 research manager. So you see we have our presentation up in front of you today. So we're going to talk a little bit about the Community Mitigation Fund. I really want you to give me the next page on that. So we'll just go. Just a little bit of housekeeping. We're recording this meeting. So it will be put up on our website after we're done today. So if anyone does want to review it or if there's anyone else who you think should view it, it will be available. So what we'll do is we'll take a break for questions at the end of each major section of the of the agenda. And but you can also utilize the chat function at any time. So down at the bottom of your screen if you scroll over that you'll see a chat button. Feel free to type in questions there as we go. And we'll keep an eye on that and try to jump in on those as they are, as it makes sense. We see we have a few people on the phone, not too many. But for those folks, we did send out copies of the PowerPoint to folks yesterday and hopefully you have them so you can, if you're on the phone, you can maybe follow along on your computer. But also, we just got a question is the sound coming through garbled or how does it sound Mary on your end. It sounds fine. Okay. So for people on the phone. You need to use the star six function to mute and unmute your phone. And also I guess we just asked everyone to keep their, their, their phones. Their screens muted unless asking questions. Next slide, Lily. So for the agenda today, you know, we've got a bunch of new things for this year and we're really going to try to focus on those as much as possible. We will go through so on the item number one, we have an overview of the community mitigation fund. And we'll talk about the fund itself a little bit and the timeline how that will all work. And then we'll talk about some changes to our budget sheet so we're going to go over that. We'll talk about our waivers a little bit. And then we're going to talk, we'll talk about our grant categories in general, we're not going to go into a tremendous amount of detail on those grant categories that we've been doing for the last number of years we'll talk about them a little bit. And then we will want to talk about the new categories that we have at moral length so the second part of this will be what we're calling our gambling harm reduction category. And, and this is something that came out of last year's grant round we did have an application to try to do some gambling harm reduction and you know as it turns out that it wasn't quite ready for prime time when when it came in and, but it did get us to thinking about maybe that's something that we should think about doing and in fact have proposed it for this year. And then the third major part of this is what we're calling projects of regional significance, which I will present to you on on that a little bit later in the, in the program. So a little bit about the Community Mitigation Fund again we're not going to go into a lot of depth on on the basis of the program we've been doing this now since 2015 so I think most of you folks are familiar with the program, at least a little bit. So of course the, the legislation that established the expanded gaming and the Commonwealth created this Community Mitigation Fund to help support the communities and other governmental entities in offsetting impact costs related to the construction and operation of the gaming facilities. So now obviously we are well into the operations phase of these there really isn't any construction impact per se that's happening at this point. So 6.5% of the taxes on gross gaming revenue from the category one facilities those are the full resort casinos those go into the Community Mitigation Fund. So in 2023, we've identified as available funds $20 million in Region A and just Region A is our eastern region, the communities around the encore facility. We've identified $7 million in Region B, which is the western region around the communities around the MGM facility, and we also do set aside some money for the category two facility which is a Cambridge Park facility. Those communities while, while Cambridge Park doesn't contribute to the Community Mitigation Fund, those communities are still eligible so we set aside a relatively small amount of money for those communities. And you might notice that there's a fairly large disparity between what's available in Region A and Region B. And this is came out of our subcommittee on Community Mitigation and our local Community Mitigation Advisory Committees, where the commission has agreed that funds that are generated by the facility in Region A would stay in Region A, and the funds generated in Region B would stay in Region B. Now, you know, the encore facility right now generates about in the last year generated about 10 and a half million dollars of funds towards the Community Mitigation Fund, while the MGM property generated just a little over 4 million. And you'll see that, you know, regionally, you know, the encore facility is bigger and it is around a much larger population center. So it has higher gaming revenues, which means it has a higher amount of money that goes into the Community Mitigation Fund. So that's why there's this sort of disparity in the funds for the regions. Now you'll also notice that, you know, I said, encore generated about 10 and a half million in the last year. But there's 20 million available. This means that that money's from previous years haven't been completely expended. And same thing in Region B with with MGM generating about 4 million. There's about 7 million available in the region because of some carryover funds from previous. Okay. So now I'm going to turn it over to Lily and she'll go over the timeline of our grant cycle and what you can expect over the next year or so. So, oh, can you hear me. Also, okay. So, as of November our grant round is currently open if you haven't already seen that I think we sent out an email to everyone on this call. So you can currently access all of the applications as well as the guidelines for this year on both our website and combines. These applications are going to be due January 31 at 1159. And you're going to be emailing them directly to the commission at the listed email MGC CMF and Mary will go into that bit of good news a little bit later. So in our process, you know, we accept these grants and by January and starting in February we work with myself Joe Mary and some other members of the commission to review all of the grants that come in and help make some determinations and some suggestions for the commission. And then if we have any questions about your application will be contacting you after our first initial round of review. I'm just asking for supplemental information or if you know we think we need a little bit more explanation will sit down and ask for a meeting. So we will then take our review to the commissioners and they will vote on these. We usually get them done before the end of the fiscal year so they're usually voted on in late spring. And then in June and July will be sending out contracts to anyone that was awarded funding. I think that in fall of 2023 is when your grants should be starting. And just to make it abundantly clear, you should not be applying for funding for things that will occur before a grant is executed so if your grant happens, you know, if we get all of our contracts together. We'll send it out in June you get it back to us in June you'll be eligible to start reimbursing as of the date on your executed contract. Yeah, I just wanted to add on to that. I think that, you know, we can also be flexible a little bit in this in some cases we can move a grant faster if it needs to move faster. I know some in the past some of our work grants we've advanced those quicker because those groups work on on a fiscal year and try to need to have their grants in place, you know by the beginning of July. And also, even if it's under the regular timeframe if, if a community is ready to go, you know, we'll get you out the grant documents as quick as we can we can be, we can be pretty flexible on on how quickly we can move to get some of it. Yeah, but we do ask if you are looking for an expedited timeline that you reach out to us in advance to let us know. Just so that when we're organizing which grants we prioritize in order of review that we can get those grants reviewed earlier. Okay, so I'm going to just talk briefly on the application submission. I want you to know we did listen to you. We're frustrated, trying to submit their application through combines. So this year we're having you send them directly to us at the website MGC CMS at mass gaming.gov. The application is received by us you'll be getting a receipt back. But the applications themselves will not be opened until February 1. So any anyone sending in an application by, you know, 1159 on January 31 will meet the application deadline. Any applicant having difficulty in submitting their application should contact us where we try to be very open and we hope that you will feel free to give us a call about any questions that you may have regarding your applications. A couple of things we'd like people to note is that we would like applicants to be sure that you are applying under the correct category. Now, if you have a say you're applying for a grant that exceeds the, the guidelines recommended amount such as community planning grants which are 200,000. Say you get an estimate and that comes in at 240. You should still file your application under that category, but what we have in place is a waiver process. So what you would need to do would be to fill out the waiver and submit it with your application and the waiver should describe why you feel the commission should give you a waiver on this particular matter. And I think that's it. I think just adding on to that Mary a little bit. Yeah, you know, last year we had, you know, a couple of years ago when we started doing public safety applications they were a subset of our specific impact grant and in some of the ensuing years, folks have applied rather than applying under the new public safety category they were a subset of our specific impact and we had last year we just had a number of applications that came in in really not the right category. So one of the things that we did in the guidelines this year is we reserve the right to, if you know if you apply for something under the wrong category, we can move it into the right category so that it just doesn't get, you know, dismissed out of hand. I just want to just highlight this year we're trying to get more concise applications also. So if you have data that you want to relay to us, we would prefer to get a summary of the data, rather than getting say 50 pages of reports. So you've got to understand if we get 50 applications time 20 pages that's still quite a lot of reading, but and we don't really, we want people to be precise in their applications, if you can. The attachments must be addressed in the application and it would be helpful if you would make sure that on your attachments somewhere on there it has a reference to the applicants. So if you could put at the top, you know this is, you know, town of Western community planning grant. So I put that on there just so and that that's just because we're going to be getting a lot of paperwork and a lot of attachments and we want to make sure that we have everything as complete as possible. Okay, next is we're going to hear from Lily on budget. So on that point of concise applications. This year we're asking that in that you fill out we've we've we've gathered together all of our best budgets that we've had in the previous years and kind of determine what was the easiest way for our review team to actually look at budgets. So we determined that in order to develop a scope budget and timeline we'd like you to actually fill out this sheet this is a screenshot of about half of the sheet where you will outline exactly what you want out of your budget and what your budget is covering as well as a proposed timeline. Previously we just had some applications where they were submitting a budget there was a different number in the narrative so just to make it more concise on our end. So this is basically what we use to review your budget. And you can, as noted here, you'll be to attach any consultant scopes any invoices quotes anything that you have on these pieces, but, and you can also submit if there's a different kind of budget you want to submit but you must fill out this budget. So this is something new for this year and then what will happen is in the fall if there is an update that needs to happen to your budget will just re update this budget form so that we can keep on track of what's happening with everyone's budgets in a little bit more of a concise way. Okay, so, you know, for, you know, we've learned a lot over the last number of years but so you know what does a successful application look like. You know, we do ask that each of you, you know review the community mitigation fund guidelines. Those were attached I believe to all of your invitations to this meeting as well. So, you know, you can also on our website you can look at previously awarded grants that can give you some ideas of things that might want to apply for. Again, we mentioned earlier filing the application under the correct category. You know, I think the guidelines list out a whole bunch of different things that you can file under book if you have a real question about what category you should be filing under would be happy to have a have a chat with you about that. Also to fill out all of the forms thoroughly and completely. And, you know, the two critical things on all of these, all of these items is first is, you know, identifying and documenting the impact of the gaming establishment. You know, in, in the community planning grants we we've made that a little bit simpler. In the way we sort of determined that some there are some impacts of the gaming establishment, but in other areas. The applicant really has to I clearly identify what the impact is and explain how the proposed project will address that very specific impact that you've identified. If you do those two things well. It takes you a long way in getting in getting the grant. You know, I would say that in most of the cases where we have not awarded a grant. It is because of that establishing that connection to the to the gaming establishment. Okay. And this is back to Mary. Yes. We kind of touched on this already, but I'll just, I want to let you know that the commission may in its discretion wave or grant a variance for many of the provisions required in the guidelines. So we would like and these waivers can be used both for money, but it could also be for a time frame so a lot of a lot of people are noticing that the the COVID delay I'm going to call it of getting equipment and other things. And if you are getting a bunch of quotes or having trouble getting quotes. But you want to continue with your application, you know, fill out the waiver form as long as it's well written and explains why you feel that a waiver should be granted. That would be, that's great. Let's see. So we already discussed how some applicants pick categories by funding available when in reality but they really should have done was to fill out a waiver form. We also already mentioned that we were grants taken out of order. But we just would like everyone to communicate with with staff on if you have any questions about waivers or variances or, you know, being taken out of order we try and be open to questions, and you all now have our emails so we hope to hear from you. The next is discussing available grants. All right, let me get my notes. Okay, so the first thing I'd like to suggest everyone do who has not done it yet would be to read the guidelines, the guidelines really are essential because they help you evaluate the criteria for each type of grant. And if you go on our website also and review the previously six previous successful applications. That's a good way to help you maybe shape some of your applications if you're wondering how to go about it. So the first grant we're going to discuss real briefly is the community planning grant. And the, as Joe mentioned the commission has already determined that casinos have both positive and negative impacts. Applicants still need to show the nexus to the casino. But it's not as intensive. Okay, we could. All right, we have I have a question is the cap for a project or the total available in that category. It's the, the caps are the total amounts in that category. No man I think that's that's a that's cap for a particular project. Cap for Oh, is the cap project or the total. Someone came in for a community planning grant you could come in for a grant up to $200,000. Right. Does that answer your question. Chief. Examples of some examples of some great uses for the community planning grants are we've done a lot with tourism, we've done websites, marketing such as branding videos. If you look under the Foxboro Plainville rent them application they they've done a great job with their branding and websites north Hampton and websites to assist travelers that you're trying to attract to your region. That's also another good community planning grants. Okay, can a different project. Let me just one moment. All right, can different projects under community planning total the funding cap. Yes, yes. Yeah, if you add if you add a couple of different types of planning projects that you wanted to do and each was 100,000. But the, you know, the cap would be the 200,000 for the community. Yeah. Okay. Next is the public safety. And we freeze this from 100,000 it was, it was formerly 100,000 now it's 200,000. And it's found in section 2.2 of the guidelines. Next to supplement departmental budgets of the police fire EMS and other public safety agencies that may have been impacted by the casinos examples of uses are for officer training, public safety equipment or supplies, equipment upgrades. There is one with with the public safety comes one additional step. If you're looking for communication equipment. The communication equipment has to go through the statewide interoperability executive committee that's a mouthful. There's a form that has to get filled out and submitted to them. And this agency just make sure that if you're a police department that your equipment is going to match all the other equipment within the state, other state police offices within the state of Massachusetts police offices. Some of the really, the commission is very enthusiastic about deescalation and other types of mandated officer trainings. We also will expand funding for operational costs and supplies such as, you know, traffic cones, things like that. Communities that have been very successful with these type of projects are Foxborough Springfield and Everett, if you want to check out the previous applications submitted by them. Next, we're going to go down to transportation planning. Now that again we've raised that limit from 200 to 250. It's found in section 2.3 of the guidelines. These transportation planning grants, they must have a defined area of issue and a clear plan for implementation. And the planning grants are intended to assist in the gathering of data and include the hiring of consultants. Planning such as Chelsea has been very successful with the transportation planning. They, they, their applications went along a whole progression they use their reserve for some initial planning and then they developed it into transportation planning and then they did transportation construction. So one just helped feed off the other. The planning is also to assist communities getting into maybe the tip, maybe if you need seed money to assist your community in getting some work into the state's tip fund. That's another good way to use transportation planning. Next we have transportation construction, which is maximum of 1.5 million, and it's found under section 2.4 of the guidelines. And these are mostly intended for construction of transportation related improvements. For the transportation construction, we do try and set a time frame for these transportation construction, and we, the project must start by 6 3024. So we give we give a lot of time but we do, we don't want this money just sitting somewhere. We wanted to just commute a recent transportation construction grant was given to Agawam for an intersection read divine. And again, the beach and street Chelsea matter is that transportation section project is is pretty well done. And if anyone has a chance to go to Chelsea. It's amazing the difference visit this, the transportation construction and the whole their whole development of these grants made in that particular area. These can be used for paving we also did quite a ways on down Dwight Street and Springfield. But I do want you to note that the transportation construction grants are not used to cover planning transportation planning those long in the transportation planning these are more construction related. The next grant we have is Mary, if I could just jump in there real quick. And also on the transportation construction side we will only fund up to one third of the total project costs. If you were to get the full $1.5 million it would be on a, you know, four and a half million dollar project. And also just in both transportation planning and construction another category that we've done quite a bit of work in is on multi use trails bike paths and things like that. Oh yes, I forgot about those. Okay, is the funding cat for all public safety departments combined or can each. Yeah, they. That's combined for your community. Yes, yeah. Yep. Yep. So each public safety department within a municipality aside. Yeah, the funding cap is for all they can that you can get a, you know, police could apply for 100,000 fire department could apply for 100,000. All right, next we're in workforce development. And with these, these have been very successful in training persons and getting backlog of workers into the workforce. Applicants must be able to demonstrate that the education and skills training programs are proposed, proposed or in response to an identified need at the casinos, or as a means to provide sufficient supply of workers to backfill jobs being lost to the casino. We want to emphasize to that a regional consortium approach is required. The two major applicants we've gotten Holyoke Community College and Mass higher work with a number of other other educational agencies and develop their grants together. It's really I think that's been a great, great program for really hitting all the different areas of need for education in region A and region B. Next is the specific impacts grants, which are for a maximum of 500,000 is found under section 2.6 of the guidelines. And these are for projects that don't really fit any other category. They must provide a thorough description of the identified impact and a resolution to the impact. And an example of this. Every year for a number of years we've gotten him to County Sheriff's Department, which it was forced to relocate as a result of where their facility was which is right in the middle of the MGM property. And they receive rental assistance in their specific impact. And next we have, I'm going to just barely touch on the next two because we have some experts here. Projects of regional significance. This is a new one with 3 million for region B and 5 for region A. You'll find it under section 2.7 of the guidelines. And it's designed to mitigate identified gaming impacts that affect multiple communities. And this could be the focus. Well, I'll let Joe go into those. And then the next two are the gambling harm reduction, which are brand new this year, and they're really community engaged research projects. And you can see we have two different types, one for 20,000 and one for 200,000. And I will let Mark VanderLinden and Bonnie will fill you in more on those. Great. And just to wrap up, just to wrap up this section. This year we decided to increase our regional incentives. If you're applying for a community planning or transportation planning application. You can combine that application with another community that might be neighboring and impacted by the same thing. For example, Mary had pointed to one that we had three communities down in the Plainville area. And we wanted to apply for something and got a regional incentive. So you can just see outlined here, these are the increases. And again, we really love to see group projects. Okay, I know we got a bunch of questions that we had during the presentation. Does anyone have anything else that they'd like to ask at this point on that sort of the basic program. Before we get into our new types of grants. And all right, well, why don't we go on. So, so for the new for 2023 Mary just touched on this we have those the two in the gambling harm reduction categories. Oh, we just didn't have a question pop in our projects judged against one another. So we have a set of evaluation criteria that we use that are they are outlined in the guidelines. And that's essentially on each one of these projects we we evaluate them against each other in each category. And then, you know, we use the evaluation criteria that's in our guidelines to guide that discussion. Maybe we make recommendations to the commission who then vote on each of the application. Okay, and then the other category is the projects of regional significance. So with that I will turn it over to Mark and to Bonnie to talk about our gambling harm reduction program for this year. Actually, Bonnie, do you want to go ahead and take the lead on this? Yeah, sure. So, I'm Bonnie Andrews I'm the research manager at the gaming commission. And I was just going to go over the gambling harm reduction grants and mark feel free to jump in at any time if there's anything you want to add anything I'm skipping over anything like that. I kind of wanted to give a little bit of a background in terms of the harm reduction grants and say that the commission is seeking the study and mitigate gambling related harms through this new pilot program. And this pilot program will provide funding for a limited number of what we're calling community engaged research projects. And that the objective of community engaged research is to more deeply understand specific negative or unintended impacts of casino gambling at a community level. The specific research topic or question should be developed through a community driven process. So the project should be contextual to their city town and neighborhood, and should highlight unique aspects of the community. So what we're asking is when you're thinking about who you want on your research team, as well as the overall approach to the project, you should consider the principles of community based participatory research. And what community based participatory research is is it focuses on social structural and physical environmental inequities through the active involvement of community members organizational representatives and researchers in all aspects of the research process. So that basically means that all partners working on the project contribute their expertise to enhance understanding of a given phenomenon and integrate the knowledge gained with action to benefit the community involved. So basically it's partners working within the community, working together to more deeply understand specific negative or unintended impacts of casino gambling at a community level. This also means that something important to note is that we cannot fund nonprofits directly. The research is meant to be community driven. So interested nonprofits should work collaboratively with the municipality to apply and that the application must come from the municipality directly. Actually for two levels of assistance. So type one is for the development or planning of a study or project and type two we're thinking of is more for the implementation of a project. So for type one, if the applicant is really going to be developing a plan to engage the community to identify a casino or gambling related topic or issue which warrants further investigation. So type two applicants that have a specific research topic and or question and are prepared to propose a research strategy would be applying for type two funding. Okay, okay. So to go into a little bit more detail is that type one we're seeing as a planning study. And what we're really seeing this as seed funding to shape a research question, and you can use the funding for costs like consultants focus groups, preliminary review of kind of secondary data that's available in your community, conducting a literature review into the background of a project or a project problem. Those are kinds of things that you can use type one funding for to plan your project. And the product of this process should be a research strategy which may be considered for type two funding and subsequent funding cycles. We expect these grants to be a one year term. And so an example of a final product from this funding would be a brief report discussing the question finding and process. So type two. This is actually sort of intended for implementation we're thinking of this as, and this is for applicants that have a specific research topic and or question and are prepared to propose a research strategy. So essentially, the applicants need to have a full research proposal, and that includes these following sections. What we're really looking at is for you to have specific aims, and the specific aims, essentially state concisely the goals of the proposed research and I'll have an example of specific aims for a type two type of project later on in the presentation. You'll be summarizing the gambling related harms and potential impacts that the results of the proposed project will insert on on your community and the research fields involved. This strategy involves providing a detailed research strategy which includes the following so your approach, describing the overall strategy methodology and analysis to be used to accomplish the specific aims of the project, the significance of the project so explaining the importance of the topic or question that the proposed project addresses innovation so any newer novel theoretical concepts approaches or methodologies to be used. There's also protection of human subjects so if you need to summarize the plan to protect human subjects and obtain IRB approval. There's also a section on collaboration and knowledge of the community so describing the organization's relationship with each other and understanding of the community with whom the study will take place, and also knowledge of how to exchange so how an answer to the question or insight on the topic may mitigate gambling related harms in the community. Identify specific activities and or measures which may be supported by the Community Mitigation Fund in subsequent funding cycles and describe a plan to share information with the community and or use it to inform policy or practice. So that's a little bit more about type two funding. And we also have a couple of questions. Why don't we stop here before we get into the Asian care study and address the questions that came in. The question that we go is can we apply to investigate slash research further incidents of DFS a and on core clubs I'm not sure I know what DFS a means. Daily fantasy sports. Oh, drug facilitated sexual assaults. I don't, I'm not really sure I think we'd have to we'd have to see what a proposal would be but I mean this is really for for gambling harm reduction and and I don't think it's really dealing with the clubs or not I don't know mark what are your thoughts on that. Honestly, I think it would be. It would be worth exploring and it's, it's a community mitigation funding. It's really not necessarily doesn't necessarily have to be gambling specific but perhaps the effect of the casino within within the community and for category one. And it's the entire gaming established. I'm winging it here. Maybe, please, would that be something that would be more public. Well, you know, we did fund last year under public safety. We funded some money for the city of Boston for their. Their human trafficking unit. Yes. So, so it might be something that could fall under a public safety category potentially or something to that effect so so I think there certainly would be some possibilities around that. But I think obviously we need to see more, more detail on the application of what it would look like. Yeah, I think it's helpful to know that this is a new category for us as well. So if you want to reach out to program staff with your idea. I think we'd be happy to kind of look it over and you know think a little bit more on our end about what that could be. And I think so the other question was can harm reduction funding be used for incentives. I guess that depends what the incentives are I mean if that if that's talking about the payments directly to people for like participating and things like that that's probably not allowable under the program. You know this is this is designed. I guess I'm really I can't say for sure but I'm not exactly gift cards refreshments etc yeah I think we have allowed where people if they're holding a meeting you know they can provide refreshments and things like that. That's probably something that would be allowable. We'd like you to, you know, outline it in your application of what it what it is that you're proposing to do and how much proposing to spend and so on. I think that's something that might be. That might be allowable. I don't think about gift cards though that. Yeah, that's that may be something if you I mean maybe you could go to the casino because the casinos are supposed to be expending funding for things like gift cards and stuff for the public so maybe if someone is thinking about gift cards they're going to on core and maybe ask them about it. Yeah, I think, well, we'd have to think about that a little bit. Yeah. Okay well why don't we why don't we move on by to the Asian care study. So this, the Asian care study is an example of the kind of a project that can be that can be considered for type two funding or the scope of a project that would be a type two kind of project. The Asian cares or the Center for addressing research education and services project is a coalition of ethnic based community based organizations in the greater Boston region providing linguistically and culturally appropriate services. So basically this group conducted in depth qualitative research in partnership with Tufts clinical and translational science Institute to expand understanding of how problem gambling manifests in Asian families, in order to inform the development of culturally and linguistically appropriate tools and community based resources for prevention and early intervention efforts. So I'm not going to read everything on the slide but this basically sort of talks about the study rationale and sort of background and motivation for the study. And again as an example of a study kind of partnership. And that this is an example of specific aims that you would include in a research study. Okay, and actually oh there are. Okay, so there are specific aims, which were, you can see the four specific aims here. And again I'm not going to read all of them but an example of a specific aim aim one would be review the state of the science strategically selecting bodies of literature relevant to gambling problems in Asian communities and family centered approaches to resiliency prevention and harm mitigation. So maybe that kind of like each of the specific aims talks a little bit about what the study aims to do. And they also provided information on the overall objectives of the study, which were to inform the development of tools and resources to support tailored education treatment referral and other harm reduction efforts among at risk and hard to reach Asian American populations. So again you can kind of look over this on the slide in more detail but I just kind of wanted to provide an opportunity to look specifically at what specific aims might look like in this kind of this kind of an application. And this gives more detail about the research process. So what they did was they recruited bilingual and bicultural community field workers conducting 40 in depth qualitative interviews to better understand the nature and impact of problem gambling. And they also reviewed community members from the Cambodian Chinese Korean and Vietnamese communities. And they also reviewed the state of the science relevant to gambling problems in Asian communities and look nationally at a few existing programs. They identified existing resources within a coalition of organizations assisting Asian immigrants and refugees and Asian American families in Boston's China town and surrounding communities that can be leveraged to engage hard to reach an at risk populations. Research findings again I'm not going to go over all of the research findings in detail but the reason that there are different colors on the text on the slides is basically because I wanted to highlight a couple of research findings and then on the next slide it talks about kinds of recommendations for mitigation related to the research findings. So the couple of research findings that I was going to highlight here are one of the research findings was that there is a lack of economic opportunity propels many to turn to gambling as an alternative source or to supplement income. And social and cultural isolation due to immigration results in a lack of social and recreational opportunities often expressed as boredom. So on the next slide. It's, it talks about suggested implementable solutions for the research findings. So, those that are highlighted here are developing programs geared towards helping working class immigrants gain the language and occupational skills needed to acquire meaningful employment with benefits and wages. The best in the neighborhoods where immigrants work live in play by creating spaces of belonging where communities can meet for safe recreational and social opportunities, and develop a steering committee of key community leaders to guide the development of policy practice and services around addressing the root causes of problem gambling. So again what they did is they had a bunch of different research findings, and they also had suggested implementable solutions for recommendations related to those research findings. Questions. Oh, and actually I had a couple of other things I wanted to highlight before getting to the questions, which was to make sure to contact the Community Affairs staff with any questions or if you have questions about your application in advance of the deadline. Definitely recommend that you read the guidelines because there's kind of more detail about each of the components of the application. And also that we have a website. If you go to the map of mass gaming calm and you go to the research agenda, there are examples of community engaged research projects they are cutting to give you some ideas about different things you may want to explore in your community and different kinds of projects that have been done. Great. Thank you body that was great. Mark. Yeah, I just want to say I don't want. So this is a new new line of funding through the Community Mitigation Fund but this funding for community based or community engaged participatory research has been available for quite some time with funding through the public health trust and the same source of revenue, but a different a different fund. And that's where the agent cares study was funded and as you'll see if you go to the research page you'll see a whole host of other research that's been funded out of the public health trust fund including several community engaged research studies so just wanted to kind of provide some clarification. So we did have a couple questions come in. One person I may have missed it but for the gambling harm reduction studies do we need to partner with a university slash research partner. If not, can you talk more about how we engage in IRB process. So, you know, these are these will be driven, you know, initially by the communities the communities have to apply for this. And I think, you know, for the planning study, I'm not sure they necessarily has to be a researcher that's that's directly involved it could be consultants or it could be some of your own research it could be, you know, doing some focus groups, you know, from your local Board of Health or, you know, health agent. But I do think when you get to the larger studies we are talking about partnering with some, some sort of research partner would you agree with that mark. Yeah, I think that's well said. Okay. And I think most of these other questions were, were regarding whether what incentives we could provide and I think we would have to look into that a little bit before say yeah, I think or not that would be eligible. One of, I think it was Brenda made a point that oftentimes incentives of some sort are involved if you're wanting to engage the community. And I, I agree with that wholeheartedly. And I think it's just, we would need to figure out a way that would satisfy Lily's point that's also made in the right. And I think we have to we have to bounce that off our legal department, I think internally to really ask that question. But you know I know in the past and some of our workforce grants we have allowed, you know, bus passes to be provided to folks and things like that, you know, people who couldn't afford to, you know, to didn't have vehicles so they could use public transportation to get to classes and so on. So, you know, you'll get it may or may not be but we'll look into that and, you know, we'll try to get out some some guidance on whether we think that's allowable or not. Oh thanks Rachel that's a UMass has a process of monitoring gift cards other any other questions from folks. Regarding the gambling harm reduction. Okay. So our next new category is project and thanks Mark and Bonnie do appreciate your time and great presentation. So projects of regional significance. This started actually a few years ago we started thinking about this is that is there a way to sort of leverage some of these community mitigation funds to projects that are more transformational. And that picture there I asked Lily to put in a nice picture of the big dig for us so we can see something that's really transformational probably not going to be funding anything like that with these grants. But what we did in this year is we realized that larger scale projects that are already in the pipeline might also address casino related impacts. And, you know, the example that we use as a fictional example in the guidelines was that if if mass dot were proposing to do a project that was going to a congestion mitigation project that's going to increase capacity on the roadway, and it was adjacent to one of the casinos. You know that would also address traffic related impacts associated with the casino. So we could theoretically provide some money towards a project like that. So we took it a little bit further and we met with the regional planning agencies and we met with mass dot and everybody really like this idea so we decided that we would try this as a, at least as a pilot program for this first year. So the basic premise of this is that that this needs to be a project that's regional in nature, but it must also, at the same time, mitigate a casino related impact. So I think in our mind in the back of our minds we were thinking more on the order of transportation or transit projects, but any project that's eligible under the under the expanded gaming act would be would be eligible for these. And some of these things that are identified a transportation infrastructure, housing, education, public safety. We haven't really thought about how, you know, for instance, no one has ever come into the community mitigation fund for housing, because it's, it's hard to make a connection between housing and an impact from the casino, you know, has. And I think even we've done some studies on housing prices and real estate prices and show no real nexus to the casino so it might be difficult to come in under one of those categories but they are certainly eligible. Now the other thing is typically our community mitigation funds go out to municipalities directly. We do allow that government agencies or districts may apply for funds for projects that impact more than one municipality, and that are these these agencies are essentially acting on behalf of those municipalities. Next slide. What we've done now is, again, sort of for this pilot we've targeted one project in Region A and one project in Region B. We didn't do anything for the area around a Plain Ridge Park, because again, so this is sort of a pilot program. And you'll see we've earmarked $5 million for Region A and $3 million for Region B. And again this goes back to what I said earlier where more money is generated out of Region A than is out of Region B. You know, we could have put more money in Region B but with only 7 million available, we didn't want to, you know, wind up being, you know, heavily oversubscribed. So, as we talked about in the transportation construction category, the Game and Commission will only pay about a third, up to a third of those costs. In this case, we're saying that we'll pay up to 15% of the project cost. So, if you know in Region B that means the overall project cost could be up to, you know, $20 million if we were funding the full 15%. And in the East, around Encore, it could be up to $33-$34 million, somewhere in that order of magnitude. And these projects, we realized that projects of this size take a bit longer to develop. So, we're giving you two years to get these done. If you look at on our transportation construction, we basically give you a year to get the project underway. This gives a little bit more flexibility because of some of the difficulty in, you know, getting the final design on big projects like this done. And questions, and I think I saw a couple of things pop up. So, from Pioneer Valley, Eric Weiss says, as an RPA, we appreciate this category, is it only one project per region or will the money be spread amongst various projects. So, our initial thoughts on this are that it would be one project in each region. But if we see, you know, I think that would be sort of our baseline. You know, if multiple projects came in that were smaller in size and we could spread the money further, we might consider doing that. But I would say, for our purposes right now, we would just pursue it with one project per region. And then it says, in the case of housing, could the funding benefit slash assist a private developer. That is a very good question. I would say, you know, our guidelines talk about money going to private entities. And we have to, you know, under the Massachusetts Constitution, we have the, what's known as the anti aid amendment, which means that essentially state funds can't go to a private entity. Unless that private entity is performing a public purpose or it's being done, the money is being used for a public purpose. So if the money were to go to a community, and then it were to go to some other agency. It's possible. But again, we would have to determine that that was being done for a public purpose. And, you know, the application would have to give us a pretty ironclad argument on why it's a public purpose. Okay, any other other questions regarding our projects of regional significance. Okay, I don't see any others. Lily, I think you're going to go through this. Yeah, so I think just to wrap up here some helpful links for folks all of these have been emailed out to you they're also all within the guidelines. They are also all on our website. So the first piece that you can look into is go on to the mass gaming website under the Community Mitigation Fund. You can find lots of application options you can find all the guidelines all the different forms that we've referenced here today. So if we've all mentioned, please review the 2022 guidelines or the 2023 guidelines I apologize that's a typo. Because that is really where you're going to find the meat of what should be in your application. And then the third piece that we really want to try and hit home. I think our public safety applicants are very good at this they frequently referenced a report called the Christopher Bruce study that was done. The gaming commission has done a lot of really great research and has partnered with a lot of really great folks across the state who have done a lot of really great research on the impacts of casinos and on gaming across the state. So if you're looking to do economic development grants if you're looking to do different community planning grants. There's a lot of research out there that could really help benefit your reports and your applications and all of those reports are very easily searchable on our website by category and type. And then the last thing again something we've all referenced, you can see all of our previous grant awards archived on our website throughout the year so you can see what we funded previously. And while previous print rounds do not indicate what we'll fund this time. You know we don't like to say that we're going to fund something just because we funded it last year, but it's a pretty good indicator of things that were successful or arguments that were persuasive to the review team. So we just didn't get another question pop up. Is there a reporting requirement after receiving the grant, and the answer to that is yes. We have a, we have a quarterly report requirement. Sometimes a year you need to submit to us on what your expenditures have been and a little update on where your project stands, and we do occasionally do some outreach to our grantees to sit down with them and talk about their projects and, and where things stand we just had a call yesterday with one of our grantees on the status of their, of their grant. So yes, there is definitely a reporting requirement. We did. Another question was could a copy of the PowerPoint presentation be available, either online or by request. Mary has this already gone up on our website. This is already up on our website. I'm assuming in the Community Mitigation Fund page. And I believe we sent out a copy yesterday to to folks. If you didn't receive it in an email yesterday, you can all and if you can't find it on the website can always email Mary or Lily and they can get you out a copy of it. And speaking of which, there's our contact information. So if you do need anything from us, feel free to reach out. And like I said, we're happy to talk with folks if you have ideas that you want to bounce off us where we're more than willing to listen to what those are obviously we can't tell you absolutely for sure that you'll get a grant or not but we, you know, oftentimes people are thinking outside the box a little bit and, and we appreciate that. We did have a question Joe how much detail do you want on your quarterly reports. We have a lot. We have a quarterly report form which is attached to the grant that gets executed. And it really kind of depends on the type of application. The reporting requirements are because there's some that are have to be more in depth and show quantitative quantitative results. So it all depends on your, your type of grant you have. I can send you if you want I can send you a sample of what the quarterly report looks like. The quarterly report forms are also located on the community mitigation website under the, there's just like it within our stuff it just says form so you can click there for any of our forms. And I think these are mostly typically a couple of pages. I think it's it's just because when you when you submit your quarterly report if you need to request funding you have to do it on that page as well so usually it's the quarterly report form and if you want a distribution the distribution and any backup information. All right, are there any final questions from folks out there. Well, none appearing I guess I guess we will close out. Well thank you all for for attending I do appreciate it for coming. You know, I hope this is helpful for you in in formulating some ideas for for this upcoming round and remember January 31 is our magic date for a submission so so keep that in mind. Happy holidays to everyone. Thank you.