to the surrounding communities. Encore has also reached out to the surrounding communities to get letters that attest to Encore's compliance with each surrounding community agreement. In addition to the letters that you have in your packet we did receive an email this morning from Somerville that their letter will be forthcoming. We do expect to have all of these letters before the project opens. Item H is compliance with impacted live entertainment venues. Encore does have one ILEV with the Massachusetts Performing Arts Coalition which Jill Griffin will discuss further in her presentation. Item I is certificates of occupancy and approvals. Encore was issued a temporary certificate of occupancy for the project on May 31st. For the entire project with the exception of the mystique and memoir spaces those will be issued a separate permit because they were permitted separately outside of the overall project. In addition the retail spaces were excluded from the overall TCO as they are still under construction. All of these spaces are expected to be complete and receive TCOs before the project opens. Encore is attempting to get the final certificate of occupancy before opening but it may need to open its doors under the temporary certificate of occupancy which is typical for projects at this scale. In fact MGM opened under a temporary certificate and they operated under that for I think about a month or so before they got there fine. Elevator certificates. There are 32 elevators and 12 escalators that need permits from the state. In your packet we gave you an update as of June 7th but as of this morning all but one of the elevators and escalators have been inspected. And we will get copies of all of those permits before opening and the last inspection is scheduled for this week. And then permits. The project requires dozens of permits for construction and occupancy. We've included a couple of charts in your packet that show all of the construction related permits and then all of the operational permits necessary and the status of those. Again that was through last Friday. We're working with Encore and getting updates on those on a regular basis and we fully expect that all of the operational permits will be in place before the project opens. But we do expect that they'll be coming in probably right up to the very last minute. The next section of the memo these all get much shorter now because there's some redundancy in these sections. But the opening requirements pursuant to 205CMR 151 as I just said most of these are covered in 205CMR 135 that I just discussed so we don't need to discuss those any further. Most of the other items here will be discussed in Bruce Bann's presentation including internal controls, the emergency response plan, approval of the gaming area floor plans and evaluation and test period. One additional item regarding a current list of all gaming employees will be included in Jill Griffin's presentation. And then opening requirements pursuant to 23K section 10. Each of the opening requirements of 23K have been incorporated into either 205CMR 135 or 151 so we don't need to discuss them any further here. This concludes my remarks and I'd be happy to answer any questions. Yeah, well just a reaction not really a question. You mentioned that this was a lengthy memo but I would characterize it as a really good summary of all the work that has gone on for really from the beginning, from the start of the oversight. I think it's notable what you mentioned, John, the commitments that have been significantly exceeded in many cases or met of course. But there's another theme that arises from this memo and that's the documentation of the work that we, you all, have been doing. Not just the licensee that has a significant role in of course meeting all of these commitments and documenting it, but us in the role of verifying it as well for our own purposes. So I think it's a really good summary. Joe, there was one letter we had gotten in which, I'm trying to find it right now, the June 6th letter from MassDOT just referencing a couple of things that should have been wrapped up this weekend. Do we know whether that work had done? There's some line striping that was done and I'll be honest I haven't been out there this week to check that but I'll obviously be following up on that before opening. I think that was the last major item that needed to be done, some at Bell Circle and some at Wellington. Okay, that's the Paul Steadman letter that we got. I want to thank both Buttsman, CM, and Mr. Delaney for their thorough briefing for me. This is a very complex statute that we follow. The expectations are very high. Welcome to Massachusetts and we are delighted that we have that roadmap in our statute. And I think you've noted, Commissioner Zuniga and I noted earlier that this has taken a very significant collaboration with Encore and our team. Just the tracking system alone that you know Mr. Delaney was so critical to the success so that today you can make the report that you can make that. We are in a situation where there's substantial compliance and we're at very low risk at this point in time. I had understood yesterday that there were permits waiting on the elevators. We have all good news. We have one elevator. That sounds like that was probably the most significant item that was on your punch list. Mr. Delaney, is there anything else that could keep you up tonight? About half a dozen things or so. I think we're in real good shape. Obviously we need those final certificates of occupancy for those final spaces and things of that nature. I don't think there's anything right now. That's the memoir and the state and then the retails. I understand those are expected to be completed before opening day. And I think on the landscaping I'm sure those last flowers are going to be going in until the 22nd. There's thousands and thousands of plants that need to be done out there and clean up and those kinds of things. Things will be pushing right up to the end, but I think it's all right. I also think it was a great highlight that Ambassador Ziemba provided where you've exceeded so many of your initial goals which were set much earlier. Particularly noteworthy of course was the extensive environmental work that Encore did that will benefit Massachusetts for a long time. Thank you. Any other comments, questions? Are you all set on Ambassador Ziemba? Thank you. That concludes our report. Thank you very much. I think that we're next on for workforce and economic development commitments. There she is. I just didn't see direct on Lacy Griffin. So thank you. And while we're making a transition I would note commissioners that we do have two office spaces over at the property. Some of you might have seen both are one. They're more than sufficient. We initially had one and realized with the game enforcement unit we needed an additional. And Bob was generous in finding office space. I think between the two we're in a really good situation right now. So thank you. Good morning, Director Griffin. Good morning, Chairwoman and commissioners. Good morning. So I'm here to talk to you about the workforce and economic development as well as some of the diversity commitments relative to pre-opening. And I'm focusing today on operations. If you'll remember on June 6 I presented relative to the construction period. So first before we begin I'd like to indicate I'm joined by Bob DeSalvio, Susie McDaniel, VP of Human Resources and Jackie Crum as well. And I'd also like to thank the Crystal Howard program manager who has also worked diligently to ensure that compliance oversight is complete. So we've been working since the start of the project and I want to detail some of the oversight that we have been doing. Staff formed the MGC workforce opportunity team. And I really have to commend Uncore Boston Harbor for working with this team of regional employment boards, career centers, workforce training providers, and community groups from the host and surrounding communities. They worked collaboratively and really utilized the suggestions, advice, and referrals for workforce. And then additionally they worked collaboratively with the commission's vendor advisory team, which included city representatives, local chambers, and business assistance groups. And we met regularly. And I would also like to indicate I think this may be a theme that Uncore demonstrated a very strong performance exceeding most commitments and requirements. So in the operational hiring commitments, Joe mentioned the affirmative action program to satisfy this requirement. They submitted a workforce development and diversity plan within the 90-day requirement. Jerry Rubin, the executive director of Jewish Vocational Services, one of the premier workforce development organizations in Boston, has mentioned that this is one of the strongest employer plans that he has ever seen. The plan was detailed, very strategic, and Uncore has executed the plan as described. In terms of operational hiring commitments, we will continue to review their progress well beyond opening. As we know that the first year of operations can have high turnover as Massachusetts residents get used to the casino workforce jobs. Uncore has complied with the statements in the RFA-2 application regarding total employees hired. As the current projected employment totals are well beyond the 4700 projected in the RFA-2. The licensee established a hiring preference for the host community residents of Everett and Maldon as a secondary hiring preference and preferences for surrounding communities of Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Medford, and Somerville. And you'll see later in their report that their results demonstrate that they followed those preferences. They report that 50% of their total headcount were actually from these host and surrounding communities. They committed to hire 75% of their employees within a 30-minute radius of which the commission defined in their June 6th meeting as 30 miles. And you'll hear later that they did indeed exceed those expectations and commitments. They did set diversity goals as required and they exceeded most of those diversity goals. So you'll hear more later from Uncore about that. There are operational hiring preferences for Suffolk Downs employees. Uncore has complied with Section 5 Licensed Condition 3 through their regular career and hiring fairs and by providing priority access hours for Suffolk Downs employees at several mass hiring events including a communications letter that was jointly sent by the former chair of the Gaming Commission and by Bob DiSalvio in early 2015, I think. They'll highlight their medical and dental benefits, which indicate that they have complied with the condition of Licensed Condition 5 and Chapter 23K regarding providing comprehensive medical-dental benefits that are commensurate with those provided in the region. So the average wage scale on core Boston Harbor was required in the RFA 2 to provide an estimate of the total number of employees and the average wage by position and benefits. And this information is confidential so I don't have details in the report, but I can assure you that staff reviewed the detailed information regarding the current wages averaged by position to demonstrate compliance with the estimated employee wages provided by the licensee in 2014. And in the request by the review committee for clarification around that same time. Most department totals in terms of the total number of employees exceed the projections and they meet projections in most categories for payroll and benefits. In fact, it was amazing how well they projected in terms of payroll and benefits in many cases. The total number of employees is much higher than projected, obviously. And the total all departments payroll and benefits per FTE is almost 99.5% of the payroll and benefits projected in the RFA 2 document. So I would say they complied in that regarding the impacted live entertainment venue agreement pursuant to chapter 23 case section 17. On January 30th, the licensee entered into an impacted live entertainment venue agreement with a mass performing arts coalition. Staff reviewed the agreement and there appeared to be no pre-opening requirements with that agreement. Director Griffin, can I just interrupt? Sure. On that point, I think you explained though that and I want to encourage the coalition that should they have any concerns. I think the agreement allows for and encourages the coalition to come to the commission. Is that correct? Absolutely. If impact, it feels a need to bring anything to our attention. Of course, I suspect that they would work anything out with the folks at Encore, but that is in the agreement, which is important. The only other thing before we go on, because I know that you've got the rest of your report, but back on operational hiring. And I know that Bob and team will give us more details. But do you have the numbers are extraordinary? And given, of course, our low unemployment rate, it's particularly extraordinary. I wonder though if we had a breakdown, because I understand the roles, the jobs are different depending on the category. The breakdown of full time versus part time. Do you have that or is that premature? Should we leave that to I'm going to leave it to Susie to cover. We do. You'll have it. She has it actually came prepared. All right. Thank you so much. Jill, just another quick question. Picking up on the chairs comment about the impact of live entertainment venue and obviously some of those things that you suggest don't kick in. It's a pre opening requirement. But can you speak real quickly to how that might dovetail with the regional tourism plan because you have some entities covered under the ILEV who are actually some of your I believe some of your partners in the regional tourism plan as well. Yes. So the impact agreement was detailed or mentioned in the tourism plan. And on core has agreed, I guess not to allow an exclusivity agreement with their performers, and they've additionally agreed to market I think events to their employees. Sure. Good morning again commissioners Bob DiSalvio. Our whole theory on entertainment is to really take advantage of the great assets that are available in greater Boston. And that's through a number of different things, whether it's use of buying tickets at various events. We just entered in an agreement with the box center to do a sponsorship over there. We're also doing the performance venue that's in the seaport. We obviously have agreements with all of the major sports teams and those sort of span between sports and entertainment. And so the idea is that we can use a lot of the assets that are already available in the community. And so that works quite well besides things that we would want to do. And we found partnership has been a good way to go. One other thing before we get off it is the operational hiring and I'm also impressed with the numbers that you're surpassing. But just a reminder to you director Griffin at some point we need to get our licensees together because we have some data collection efforts that we want to undertake to kind of look at things apples to apples in terms of break out of executive level management, you know, kind of entry level positions, the diversity within those ranks and then collectively also looking at promotions and how people are having an opportunity to move up to the organization. So it's more in your to do list than actually part of history. I appreciate that commissioner Stevens. I'm on it. So regarding the tourism and marketing plan, I did present to you in the June 6 meeting and vote is required today. You will do that later on in the agenda. So the affirmative action program for equal opportunity. This requirement was satisfied when on core Boston Harbor submitted their supplier diversity and local commitments plan in September of 2018. In that plan, they detailed their strategy for identifying local vendors and vendors in their host and surrounding community as well as detailing their diversity goals and commitments. So I'm going to at this point turn it over to on for Boston Harbor to present more details regarding. Good morning. How are you? Good morning. I'm quite loud. So I'll try not to speak too loudly in here. A little bit about workforce development. We were really proud. We've worked very hard. As you said earlier, finding this many employees in a market with low unemployment has been a little bit of a challenge, but great. And seeing them all come on property last week was amazing. It was really a fun day to see all of the work pay off. So my opening was last week. So I'm done. So we're excited to be here and about some of our numbers. And earlier that one of our primary commit commitments was to the host and local surrounding communities. We met our commitment within the 30 mile radius as well. When we look at our local higher hires. We have a 50% higher rate from the local communities of Everett Maldon, Boston, Cambridge, Chelsea, Medford and Somerville with Everett being 13% of that and 600 employees. And when we look at the 30 mile or 30 minute radius, we're at 85% with a 75% commitment. So we're about 10% over that. We're continuing to hire. That will be a theme for quite some time. And we will continue to promote these diversity requirements, excuse me, hiring requirements to the community. We do training with all of our management team before they start interviewing and one of the first things we educate them on are the expectations of the commitments that we have to our community and to mass gaming with our hiring efforts. So that's a little bit about the local efforts. The next one is work first diversity goals. We have three commitments with women being 50%, minorities 40% and veterans at 3%. And where we are today, for our females, we're at 44% actuals, 51% minorities and 3% veterans. So we're really proud of the minority and veterans. And we need to do a little work on our females and we have some plans for that as we continue to hire and as we open. We've had a great, great hires into some positions that may be seen as traditionally not having as many women as men. And we have some great representatives from those departments that I think we'll use internally to market to other areas as we allow transfers and people to grow their careers. We'll have a training program, a management training program that will focus on high potential minorities and females in the workplace. And that will launch as soon as we get our feet underneath us after opening where we can really identify some great performing employees that are minorities and females and help them grow their careers, whichever way they would like. When you mentioned traditional areas, could you elaborate on that, please? And then just, I'm assuming when you say that you're going to be working with females and minorities, it will be for them to actually also infiltrate what is perceived to be perhaps a barrier. Exactly. You know, we work really hard to look at our applicant pool. And when we go out and market and we look at our applications, if I have, for example, in facilities, right? If you have an application pool of 95% men, what can we do to, I'm not saying that's what our pool is, I'm just giving an example, but what can we do to increase that? What can we do to draw interest for females applying for those positions? And I think a lot of that is if people don't see somebody that represents them in that area, they may not be comfortable in applying or think it's something that's out of their skill set. So we have some great, we have an electrician who's fantastic, that's a female and has been in the industry for I think 16 years. And to work with her to do presentations, to get her in front of the rest of the workforce, not only in the community, but within our walls that are already there. And show them that there is opportunity. You know, we're not just talking about this. Look, you know, as she speaks, I've done this for 14 years, I've had a great career. I support my family and to be able to have that communication to our co-workers as well as the community, I think it's huge to open the doors for people to see that, hey, okay, wait, there is a chance for a female in this area where you traditionally may see more men. I want to add one comment to that because I think the facilities area is a great example of how we can benefit from the work that we did with girls in trade. And you think about the effort on the construction site where we got over 7.2% females, which was pretty much unheard of in the area. We're hoping that a number of those young women might then be interested down the road in joining our in-house team. And so they've seen the way that we focus on that and that it would just be a great dovetail. Now, some of them may turn around and listen if they stay in the trades and that's terrific, but down the road I'd hope they would consider us. Or just the fact that we're an active participant in that group might open up a few doors for Susie and the recruitment team. So that's one good example of how to take an area that's been a little bit more skewed one way and continue to introduce some great opportunities for females in facilities. Can you remind me of the work I believe you're doing with the vocational schools in the area? Sure. The girls in trade group was co-founded with Jenny Peterson, who's our director of employment, and Mary Ann Ham, who happens to run the program up at Minuteman. Minuteman, yeah. Yeah, Minuteman and Lexington. But then that spun off into looking at the other schools in the area. There's many really strong VOTEC programs in the area that we can continue to work with. But I think we can make an impact and hopefully the work that we did early on would show people that we're real serious about this. Thank you. So the next section for the license condition is regarding benefits, providing a comprehensive medical and dental benefit package, which we have. We have traditional health insurance through UHC, multi-tier depending on if you're family single, et cetera. We offer dental and vision. We have a flexible spending account for our employees as well as a health savings account. We have other ancillary insurance as traditional short-term and long-term disability, accidental death and dismemberment, so on and so forth. We also are offering transportation, continuing the theme of Bob's presentation about transportation earlier. We want to encourage and are encouraging our employees to take public transit whenever possible. And we're doing that in several ways. And one of them is offering discounted passes for the employees that they can actually buy through Encore Boston Harbor without even having to go to the MBTA and can have those items payroll deducted at 50% cost reduction up to $50 a month. And that's true for MBTA, the local train and buses, as well as the commuter rails in the area. And we're marketing that in our back of the house. We have 28 huge, beautiful poster boards available to market to our employees. A wide variety of things. And transportation is one of the first that we put up. So that's huge for us. Can I ask on the parental leave, since it seems like the vast majority of your employees won't, they're going to come into this, not qualifying for the paid leave. What, if anything, is provided to them in their first year? We also offer personal leave, like a 30-day personal leave, depending on their time with the company. Obviously it's a year for FMLA. But personal leave is the biggest thing that we offer. Also, we offer leave with any ADA requirements. So if somebody's in a condition and typically pregnancy would qualify for that, for time away from work as well. Just following up on the scheduling that Bob talked about earlier, relative to mitigating some of the traffic. He mentioned the operational implications. I'm curious if you have any feedback from actual employees relative to earlier starts or later starts. I have my own ideas about, you know, I would like to myself avoid traffic. But there's a number of things that go into my commute hours. I'm wondering if you can speak to that from the employee perspective, if you have any kind of feedback. Absolutely. It's been interesting to watch, because obviously that was a concern for us. Okay, how are our employees going to get to work if you make it too difficult? It's going to be too difficult for them. So it's been interesting. We were very concerned about the buses and the travel on the buses. And I think we felt like we needed to figure that out for everybody. And they've been figuring it out pretty well on their own, even though we've tried to get them on certain paths. They've made it a little more simple for us than I thought they would. I think being in an urban setting where people are used to taking public transit, it's a little bit easier. I worked in Las Vegas and in LA in Las Vegas, we have parking everywhere. And in LA, there's no parking at site Boston. And when I moved there, I was like, oh my gosh, what are our employees do? And nobody ever even asked about parking there. And here, I think we made a lot, a much bigger deal out of it than they have. But the Sullivan Square Stop is key. They're getting off on the orange line, either walking or hopping on the bus, the local bus. That takes them to the stop right in front of the property and walking in. So it's been a lot less trouble than I thought. I'm across the Mysticot or across the harbor at Assembly Row. So I'm going to get, I'm on a paddle. I've been trying to figure out how can I get across this without having to go around. There might be a bridge there one day. We don't know about that. I'm like, what's going on with that bridge this morning? So yes, we're trying to make it easy. The shuttles are running from Wellington Station. That's a heavy, heavy hub of people getting off there as well, or people that have driven in, which we discourage as much as possible. We'll hop on the Wellington shuttles and come over and they run like every 10 to 15 minutes. So it's not like people, employees are sitting there for 30 minutes waiting on a shuttle. We're also going to have an app that our employees will be able to access once we're up and running to be able to see where the shuttle is at any given time. So if it's cold out, they can sit in their car for a few minutes or in a closed-in area before they head out to the bus stop to hop on the shuttle. And I think some of the initial feedback that we've received on the shifts is people are actually appreciating the flexibility. So some people are more than happy to come in early and leave earlier. And it's taken a bit of adjustment because it's not a typical 8 to 5 or 9 to 6, whatever job. But I think people are appreciating it now. Another thing we're doing is I love to promote our operators scheduling 10-hour shifts because then people only have to commute four days a week as opposed to seven days a week traditionally. So I think a lot of our operators have embraced that. And just from a recruitment standpoint, if I can tell you, hey, you're only having to sit in traffic four days this week or be on the train four days this week, not seven, I think that's really attractive to a lot of employees as well. There are a couple of things that we're doing. And I think we're learning every day. We definitely move quickly when we hear something's not working. We want our employees to have a good experience coming to them from where, obviously it's going to make my job a little bit easier from a recruitment standpoint. So we're trying to be agile as we hear things that they need. And one other additional benefit that has been incredibly well received is, as you know from your tours, we have this wonderful team dining. And the initial response on that has been outstanding. And they get a free meal, you know, during their shift as part of it. And to say employees have been surprised and delighted might be the understatement of the year, but it's been a great, great feature to have. That and the pet insurance. The pet insurance. People really have loved our employee dining room. It was called the staff cafe. And there's a line getting into it. Most days people are blown away by the food is fantastic. And we have great ice cream. Some healthy options as well. Jackie was upset we were out ice cream a couple of days ago. She showed up to my office immediately. Okay, a little also we have not talked. We touched on Suffolk down a little bit earlier with Jill. So we've had a couple of different hiring events or Suffolk downs. We've had the mailing that Jill talked about earlier. We will continue to communicate regarding the positions that we have available. Again, we'll continue to hire and as we have interest, those employees will definitely take priority during the interview and selection process. And just one one. I'm sorry. Go ahead. I'm sorry. Have you hired any today? We have ongoing. We have and we will continue. One historical perspective note on that is at the time that we had offered to do that preference. We had believed then that Suffolk downs was actually going to close. As you know, there's still an operation running, simocasting and racing. And so in a sense, maybe some of those folks might become more interested as their schedule changes. And I don't know what the final outcome of the schedule is over there, but we'll continue to make sure that we treat them the same way. Should even they show up at a later date and be interested in employment and the property. But a lot of them are still working. Great folks. I attended. I remember we did. I know we mentioned one, but I think we actually had two sessions over at the Hilton Garden in right near there. And it was a nice group of folks. So we're ready, willing and able. We have plenty of jobs open. And if they want to come over, we'll I think this will be more of an ongoing thing as well, depending on what happens to their schedule. I think that's an important clarification. I had asked the same question because I didn't understand the history. So on course, not poaching. They are course offering offering in accordance with agreement. So thank you. Sure. And that's all I had prepared. Great questions. Just one, it's not really a matter of meaning a lot. Well, it is kind of meaning a statute condition, I guess. But can you tell me what kind of interest you're having to date in terms of the daycare services you're making available? I know the facility isn't going to open until later in the year, but what kind of interest are you getting from people that you brought on board or people that you're still talking to? We've had a few questions, not a ton thus far. Any time we have something, and I think our employees that have been here for a while are used to this already in the month that we started, we'll see we market internally for anything that we have to offer our employees. So we haven't started doing that yet. And I think when we do that, we'll have a great amount of interest in it. You know, we have some other options that we've talked about with care.com that we're working on and have gotten some final proposals that we're trying to work through on that. We'll communicate sooner than later. But I probably only had maybe three people reach out to me with childcare questions thus far. Thank you. Can I, going back to your comment about the sort of gender areas and lower numbers than you wanted for the women, is it a question of not getting enough in the applicant pool or is it a question of not getting the qualified applicants in the applicant pool for those areas? I think there's a little bit of both. So, for example, security has worked, that's another area that you traditionally see more men in those roles even from an applicant standpoint. And we have definitely, I think because of that history where you don't have as many people with experience, so Rich Pyre, Executive Director of Security is really working hard and finding candidates that are female with a base knowledge and working with training them, even bringing some people in that maybe aren't quite there but have exhibited things during their interview process that are hopeful for us and we believe that we can train and develop. So we're taking some chance there and bringing people in. But we definitely also need to have that base of experience. So that's a high risk area, facilities as well as security. And then, again, the applicant pool. And I think in other cities that I've worked in, if you can get your applicant pool at a better balance that's closer to where your goals are, obviously it's much easier. So I think it's a combination of both. But I'm hoping some of the internal training that we will do and again, other females seeing females being successful in those roles will really help us encourage those applicant pools to have a better split for us to be able to reach our hiring goals there. I'd like to mention something that our colleague, Commissioner Cameron, might mention in exactly this situation, even though she's not here. And I take all your comments. I think they're right on point. It's a lot about what people see and the comfort level. But I think she would mention and I believe that women are really good at diffusing situations and in the area of security that's also a very important skill to have. I mean, to the extent that we can at least emphasize that going forward on those conversations that would be also very useful. Thank you for that. And Chairwoman Judd-Stein, I think you had asked about the full-time part-time ratio. I did. Yes, I'm so sorry. I wrote it down and I forgot to say it. Where for our head count we're at 21% is our split to full-time and part-time right now. Oh, could you just say that one more time? 21% part-time to full-time. And you're saying 20.4? 21% of our overall staff is part-time. Is part-time. Or we call it steady extra if you hear us. And do they receive a benefit package of sorts or does that work? They do have an option for a scaled-down benefits package. It's not quite as rich, if you will, for the full-time employees, but they do have access to some benefits at a little bit higher rate. And even for full-time you only have to average 30 hours a week. So you don't have to work 40 hours a week to have full-time benefits. And we look at that annually. So once you have, once you're hired in as a full-time employee, once a year we'll go in and analyze hours. And even if you were hired in as a steady extra employee, when we analyze those hours, if you are averaging 30 hours a week, even though you'll keep your steady extra status, we will move you into a full-time benefits package. It's all based on hours, more so than status after a first year. So for all practical purposes it becomes available to almost everyone. Because there'll be very few jobs where we want anyone less than 30 hours. So it's almost going to be, even though the number might say 7921, really in effect you're going to have almost all of the staff would be available for full-time benefits so long as they're averaging 30 hours. And we've seen that historically in other places where, and especially in markets where you have access to large numbers of local individuals to come to the facility. And by being in the greater Boston market we'll have significant amount of mid-week business compared to maybe a resort location that's not near high-pop concentration of population. So that means that we're going to be asking everyone please work more hours. And that then gives them the ability to bump up to the full-time package at 30 hours, which is a really pretty much easy threshold based on our typical habits of scheduling, if that makes sense. That makes great sense and it's admirable that it kicks in at 30%. It's also noteworthy that some of the positions are less than a traditional full-time position because that also is an attractive alternative for many of our residents. So thank you very much for that update. But I just wanted to make sure when we do read the numbers we're kind of aware that they may be full-time, the 30% piece, I mean 30 hours a week is really important to know but we'll just keep that in mind and continue to be updated. See how many you shift them over to that full-time slot. Excellent. Does anyone else have any other questions for Director Griffin and the Encore team? Susie, thank you for your report. Oh, you're welcome. Thank you for having us today. Thank you. That's that. All right. Do we want to take a short break? It's actually 11.58 which is hard to believe. I thought it was 10.50. Do we need a short break or shall we continue with a lunch break, one 10-minute break right now? Thank you everyone for your patience. This is a very meaty meeting and we'll take a 10-minute break now and reconvene at 12. No, not necessarily. We're going to see. I sit next to Commissioner Zuniga. I need to eat. He needs to eat. Yes. She's right in the middle. Thank you, Austin. We have reconvened and the next item on our agenda is the report on gaming technological compliance and information technology, Chief Information Officer of Gaming Commissioner, Katrina Gomes. I've never said your last name out loud, Katrina, but it's so nice to have you here along with Scott. Hey, Wig. And again, I'm saying your last name for the first time. Want to correct me? Hellwig. Hellwig. Hellwig. Okay. Hellwig. Katrina and Scott and I have met a few times now but I've never had to use your last name. So thank you. And we have Jason Stump, Chief Information Officer from Encore. So thank you. Good afternoon, Madam Chair, commissioners, Executive Director Bedrosian. Thank you for taking care of the introductions for me. So that saves me a couple of breaths. You would have done a better job. No, no, you did perfectly fine. Thank you. Thank you for introducing the team and also by no means does the few of us represent the individuals that actually worked on this project. And as a special note, I would like to recognize the collaboration due diligence and efforts put forth by both Encore Boston Harbor and the MGC technology staff. So today we will be presenting a summary of the diligent efforts to ensure compliance with our regulations and several technology areas pertaining to electronic gaming devices, EGD, EGD management or slots, and the Internal Controls Information Network Security Plan. Gaming Laboratories International or GLI performed an onsite inspection at Encore on June 5 for compliance with all pertinent sections of 205-CMR-143 and 144. The scope of work was to perform an inspection of IGT Advantage, which is Encore's health system or their central monitoring system, and all systems passed with no issues. On May 15th, BMM test labs, referred to as BMM here and after, certified the Wind Gaming Management Systems, Cage and Collections at Encore Boston Harbor for compliance with all pertinent sections of 205-CMR-139 and 143. On June 5th, Scott Hellwig, MGC's Gaming Technical Compliance Manager, in conjunction with BMM, validated the systems and all systems passed with no issues. The IAB Gaming Agents Division tested the EGDs for compliance with all pertinent sections of 205-CMR-143 and 144, and all 3,151 machines were received, passed and sealed prior to June 5th, and further details will be addressed in the IAB Gaming Agents Division presentation to the Commission later on today. In accordance with 205-CMR-144, GLI and BMM certified each type of EGD at Encore Boston Harbor. All EGDs and internal systems were verified by the MGC Gaming Technical Compliance Team, and this included financial, promotional crediting, manufacturing models, and software on the approved list. The IGTs Network Operations Team, or commonly referred to as the NOC, completed all cabling and fiber installations at all banks to ensure communications with the Commission's central monitoring system, and the 3,151 EGDs. In addition, the game software was verified via the Program Validation Disable Check, which allows for compliance against GLI and BMM's approved software to live games on the floor. Pursuant to 205-CMR-138.02 and further detailed in 143.12, the submitted Information Network Security Plan was reviewed, which included information on security standards, access control policy, remote access policy, server workstation build policy, BYOD or bring your own device policy, patch management policy and procedure, production change control and data classification. All feedback provided to Encore Boston Harbor was reviewed by the necessary teams and the documents have been updated to reflect critical changes that would impact operational readiness. All other recommendations will be reviewed for inclusion as applicable. As with all policies, they're only effective as went placed into practice, so it's the intention of the MGC's Gaming Technical Compliance Team to conduct a security audit within the first year of operations. Could I interrupt? You were so helpful going through this with me. I just want to make sure we understand the process that you engage with in developing the security plan. It's my understanding Encore perhaps started with a plan and then there was a collaboration including the benefit of an outside consultant. So Encore already has have their corporate information and network security plans. They submit that to us for compliance with our regulations. However, the IT department, that would be myself and a few other of our staffers, including a independent security consultant reviews all of the policies for compliance with our regs but also for NIST and CIS standards. Those are industry IT standards. What does that mean? NIST and CIS was not prepared for that. Those are just commonly used acronyms but they're all very defined. One is federally federal standards and the other one is a newer standard that includes both FedRAMP and federal and state in governance as well. And then you give back the feedback in conjunction with the benefit of the outside consultant and then work out the plan. Correct. Jason and other members of the EVH team took all of our feedback in. We had many discussions. We've gone through it several times and had conference calls. They've made the changes that we thought would impact operational readiness and then there were other housekeeping things that we recommended that they are going to take a look at and include but it does not impact operational readiness. That would be something going forward. Yes. Katrina, could it be the National Institute for Standards and Technology? Thank you. Google. I kid you not, on the way to work today, my husband and my adult son who's living with us for a couple months to his apartment becomes available in Boston talked about how acronyms should never be used. That they just are so confusing. So acronyms. Here we are. That is true. Between technology and government we have alphabet soup on a regular basis. And then there was another word that Director Griffin and I were confused by yesterday, compendium. That also came up in ironically. So there were two matters on my ride as we were also looking at your billboards. So it turned out to be a very productive ride in. And so with respect to the security plan because I felt that that was a critical piece of this compliance, you feel satisfied at this point? We do. It's been reviewed by an entire team several times and we are through the conversations with Jason and their internal staff we are very comfortable with their procedures and process and their policies. Thank you. I'd also like to express my sincere appreciation for all the hard work and due diligence of the information technology services team which comprises both of corporate and gaming technology and that includes Priya Gandotra, Tim Drain, Kevin Gabbro and Vijay Lama. And in conclusion it is our recommendation that Executive Director Bedrosian approves the information network security plan as presented and at this time we would like to give you guys our opportunity to ask more questions. So you may have mentioned this but perhaps quickly there's been already a lot of communication with the NOG, with our own network operation center here, but the real test will come during test night is that a fair statement? Correct. We will have staff on site at all of the test nights and we will be treating the test nights as fully operational how the communications need to go between the EVH staff and the MGC NOG and our internal staff as well. And I'm just curious to the extent that you can, I like that we use the two independent labs in different ways just from a general principle of not going only with just one but can you describe a little bit more how that division of work here perhaps for the benefit of our own testing? Sure. Most of the EGD testing and again as I referred to earlier the IAB Gaming Agents Division really took care of that validation and testing. We took care of the software technical validation so every single EGD on the floor has something called a signature. They tie into the system with a unique identifier and every signature on the floor, every piece of software appliance gives their multiple components within a slot machine and Scott feel free to jump in and correct me anywhere during this explanation but every single slot machine has multiple components to it. Each of it has its own software or specific signatures. GLI and BMM certify those signatures. They certify that software and they validate it and so that's why sometimes you have to use both and not just one because the manufacturers may go with one independent tester versus the other. But it's not like they both check the same kind of equipment in other words there was no double testing necessarily, there was just testing according to the manufacturer reference. No, there was no double, no redundant testing so either manufacturer will submit their software to BMM or GLI depending on who they decide to use and there's usually no overlap. But they both test against the GLI standards which are considered industry standards. Which we adopted absolutely. Just a quick question I know the statute speaks about this. There was a preference in the statute for domestically manufactured machines seeing your breakdown kind of by manufacturer do you get a good sense of how many are domestic made or even again for an owned company makes them here in the United States but looking at the list you have a good sense of who's domestic. So there are actually only ten manufacturers on the floor and of the ten six of them are US based and manufactured in the US as for the other four they are internationally based but they do have headquarters in the US and they manufacture in the United States. Thank you. Do we have any other questions? Mr. Stump, do you want to add anything? No, I appreciate that Katrina and her team we've worked really close so I started about eight months ago we talk frequently and it's been a great partnership I can't thank her and the team for the partnership and support. Excellent, thank you. Any other questions? Thank you very much. Thank you. Thank you. We'll move on to item 4B4 on the agenda regarding responsible gaining and our director Mark Banderlinden and Teresa is joining and Teresa Fiore and Teresa Fiore program manager Bob Jackey, thank you. Good afternoon Chairwoman and commissioners. Good afternoon. I have a presentation that's broken into two parts. The first is going to be centrally focused on the responsible gaming plan that was submitted and accepted by Encore Boston Harbor. The second is going to steer away from that but it also falls under the umbrella of responsible gaming and Teresa and Elaine will talk briefly about the Game Sense Communication campaign that supports the opening of Encore Boston Harbor. So first off the expanded gaming act includes a number of protections in regards to the prevention and mitigation of social impacts of introducing expanded gaming in Massachusetts. I think that the gaming commission took this mandate really literally and from the beginning we have been working from a responsible gaming framework. The responsible gaming framework is intended to both inform regulation in Massachusetts but also provide just an overall orientation to responsible gaming practice and policy adopted by the gaming commission as well as our gaming licensees. Our gaming licensees have in differing degrees adopted many of the recommendations or tactics that are contained in that responsible gaming framework. Encore Boston Harbor when they were developing their responsible gaming plan I very much appreciate that they took the Massachusetts responsible gaming framework and adopted that structure. So they similar to the Massachusetts gaming commission responsible gaming to Encore Boston Harbor is seen as something that is multi-dimensional. It's not just putting a brochure out on a rack but instead it's seen as a corporate culture it's seen as a public health issue. It's seen as engagement with the community etc. So I'm going to hop to the responsible gaming plan or program that Encore Boston Harbor proposed and what I'm recommending that the gaming commission accept. There are seven strategies within the responsible gaming framework. Commitment to corporate social responsibility Encore Boston Harbor is developing a responsible gaming committee that's led by executive staff and they've submitted to the gaming commission this responsible gaming plan. Strategy 2 is supporting positive play. Encore Boston Harbor is collaborating with the game sense program and the front and back of house to assure that patrons and employees have the information that they need to support positive play. As a side note Game Sense Advisor Lynn Ho has so far trained Encore Boston Encore employee 4,865 employees over the course of 19 trainings. It's outstanding in two ways. One that responsible of this game sense training, this responsible gaming training is an important commitment that Encore Boston Harbor has made and they have allotted very valuable time for their employees to receive this training. Probably even more impressive is Lynn Ho the game sense advisor who works for the mass council on compulsive gambling and his I would say endurance to be able to do this. And promoting public health and safety within the casino activities include a clear plan to assist patrons in need of help, safe guards on property right protections against child abandonment and a clear very clear plan to prevent underage gambling. Strategy 4 which is to ensure responsible marketing the Encore Boston Harbor has adopted and is adhering to the industry accepted standards on responsible gaming advertising. Managing high risk financial transactions they've developed many procedures that are actually regulations that have been that are in their internal controls but these also include such things as there aren't ATM machines on the gaming floor they have a regulation that requires they're at least 15 feet off of the gaming floor. There are procedures for caching checks there's procedures for suspension of credit privileges there's a number of procedures that fall under this specific strategy. The next strategy engaging the community they have a clear plan to gather patron comments and complaints and respond in a timely manner we're relevant integrating that information into strategic decision making and the community mitigation process. And finally the last strategy deals with the commitment to continuous improvement in reporting I appreciated that they identified the responsible gaming committee as having the overall responsibility for developing and revising subject to MGC approval and implementing a plan they've developed a clear method in order to for internal audit surveying employees and reviewing relevant data and making changes as necessary based upon that circle of feedback. Now skipping specifically to a couple so that was the sort of overview of their responsible gaming plan there are a few specific items within that responsible gaming plan that are also commitments that I'd like to highlight the first is the voluntary self-exclusion program as you know the voluntary self-exclusion program is an important program for individuals who have lost control of their gambling and are looking for an external reinforcement of a decision not to gamble the voluntary self-exclusion program is an evidence-based practice it's shown through evaluation in Massachusetts and elsewhere that persons who enroll in the program have better outcomes, have improved mental health and relationship quality after enrollment than prior to that we're working closely with Boston on-court Boston Harbor security supervisors will be trained as designated agents to administer the voluntary self-exclusion program we identify what a designated agent is the gaming commission does we want those individuals to be very specifically trained to understand the very big decision that people make when they come forward to enroll in the voluntary self-exclusion program and how this is very much an opportunity to connect them with additional help down the road the on-court Boston Harbor VSE policies and procedures meet the requirement of 205CMR 133 for the voluntary self-exclusion program next is the Game Sense Information Center Mark, can I just stop you on the voluntary self-exclusion help me understand a little bit of the thinking one where one of the security supervisors will actually do the VSE registration and I guess the second question is are we hoping to cover hours that a Game Sense agent isn't on the floor thanks for that question much like the other two casinos we have three lines to be able to respond to an individual that's stepping forward at the casino property saying that they would like to enroll in the voluntary self-exclusion the first line is our Game Sense advisors they will ultimately end up doing a vast majority of any of the voluntary self-exclusion exclusions at the casino property they're very good at it they're wrapping up what amounts to about four weeks of training that lead up to this position and that's our preference second to that is training of the MGC gaming agents so should a Game Sense advisor not be available for any reason including they're occupied on the gaming floor they may be already doing the voluntary self-exclusion or it may be hours that the Game Sense Information Center isn't operating the next line is our gaming agents and they have received the training and then finally is the operator so that's where the security supervisors step in they can assure 24-7 coverage especially in those hours where Game Sense isn't operating from 1 a.m. to 9 a.m. there is a it's more likely that we would need to draw upon their services to help this enrollment and we want everybody to be on the same page about what enrollment means and the process and procedure to do that in terms of space obviously this is very thoughtful conversation you're having with an individual you're not going to do it right in the middle of the gaming floor where would a security you know one of the on-course security supervisors take somebody to have that conversation right you know that's actually a very good question when you're Jack and Bob may have a response to that sure we do have space back of house where a security officer could escort someone back of house to have a private conversation the Game Sense Information Center also includes a private space that if it's not being used it's possible to MGC gaming agents and obviously on-course staff for that purpose as well okay thank you final is the Game Sense Information Center this is the hub of where responsible gaming activities take place on-course Boston Harbor has said in many different times in many different ways including in their responsible gaming plan that they value the programming that Game Sense brings they recognize their expertise and tend to draw upon that that resource and their daily operations with their guests on-course Boston Harbor has worked with the gaming commission to assure that the Game Sense Info Center has made the requirements of 23K section 9 8 I can never say the right whatever the correct languages but it specifies on-site space for an independent substance abuse and mental health counseling service by a provider to be identified by the gaming commission in this case it's the Mass Counsel on Compulsive Gambling as I said the Game Sense Information Center is the central hub at on-course Boston Harbor for information and resources on positive play as well as at risk and problem gambling the GSA's will be staffed 9am to 1am 7 days per week over the next couple months we intend to kind of monitor the utilization of the Game Sense Information Center both in terms of monitoring how many guests are at the casino at any given time the daily tracking logs to see when interactions are taking place in order to optimize that service the Game Sense Information Center on-course Boston Harbor we're pleased with the location that it is in there are four primary entrances into the casino the Game Sense Information Center is located at one of those four entrances and specifically we appreciate that it's near an entrance where two of us will be dropping patrons off my conclusion is the responsible gaming initiatives and policies in this memo meet the commission's high expectations and statutory and regulatory requirements before I turn it over what I did intend at the beginning to just kind of call out the those that have been involved with this including Teresa who has been our point on all things Game Sense managing the details of this program and as we get further into the Game Sense program that list of details only seems to grow as we try to continuously improve this program also behind me is Marlene Warner the executive director of the Mass Counsel and Compulsive Gambling who has operated the Game Sense Information Centers since we opened at Plain Ridge Park Casino the training that she and Julie Hines their director of responsible gaming have pulled together for a new cohort of Game Sense advisors coming on board is nothing short of extraordinary they receive training on the entire spectrum they will receive training on how to talk to patrons about how games work on responsible gaming tips on just customer service and engagement they will receive training on mental health first aid on emotional interviewing on suicide on problem gambling on the resources that are available in the community and how to mostly using motivational interviewing how to try to shepherd persons who are exhibiting gambling related harm how to shepherd them to additional resources it's a it truly is a extraordinary program with the presence of any casino patron that comes their way so thank you to Marlene and specifically the extraordinary Game Sense advisors so with that turn it over to your questions any questions for this half just to reiterate the commitment that this commission has made in the efforts that we see from the statute and some of the requirements specifically to this space I have not yet seen the finished space I saw a little while ago before it was furnished that it's in a prominent place as you describe it just of the casino floor in an entrance that will be a main entrance but I think one of the key pieces that has worked well with us is the ability of in the past with MGM and Plain Ridge is the ability that the Game Sense advisors have in terms of walking the property to greet and eventually meet and if it requires so I suggest to a patron to come back to the Game Sense office to have a deeper conversation if needed I know that we're also still thinking about the hours what might be the most impactful hours because we want to have presence but I don't think it's necessary it's too costly to have 24 hour coverage seven days a week so the designation of others like the gaming agents and the security personnel I think is critical and what you describe is also very important and that is the coordination to resolve whatever might come up in terms of logistics or operations cross training etc is also very very important in the efforts of implementing this program so it's really good to hear that you're up to a good start when I this plan is much much stronger than even what was submitted in the RFA too and I credit Jackie and Bob and their team for living in Massachusetts understanding what the commission's commitment is to this seeing that they're and then kind of working with us to assure that their plan is very strong I appreciate that I appreciate the cooperation and partnership well I think the location gives us another opportunity to plug the alternative modes of transportation to get to Encore Boston Harbor to get dumped off at that exit and you know usually the game sense info center has free swag so as much as we can play that up it's great and the other questions in next presentation again this steers off just a little bit but I want to I think it's an important piece for the commission to have an idea of the communication campaign that's being rolled out in eastern Massachusetts to support the opening of Encore Boston Harbor Director Driscoll good afternoon commissioners good afternoon so I will just give a very brief download but essentially what we're looking to do is basically ramp up public outreach about the game sense program in advance of the opening and then also throughout the opening period as some of you may recall from the MGM Springfield opening we had introduced a new brand overall look and feel following BCLC's lead after they did a brand refresh last summer so utilizing all of the assets that we created at that time including the new website we will be doing a comprehensive campaign that kicks off as soon as today to basically increase brand awareness about game sense throughout Region A and also the availability of the game sense info center and the game sense advisors at Encore Boston Harbor so essentially we put together a campaign that will do a few things increase brand awareness about game sense hopefully drive traffic to the game sense MA website highlight the many resources that are available with game sense including the voluntary self-exclusion program for example will be sending out a press release announcing and reminding the public about the availability of that as soon as today if not tomorrow morning it's an opportunity to educate on responsible gaming tips promote informed player choice and then obviously ultimately it underscores the Commonwealth's commitment to ensuring responsible gaming and mitigating problem gambling so we'll accomplish all of this four ways one starting June 17th we will do a paid advertising campaign that will run through the opening period like the second week in August not dissimilar actually to what Mr. DiSalvio said about choices that were made for their transportation campaign the most the highest impact is really to go digital it's really the way you can get basically the most impact so we'll be doing a digital campaign that starts on June 17th similarly it will be web browsing behavior targeted and then secondly we'll be doing marketing initiatives that includes you know signage and then we'll also be doing earn media as I mentioned earlier such as the announcement of the availability of the voluntary self-exclusion program and then lastly we'll be doing an aggressive social campaign through all of our social channels of which we have many so between the Massachusetts gaming commission social channels and then also the game sense channels which we also operate and then we'll be working with the mass council to amplify that through their social channels as well so we have an extended plan already in place for what that will look like for over the course of the next six weeks so I am going to go through some of the more detailed tactics which Elaine just described starting with the brochures for which I dropped up some of the examples for you so we broke up the brochures into two different primary types the first being game specific brochures and our goal that we try to accomplish in designing those is to provide very high level information so that players can make informed decisions about their gaming for the game brochures and I put the slot one and actually gave you the slots as an example because it is by far our most popular brochure our second type would be brochures with messaging specific to responsible and problem gambling now these in addition to the game specific brochures are available in the game sense info center but these ones will also be found throughout the property in a different areas on the casino floor so we have translated these into Spanish traditional Chinese much like the game brochures but we've also translated them into a simplified Chinese in a Vietnamese Vietnamese we also have a huge library of digital signage which is something that we are working with the property to identify the perfect locations on the gaming floor so these are some examples of assets we've used previously of properties the left is an ATM specific sign it says put your benjamins on a budget in the right one and vision would go with the end of a slot bank for example in rotation with their digital signs and it says play smart learn to lose like a winner and then the call to action go to the games info center for helpful gaming tips I actually worked directly with Jackie on this a while ago about how on Corbass and Harbor is going to promote the program on their website and their advertising so there is a set of requirements that many gaming operators follow in terms of adding a disclaimer on any of their advertising so we hammered out very specific language which they have included on all their ads across platforms on their website if you look on the left hand side that's a screenshot they have a a tile specific to game sense and if you click on that it links directly to the game sense website and these are just examples of some additional creative which we have in our library and many of these have been updated to include calls to action which is specific to on Corbass and Harbor so that would mean if you would like more information and would like to visit the game sense info center it is located by the east lobby and Elaine mentioned the social media plan which we have created she didn't touch on the game sense website which I know Chair Juddstein is new to you for the MGM presentation but some of the items which we have on that website are entertaining videos, valuable tips and advice, a myth-busting quiz interactive tools slot and table game guides support services and information on voluntary self-exclusion this slide just goes through the four phases of the advertising campaign so I won't touch on that I'm very happy to talk about our on Corbass and Harbor game sense advisor team, we have hired 12 which is our largest team and that is obviously to reflect the size of the gaming floor, the number of staff members and the number of guests who we expect to visit this property and you can see in the little box that I created that for every game sense advisor there is 453 on Corbass and Harbor staff members they are currently in the fourth week of intensive training and they have a combined 63 years of direct gaming experience the spread of experience is supplemented by bachelors degrees in applied psychology and mass media communication as well as a decade of service in medical translation service and time spent in the US Armed Forces I believe the Air Force in addition to English, certain members of this team and Spanish, Mandarin, Cantonese Vietnamese, Dutch French and Papiamento Which one was the last one? Papiamento it is, I read it down a Spanish Creole spoken in Aruba, Bonaire and Curacao I think it's interesting that your team has 63 years of gaming experience gaming is a nice industry so are almost all of your team members coming from outside of Massachusetts? Many of them are and I can get more specific answers for you on that one but what I'm finding and working with many people in this industry is that it is a rather small population that travels to a lot of different properties and they're very proud of that and they will tell you all the different properties where they've worked and what they've learned in those locations so yes they've spanned the US Generally they don't only have an extensive background in psychology and counseling which I would have expected but they actually have gaming touches which is good It's an interesting balance of who do we want to have be games and advisors we can teach individuals that have been in the gaming industry a long time on some of the more human service aspects of it but we can also teach individuals that come with a human service background a lot of information about gaming and both are represented in the Game Sense Advisors And it looks like the population is well represented here That's great. Thank you And finally as Mark had mentioned and I would love to call out Senior Game Sense Advisor from Boston Harbor, Lynn Hou who has conducted 19 trainings for 4,865 on-core Boston Harbor Within this training staff are invited to utilize Game Sense as not only a professional but also a personal resource should they need it themselves And I would just like to add that I was actually at the property on June 10 So a few days ago in the new staff were actually participating in a scavenger hunt and Game Sense was one of the stops there and as part of the scavenger hunt they had to answer the question what is one of the signs of problem gambling and we overheard some terrific brainstorming conversations so we are very pleased to see that Just to add just before our presentation Jackie and I were talking about an advanced training or an enhanced Game Sense training so while these 4,800 employees have the basic Game Sense training there is also an enhanced training and we are planning the rollout of that enhanced training to key employees And finally I just wanted to point out from my visit a few days ago we observed some backup post signage which included the 24-hour problem gambling health knowing number information about Game Sense and more general information about responsible and problem gambling so it really shows on-course commitment and we are really excited to keep working with them and make this program operate as successfully as possible can Any questions? Teresa when you guys were working with the team at MGM prior to opening you also did a lot of outreach to gamblers, anonymous groups and others to again try to make the access to the VSC easier to access Are you doing anything like that with respect to the work up to the opening of Encore? Yes, so there has been a few additional designated agents trained in the Region A area in addition to that Mark and I have made ourselves available to actually conduct VSCs here at our office so we kind of take everyone on a case by case basis and if they need to meet somewhere that's closer to their office or their home we're able to do so That's correct Thank you for this great presentation I like very much and recognize many of the strategies and tactics from the MGM campaign I like the cost effectiveness of the social media and the coordination with advisors and the branding but can anybody speak a little bit about what if any maybe a new tactic or an enhanced procedure that we've done as a lesson from the prior launch? Well it's funny actually we were just talking about that earlier today before this meeting I think that one of the things we've really been able to do that we've taken lessons learned even today with crafting what the announcement message is about the expansion I think we've honed messaging really well over the course of just like I said through our experience I think that we understand even how to target for earned media just the most impactful way to go about that what Commissioner Stebbins also just said got me thinking in which is that we're planning on issuing our announcement like we always do about the availability of the voluntary self exclusion program there's actually no reason why based on our research and our various contacts why we can't sort of target that announcement to key audiences even more closely so I think that we can take that announcement that today was intended to be broad and identify certain areas and send direct messaging to them for that some of our more at risk groups may have newsletters and things like that that they could include this announcement in so I think we can very specifically target there I think that's a great idea and I think that we've also taken the opportunity to enhance our digital assets for our social campaign so for example we've created a new video that's a brief snippet that would go out over Facebook and Twitter that basically is a game sense the website 101 it's a quick review that says here's how to find your way around the game sense website in types of things that might be of interest to you so we've enhanced that we've also created a digital enrollment 101 for VSE and we'll be putting that out as well so we've added some new assets we've enhanced our messaging and we can target certain groups based on the research yeah and on the programming side we're continuously evaluating kind of what the program is and I think it's reflected in the that four week training that the game sense advisors have gone through MGM is a great test case for operating in a casino that has both slot machines and table games and we've learned a great deal over the past nine months of operating at MGM and just what types of questions concerns, problems patrons are coming to the game sense program with and being able to respond to those you know the Mass Council hired a director of responsible with extensive experience and prevention and so it's beginning to look at how we fold prevention strategy kind of comprehensive prevention strategy into game sense tactics and game sense messaging and I think that that's a that's a breakthrough quite honestly we had a tool chest of game sense activities and ways of talking about it that's very good very helpful but I think that at a certain point you and our experience and through the evaluation that we've done you kind of reach that glass ceiling how do we break through that in order to continue to make this interesting make this engaging make this meaningful and working towards the sort of end goal of mitigating gambling related harm in the last thing I just want to add to sorry is we studied the metrics and performance from the game sense campaign around mgm spring field particularly how the ads performed the digital ads performed so we're able to use that Intel to decide which ads we should use for this like the more popular ones the ones that were most likely to inspire a click that went through to the website and the ones that didn't really work seeming you know that they didn't get any clicks much reach so we're able to use that Intel to hopefully have a more targeted and shop campaign for this would it be I don't know how I would personally feel about this but would it be worthwhile to try to within the communication within the messaging to try to remind those who may be in the voluntary self exclusion list that when it comes to Massachusetts you're excluded from all three casinos a propo of the new one opening and I the reason I say would it be worthwhile is clearly because this is a broad campaign targeted to a lot of people but there's this particular group that we are also interested in so do you have any thoughts as to whether that would be worthwhile yeah we had that discussion last week about how to reach out in a very discreet way to individuals that are already on the list that may not have received notification when MGM opened up that it was a statewide voluntary self exclusion list so so there's a plan for direct outreach as well as a plan to post on our website as a reminder to persons that it's a statewide list regardless of when and where you signed up if you're on the list it applies to all three casinos in Massachusetts I just want to mark acknowledge some of the work you guys have done kind of in the lead up I'm starting to call you our director of research and play your health but kind of a lead up you had a great meeting with the secretary of veterans services because we know Encore is opening up very closely to the Chelsea soldiers home we know veterans are predominantly a higher at risk population but the two of you undertook some outreach efforts over there so kudos to you for a lot of the work you've done leading up to the open thank you very much thank you Teresa for the brochures very helpful today in your presentation I think at this time it makes sense for us to break the match I appreciate everyone who's been here all morning and invite you to return if you would like and then I know we have many members of our team that need to present for the afternoon so thank you we will return and should we say 2 or is that enough it's 110 now 2 is fine excellent we will go with 2 o'clock thank you so much thank you Austin good afternoon everyone we're reconvening public meeting 272 and we left off on our agenda we are now item 4B5 Mr. Dan Madam Chair, commissioners thank you I'm here today with Burke Cain my field manager Bob DeSalvio and Jackie Crum we're here to talk about the gaming regulatory compliance review and these are all the inspections that our staff has been doing over at Encore since the beginning of February actually during that time the staff inspected 3158 slot machines even though there's only 300 3151 games on the floor after Bob changed his mind in the high limit zone sorry Bruce sorry the inspection started on February 4th and we finished it by October 1st and that was doing the denomination software the theme machine percentage payout return to the player pretty comprehensive inspections of these electronic gaming tables we also have just completed this week the inspection of 144 table games and 88 poker tables and that includes all the shuffling tables and all the equipment that comes with that we also did 12 roulette wheels and 28 ticket redemption machines we inspected 3 cashier caged the money routes on the floor security and surveillance submissions we approved over 144 submissions and the credit should go to Sterl Carpenter for all the hard work that he did on that that's months of work on that thing itself we also looked at the proposed gaming day which would be 24-7 gaming day would start at 6am in the morning emergency and critical incident response plans was reviewed and it's with the Everett department and has been approved we also looked at their credit and suspension of credit procedures and all met the requirements of our regs the liquor license has been in compliance we still have an onsite walkthrough on Friday with ABCC to complete that slot operations plan was great and then the final plan for test nights is in place I've received it from on court today of what each of the three days will look like and it was very similar to what we did at MGM and it was all acceptable I would like to take a moment to give special thanks to the field manager Burke Cain and Louis Lozano for all the hard work he's done I don't know if we'll do it he's right there he's been out there since February with the whole staff organizing everything and making sure everything gets done great job same with everybody on the staff any questions? Bruce do you want to highlight the floor? I think later on that's the agenda can you just remind me of the approval process where you say reviewed and approved does the director sign up and is there actual documentation for that? we actually review what gets submitted they look at our regs and how they're going to meet those requirements store reviews some of these things are 30-40 pages long all their submission compares it to the reg to make sure it's in compliance and after we do that review it gets the letter to do the official sign off for it it's not the case with all the presentations I know Katrina also said that you would be signing up will we is that something that you've been doing all along? it is on the internal controls it is and usually what happens is they will explain to me what the process is because I was a newbie to the industry I didn't understand credit sister did that and I would sign off on internal controls on the information security plan I think I still need to sign off on it that's what I'm interested in that's what prompted me and then you've said reviewed and approved that's the actual approval you I understand you've briefed me thank you about that everything's been met and then add you actually sign off thanks yes there is documentation in the power point about when you get to this real powerful thing it's a list of all the regulations that we reviewed and approved I'm surprised Cheryl can still see yeah it is hard the color helps anybody any questions for yeah I remember that a lot of the testing that we did initially on PPC we relied on the labs even that we had less of course less staffing of course there was also no table games I know that my recollection is right we did all of the denomination testing of the machines for MGM and that's the case you went through this quickly but that's here as well the progressive yes but our staff worked with them to learn what their inspection was this time our staff did the complete inspection all except the software approval for the advantage system which Katrina talked about earlier that was what she was referring to and then besides the denomination testing are there other actual testing that in our past someone else did like a lab now do? we pretty much do all our inspections with the games and stuff we of course always require a GLI letter saying that it's approved in our jurisdiction but the actual inspection itself our staff does completely no additional cost like we had in the past thank you Bruce just a quick question to remind remind me the critical incident prepared in this plan that's not just all the machines go dark or anything else that is more a security emergency part of the security plan you guys review it I'm assuming with conjunction with the state police I think the city of Everett reviewed it as well is there any new games here that we have not seen you'll see Pygout Tiles even though MGM is in the process of getting it I don't think they've opened it yet have they? so you'll see that in a way new games maybe on test nights we'll get you there to try it out all the slots are new models and stuff so I'm sure you'll see some things that you haven't seen before they also have the game of a sick bow that's the big table that'll light up with the three dice they're in the shape of the difference between this property and MGM a lot more private gaming rooms what does that do or change track information we have unfettered access to that but we also have complete access to the surveillance system to watch with that and their player rating system so we really kind of know what's going on in the room you'll get a big player like Michael Jordan or something that doesn't want to play out in the public where somebody owns a business or something like that that doesn't want to publicize that last three maps in the floor that's actually in the floor plan approval so I will address that later on in the agenda thank you very much next on our agenda is item 4 b6 director welts you are helping out today your colleague licensing manager Bill Curtis thank you yes good afternoon as you may have noticed I am stepping in for Mr. Curtis this morning he did submit a memorandum for your consideration which is in the packet just to give you an overview of the licensing divisions perspective the issues that are required to be brought forth for the commission for the operation certificate as far as employee compliance required for the operation certificate they do have to list the gaming employees and that's done through the LMS system and the company and the licensing division are in constant contact and that's been updated so we do have a current list of employees which complies with 25CMR 151 as far as the vendor compliance there's requirement that the vendors be licensed and registered the mechanism for this is that the company provides a disbursement report so they tell the licensing division all the money that's flowing out through the company expenditures and then the MGC verifies that so I've been in touch with Mr. Curtis that's ongoing that's done on a regular basis so they confirm that they're not spending money or spending money to vendors that are not licensed or registered it is important to remember there's some exemptions that don't have to be licensed or registered but we confirm those so that process is in place and the company is in compliance with that they are also required to submit a jobs compendium which they have done the proposed amendments to the compendium have also been submitted and the licensing team and the company work together on that and then all the documentation is not only reviewed by the licensing manager but they work with the gaming agents chiefs of Bruce Band just to check that the level of licensure is appropriate and that we're doing everything in that respect and those are approved and all that procedure has been flowing smoothly no issues on the jobs compendium the other final issue with respect to the licensing division is the gaming beverage license which Mr. Band already referenced that has been approved by the commission but we do have a final walkthrough that we're doing on Friday we'll go through with that I believe the chair will sign off on the actual license of themselves we've got a process in place to get that done so they may have their actual certificates as early as this Friday oh you already signed it so it's done which certificate was that the gaming beverage certificate so they have their different locations so the chair signs off Karen I'm sorry real quick so the gaming beverage license is allowing them to serve on the test nights however you know I know shadowing Bruce and Burke out in Springfield other issues arose around beverage service how do we kind of play that off they already have the license but we may find some discrepancies in service or what have you correct so it would be as if you had an operating casino so if there's any issues there would be a notification to the licensee an opportunity to correct the issue if there's a there becomes a pattern of non-compliance for example leaving open liquor bottles having people with access to liquor shouldn't have access there can be some enforcement action taken but there's a process and procedure in place as to the steps before we would take any action to get into the casino so just for the commission's application the whole team includes the licensing team and the and the state police investigators they've done 9 key executive licenses 152 key standard licenses 1460 gaming employee licenses 1360 service employee registrations they had 58 finger printing events and so total I think there's 2,981 licenses of registrations and Mr. Curtis asked because he's such a good leader for his team to specifically thank on his behalf his team Mary Polgarin Least of Brookner Mary and Breton Davies Terrell Blank and Connor McCourt just processing all those applications and dealing with the public getting people through the process in the most efficient way possible making them feel welcome as part of the whole licensing and registration process was important and he also wanted a shout out to trooper Scott Walker who did a lot of the finger printing and coordinating a lot of those efforts that's a big task in getting those people in and I got excellent reviews as far as the efficiency of the process not only on the licensing side but also the investigatory side and I can't thank Bill Curtis enough this is someone who was working weekends working nights always on LMS I could see emails going back and forth at all hours so he Gina Joyce and Mike Banks they really worked very very hard to make sure that these things are moving so this thing could open on time and that the project would be successful and it's been incredibly smooth on our side of the process thanks to the efforts of Bill and Karen and the team we haven't had any complaints in terms of people being held up while the application is lengthy they've been unbelievably supportive in terms of getting people processed and having a constant communication without team to that end can you just expand a little bit on the LMS the way our system has worked towards these efficiencies that you are one of the most one of the smartest things we did was implementing this LMS system just as an agency because the efficiencies especially in all parties being able to view the same database so when the applicant submits it then goes to a queue so the company can check to verify that person actually works for the casino the casino can also check where that person is in the process the person can get their notifications to the LMS system I can check how many applications are in each stage of the process there's so many ways to access the same information when we tried to do that by paper it was much more difficult one file that was located in Plainridge I'm over in Boston asking questions and getting information was much more difficult I can look up something at 9 o'clock on a Saturday night from my house through my VPN and check where an application is if I get a question or something happens so it's that direct access to information and the ability to communicate more efficiently with the applicant and the casino it keeps everybody informed and nobody's wondering what's going on here and if people know what's going on they understand so there might be a holdup if there's information they're waiting for from the applicant but then they know what it is so they're not frustrated they know and they're not left in the dark and then they feel like they're part of the process and they feel respected and in the past we also issued a number of temporary licenses not just vendors but it may happen so some individuals that was done by necessity just to manage the large influx how is that process this time? yeah and I think that's been going well too the state police particularly Gina Joyce and Mike Banks would be in communications with the casino if there were particular employees that they needed to get on very quickly in order to make operations run smoothly those would be put on a priority list the state police would understand this it could be put first in the queue so we could get it potentially a temporary license if we needed to do that they would check things that would be particularly problematic if someone had a temporary license but as long as they clear those hurdles let them have the temporary license let the process go and then if there's a problem they can always circle back later but that system worked pretty well and they were in communication it's all about communication and talking and seeing what you need any more any need for a lot more overtime hours for bail or anyone else how is the next few days the wave peaked so we're on the back end now the people the state police and the license individuals they worked really hard they were moving these things along on a regular basis so they really did a good job and we commended they took pride in it to make sure that the system was successful so I think now it's playing a little bit of catch up so if there's some folks that have temporary license you gotta circle back and get them those and then the registrations those people who are as soon as their applications complete they can get to work so we can finish up on those investigations make sure those are all set there's a little bit of catch up on the back end but as long as the business process is working we have the resources right now to get done what we need to do so we will have people either license permanently or temporarily or register before the opening and I think the temporary license has worked incredibly well we let employees know upfront that it is a temporary license and that the gaming commission has not finished their investigation we've only had a handful of candidates who have been nervous about giving notice on a previous job most people come to it knowing that they've got a clean record so they're prepared to go through that process and it's been an enormously efficient way of getting through a large volume and I just wanted to add some thanks to Bill who every once in a while we'd have these critical cases and he was on speed dial he would pick up the phone any time day, night, weekend if we had emergencies where we had to get somebody through the system as quickly as possible so just a shout out to him and I think you pulled him by mistake yesterday I did well I think it's fair that all of us are thinking of Bill today and acknowledge his exceptional work in leading here I think that the statistic, the metric here that we should be all looking at is that there are nearly 3,000 licenses in registrations process since June 4th or that may be as of June as of June I'm looking at that I'm like I think that's as of June so it was really, it was still very, very concentrated so that's what I was wondering because of course the employees have been coming in but still it's been a very concentrated time and then the same with the fingerprinting which I understand on help but Bill's leadership should be recognized and all his team so thank you and of course the collaboration again great job thanks thank you alright next item 4B7 our CFO Derek Lennon and Revenue Manager Doug O'Donnell please and Bob is still on the hot seat good afternoon Madam Chair and Commissioners good afternoon I'm joined by Doug O'Donnell Revenue Manager of the Mass Gaming Commission and we're here to give you a recommendation on the procedures for verifying taxes on gross gaming revenue one thing I do want to remind everyone is you do not see anything in your package because the documents that we deal with are highly sensitive they've been covered under non-disclosure agreements and each licensee does their revenue water a little different and we've respected that we haven't presented anything for the Plain Ridge Park opening of them verbal didn't present anything for the MGM opening of them verbal and we're doing the same thing for the Encore Boston Harbor opening just a verbal presentation I'll just do a quick overview and then I'll turn it over to Doug O'Donnell but we have been working diligently with the Encore Boston Harbor staff just as we did with our other two licensees prior to their openings to make sure that the facility has both competent staff in a good system of internal controls and procedures to provide training and oversight to the staff working at the facility who will be responsible for the daily drop count and revenue audit process to produce a daily gross gaming revenue figure prior to turning the presentation over to Doug I'd like to thank members of the MGC finance HR office as well as some of the Encore Boston Harbor team for all the work they've done Doug and his team of Sarah Ganji and Noah Lowe have been instrumental in the gross gaming revenue component of opening which you'll hear about in detail from Doug as well as getting our internal revenue recognition systems and controls in place Agnes Bollier and Jay Lee have worked tirelessly to make sure that the supplies and technology components are ordered in time as well as up to the standards that our employees get to enjoy Troop DeBanda and Natasha Martin have been aiding all of our staff in getting positions posted, on boarded in a timely fashion Jacqueline Knet she had to correct me in the pronunciation Jacqueline Knet has been a great addition to the team is she's helping with reviewing every single slot machine the testing data on it so she actually takes the handwritten sheets from the slot tax puts that into a database then compares that to what came out of the CMS and compares that to what came out of the advantage system to make sure that all three different areas of testing are in compliance Doug reviews that and then kicks it back to some of the gaming agents when there are problems or kicks it back to the NOC staff to take a look at she's also helped with all the onboardings of new employees and credentialing helping to order supplies and keeping our entire team accountable for our compliance monitoring schedule I'd like to thank the MGCIT team the IAB Gaming Agents and the IGT NOC which have been great partners throughout the entire pre-opening process the Boston Harbor team of Bob DeSalvio who calls us regularly to deal with any of these gross gaming revenue issues Frank Cassella, Kinley, Bill Pangoris and Amina have been nothing but professional, helpful, responsive and cooperative all while trying to open this major project so at this point I'd like to turn over the presentation to Doug O'Donnell in details that we've done to get to this point Good afternoon, Adam Chair and commissioners Good afternoon. I would just like to echo what Derek said about our staff and how hard they had been working over the past few months we were short staffed up until two months ago when we added an additional employee well low to our team which has been a huge help and it's you know things have been moving on very smoothly and we're quite happy with the way things have gone and Encore Boston Harbor in working with them they will be using their on-site staff to count and calculate the daily GGR which we will verify for purposes of assessing the 25% tax rate Encore will be using the IGT Advantage House Casino System for tracking play on the casino floor and calculating the daily GGR this is the exact same software package that MGM Springfield is currently using so we are very familiar and comfortable with the core reporting systems of the system it's been very helpful and it's again it's running very smoothly for all of us in February of this year the MGC Finance Team began meeting with Encore Compliance and Revenue Audit staff these meetings happened on a bi-weekly and monthly schedule and covered the following topics overview of internal controls and procedures for the slot table game GGR calculations slot audit observations in detail table game audits gaming audit and accounting compliance it was during these meetings that we were able to interact with the managers and staff that will be responsible for implementing the Advantage system and training the Revenue Audit team at Encore while the staff was not intimately familiar with the IGT's Advantage system they are extremely qualified and knowledgeable in the area of Revenue Audit gross gaming calculation and variance tracking and reconciliations with over 50 years of combined experience in the casino industry we were actually able to see documents from Wins Vegas property and how the audit process worked and as a reminder back last year when during the opening of MGM our IT team scheduled four days of training with the IGT to demonstrate the Advantage slot accounting and management system the training combined with the daily review of MGM reports from the Advantage system proved to be a helpful base to have an understanding of how the system works the Encore team has recently taken the training and they feel very comfortable and familiar with the system now we've also worked very closely with agents in the MGC team and the CMF networks to review the manual testing of the slot machines and comparing those sheets with the central monitoring system to ensure accurate GGI calculations of the slot play we have reviewed all 3,107 slot machines which they have all passed and we can thank Jacqueline Kanat for putting that spreadsheet together and going over every single machine to making sure that they did pass again our team worked very diligently and very hard in getting this process finalized and with everything we have reviewed and worked on with Encore team and our internal MGC partners the gaming agents CMS the IT team we recommend that the commission approve the daily GGR package controls and tax package is submitted to the finance office for usage during the test nights so if you have any questions we'd be more than happy to answer them for you excuse me I do I'm just somewhat familiar with the capabilities of the IGT advantage system the house system and you mentioned that there's perhaps different approaches to like this between licensees is there any similarities in terms of reports that we're going to require or are we seeing differences perhaps in the procedures that would cause us to just adjust in a different way because it's a different licensee from MGM so we're using our tax package the same baseline reports the process for reviewing and revenue audits is different from licensee MGM has a one-stop shop approach where everything goes up to the shared financial services system in Vegas where the Encore Boston Harvard team will be doing a lot of it on site the daily audit procedures are a little different on what reports are used but our tax package for deriving at same fields they're using the same electronic table game manager, same similar slips how many they pull to audit may vary differently from how many MGM pulls to audit the slips, see if all the signatures are the same on their processes so that's the differences we see and that's where each place is a little different when you look at the details of the revenue audit process but the baseline reports all the same we've been using them now for a while and seeing them and reconciling them with MGM we plan on doing the same approach or having the same approach with Encore as we do with MGM we meet with them every week or every other week to review our taxes that have been paid and any other discrepancies we may have recently we have been meeting with Encore the financial team we've had gone over every single tax report that we've had and everything is tying out so we're we feel very confident and comfortable moving forward with Encore great second director do you sign up on the report I believe that Doug might have said that he was seeking the commission's approval what is the process for that I think it's just the overall vote that we will be using the same system that we're using with MGM we're familiar with it no problem thank you for that report any questions for the questions thank you next on the agenda we're going to hear from general counsel Blue for item 4b7 legal thank you commissioners legal is here today to report on the status of two agreements the MOU between the Department of Revenue, Encore Boston Harbor and the status of the lottery agreement between the lottery and Encore Boston Harbor the MOU between the Department of Revenue, the commission and Encore Boston Harbor is required under 23K section 51 and 52 in order to set the process for sharing information between the Department of Revenue and the licensee regarding winnings and whether payments for back taxes child support or transitional assistance may be owed that agreement is complete the terms have been negotiated and the parties are currently executing it we expect it will be here for the commission to execute sometime today the lottery agreement between the Encore Boston Harbor and the lottery was executed in September of 2014 that agreement is required pursuant to 23K section 15 that has been the case with our other licensees there are sometimes amendments made after execution from time to time but our statute is complied with once that agreement is executed so Encore Boston Harbor is in compliance with that requirement and that is legal's report Catherine early on in the process with PPC for the operation of that check that review or that reconciliation between DOR's database and the casino's database had to be worked out is there any testing or procedure that we do for that or that DOR does or that the casino that the licensee is supposed to do to ensure that prior to the start of the operations so my understanding is that some of the issues that we ran into with PPC have been corrected over time the parties have understood that that process didn't work quite as well as it should and I believe DOR has also changed its platform a little bit so yes there have been significant improvements since the first memorandum with DOR and they do test it and we think there's a process now that works it works at MGM and it works it should work at Uncle Boston any further questions for General Counsel Blue thank you Catherine and thank you all thank you Second Director Petrosian I believe your update is now complete it is we'll move on now to return to Ombudsman on item number 5 on the agenda thank you chair I'm going to turn it over to Joe for a discussion of the final stage of construction requirement we discussed this previously when we discussed the detailed schedule a little bit earlier thank you commissioners this final stage of construction this is a requirement under 205 CMR 135 that determination has to be made for the final stage of construction what this does is on-core issued a bond for the project early on and has been maintaining that throughout in order to release the bond we have to make this determination so we are expecting a letter from on-core certifying that the project has reached its final stage of construction I think based on our earlier report today it's pretty clear that the project is at its final stage of construction that the final stage of certification can certainly be made so we're recommending that the commission determine that on-core Boston Harbor has reached the final stage of construction subject to the recede of the on-core Boston Harbor certification that the project has reached the final stage of construction and after we get that we take the necessary steps to allow the bond to be released which would not happen until the 23rd at the early of the year no we do not have a motion for this we have motions for the four that are opening but you can just move that it's based upon the memorandum in your commission just clarification nothing takes place even despite our motion until the letter certification letter from Boston Harbor correct and nothing takes place until at least oh I'm sorry no and I kind of gloved right through that want to see how she transcribes gloved but it's with our vote bond doesn't get released until the official certification letter arrives from on-core Boston Harbor so it's more clarification and no earlier than the 23rd and no earlier than the 20th could it just ask Peter so thank you do you have any questions no so now I think we're good without a written motion if there is one Madam Chair I request that the commission determine that the on-core Boston Harbor project has reached the final stage of construction as of the proposed opening day June 23rd 2019 subject to the receipt of the on-core Boston Harbor certification that the project has reached the final stage of construction and after such receipt of such certification staff would then take the necessary steps so that the bond may be released second any questions general counsel blue are sharing that work that works and that's fine excellent thank you I thank you thank you alrighty next on the agenda legal division general counsel blue would you like to proceed please we have director Griffin here to talk about the marketing and tourism plan and then the design and construction diversity commitment good afternoon good afternoon on June 6th we presented on-core Boston harbors regional tourism and marketing plan and on-core was there to present the plan as well as others and I recommend it's ready for approval unless you have any questions remind us they presented we were going to put it for public comment or it was just presentation and then come back and approve at a later time that's right we were consistent with what we did with the casino and western masks so we did get a full presentation earlier do we have any questions do you want any further clarifications then it's my understanding that you do need an approval under our statute do I have a motion madam chair I would move in order to fulfill pre-opening requirements of license condition 15 I move that the commission approve on-core Boston harbors regional tourism and marketing plan which was presented at the June 6th 2019 MGC public meeting and as shown in the attached documents provided that such approval shall not be construed to supersede any obligations pursuant to mass general law 23K or to the conditions of on-core harbors on-core Boston harbors license including but not limited to condition number nine which is relative to compliance with the information included in the application filed by the designated licensee in the evaluation reports filed by the commission any further comments discussion my only comment would be that the presentation was excellent at the time we appreciate the good work thank you all those in favor aye post 4-0 Catherine thank you and Director Griffin I believe you have yes diversity commitments thank you also on June 6th I was joined by on-core and we talked about all the commitments related to construction diversity and pre-opening and I'm actually not sure that we require a separate vote on this we do okay so we will and these were all the commitments relative to chapter 23K license agreements involving the affirmative marketing program the affirmative action program for equal opportunity setting the diversity goals and regular reporting which I confirmed to you at that time that on-core had satisfied all those requirements Director Griffin I'm going to just ask perhaps General Counsel Blue you could what the vote is needed because I don't have a vote planned the vote is to confirm that they met their license requirements as part of this plan Director Griffin's report indicates that they did so where the vote is just confirming that they met their commitments pursuant to the license and the statute it may perhaps for clarification when we have in the packet is the memo from May 31st that says that there's no vote required at that time it's included as a reminder but I was confused as well well that's right and I know that we have a vote but to be fair to Director Griffin we met and we also were a little bit confused as to exactly what is required as a vote we understand the compliance but we're just wondering what the obligation of the commission is in terms of meeting our statutory requirement the commission by voting to accept Director Griffin's report is confirming that Uncle Boston Harbor has complied with the terms of their license agreement by meeting these commitments this is a separate license condition also a separate statutory condition we have not rolled it up under the general you mean under Director Petrosian's report so that that's why this particular evidence of compliance needs to have a separate vote yes any further questions okay does somebody want to make a motion so that we can in fact meet our obligations sure Madam Chair I'd recommend that the commission determine that Uncle Boston Harbor has reasonably met their construction diversity pre-opening compliance requirements and commitments all those in favor aye opposed 4-0 thank you thank you so much Director Griffin thank you my apologies for the confusion and I'd like to refer you to the last three pages of the gaming regulatory compliance PowerPoint the first page is titled Casino 4 Plan yeah they're in a separate tab in the same order so yeah what they're referring to is the gaming four is that on the map you see the orange line that goes around everything inside that is gaming floor space yeah there's two fours I haven't gone to the second four yet the next page is the second four and you can see the same orange line outlining the gaming floor space with that as well your third print actually shows a path for if you come up right near our office right next to Duncan Donuts and those elevators this is where they'd be sending anybody that you know was under age around that green line which is non casino floor space sending them around the outside yeah it's around the outside of the casino floor hopefully not many people come up that elevator because they have adequate signage down below but a lot of times people just don't read signs and on the left is the hotel yeah the left side is the hotel lobby area the right would be like Duncan Donuts at the end of that yes just for point of clarification the first floor plan where you get the separate squared off gaming area that's not highlighted in green because they don't want any confusion yeah that squared off little gaming area on the left that is your stadium gaming right but in terms of you didn't highlight the green I assume because they don't intend to have people read and wander that far right no miners would go through any any area that's that gap and the gaming floor is approximately 200,000 square feet we're going to be getting a new measurement on that now that we have the orange line I'm sorry I didn't quite catch that I didn't quite catch that last point can you refer back to the slide of the first floor which is the carve out first floor see the carve out for that but that's not going to be part of the green walkway that's correct if you compare the first schematic with the last in terms of how they're going to escort miners we try to avoid any area where they're just gaming equipment on either side of the path Bruce with respect to the first floor walking plan and again we've kind of been here before with respect to MGM and understanding that people may bring their families to go to the dining establishments or to something in the convention banquet space how do you feel in terms of I feel comfortable with the way the security posts and the number of security people they have your buffet 21 and over so that restaurant gets taken out of the equation as well that might see a lot of underage people so I think it's a completely different setting than we had in MGM what's that buffet is 21 and up the only restaurant that's on the gaming floor that's accessible to miners is red 8 and we will have security stations to make sure that no one permeates that boundary between red 8 and the scene of floor and if you recall red 8 has a separate corridor that leads back to the Esplanade so that somebody who was underage would not have to cross cross the gaming floor okay and for tallies is 21 and over correct we have learned about individuals dining there and then moving on to the moving directly on to the gaming floor and you'll notice we eliminated that original idea of anything through the center this just seemed to make more sense and was a little more controllable and if I remember correctly it's marked up just by the lines change of carpet thank you change of carpet and then also that will be reinforced by lots of eyes and security lots of eyes, lots of signage we're trying to separate traffic from resort and casino but ultimately inevitably somebody will wind up in the wrong location and hence we have at least the pathway if we need to use it but the idea is to try to isolate the gaming floor and keep all miners off of it and when you do pull into the garage there's signage that says if you're going to the resort go left if you're going to the casino go right and additionally there's signage that says miners are not permitted on the casino floors or park on the other side do you know how many steps are on that green line? I do not but that's quite a walk it's about a 5 minute walk I'll calculate that using my Fitbit so this is really helpful we had been looking for this and appreciate it and appreciate the vigilance that we know you'll use to keep the miners safe so thank you I believe that you need a boat Mr. Bann yes ma'am Madam Chair I move that the commission approve the designated first and second floor casino floor plans as well as the first floor walking plan that's provided in the packet second any further discussion questions those in favor aye 4-0 thank you thank you thank you very much Mr. Bann the next four motions are the motions that you have traditionally used to start the opening process and we can take them in the order that they're listed on the agenda or we can take them in any order that you prefer the first one is the motion to approve the opening for the test and the evaluation play this allows Encore Boston Harbor to actually set up and run and to allow them to game to serve alcohol and to go through the test and evaluation process and just unrelated to the vote but just a reminder FYI any profits from those nights are usually go to charity not counted in gross gaming revenue and I believe that'll be the process here that's correct Bruce do you have any detail on hours of the test nights the first night which is the 17th is noon to 8 o'clock then we have two more test nights the 19th and 20th and that's from 4 to midnight any further questions for general counsel Madam Chair I don't I know I just wanted to I wanted to the session description you can certainly I don't get any editing actually go right ahead and read it because actually reading it may pause the question thank you in relation to the approval for the opening of test nights and evaluations I move pursuant to 205 CMR 151.03 that the commission authorize WinMass LLC doing business on core Boston Harbor referred to as the licensee to open for test play on June 17 for an evaluation and test period and sorry June 17, 19 and 20, 2019 for test period providing the following one that prior to June 17 WinMass LLC DBA on core Boston has received a certificate of occupancy from the city of Everett 2 that the licensee may accept currency in exchange for chips and other items of gaming value with the cage and gaming tables 3 the licensee may process currency and other items of value in the count room 4 the licensee may operate slot machines and other electronic gaming devices previously approved and certified in accordance with 205 CMR 144 5 the licensee shall determine how the gross gaming revenues from the test period are utilized and advise the commission at the next public commission meeting of such utilization and lasting number 6 the licensee may serve alcoholic beverages pursuant to the terms and conditions of its gaming beverage license Madam Chair just had one quick question it's certificate of occupancy it's not temporary certificate they have a temporary certificate of occupancy currently right it is possible that they have one permanent one but they may not we've left just called it a certificate of occupancy in this motion but they do have a temporary and that allows them to open to do this and my recollection is that MGM operated on a temporary certificate of occupancy for at least a month after they opened yes as did PPC just to know if we needed add temporary to the language any further questions I second that motion any further okay all those in favor aye post 4-0 thank you Catherine the next motion is the commission's motion to delegate authority to a single commissioner to observe the test night and then to ultimately if that commissioner is comfortable issue the conditional operations certificate subject to any conditions that that commissioner wishes to add to that do you want to just explain the process a little bit more so that folks who aren't as familiar understand so a commissioner will be on site for all of the test nights along with many many staff people that commissioner will meet with the staff to determine how the process is going things from how the slot machines and the table games are being run to how the money is dropped and that commissioner will meet with the staff periodically over that period to determine how things are working if there are things that need to be fixed for example if there's surveillance cameras that maybe aren't in quite the right place or if there are some other minor issues that can be fixed right of way that commissioner and staff will meet with the licensee to have those things fixed if there are other things that may take a little bit longer and they need some time to resolve as conditions to the temporary or the conditional operation certificate we should keep in mind that if the commissioner was at all concerned about opening that commissioner would have the authority to not allow the casino to open so the commissioner has the authority to do that and then that commissioner will come back and report on the results of the test in evaluation at the next commission meeting which currently is June 27th and at that point the commission will confirm what the commissioner reports and the commission will issue a permanent operation certificate with any conditions that the commission at that time decides to impose can I ask a point of clarification you said that the commissioner who would if we move forward on this that is delegated this authority could decide not to authorize the opening that commissioner would have the right to certainly report to at least one of us to say that there is an outstanding and perhaps very critical condition that has not been met and then we could convene because we do have time at any time in emergency meeting to make a decision as a group that's correct so that is I mean I think it's an important as I understand this process because I haven't been through it it's really was derived because up a few factors we operate under the open meeting law so we can't make decisions altogether and we would be making these decisions in no time the evening of test test nights when our very experienced staff and the encore folks would be describing the really being able to reveal how everything is functioning but if there were something that were so serious I think the individual who is delegated this authority should absolutely know that a tool that would be available to him or to her would be that we could convene an emergency meeting that way such a ominous decision would not have to be on their shoulders that's a great clarification I am now remembering perhaps a factor in the genesis of this delegation was when we started with Plain Ridge the test night was the night prior to their scheduled opening and so there was practically no option that you describe right and in this case we do have time and that's why I wanted to point out we do have time so no one commissioner should deal with that there would be something that would go so awry which we do not anticipate but if it did that should not be unnecessary or unfair burden to any individual we understand probably notwithstanding the open meeting law that it makes sense to have this kind of a construct for efficiency purposes Catherine just a quick question obviously not only does the appointed commissioner review gaming operations but also because we issue the alcohol up average license that they also review go around make sure stuff is put away locked up as we've talked about periodically here so it's just to be clear it's more than gaming operations it's also the alcohol operations and a further clarification is notwithstanding notwithstanding this delegation that members of the commission will be attending test night over time we will not be deliberating in fact I'm going to run if I see you to the other side of the room no I make that without joking it's a very important part of our work to see these operations in action and we make this delegation as a very important delegation but we will should people see us we will be there perhaps not for the same amount of time as whoever's delegated the authority but we will be there so that we can learn as well from our team but we will be there but we will not be there official capacity as a deliberative body we will not be speaking with each other and even the size of this casino it's quite possible that we might not even run into each other on the other side so that's just another caveat and again I haven't spoken to my fellow commissioners we have no set plans in terms of timing but if the public were to see us we are there to learn and understand the operations well I can also say that you won't see the floor any quieter than you will I'm testing it because after that it will be full on operation 24 second so do we have a motion for this I'm happy to make a motion and because I've done this once before I'm not going to offer myself up to do it again but I would ask my good neighbor commissioner O'Brien if she would be interested in being designated before and I'm on the other side of the room so I'm not twisting her arm Madam Chair I'd move pursuant to 205 CMR 15.01 subsection 1 that the commission grant to and the authority to observe and review the results of the test and evaluation needs to be held by and based upon that observation and review and any prior approvals granted by the full commission the authority if she is satisfied that the licensee has met the legal requirements described in chapter 23 K section 10 and 205 CMR sections 135 and 151.01 in subject to any conditions necessary in her discretion to issue a conditional operation certificate effective 12.01 a.m. june 21st 2019 through 12.01 a.m. june 28th 2019 which shall be subject to ratification by the full commission at its june 27th 2019 public meeting or at such earlier meeting the commission determines appropriate I further move that Commissioner O'Brien will report on the results of the test night to the full commission at the next regularly scheduled commission meeting I second that motion those in favor aye okay we have three with one abstention re-approved thank you and thank you for taking on that responsibility I am certainly Catherine would you like to go through the next vote that we apparently need the next motion is for the commission to approve the forms of the temporary and the permanent certificates of operation these are the forms that we have used for our other licensees ultimately the permanent certificate of operation will be posted at the casino the temporary one will be in their possession for the short period between the time it's issued and the time the permanent is issued we will fill in the blanks on that as we get closer to the test nights and then ultimately when you get to award the permanent certificate of operations we will fill in all of that information too so right now you're just approving the form any questions for Catherine this is the same form that we've approved before Madam Chair I would move that the commission approve the form of the temporary and the permanent operating certificates as those documents that appear in today's commission packet second questions all those in favor aye opposed 4-0 thank you last item on the agenda before commissioner updates the next motion is really the reason why we were all here today this motion allows you based upon the presentations that you received today plus earlier presentations to move that Encore Boston Harbor has met all of the requirements that need to be met up to this point and they can be allowed to open this motion is always slightly different for each of our licensees and in this case at the end of the motion what you'll see is we're asking the commission to give Encore Boston Harbor 90 days after opening to provide some of the paperwork that we might not have yet received and I know Mr. Ziemba and Mr. Delaney talked about that in their presentation where there's some letters that we're waiting for but we know the work has been done we're asking the commission to give Encore Boston Harbor 90 days to supply that to us so we can finally close it out any questions on this Catherine just thinking about something that might not be issued or forthcoming in 90 days that might be a requirement of the statute I'm just thinking in one case is the LEED certification which we know takes a while is that are you thinking of that in that 90 day window or the LEED no because we know that that takes quite some time we were a little more concerned here with some of the letters from the municipalities where we believe Encore is in compliance but we don't have the letter some of the sign-offs may be from other agencies that we need to have we don't think this is like MGM where MGM has ongoing requirements that took longer than 90 days but there might be some traffic demand management things in the section 61's we need to look at it's in this case we believe it's mostly documentation to support what we already believe is compliance I'm satisfied based on my briefing from Ombudsman Siamba and Mr. Delaney that 90 days should be sufficient to achieve the compliance that we would be confirming here with an affirmative vote I am too and I would add you know a lot of what was presented today and all of the evidence that all of the materials point to all the work that has been done before I keep comparing comparing this to MGM but they were in the case of MGM there were important elements of the project that by necessity and for other reasons had to be approved or are going to be complied with later I'm not only thinking of the presidential piece which was the subject of a lot of discussion about the commission meetings prior to the opening and then since I think that's not the case here as you say this is mostly one of documentation or verification of the documentation that exists but maybe is not yet uploaded into the system or a letter that has not yet been obtained from the agency so I'm quite comfortable with this approval I have questions for Councillor Blum on this matter and if need be on Betsman, Siemba do I have a motion? Madam Chair I would move that the commission find and determine that based upon the reports provided to the commission at the June 6 and the June 12 of 2019 commission meetings and the project updates provided to the commission at previous meetings subject to any terms and conditions expressed by the commission at those meetings and any terms and conditions determined by the single commissioner of Ryan in their discretion after the test and evaluation period that windmass LLC doing business as anchor Boston Harbor has demonstrated material compliance with MGL chapter 23K 205CMR the terms and conditions of the agreement to award the license and the license issued to windmass LLC on September 17, 2014 and effective November 7, 2014 subject to any further terms and conditions deemed appropriate or necessary by the commission and subject to the commission's right to review or revisit such material compliance in the commission's discretion I further move that as a condition of the windmass LLC anchor Boston Harbor permanent operation certificate windmass LLC DBA anchor Boston Harbor shall provide to the commission any further documentation needed to confirm its compliance with the commitments described in the commitment closeout update included in the commission packet or any other commitments described at the June 12, 2019 commission meeting no later than 90 days after the opening of anchor Boston Harbor subject to any further extensions of time granted by the commission in the commission's sole discretion any further questions on this final vote the comprehensive vote of the day great work by everybody it was excellent work we don't have our entire team here but there will be many opportunities for the commission to thank everyone who has worked so hard from our team we won't try to say names at this time although I'm sure they're all watching what we have recognized is that you've been very diligent responsible and you've taken all of these responsibilities very very seriously and that's a standard that I think our friends on court recognize that that's just how we operate so we appreciate everyone's help executive director of projession excellent job today with your team Catherine thank you very much excellent job all thank you and Austin we're not concluding yet sorry I'm just reminding his name we all know we've had discussion no further questions those in favor opposed 4-0 last item on the agenda any commission update do I have a motion to adjourn so moved those in favor 4-0 thank you Catherine sorry I thought for a minute