Before I start, I need to take a roll call. Chris Cameron. Good morning, everyone. I am here. Good morning. I am looking for commissioner. Oh, there she is. Commissioner. Yep. I'm here. Good morning. Good morning. And commission is going to get. Good morning. Yes. Good morning, everybody. I'm here. I'm here. And thank you. Appreciate it.  A lengthy meeting for a vacation day. So thank you. As you know, everyone, we're able to. To gather today virtually because of. Relief that has been granted by the governor through. This emergency orders in light of the pandemic that. Provide the opportunity for. Some relief from the open meeting law. We've been able to do that since. March of 2020. Today is. May 20th, 2021. And it is public meeting number 344. I'm going to call to order. Before we get started on the minutes. I just want to say that. I wanted to provide an update as to the commission's anticipated. Plans and actions in light of. CDC's new guidance and the governor's announcement on. And order on Monday. The gaming commission will hold a special public meeting. At 10 a.m. next Wednesday, May 26th. This will follow our planned agenda setting meeting, which will now be scheduled for 9 a.m. The agenda will be addressed. We will have representatives of the three licensees. And harnessing horse racing and. A simulcasting. We'll attend and participate. We anticipate the agenda will address the following three items. We adopted. 19 guidelines. Relating related to the gaming establishments. And we'll have representatives of the three licensees. Relating relating to horse racing and simulcasting. The impact of the governor's order on the commission's future use of remote collaborative technology. Given the governor's emergency order offering. Public bodies like ours. The relief that I just mentioned from certain provisions of the meeting. During the pandemic. We've had a number of meetings. And I thank all the members of the team. Worked so hard earlier this week with me to come up with these plans. In the night of Monday's order. Also of note for today's agenda yesterday. We did post a, an amendment to today's agenda. We will not be addressing a particular horse racing item. It had been previously marked up as. In addition to that, the commissioners and commissioners. The commissioners and commissioners. The commissioners and commissioners and commissioners. The future meeting. It didn't involve a collection of public comments. And we decided that the, the gaming commission really needed additional time in order to be prepared for all of us to act. The commissioners to act on this in an informed fashion. So. That will be addressed at a future meeting. So with that, we'll get started. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you, Madam chair. We have meaning minutes from February 11th. 2021 in the packet today. I would move that the commission approved the minutes from February 11th, 2021. Subject to correction for typographical error or any other non material matter. Second. Okay. Any edits comments. Okay. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner Zunica. Aye. Yes. Thank you, Tanya. We're zero. Moving on then to the administrative update. Good morning. Chair moves to the commission. Before we get into items three a, I would just like to acknowledge. Teresa Fiori. She has. Received a very exciting opportunity. And she's going to be leaving us. So I just wanted to publicly thank her. For all the work that she has done. She's been such an instrumental part of this team. And of the. Research and responsible game division. So I wanted to turn it over to Mark just to say a few words in recognition of Teresa and all that she's done for the game. Thank you, Karen. Good morning. Madam chair and commissioners. So last meeting I was really happy to announce. A new addition to our team. And it makes me really sad actually to. Make this announcement. Teresa. Teresa has been with the commission for almost five years. It was a new position. And what was still a relatively new commission. And. She started just after we launched play my way. At Plain Ridge Park. You know, she started before the opening of MGM. Or on core. And over the past five years has been. Pretty darn instrumental in the success of. Our, our responsible gaming efforts at. At the gaming commission. Overseeing a lot of the daily operations of the game sense. Program. The voluntary self-exclusion program. Teresa has been the daily contact for that. In each of these areas, she's just been a fantastic. Partner. In rolling these programs out and seeing the vision of, of where they can go in the future. So. Teresa, I totally wish you the, the. Very best of luck. And. I hope that. In your new position, you're taking away. Some of the, the lessons that you've learned. Both hard and easy lessons here. From the gaming commission. So all the best. Thank you. Thank you. I really appreciate that. And I appreciate the send off as well. Always a little strange because it's virtual, but happy to see everyone. And I just appreciate the opportunity. To have worked on such innovative. You know, projects, especially in my home state. With the legalization of casinos. Gambling. It completely changed. So I appreciate everyone's. Patience at times with me. And explaining different. Things. And it's been a pleasure working with everyone. Thanks so much, Teresa. I don't know if any of the commissioners want to chime in. I'll give you a chance, but. I just, I just want to thank you. You've been a really wonderful addition to this team. We're all going to miss you very much, but especially more. Yeah, let me, let me. Sorry, I wanted to jump in as well. Yeah, we're going to miss you, Teresa. Best of luck. I think. We know many people know that you did great work. For us. And it's, I believe because of that, that you have. In part going to these opportunity that will make you. Remaining responsible gaming in the industry. So. I think maybe our paths will cross in the near future. Hopefully. And if not, we really. Look forward for you to stay in touch. And we shoot the best. Yes. Teresa, I'll miss you outside my office when we get back to work. And getting to know you a little bit getting to hear about your family. And, but again, excellent work. It was apparent to all of us. You jumped right in. You learn the issues you made. You built relationships, which I'm sure is part of why you're getting another opportunity. But the work is speaks for itself. With regard to what we've done in this area. And I think we're going to miss you. And I'm always happy for folks who, you know, a new opportunity, right? It's so important. And if we had a little part in that, letting you grow your career, then good for us, but we will miss you. Sure. Sure. Thank you. Good luck. Teresa, we will miss you. As everyone has said. I think it does speak to the work that the commission has done that you and Mark have done to that you have the opportunity to get back to work. It sounds like a great opportunity. For you. So I wish you luck in that. And I think the only good thing is that. Before that, the notice actually came in because I. Otherwise. But hopefully we do cross paths and I wish you luck in the new position. Teresa, I just want to congratulate you on your next opportunity. As everyone said, I think it really speaks to. The important contribution you've made. With respect to responsible gaming. As we emerged in the casino market. And the leadership you take. And I've been so impressed by the level of professionalism that you offer. Not only our team internally, but I've seen you interacting with so many external stakeholders. Really conveying to them the import of responsible gaming. As we. Intersect with the gambling. Industry. It's real. Really nice to see that you're going to continue. Contributing your expertise to this important area. As commissioners. Right away. Mentioned. I'm having. A little bit of a flashback right now as I sit in my home, still working virtually and you're right. I wish we were doing this personally. Teresa will be embarrassed, but I'm going to. I'm going to mention it in any case. I was so fortunate to join the gaming commission and have as. Really. My closest neighbor, Teresa. And across the hall. I was so fortunate to join the gaming commission and have as really. A very nice neighbor, Teresa. Across the hall for me. Because I watched Teresa grow up and I'm looking out right now in my backyard where she probably. Daunt her prom dress with her very nice prom date. In several, maybe 15 other couples. At the time. And so her picture is prominently in our house. Along with all the prom, prom date. So to see the professional that you've become in such an important area. Makes me proud as a former neighbor and.  Thank you as well. I really appreciate that. And I have the same pictures. It was a gorgeous day. Thank you. All right. So, so commissioner Karen's point. We had a little bit of a part in this great mark. This only means that whatever is next in terms of your division. Teresa has paved a great road for you. And. And now. The only thing is that Marie Claire and Teresa won't have the opportunity to, to work together. So I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. I think that's a good point. Commissioner Zuniga suggested will, our roads will intersect. So thank you. Congratulations. Thank you. Thanks so much, Teresa. All right. So the next item on the agenda, the administrative update, I'm going to turn it over to Loretta and to Bruce to get started on the onsite casino updates. I'll start with Loretta. Thanks Karen. Good morning, chair. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. I'll start with the meeting next Wednesday. I know there's some forward looking attention given the announcements by the CDC and the governor. But for purposes of this morning, I have been reporting on operations along with Bruce and activity at the three properties at the public meetings. And really for. This two week interview. I'm going to talk about the three licensees through their employees have continued to follow and monitor and enforce. The health and safety measures put into place by the commission to the gaming areas and have continued to follow the measures put into place by the governor for the amenities at each property. You know, the patrons overall have continued to accept and abide by the measures as well. So I'm going to start with the three licensees. I'm going to start with the three licensees. I'm going to reflect on the past. 14 months in the past approximately 11 months. Since the reopening after the COVID closure and. Reflect on the coordination that took place to first close those premises that were never meant to be shuttered. And then. Reopening in July subject to strict. Conditions. The, the, the. The, the, the, the, the measures and steps along the way, you know, October of last year. Roulette was authorized to resume in a very unique and innovative way to keep people safe. In November there was. under an order of the governor tracking a surge in cases at that time, limiting hours of operation, and there was a stay-at-home advisory, aligning with the metrics. Again, there was then a return to 24 operations. And as public health metrics continue to improve, a commission authorized the reintroduction of crafts and additional seat at Blackjack-style tables. Over that time and through all of those permutations, the three properties have consistently dedicated substantial staff and substantial resources to the effort. That holds true at the parent company level of each company, and it holds true at the property level as well. They have shown a great deal of adaptability, responsiveness, responsibility, given this unprecedented situation, which is outside their core business. So for each of these updates that the IEB's been doing at the commission's public meetings over these months, there is ongoing daily behind-the-scenes work, constant communication between each property in the IEB. And I can say from my perspective that every phone call, every question, every issue that has ever been brought forward to them has been met with immediate response, real problem-solving attitude. I also wanted to note, and I know that you as a commission often note that while many of us have been working at home over these months by necessity, the casino's employees, members of our gaming agents unit, state police gaming enforcement unit have been on site. So I did wanna bring particular attention to those employees at the commission and the casinos that have been part of those teams on a day-to-date basis. Just a word about vaccines now, you're aware of the vaccine site at Encore with a convenient way to allow citizens as well as Encore employees to become fully vaccinated. Both Encore and MGM have implemented incentive program for their employees to encourage vaccination. And that is underway, has been underway for a couple of weeks, I believe. Plain Ridge is taking a little different approach with incentivizing patrons who demonstrate vaccination, but they as well are in close touch with their employees about their health status and encouraging full vaccination as well. So I guess this is a long way of saying these past two weeks have continued to go well at each property. I did think it was appropriate at this time to reflect on the past 14 months a little bit. I hope I got the timeline right. Those are my comments, happy to answer any questions. I know Assistant Director Band is here and always offers something interesting through his lens. The occupancy levels have just been fine, they've been in compliance. The only thing I had to have with Director Lodos kind of stole my thunder is Encore. It had started show us your VAX program for their employees, it's an incentive program where you can win cash prizes and stays at the hotel and so on. And all you have to do is show your vaccination card to the HR program, which is a company-wide program that they're doing. I agree with Director Lodos that the casinos over the last 14 months have been nothing but cooperative with this program. They've done everything we've asked pretty much and have certainly reached out when they've had any questions at all to get it clarified. They've been great. I would like to add one other thing and thank Teresa for all the time here. Our gaming agency works very closely with her and she'll really be missed by our group. She's always been a pleasure to work with from our standpoint. So we'll miss you, Teresa. Same, thank you, Bruce. You're welcome. If you guys have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask. Well, I wanna just thank both of you for the recap, particularly Loretta, going through that timeline because it does reflect not only the good work and the responsiveness of our three licenses, but really the good work of Karen, your entire team, Loretta, your entire team, Bruce, your teams in being able to respond to all the changes that occurred, all the various orders that occurred and to do it in a way that achieved the goal back in July when there was a reopening, we hoped it would be a sustained reopening and we were able to achieve that because of everyone's vigilance on this team and the licensees and also the publics, you know, the patrons who attended. So that's good for our employees. That's good for the Commonwealth. It's good for business. And now we'll see what the future brings. But thank you. I, at some point, I'm imagining a graphic that would really outline that timeline, Loretta, for some memorializing it in some way. I think Bruce, you would say in your career, you never thought you'd be shutting down casinos. You know, unfortunately, I have shut down casinos before in my career. But not for the good reason. Yeah, that's correct. Yeah, yeah. Any comments on commissioners? All set? All right. And Kathy, I mean, may want to also just, just get a quick update from Alex just on the racing side. Yes, I'm sorry, I wasn't going to move on yet anyway, but yes, good morning, Dr. Lightbaum. Thank you. Oh, yeah, I just wanted to echo what Director Lillio said on the racing and simulcasting side. As you know, Plain Ridge has started live racing again and we're getting great general compliance with our protocols. The big question is when can we change them? So the commission is going to be addressing that next week. Everyone was very good over the past year about responding very quickly to the different things that came up. A lot of our meetings came up quickly depending on how things had changed due to the COVID. And so the licensees and the horsemen all had to be very nimble about getting plans to us and working through different issues to make sure we were all safe. I do want to thank them all again for their cooperation and for helping it be a sustained opening. And we're just in such a much better spot right now. It really is wonderful to be at this position now. That's awesome. And Dr. Leica and you were really ahead of everyone. It started early in April, 20. Was it April or May, 2020? We couldn't start till July with- Oh yeah, you couldn't start till July. Yeah, with everything else. So we had to delay our opening in April until July, but we did, we were our staff and all were some of the first people that were actually like back in the office, so to speak. That's what it was, yeah. And again, thank you to everyone in the, in racing because they did go back to in-person work last summer and worked through the pandemic with the horsemen and with the licensees on the grounds. Yeah, I'm struggling with my memory because I have this image of being down there and it was, but can you remind me of the PPCs? PPCs, I don't know if anybody has it off the top of their head. PPCs reopening date back in July and versus horse racing. Weren't you before the casino? I think we might have started qualifiers around the sixth or so and then maybe started racing on around the 13th, somewhere around in there. Yeah, so it was the qualifying races that were had. Now I'm remembering. Yes, thank you. Again, a timeline would be really helpful if we can memorialize it in our free time. And by the way, when we acknowledge all the work that was done during that period, you're doing your non-COVID-19 responsibilities at the same time and that's not lost on us. No one missed a beat. There were, in racing obviously there are a lot of regulations and protocols, very strict protocols and all that we adhere to. And so it definitely was challenging adding the COVID protocols on top of that, but everybody rose to the occasion. Yeah, I see Steve O'Toole just turned a glimpse in and we commend the partnership that the two of you shared at that time. So thank you. Any questions for either Loretta, Dr. Leipan or Bruce, commissioners? I'll set. Okay, we've got a good full agenda. Head, Karen, is there anything else? No, we're all set. Thank you. Thank you. Moving on then to item number four. Chief Skinner. Good morning. Good morning, Madam Chair and commissioners and everyone. So today I have three positions for you to consider exempting from the service employee registration requirements. Excuse me. They're for the Walburgers restaurant out at MGM Springfield and you have the full job description for each position in your package, but just to summarize, we have the fry cook who is responsible for preparing starters and sides for meals. And it's the last touch before the meal is delivered to patrons. We have the expediter position. That's the middleman between the front and back of the house, the kitchen. The position has the responsibility of ensuring the meal conforms to patron specifications. And then the board and window is the third position. It's responsible for building burgers and sandwiches at the back of the house before passing on the fry cook for delivery to patrons. As you know, Walburgers is located in a standalone building on MGM properties. So there's no concern about access to secure gaming areas or any gaming related confidential or secure information. Neither of these positions has any managerial or supervisory responsibility, nor are they responsible for storing, distributing, selling, or serving alcoholic beverages. So for those reasons, I fully support exempting these positions from the service employee registration requirements and recommend your vote to approve. And of course, happy to answer any questions you have. Oh, you're muted. Sorry, my landline was wrong. Any questions for Makisha? Okay, I think that she's asked for a vote. Do I have a motion? Madam chair, I'll move that the commission exempt the fry cook expediter and board and window positions at Walburgers at MGM Springfield from the registration requirements in accordance with 205CMR 134031B for the reasons discussed today and as described in the commissioners pack. I second that. Questions, comments. Okay, commission, well done. Again, Makisha, very, very thorough in exemplifying nearly the purpose of this option for us. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zunica. Aye. My vote, yes. Four zero, thank you. Thank you. And that concludes all of your business today, correct? Chief Skinner? That's correct, Kat. Okay, thank you so much. All right, then we're now moving on to item number five. Dr. Lightbound, you have several items for us today. We'll get started. So the first topic I wanted to talk to you about is our drug testing program. And right from the beginning of it, we start with using a request for proposals for our lab that was developed by the racing medication testing on this podium. So the regulatory industry realized that it's not only important that you hire a lab that has different certifications, but that in your request for response for to hire a lab that you have certain things in there to make sure that they're going to meet all of the requirements. So right from the beginning, we start on the racing division with that so that it's important that the responses we get are in compliance with everyone. So we use that. And then the lab that we did contract with starting in 2015 does have the racing medication and testing consortium accreditation and also the ISO 17025 accreditation, which is what the industry recognizes as the lab needing right now. The lab director, which I think most of you have had have met her in different hearings. She's has great experience in the horse racing industry. She's on numerous different boards and has been wonderful to work with. Um, different things come into effect. One of the things is RCI, the racing commissioner's international has a uniform classification of drug substances, realizing that not every drug is necessarily as what we call bad as others. So it goes all the way from class one, which are drugs that should never be found in a race horse down to a class five, which may be like a therapeutic drug. And this is one of the challenges that I think racing has had is trying to explain to the general public the difference between a, when the general public hears a drug positive, that's all they hear. They don't necessarily understand that maybe it's an overage of what is a therapeutic medication. And it's just not something that you want at a certain level in the horse on a race day compared to some drug that is what you would consider performance enhancing that should never be in a horse. So that's one thing we try to distinguish for the general public. The racing commissioner's international with help from the racing medication and testing consortium also came up with a controlled therapeutic medication schedule. This has been in effect for quite a while. And this realizes or recognizes that a private veterinarian working on a horse much like your private veterinarian working on your dog or cat needs to be able to use certain drugs to help an animal that may be sick or injured. And that's totally appropriate. We want to have these animals treated and we want them to get better. So they came up, worked with private veterinarians and regulatory veterinarians to come up with drugs that are commonly used in practice. And tried to come up with guidelines for the veterinarians on when they could use them and for how long and what amounts. And that really has given some guidance to them instead of just kind of blindly saying, well, I'm going to treat your horse but I don't know how long it would have to stay out of racing before it could race and be clear of this spread. So that's kind of important to all that has come along. There's also uniform drug testing lab standards. Once again, to try to make it uniformed about the country on what the labs test for and how they go ahead, how they go about this. We also use the protocols for the test barn that have been developed through these two agencies and the protocols for split sample testing. So these all are standardized policies that best and basically best practices. And they've been very helpful for us on training our employees and it's really helped with if a drug positive or a drug overage does come up. We have standard procedures that we follow. It affords the horsemen their due process. They have a right to a split sample. And if one of our drug adverse findings gets appealed I think it's really helped our legal team to be able to show what our procedures are and how we go about maintaining chain of evidence and all of those. There's been a lot of interest recently after the finding in the Derby. It so happens that our lab industrial laboratories is also the laboratory that conducted the testing for Kentucky. I don't have any personal knowledge on this case. So I don't want to imply that at all. We have had eight overages for beta methazone that particular drug that was found over the last eight years here. I went back on a few of them to find the levels and they were at 21, 25 and 26 pika grams per mil. It was reported that in the press that the Derby overage was 21 pika grams. So it's in that ballpark. You can't necessarily draw any conclusions from a simple number as to how and when a particular drug was administered. A small amount of a drug given very close to the race, may give you the same amount as a large amount given further away from the race. So I just want to state that too. So I think with all these procedures that we've put in place, it's really helped our agency, it's helped our employees and I think it's also helped the horsemen to maintain their rights. Are there any questions? I think commissioner Cameron will have some comments and questions. I do and I just wanted to add, Dr. Leipzig did an excellent job of really explaining the evolution with this commission and the steps we've taken. One of the things she's probably too modest to tell us is that RCI racing commissioners international actually has a kind of best practices and they list agencies and we are one of a handful of agencies in the country that are listed as the absolute top score for a model agency. They judge about five different categories and we are right at the top and listed as a model agencies for the way we regulate and in particular with our standards around medication testing. So that is a tribute to Dr. Leipzig and her team as well as the legal division who does an excellent job also of preparing cases and making sure that due process is there for everyone, split samples, whatnot. So just a great effort and we have been recognized internationally for as a model agency for the way we do business. So thanks to everyone. It's nice to see when you read something from RCI and there we are right at the top. So good work. Thank you. And Alex, very clear. Thank you and also thank you for putting in to light some of the new stories that we're reading that prompted our request for you to report today on this commissioners in a guy. I know you also wanted to hear this report. Yeah, thank you. And I was echoed the comments of commissioner Cameron. Alex, if I could just from your memo, you put in good context the horse racing integrity and safety authority that was signed into law at the end of December of 2020. Which apparently codified a lot of the practices that had been recommended and we had implemented from RCI that we had implemented that you described. Are there any practices recommended there or horse for thoroughbred racing or any elements in terms of control and protocols that we have not yet implemented that we should look at? Or is it fair to say that by virtue of following RCI guidelines from the past, we are up to speed in this notion of the act that was signed at the end of 2020? I think Alex is going to talk more in detail on the next item on the act, but on that answer, do you want to in terms of the narrow question that the commissioner asked? Yeah, so on the narrow question, right now the horse racing and integrity authority hasn't written any, they haven't promulgated any rules or regulations yet. They're very much at the very beginning stage and I think it helps to kind of compare it to when the gaming commission first started up. This is going to be a new authority. They just recently announced their board of directors and they named members to, they have two standing committees, one about medication and drug control and one about track safety. So they have a long way to go and there aren't very many, well, there's really virtually no specifics at this point. So that being said, a lot of what is written in the statute mimics things that the National Throw-A-Bred Track Association, NTA, what they have done as far as track safety goes, if you recall, Suffolk had that accreditation when they were racing live and had had it for years. And that was quite an extensive program that they still have in effect today for other tracks to certify them on safety issues, as well as a lot of what is written in the statute is things that the Racing Commissioners International and the RMTC have put into effect. The big difference is that RCI doesn't have the authority to mandate the model rules and the different practices and neither do any of the other two agencies. So it really comes down to the states doing it and about 92% of tracks now are in compliance with these different things, but they aren't also on a national level. There had been an effort to standardize everything and there were different ways that they could have gone about it. One would have been to make like interstate compact with the different jurisdictions and have RCI kind of have that authority. But when over the years, because there's been federal legislation out there for six or seven years in different forms. And this is what eventually passed. So now with the Horse Racing Integrity Act, it's mandatory for thoroughbred racing in the entire country and it'll go affect July 1st of 2020. For other breeds, such as the standard red racing, the harness racing, it is opt in. So, you know, this is something, again, there's not enough known right now to start making decisions, but this is something that we definitely wanna keep on our radar and I know the harness tracks and the harness horsemen are well aware of this and have been also following this. Thank you. Any other questions, at least with respect to the testing and then if you wanna kind of reset for the second item on the agenda, Alex? On the testing, I just wanna make sure, Commissioner O'Brien, did you have any questions on the testing? You and I were here in 2015, but we both are well aware of the great progress that the commission made under Dr. Lightman's leadership. No, no, I don't, I know that Enrique had asked the question about sort of our history in terms of the recent events in the news, so that was interesting to hear, but no, I've heard about the great job we've done in the past, I think you're right, Dr. Lightman won't crow about it, so Commissioner Cameron does it on her behalf, I think rightfully so, so I don't have any questions. Okay, then update on the national level on the act. If you wanna, you've given us some background, but I want to make sure you get all of your talking points in. Okay, so the act did pass and was signed into law in December of last year. It was part of the omnibus bill, so that legislation was like 5,000 pages long. So I didn't include that in our packet, but it's very easy to Google it if anybody wants to see it. It's not without, I will say it's not without controversy and there are a couple of lawsuits now already against it and so we'll just have to see how those play out. The act covers drug testing, medication control and racetrack safety and like I said, a lot of the things they cover are actually things that are being done already. Some of the, the way it's set up is there's a private run authority and it will be under the Federal Trade Commission and the authority will come up with the regulations and then it'll be up to the Federal Trade Commission to approve those regulations. That's the way it's been set up. The Federal Trade Agency can either reject, modify or approve whatever regulations the authority comes up with. I guess there's a similar situation in the financial industry where there's a financial industry regulatory authority that's private that proposes rules to the Security and Exchange Commission but that's one of the, and I won't get into the legal aspects of it. I'm not a lawyer but I've let Todd know about this agency coming along. One of the questions is about along the lines of state rights and that. The deadline for full implementation according to statute is July 1st of 2022, mandatory for thoroughbreds opt in for other breeds of race horses. They'll be responsible for developing and implementing horse racing, doping and medication control program and a safety program. Like I said, they just set up committee members for those two committees and so they're just really in the beginning stages. In the statute, it has them contracting with the US Anti-Doping Agency, USADA, which is the agency that oversees Olympic testing for humans. Let's see, some of the other highlights. One of the things that is going to be interesting and would come before the commission is how it will be funded. Right now, we pay for our drug testing protocols and our people who were involved in that system through what we get from the handle, from the race tracks and our license fees, things like that. The authority will come up with a amount based on what they think their budget will be and then using the number of starts of racing horses in this particular state and give each state basically an idea of what their cost would be. So then it would be, if the commission decided to opt in, then the question would be, then do we just take the money that say we're paying our laboratory now? Does it just get paid to the authority instead? In this statute, there's also a, the state can decline to pay for it out of those funds and it could be charged on a per start basis back to the licensees, meaning the tracks and or the horsemen. There wouldn't be a double billing. So there would, if we were not paying through the handle, we probably would, there might be a mechanism where we didn't take that money from the handle anymore. So there's a lot to figure out on this. And of course, I've already told the Horsemen's Association, this is something that will involve open commission meetings and we'll get the input of the horsemen's groups. Right now it's really too, it's premature.  We don't know how much it's going to cost. So where we only have standard bread racing now, we aren't in quite the time crunch that maybe some of the jurisdictions that have thorough bread racing are in, they're gonna have to be ready to go next summer. On the harness side, we have some time to wait and see and see what the, exactly how the cost is going to be shared. There is definitely concern that it could be an expensive program. And again, a lot of what is in the statute are things that we're already doing through RCI and through RMTC. And, you know, we even, the commissions several years ago started having Lane Ridge have an independent person come in and review the track before they open. So in a lot of ways where we may even be a little bit ahead on some of these issues. There are some things in the statute that the new authority can enter into agreements with commissions on. So perhaps they enter into an agreement that we provide the testing personnel because that was a question too, was this national organization going to bring in their own veterinarians, their own testing assistants and all that. So there has been, there was something put in there that the authority can contract with individual commissions on certain things that they may want done on a local level. Let's see. And, you know, it does get a little more specific about 90 days before the effective date of the program going into effect. They'll provide the states with what their cautionary would be and that type of thing. It is on the standard bred side where the standard bred horses race fairly frequently and they can get a large number of starts in a year. A per start fee is, you know, could be an issue. And also if figuring out how a jurisdiction that doesn't have as much, give out as much purse money as another one that may come into effect as well. There's also some concern on what the penalty structures will be. Right now there's some leeway for mitigating circumstances and all with the RCI. And we'll have to see how rigid the penalties might be under this new authority. So for instance, a thousand dollar fine for a trainer at Plain Ridge is very significant. And it might not be as significant for somebody that's racing horses at Belmont Park and earning a much larger purses. So that's something that we'll have to look at too. So again, I think the bill itself is 60 pages long and the bill doesn't even start to really get into regulations. So this is a very brief recap and I might have missed a few points but I think those are the main points. You know, main thing is they wanna try to get uniform guidance throughout the country. And the other main point I have is that right now there's very little known. So for anybody to ask me, you know, is the commission gonna implement this or go with this new thing on the standard bread side? It's way too early to have any type of recommendation. And again, on most of these issues, I think we're already at or exceeding what the authority may come up with. And I look forward to keeping the commission updated as this moves along and look forward to working with the harness horseman's association and Plain Ridge on any concerns they may have on this and any suggestions they may have as well. Commissioners, Mr. Cameron. Just one question. Dr. Leipa, any rationale provided about why the thoroughbred are mandated and other breeds are opt in? It started to, it was mainly pushed originally by thoroughbred interests. And there has been some concern among the different breeds about should they be treated in a uniform way or should there be certain things that make sense for one breed that may not make sense for another? So I think in that vein, they went with, we'll make it mandatory on the thoroughbred racing side and then make it opt in for standard breads. And depending on how they gear up that side of the program, you know, it may eventually, maybe standard breads will want it to be mandatory, but for now it is separate. Thank you. Other questions for Alex? Commissioner Zuniga, how's that? No, you were right that I did ask my question ahead of the agenda item. So thank you for the summary. We'll stay posted. You did your reading well. You were just putting well. So I figured after the first remarks that she hadn't touched on something, but she obviously had planned to it later. Yeah, she separated out nicely. That was fine. I guess my big takeaway is that I think you're messaging well that this is underway. It would be premature for you to bring anything to the commissioner, to the associations, but that it will be a matter that this commission, and rather than each state government, that's the regulating agency that will have jurisdiction as to the implementation, and that will have some degree, some at least 90 days. Is that what I'm hearing for implementation once they solidify their rules and regulations? Is that correct? They give you 90 days notice on how much it would cost your individual jurisdiction. I'm not sure how fast they'll go on their rulemaking. A lot of the people on the different committees have been involved in horse racing and have been associated with the different, the alphabet soup agencies dealing with it. So maybe the rulemaking process will go quickly. I'm not sure how fast, but I think the rulemaking process will come out first and then figuring out the cost and how to spread that cost out will come up after that. But it sounds like we'll have sufficient time to do thoughtful process, get public comments, have public hearings, all the necessary process that we like to engage in to ensure informed decision-making. But we're far from that right now. And one of the decisions may be not to opt in the first year or, you know, and see how it works on a thoroughbred side. And also it'll be interesting to see there's multiple jurisdictions that have both standardbred and thoroughbred racing. So it'll be interesting to see what those jurisdictions decide to do because they will be doing it on the thoroughbred side and then whether they opt in on the standardbred side and how that works out and develops will be interesting to see also. Well, then we look forward to continuing updates, but it sounds as though we have an update now and a plan for the future. Great, very, very helpful. I know Commissioner Cameron, you were probably well informed on this. So I think the rest of us are a little bit caught up now. So thank you. All right, do you want to go to item C now? Dr. LaBelle? Today we have Chip Campbell, the president of the standardbred owners of Massachusetts here for their recognition as the breeder's representative group. Just before I introduce him, I want to mention that the program continues to thrive. Even through the pandemic last year, we were able to have a great series of sire space spaces. Each year they continue to get more competitive and the organization is always very easy to work with and the program went off very smoothly last year. So now I'll introduce Chip Campbell. Thank you. Thank you, Dr. Leipam. I think Nancy Longabardi, the secretary treasurer is also with us today on the call if we have any questions that I may not be able to answer. Good morning, I am on yes. Thank you Chip. Terrific. Let me hear you, great. Thank you. Thank you. Good morning commissioners and thank you for the time today. As Dr. Leipam said, we're here today to request the approval to be approved, to be recognized as the organization to administer the standard bread breeding and sire state program. Even with all the challenges of 2020, the program was able to hold its own and ended the year on solid ground. We do have a few slides. I don't, I can just go forward if they're not available but the points there, it shows the number of registered brood mares. Went from 122 in 2019 to 120 in 2020. And if you think for a minute that if you're a breeder you have to make that decision to breed between February of the calendar year and the final breeding is in July. And the other decision you have to make is you have to choose to have your brood mare here in Massachusetts on the ground at a farm by December 1st. That timeframe on both of those decisions certainly during a time of continued uncertainty. And we would not have been surprised if the number of brood mares had been reduced more because those two decisions during a time when there were many other things going on I think speaks to the continued confidence in the program that many breeders have on the farms. The number of farms basically stayed about the same. The demands for their services continue to be level or increase. And one of the reasons they increased on some of the farms is because UMass Amherst unfortunately was had to shut down to the public. So we didn't have that resource to both house and full out and get your mares bred back which was quite a resource for many of us to lose. And we're very hopeful, we're optimistic that that will change here shortly and that there'll be a back on board and participating in the near future. The number of races, sorry, state races stayed the same which we're very happy about that. And the, but there were more opportunities given to mass breads specifically the race secretaries writing races now that give preference to mass bred horses. And they also give preference to 100% mass owned horses. Those two opportunities now allow for more horses to be involved locally. And we find that the feedback on that has been very positive and should continue to be positive going in the future because it allows for these mass breads after their sire stake season is over at two and at three to be able to continue to race locally with a preference being the mass breads. And so it increases the value of the horse and it also increases the most likely to have people stay around and race at Plain Ridge instead of maybe selling their horse which would end up in Ohio or Indiana or somewhere else racing in overnight. Along those lines, Plain Ridge Park has been a very valuable partner with the breeding program. The their willingness to basically accommodate us in any way they possibly can. And especially last year to allow races to go off pretty much as planned, which is pretty exciting. Specifically, Steve O'Toole and his staff, they go above and beyond long before the race states are even chosen for the year all the way through the year and then implementing the program. And I just feel it's important to point that out. We feel a very good work in relationship with them as well as Dr. Leipam who helps in many ways and assists in many different ways to have things go smoothly. If you can see the number of starters, if the slide is up that they aren't, if it's not then the number of starters increased in the sire-stake races as well as the talent level. You can see that in the fact that out of eight restricted sire-stake races, there were five new track and stake or stake records. That goes to the, I guess the more talented brood mares, bloodlines and people involved to continue to further the breed and give them an opportunity after sire-stakes are over to be able to race. Although 2021 still has its challenges, we remain optimistic about what is ahead of us all. And thank you again for your time today. We appreciate it. Thank you, Mr. Kimball. We were able to follow along because we have the path that's in front of us. So we did change the slides and the public home has them in the public packet. Of course, I'm mesmerized by the names of the horses. I don't know if we wanna vote on our favorite Commissioner Cameron, I'm kind of struck by bag of chips. One of the Phillies names. I agree that it's always interesting to read out to the track to see the names of the horses running is always a great interest. Yeah, that makes it always fun. Questions for President Campbell. So the starter number just as a reminder to the public went from 2019, that was 210 and then 2022, 39. So that's a favorable increase, correct? Yes. Yeah, yeah. It's a really nice report. And again, PPC will be presenting its quarterly report and we'll note the compliment you've given them as a good partner, it doesn't surprise me. This is all very good news. I do know that you need a vote, Dr. Leibhahn, today. But any questions for Mr. Campbell? Good one comment, Madam Chair. It wasn't a question, but when I looked at the breeding numbers, I did pause and I said, I did not realize that the pandemic really did impact. So those numbers are actually quite good considering all of the elements that have to happen and the uncertainty that you just laid out. So I think that's certainly a tribute to the dedication of the folks involved in particular the breeders. So thank you for educating us with that fact. Great. It remained stable and in some points it was even more favorable, right? Thank you, Mr. Cameron. I guess I would love to hear Dr. Leibhahn in the future the update on the UMass facility. I know that you've reported on that in the past and I understand it's important in this program. So we'll stay tuned. Any further questions? And we'll need to provide a vote if we have a recommendation, Dr. Leibhahn. I recommend that they be approved as the representative group of the standard bred breeders. Commissions. Madam Chair, I would move that the commission approved that standard bred owners of Massachusetts incorporated as the representative organization of standard bred breeders and owners referenced in Chapter 128, Section 2J. Second. Thank you. Any further questions or comments? Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Zuniga. Aye. I vote yes. President Campbell, thank you and thank you, Dr. Leibhahn, for your ongoing work with this association and its success. Thank you so much. Thank you. Nancy, thank you. Okay, then we're moving on to, I think it's, I'm scrolling back, item D, Dr. Leibhahn, 5D. Yeah, so we thought it would be great to have a update on the meat, as you know, Plain Ridge started racing mid-April and they continue to work on trying to improve things for the horsemen and for racing commission employees. One of the things we noted last year when we had to quickly improvise because of the pandemic and move space the horses out. So we used the entire backside basically as the paddock. It made a lot of extra walking for everybody. And that put some stress on some people. One solution that Plain Ridge came up with for this year was they put an extra door in the, what was the old paddock so that now if you're in the paddock or in the test barn you can go directly to that door into the rest of the barn area. Before, it was not a big deal but you had to either walk to the front or the back of the paddock to go around. Numerous people, both horsemen and our employees have said how much they appreciated that. So I just wanted to highlight one of the ways that Steve and his crew has made things better for everybody this year even. It was very exciting to be able to open on time this year. I can't stress that enough after everything that we went through last year. Once again, I want to thank Steve and his crew and the horsemen for working through those issues last year. We got through a very difficult time in a good manner where everybody came out healthy and purse money was earned and jobs, people got back to their jobs, so it was very exciting. This year there is a, I feel a real sense of optimism. Not just that, it looks like the pandemic may be winding down but everybody's very happy to be back race. With that, I'll turn it over to Steve. Thanks, Alex. I didn't realize that the doors was going to be such a hit so I think we'll probably add a few more. I think everybody really happy, right? Thanks so much, commissioners, for having me present today and give you a recap of the last couple of years and as Alex said, where we're headed in the future. I was really happy at the end of the year. Last year I wasn't so happy during the year but at the end of the year I was very happy with how the meat went off. It was taxing for my staff, both on the top side as well as the back side. They did a tremendous job in handling customers and we had one little glitch on the back side that was taken care of with the help of the horsemen. They self-policed after we ran into a little bit of a hiccup with some of the protocols but they were very strict protocols and I give them a lot of credit. The Horsemen's Association stepped in and helped monitor as well as Alex's team and my team and that helped out and we had, I believe, a COVID free season which is pretty remarkable given the fact that when COVID first struck as some of you might recall, the harness racing industry in New Jersey and New York was hit pretty hard right off the bat when no one really knew what was happening to people. So we're very proud of the fact that we pulled it off and I give the credit to my staff as well as the work that went into pulling off a meat shorthanded because of some of my employees didn't wanna come back because they felt susceptible so we were very happy. Now, getting to the numbers, they're pretty impressive as well. We had 68 days of racing in 2020 compared to 108 days in 2019 and of course the horsemen will always tell you that they need more racing days. However, with those 68 days and the less racing and given the fact that we went into the meat with $900,000 or into the new year with $900,000 carried over in our purse account and given the fact that we overpaid the purses by 500,000 we were able to provide overnight purses of $6,500,000 whereas for the 108 race days the year before it was just a little bit over $9 million. So the horsemen enjoyed the ability to race for pretty much the same amount maybe even a little bit more during that time. So that provided them with a stable income and we also pulled off a very successful Clara Barton and Spirit of Massachusetts Day which was right at the very beginning of when we opened so that was a little bit tough to do but we got that in and not only did we get that in but we also got a world record from Manchego which we're very proud of. There's a picture of him in your packet or her I should say it's a female horse her crossing the finish line in world record time. And when I mentioned world record that means it's a record for a five eighth mile track for that particular gate. So that's standing today and hopefully it'll stand for a long time. As you just heard from Chip Campbell and I won't steal any of his thunder but the Massachusetts breeding program is just doing very, very well. We have so many more horse my race secretary has so many more horses now today that have been raised in the state to work with in overnight races once they're racing in the sire states program is completed. So what that does for the track what that does for the breeders themselves and what that does for the owners of those horses is tremendous. And one of the things as Chip pointed out you know the breeders have a long-term commitment it's a three year commitment whether they even know that their horse is gonna race. They start with a stallion book and breed a mare takes a year and then you raise the fall it's another year and then there's big expenses in training some of them go south to train and then come back. So it's three years of total commitment for any dollars are seen. So for the program to be striving the way it is and we feel at playing with myself and my race secretary Paul Barrett feel that it's very important that we continue that on and give those horses as Chip mentioned recognition as far as conditions and also this year we plan on actually writing some races for four and five year olds because their stake races are limited to two and three year olds. So we want to reward that commitment not only in our racing program but in the state of Massachusetts because there's so many farms and we need these farms to continue on as well as training centers to continue on in order to provide our folks the tools they need to compete here and it's become highly competitive with all of our races and the purses that we're offering these days. As far as this year is concerned we've got off to a great start. Our track is in good shape. Alex's team is using the new door that we put in and some of the horsemen we've also added a few other things on the backside to make it a little bit easier for our horsemen to get around.  We're working through that but all things are very positive for this coming season. That's about it. Unless... Questions commissioners for Steve. Unless Alex wants to put in an order for more doors that's all right. To get them. We're good thank you. Thank you Cameron. Mr. O'Toole nice to see you. Great to see you. Thank you for that report and I'm going to get it just reminds me I'm going to get out there soon but I was just wondering how that infield is looking at this year. The infield looks good. We have an awful lot of geese. We don't like...  Our outrider he tends to the geese more than he tends to horses on the track. Okay. Holding hot horses on the track but the infield feels good. I think you know for the other commissioners benefit our infield was structured so that it takes all the stormwater from the property and filters it through the infield for recycling and we use that water for irrigation for the property. So all the nice green grass that we have coming into the property and also the hundreds of gallons of thousands of millions I guess it is. Gallons of water that we put on the track. I mean in between every race we put at least 2,500 gallons of water down on the track between every race. So we go through an awful lot of water. If we didn't have that recharge system we don't know where we would have water built. Very high I guess. But so our infield sometimes looks a little tattered on the very inside but we try to keep the rim as green and lush as possible. Yeah, it's a great sustainability story, Steve. Thank you for the report as well, Steve. And even though this was an unusual year because of the delay start and what not due to COVID the numbers look increasingly improving. As you mentioned the breeding program are the field sizes increasing? What do you expect for next year? More flexibility as you mentioned for your program to have more options or what do you see in terms of other benefits in terms of field size and whatnot? So we've realized the benefit of the program already with the field size. Field size has been large enough that I believe most of them were all bedding races last year where in the past we would race them as non-betters because of the non-competitiveness or the short fields that were provided. So we've benefited already by being able to use those fields as bedding races and they've been highly, highly competitive and really featured a lot of good competition. On both sides of the aisle, both the Pacers and the Trotters, there's two powerhouse stables that provide horses for us. The Chip Campbell stable, he has some very, very great horses. As you know in 2013, he and his partners won the Hamiltonian with the Massachusetts eligible horse which is the biggest trotting race we have in the country. And a lot of that horses offspring is now making its way into the program as well. And also the Lindy Farms stable breeding farm which is a very large operation internationally known. And so the competition here is very, very high and it's been right across the board, it's been very good. And even the smaller breeders have been able to keep up as well. So it's really a great story and we couldn't be any happier with that program. And as well as the overnight horses that our horsemen have been providing, the horse association has been providing as well. We've grown every season with larger fields and our handle last year it was a tough ride, but this year our handle has been up for the same couple of weeks, starting off the meet, not the same weeks of the year but the same weeks as far as the first two weeks, three weeks of our meeting. Right, no it's great to see, I remember learning about the race horse development fund early on and what it was expected to do and it's really nice to see the fruits of that of those programs taken together with the efforts of all of you. Bare fruits as intended. Yeah, I agree with that. Commissioner Zuniga, this program really shows the, it indicates that the objectives of the horse racing development fund are being met and that's a huge success. And of course, we think a lot about all the jobs associated that we see at the race track in the day of the races, but of course all the ancillary businesses that are supported in the green space that it's preserved because of the success of the program. The ripple effects are enormous. I have to say I was at opening day, it was a cold day, steep risk and given all the protocols I opted to stay outside and it was very exciting and it triggered for me really a restart for spring, a really beginning of normalcy for me and I'm glad to see that the program is off to a great start. So I also got to see North who just went behind his video in that lead car. Did you have fun, North? I did, it's the best way to watch a race. To be up there where the starters are, I mean, I did not, so I'm a little bit new to the harness racing side of it. So the running start is different for me and I didn't realize as you watch that race that some of those horses will bump up against that gate with their nose. I would have thought that, I mean, they're ready to go. Sometimes when that starting car pulls away, it's a lot to watch, it's really cool. So yeah, it was a great day, it was cold, it was a little brisk, but we've had a good meet so far this year and we're excited and Steve and his team do a great job making everything work for us out there. And PVC deserves a lot of credit for all that the supports it provides, so thank you. Thank you, Mr. O'Toole, I think, are we all set commissioners? I was just going to suggest, Mr. O'Toole, you'll have to get the chair in the starter pod. I've done it, I've done it. Oh, you did do it? Oh yeah, in 2019. No, 2019, best day of my time on the commission. It's excellent to do. And they've all been wonderful, but that was the best day. Actually, I think, I'm not sure if it was permissible, but I did take a photo from the lead car and I texted it to my kids who are across the country and one said, wait, do they, do they try to catch the car? Confused as to what was going on. It's actually enormously exciting. I hope everybody, the other commissioners have had a chance to do it, but really, really exciting, so. Yes. Alrighty, Alex, you've had a big day today, but you have one, we don't need a vote on this item for Mr. O'Toole, thank you for the update. I know we're gonna get some more. The only thing I wondered if you could remind me of the dates for Claire Barton's fear of Massachusetts. Do you have those, Steve? Yeah, that's July 25th. It's a special Sunday racing matinee at two o'clock. Thanks. Okay. You're gonna come out for that? It's on my calendar. Great. Okay, can't wait to see it. Thank you, as well. And it's gonna feel even better than it did feel in April because as we continue to see such favorable health trends. So everything's looking up. Thanks, Steve. Thank you very much. Yeah, now, Alex, I think you're on to your final item for today, item me. Yes, this is the Master of Red Breeders Association. They are in a consulting role under 128, which is the agricultural statute for how they, the different things that they can do with their breeders money. And so earlier this year, they brought some plans to us. There was a meeting with the chair, Commissioner Cameron, Council Grossman, Executive Director Wells and I and a couple of Arlene Brown and a couple of other people from the breeders where we discussed their plans and talked about how we felt it fit in with the statute. So this letter basically just puts into writing what we discussed at that meeting. Council Grossman had input in drafting it as well as we've had other comments on it too. And so it was kind of a group effort to get the letter together. Just some highlights. One of the things they were requesting or one of their plans was to pay out on races to the sixth place. Right now under the statute, it says to the third place. So I mentioned that they did wanna change bonuses given to the stallion mayors and different owners through the breeding program. And it was a 5% increase to the breeders and that definitely makes sense. They're trying to think of ways to increase the breeding. As you know, their program has had a tough time now that there's no longer racing at Suffolk they have not been able to have the success that there has been on the stand on the standard side and they're trying to figure out how to navigate the situation that they're in now. Then they did go on and look at what they called breeders incentives. And right now under 128, there is nothing mentioned as breeding incentives. This is something that we discussed with them as far back as January of, I'm trying to think of 2020. This was when Council General Justin Stempeck was still here and Commissioner Cameron and I met with them and Justin and we're really trying to come up with some new ways that might incentivize breeding. And one of them was to actually give an amount of money out at different stages of the breeding. As you heard on the standard bedside today, it does take several years, three years at least before you get a horse to the races and start seeing any return on your investment. And so the idea was if you maybe give a payment when the horse is bred, when the foal is born, when the foal is registered, that this would give an owner and the breeders some money along the way to help them through the program. It sounds like something that's worth trying to me. It's definitely would help along the way, but I just, it's not mentioned in 128 now. And 128 is fairly specific. They do start off general about talking about the breeders association doing what they can to promote and encourage, throw bred breeding, but then it gets more specific and it goes on to say in the following manner. And so right now breeders bonuses are not included in the statute. I did want to say one thing. Arlene Brown wishes she could be here today. And she did give me permission to tell you all she did get injured a little while ago with one of her a two hour old foal injured her. And she ended up with several broken ribs and was in the hospital for a little bit. So she is mending and she's at home now, but she isn't on the call today. Oh, dedication to her profession. Oh, we all wish her well. Yes. Questions for Dr. Lightbound on both process and substance, the letter. This wood has not yet gone out to Arlene. It's public, but is that correct, Alex? That's correct. Yeah, you haven't signed it yet. Commissioners, Commissioner Cameron, I see your hand. Yes, yes.  I'm sorry. All right. Just the lighting, it's fine. Okay. So first of all, I want to wish Arlene Brown a speedy recovery. I'm sure that that new foal had sharp little legs that must have been kicking, right? And so I do wish her well. I've just heard about that, her injuries, as part of the work she loves and does well. Secondly, I think the letter has outlined, it's our best advice, right, in our consultation role. It's how we think the statute should be interpreted properly and they asked for that and I think we're giving them the best advice we can. So I certainly think it's an appropriate letter to forward. Commissioner Bryant, can we share some of that? I just didn't know, Todd, if you had any thoughts you wanted to share on the process or the letter, everything that's been said makes sense to me. I just didn't know if you had anything to add. Thank you, Commissioner. No, I think Alex did a beautiful job summarizing the contents of the letter and the thought that was behind everything there. So there's nothing really else to be added to that. My understanding, Todd, we have vote list on the agenda, but technically don't need to vote. It's the chair of the commission. So the consultations, technically with the chair, I think she's looking for input, but technically as a consultation, the commission could go ahead and just give some input and then Alex could send out the letter, correct? That's exactly right. Okay. Commissioner Bryant, did you have any concerns with respect to the content or the process? The only thing I wondered was whether there was any sort of ongoing conversation. It kind of ends, you know, lauding their efforts and reminding them of things. I didn't know if there's another stage to this consultation, whether they come back with further information or whether this is the way we want to end it or you want to end it. I think we do get regular updates. Todd, do you want to advise? Well, I think it depends what their response to the recommendations is. You know, it perhaps does warrant an ongoing conversation. They may agree with the points that are made in the letter and pivot off of what their initial proposal is. And if they want to move forward with some of those things, we've recommended they get legal counsel to offer them some direction. So yeah, I think a further conversation is certainly appropriate, but it a lot just depends on their reaction to these points. And then of course, they also have an obligation by statute to consult with the Department of Agriculture. So that's, I know Alex, you have channels of communication with that agency as well. But I feel as though this by memorializing the consultation and writing really allows an opportunity for the Gaming Commission to provide its insights and we will continue to monitor and get updates on their practices. Commissioner Zuniga, what do you think about the process and that substance? Are you all set? Yeah, yeah, I look forward to their response. I'm curious as to, I think that the letter articulates well the points and potential concerns, but look forward to what they have to see and go from there. Okay, hearing no objections, then I think that no vote is required. We have a consensus that this is a good next step and you would sign this Dr. Leipzig and we'll get it out. Is that sound right, Karen? Yes. Okay, Alex, big day. And we're really on spot on time if I understand Mary Ann's timing agenda. It is now 1140 and I think she allocated 20 minutes before we take a lunch break, Karen. So with that said, you can take more than 20 minutes, but I just remember noting that that was the timing. Excellent, thank you so much. Mary Ann's magic and we'll get started. You have a report today on regulatory. I'm a lot of meaning. Okay, sorry, I'm just here, it's only behind me. All right, so the next time on the agenda is the regulation review updates. So I've been working with Commissioner Zuniga and Attorney Kara Teresee on the process. So we just wanted to come before the commission. The process of having a regulatory review is certainly an excellent tool. It's a quality assurance tool to make sure that we're doing things the right way. We've been up and running for several years now. The time is clearly right to just take another look and review the regulations. So the team, we looked through some of the options and came up with some proposed 2021 regulatory review goals. Those are in your memo as number one, ensure regulations are clear, well-written and understandable. Two, eliminate duplicative or contradictory requirements. Three, eliminate unnecessary and minimize overly burdensome requirements. Four, ensure reporting requirements are necessary and provided information is used by regulatory agency. And four, eliminate barriers to equity and inclusion. So we've also talked a little bit in the memo about why those particular goals. One was just ease of navigation. We want this to be easy for our users to go through these and be able to understand them and go through them and be able to comply. The second reason was fairness. We want to do the right thing as an agency. Our agency is all about integrity. So making sure that this is fair and we're doing the right thing would be an applicable goal for this regulatory review. And then the fourth was the reduction of unnecessarily regulatory burdens. So having unnecessary things, things we don't use, superfluous information, that's really not required. So why, it's the why, asking for things because we're actually using them. So those are some of the reason behind it. And then we've identified a proposed review process led by Commissioner Zanigan. I'll be working with him, legal staff. The steps here that we've identified are number one, at this meeting, some commission feedback on the proposed goals. Are these things that you think are worthwhile? Is there anything we're missing? Just get some feedback from the commission. We'll need a form for the review process. Here, Teresa has already sort of done a draft review form for different members of the staff to fill out as they look through different sections. One of the first thing we do is we would identify a set of regulations and associated documents to commence the review. As they indicated in the memo, we can't do everything all at once. So we'll have to do this on a rolling basis. So we'll identify the first set of regulations. What do we want to look at first? Do that, Sean. We may have some lessons learned in there. Maybe we modify our process a little bit. But that would be sort of the initial ideas go through them one at a time and have the group identify the first regs. We have a review team or working group for proposed regulations on the review. That may change depending on the regulations. So, for example, we go through the licensing regulations. Obviously, Division Chief Skinner would be heavily involved in that process. And then maybe we get someone else that knows nothing about licensing regulations. So someone that looks at them and says, hey, that doesn't really make any sense to me because they've never seen them before. It can actually be really helpful as opposed to someone that sees them every day and assumes everybody knows what they mean. Number five, look at a timeline, conduct a preliminary assessment of the regulation in question. It's also important to develop and implement a process for stakeholder input. We want to hear from the licensees, potentially maybe get some input from different vendors or employees, just get some input on how these things are working. We then finalize any proposed regulatory revisions and then present them to the commission or the normal approval process for any amendments. So that's sort of the outline. I did want to give particularly commissioners to Nega a chance to chime in on his thoughts on the process and where we are and just thoughts on the goals and where we are as far as that identification. So I think you're on the way. Yeah, yeah, thank you, Karen. Yeah, if I may just emphasize a couple of the key points of this summary. As Karen started, this really goes back to a good practice, a best practice that you identified, Cathy, early on about the need and desire to do a regulatory review of that could go back all the way to the beginning with the goals articulated. There was a convergence with the equity and inclusion working group that you also identified and implemented a few months back and in which that becomes another important goal as part of the regulation review. And in keeping with the convergence theme as the way that we're envisioning the rolling basis and the working groups with different elements of our staff, we will continue to involve or the desire is to involve people who have lived with these regulations and people who need to learn the regulations by virtue of either being new or being in a position where they are going to live with these regulations. So that's part of the next steps. At this point is to come for input on whether there needs to be more clarity on some of the goals that are meant to be brought so that they apply to all of them or whether we need to be thinking about a particular sets of regulation to start with. And before that, by the way, before I finish, another part that's not clearly stated, but we're here in this memo, but we clearly are anticipating would be a necessity. We come to modify regulations often. And the idea is not to replicate any of those efforts. So whatever the legal department has already identified as necessary to address for whatever reason that this would be an effort that would be done at the same time. There's elements about rules of the game, for example, that are not stipulated in regulation, they're referenced. So there's other documents that this effort would by definition also touch on, forms, et cetera. And again, the idea is not to replicate the effort, but to converge and focus as intended. And so one of the principles here that we've talked about is also, don't overly complicate it. If you make this simple, if you make it direct and it's easy for folks to understand this process of the regulatory review, it'll be much easier for people to complete and we'll be able to move things along and I think get a better result. So that's one of the reasons the, sort of we have, as Commissioner Ziegen mentioned, we have these high level regulatory review goals that we're looking at. So I mean, I think right now I'm just looking to see if there's any feedback on the goals and on the process. If the commission is comfortable with that, we'll go forward with the process and then we'll give regular updates on how we're going and then ultimately, if there's any recommended changes, they would come in front of the commission for an opportunity to make a decision. Well, I'll chime in first just to get the ball rolling. I am very, very pleased with the entire presentation today, the memo. It's straightforward and I do think streamlining the process and keeping it simple will help you achieve the objectives that you've stated. This is a really good process to institutionalize and of course, as it gets institutionalized, it gets easier, right? And I think to Commissioner Ziegen's point, you know, we are involved in rulemaking and regulations on an ongoing basis. Even in our role, commissioners, we will be thinking more of the goals and we'll start, you know, in the legal department, we'll start writing regulations where these goals in mind and so it becomes really self-filling. So you had a lot of regulations, commissioners, that you had to promulgate early on. So the time does seem right and I'm just pleased that given everything that you've had to address this year that you've gotten this work going, I have one recommendation with respect to goals. I think it's probably in there, but I wonder if we wanna articulate it whether a regulation is consistent with or not in conflict with state or federal law because the regulation may precede a change in state law so there probably needs to be a check on that. Okay. Probably doesn't arise very often but I think it's one of those things Carrie and Todd will know it when they see it. And that's one of those things we can add to that form that we were talking about. It's sort of an item for each regulation. Make sure whoever's reviewing it checks that. If it's connected or derived from a state law, right, just let you, okay. That was my only, those are my only comments. Other comments, Commissioner O'Brien. Thank you, Madam Chair. I know I like it also. My only comment in terms of the proposed goals in it's somewhat covered when you say duplicative or contradictory, but we might have either complete or unnecessary in there. Okay. Maybe there's a game we don't use that's not used, et cetera. And I don't see the point in having rules of the game necessarily let's say perpetuate if they don't exist in the jurisdiction. So to make everything cleaner too, to just keep an eye toward if we have regs that govern some equipment, rule or game that just doesn't exist anymore. It might be worth taking a look at when you're. Okay. Take it out. Okay, got it. That looks good. Okay. Thank you. I didn't mean to cut you off, Commissioner O'Brien. Are you all set? Commissioner Cameron. I agree that this is a worthwhile process, something that we need to do. I remember early on when we were, and Commissioner Zaniga will recognize that we'll remember this as well. Yeah, we had long kind of philosophical discussions about did we want to be overly prescriptive, which is really in some sense, it's people know exactly what to expect and it might be easier to enforce them, but or do we want to, you know, keep them, streamline them and let the licensees come to us. So in particular, I'm thinking about many of the, you know, whether it be the rules of the games out at the casinos or any of the casino-specific regulations, or do we let, give some, make it shorter and let the licensees come to us and say, look, we think this fits. We think we can do it this way and it gives them a little flexibility. So we had long discussions about that. And I think some of our regulations, we really did decide to keep them, just give some generics and let them come back to us with the specifics. And in others, we were pretty specific because some of our experts, you know, kind of convinced us that was the way to go. So I think looking at that with a fresh set of eyes, Karen, I like that you said, having someone else look at it that hasn't been in the weeds for years with regard to that subject. And is it understandable? Is it easy to understand what we're expecting? So I thought that was a really good point that you made about that fresh set of eyes that hasn't been working with that particular set of regulations for years. So when I saw all the goals, I thought they were excellent. I love the idea of getting back and taking a look at some of these things that we did years ago, because we now have a lot of expertise that we did. So good work and it's really worthwhile endeavor. Thank you. Yeah, let me add to that because I think it's an excellent point. I remember thinking about precisely that, the question that seemed at times unanswerable, how prescriptive do you want to be or how flexible and broad, which is the counterfactual. And the difference now is that we have a lot more experience with whatever those approaches yielded in the staff because we've lived through them in the regulated entity, the licensees, et cetera. So it will continue to be a question, but one that won with the goals, we can address with a lot more comfort. I would argue. Okay. I think I would, just to add to that, having been there historically, what I'm hearing is that there really is some values, judgment that's attached to this process. I like that you include fairness. So if we go back to the values that were adopted by the commission early on, that drives the review process too. I don't know if you want to reference that, but I think we know that on a daily basis, we work as a values-driven organization. And so the fairness factor jumped out at me and I was very pleased with that. Commissioner O'Brien, you're leaning in? Oh, okay. Okay. Oh, the kitty's leaning in. What is the, what is the main, main? I think I was excited at the start of the launch, apparently. Oh, I wondered if he wanted to chime in on regulatory review, maybe on cat food standards. All right. Anything further on this important matter? You streamlined not only the process and the presentation, but you might have even streamlined four minutes ahead of the presentation time. So there we go. Off to a great start. Yeah. You never want to be the person holding people up from their lunch. So, you know. But that is our next thing on our agenda. Does that still make sense? I think Chief Delaney will have the licensees coming in for their presentations after, well, for the community mitigation first and then the two quarterly reports after the lunch. So what do we have? What did Marianne schedule for time? 12 to 1230 for lunch, ma'am. Okay. Thank you. So, does that make sense? Well, we'll break now and reconvene at 1230. Excellent. Sounds good to me. Yeah. Excellent morning, everyone. Thank you for all the contributions. It's just after 1230, 1233. And we are now turning to, I'll take a roll call to confirm virtually that we're all here. Commissioner Cameron. Good afternoon. I'm here. Good afternoon. Commissioner Bryan. I am here. And commissioners in again. Here. Okay. We can get started. We're reconvening an item number seven and that is Chief Delaney. Thank you so much. And thank you everyone again for this morning. Great. Thank you, Madam Chair and commissioners. So for your consideration today, we have the final eight community mitigation fund grant applications. These fall in the transportation planning, transportation construction and community planning categories. So after today's presentations and votes, we will come back before you one more time to give a final summary of everything and a wrap up of the community mitigation fund for 2021. I think we've got that tentatively planned for June 3rd. So without further ado, I'll jump right into the transportation planning grant applications that we have. First one is the city of Boston, the Sullivan Square design. So the city's requesting $200,000 for the ongoing design of long-term improvements to Sullivan Square and Rutherford Ave. Approximately 70% of the casino related traffic, travels through Sullivan Square. So really for this reason alone, the review team agrees that there certainly is a casino related impact on Sullivan Square. Now the commission has been funding this project for the last few years. We've provided to date a total of $850,000 towards this design effort. If this grant is approved, that would bring the commission contribution up to 1.05 million, which makes up about 9.5% of the total design cost of $11 million. And the city has indicated to us that this should be their last request for design funds. So the 25% design plans for this project have been submitted to MassDOT and they expect to have a public hearing in June. 75% design plans are expected to be submitted in early 2022 with the 100% plan submitted in the fall of 2022. And both Encore and MassDOT were in support of this application. So the review team agrees that this level of investment is appropriate, considering that it will help leverage over $150 million in construction funds and recommends awarding a grant in the amount of $200,000 to the city of Boston. And with that, I will open that one up for any questions. Any slurs? Any questions? Christian Zuneda, are you leaning in? Well, just to agree with the recommendation, I mean, I think anything relative to traffic and Sullivan Square has been and continues to be a really, in my opinion, at the top of what the community mitigation might have intended, the community mitigation fund rather. So I mean, full support of this recommendation, the bigger question becomes, what happens after, but in the meantime, it's important to fund design money so that the work can progress. Joe, while we go on in terms of process, I'm reminded that we voted on all public safety applications, but we have heard a last, in our last commission meeting, we did hear your recommendations as to some of the other categories. I don't think they're set forth in this document. Ultimately, we wanna vote category-wise. Is that correct? Is that the process, Karen, that we're imagining? That was muted. Yeah, that was my understanding. Please, Joe, chime in. They would do it in groups, correct? Yeah, Commissioner O'Brien's been working with Todd on motions for that. And I think the idea is that we will, all of the ones that were remaining from the last meeting on the sixth, plus these will all be voted on at the end, by category. Okay. And I believe, and Joe, you can correct me if I'm wrong. There was a Northampton community planning that was outstanding to vote on today from the last meeting. Is that the only one? No, no, there's... But I had nine plus... I'm doing four. Is it 13 all in? 14. 14, all right. I may be missing one as we go through. I think the Northampton one was the one that was missing. Was that one? Okay, so that was... From the last. Yeah. Yeah, maybe in the interim, Todd, you can, we can see that list all together. I'm just trying to keep my head straight in terms of transportation, planning, grant applications. Yep. Yeah, I have the 14. Yeah, 14. Okay. All right, so maybe as we're doing these, we can think about whether there are some other... I guess what I'm hearing is we're gonna conclude, but if we're doing transportation planning now, could we... I think maybe if I could suggest, as Joe goes through each category, Joe, if you just wanna make a reference to anything in that category we discussed at the last date, and that would sort of close out that category. That's what I'm looking for. Commissioner O'Brien, thank you for filling in my words because I wasn't being very clear. That would help at least me think about our categories. Does that make sense, Joe? Does that work for you? I don't wanna... No, yeah, that's fine. Let me just... Because we've got a few transportation planning grant ones now. Yeah, let me just... But I'm just gonna note it as I go along so I can keep track of them in my head. I intended to do that last night and I just didn't get to it. My apologies, Joe. No worries. I'm just quickly opening up that document just from my own screen so I have... Sure, yeah, thank you. Appreciate it. That would keep us working on it. All right, now... Okay, so I think then we're all set on the Boston one, right? Yep. Commissioner, and so I'm moving on to Maldon. Sorry to put a... Oh, no problem. No problem. Thank you. So the next one is Maldon Broadway Improvements. So the city of Maldon's requesting $200,000 to start the design of improvements to Broadway from the Everett City Line to the Melrose City Line. And this request will also advance the design of one area of Broadway near the Everett Line to full big documents. Now, the environmental impact for the Encore project estimated that about 1% of the traffic generated by Encore will use Broadway in Everett and Maldon. In addition, Maldon serves as a transportation hub for Encore with shuttle buses going to and from the Maldon Center T station. There are also a substantial number of Encore employees living in Maldon that may also use this route. So the review team agrees that all these together, certainly constitutes an impact on the Broadway corridor, although that impact is relatively minor. Now, the total construction cost for these improvements on Broadway is estimated at $8 million and it's expected to be funded through the state's Transportation Improvement Program. A full design of these improvements would be expected in the $800,000 to a million dollar range. So if we consider sort of a maximum all-in cost of about $9 million, the contribution that the Community Mitigation Fund would be making would be about 2.2% of the total project costs. You know, while the review team agree that there is an impact on Broadway, it is relatively minor with an estimated increase in traffic of about 250 vehicles per day. You know, therefore we had to consider whether the proposed Community Mitigation Funds were proportional to the impact. Now, considering that the cost of this work would only add up to about 2.2% of the total project cost, the review team certainly felt that this was proportional. And both Mastod and Encore were in favor of this project. And just by comparison, this project is very similar to the project that we funded up in Lynn last year on Western Ave, where we were looking at it as, even though the impact on the road is fairly small, we felt that providing sort of some seed money to get the project started was appropriate. And we look at that, this project is being very similar to that. So for all of these reasons, the review team recommends awarding a grant in the amount of $200,000 to the city involved. And with that, I will open that one up for any questions. Any questions? I think you're all set, John. Okay. And of course, we've had the benefit of us an excellent briefing. So the next one is West Springfield, the Elm Street improvements. They are requesting $147,600 to design complete streets improvements to Elm Street and South Worth Street, and to also purchase some traffic counting equipment. So really, this is essentially kind of a four-part request. The first is a redesign of a portion of Elm Street. The second part is extending the limits of that earlier project further down Elm Street. The third is extending the limits of that earlier project to a portion of South Worth Street. And the fourth is the purchase of the traffic counting equipment. The review team is not recommending funding for this project for several reasons. And I'm gonna give a little bit of a history lesson on this, if you'll indulge me for a couple of moments just to put it in context. So back in 2017, the commission awarded a grant to West Springfield for complete streets improvements to Elm Street, which is the same project that we're dealing with here. The design that was advanced would have resulted in the loss of some parking in the area to accommodate bike lanes. Now, after the plan was complete, a meeting was held with the business community on that plan and the loss of parking on street was not well received. So the town decided that they would re-evaluate, they want to re-evaluate the location of the bike lanes and redesign that section of the road. So this... Lisa. Thank you. We didn't want to hear her phone call. So sorry, just to keep it straight again. No worries. So essentially, the review team just didn't believe that it should be the role of the CMF to be funding the redesign of work. Had the issues around parking been raised earlier with the business community, this redesign effort could have been avoided. And then the second part of this, the review team really couldn't identify an impact of the casino that is associated with the expansion of the work. So the expansion of the project on Elm Street appears to be due only to the proposed relocation of the bike lanes and is beyond the limit of route 20 where casino-related traffic impacts are generated. The proposed expansion of the project onto South Worth Street is associated with the construction of a new school. Now there is some of this, the town has some proposed changes in the traffic flow that would bring some of the traffic from the school out to the intersection of Elm Street and South Worth Street. And while an increase in traffic at that location may be of concern, that new traffic is an impact of the school and not the casino. And with respect to the traffic counting equipment, the review team felt that this really was more of a general municipal expense rather than a response to a casino-related impact. And both Mass.NMGM both expressed some reservations regarding this project. So again, we are not recommending this one and I'd be happy to answer any questions regarding this application. Questions? I just had one point of clarification that I might be helpful to. I think that when we were talking about it, there was some discussion about whether you could determine, I know if they had, if they'd submitted the application with the current bike lane plans, there arguably would have been a need to do a small section at one end to have the bikes come back in where they needed to connect. But is it accurate to say that there was no way to determine how much of the grant application would have pertained to that discrete section? Yeah, we did ask the town to provide us, if they could provide a breakdown of sort of the pieces of this. And they just, they indicated that, you know, the proposal that they got from their consultant was kind of a lump sum proposal for the whole thing and that they couldn't really break out the costs of the pieces of it. Okay, thank you. Yeah, I had that same question. So the full amount was the $147,600. And no, the application doesn't suggest any kind of online item analysis, correct? No, except for the traffic counting equipment, which I don't have that number right in front of me, but as memory serves, it was about, that was about 9,000, I think. And Joe, the thought was, can you hear me? Okay, the thought was that traffic counting now, after the fact really doesn't serve any purpose correct because we didn't have a baseline. Well, yeah, I think if this request had been done maybe before the opening, and they were trying to use this equipment to establish baselines and evaluate the actual impacts of the casino, it might have more merit. Buying the equipment now, while they could certainly use it to count traffic on Route 20 and on Memorial Ave, some of the major routes to the casinos, it wouldn't really provide any particular utility because you wouldn't be able to parse out what traffic is casino related and what isn't. So we felt that really, I mean, and look, communities all over the Commonwealth have traffic counting equipment and they use them in neighborhoods when people are complaining about cut-through traffic and other things and so it's, it seemed more like a general municipal expense rather than in any kind of direct response to the casino. This as well as the other three items really do get back to the fact that the team could not make a nexus to the casino, correct? Yeah, I think certainly on the expansion work, we didn't really find the nexus. Now, of course on the area that they're asking for redesign, a certain portion of the traffic, about 5% of the MGM traffic is estimated to use Route 20. So two years, I was saying four years ago when we approved the grant, we made that connection. We said, sure, there is an impact on that section of Route 20. So that piece of it is more of the fact that we're saying that we probably just shouldn't be funding redesign of work that had been done previously. And so the other three pieces of it are sort of the nexus to the casino wasn't really made and that one piece of it is more, maybe we shouldn't be funding the redesign of work that we already funded. Okay, thank you. Any further questions, comments? We can circle back to as we hear the other recommendations. Thank you, Joe. Okay, so that concludes the transportation planning. And maybe I can just give you the rundown of the ones that we've covered between this meeting and the last meeting. So under transportation planning, of course, we just covered the Boston Sullivan Square. At the last meeting, we covered Chickapee, the Chickapee Center streetscapes. At the last meeting, we also covered the Everett Mystic Riverwalk, that little piece of boardwalk that they wanna build. In Maldon, the Broadway improvements that we just talked about, and that is, those are all of the ones that we are recommending. And then there were the two transportation planning grants that we are not recommending. One was in Lynn, which was the traffic and safety improvements at Boston Street and Hamilton Street. And the other one was West Springfield, the Elm Street improvements that we just discussed. Commissioner Brown, I know that you worked with Todd on this, but if this is the end of this particular category, does it make sense that we finalize discussion on this and do our voting now? I mean, I think for me, it might help me keep organized in my process. That's fine. So what Todd and I had done is grouped what was still outstanding by category, consistent with the recommendations of the working group and the team. And then we can obviously change that. I mean, if the consensus is that we are voting, contrary to that, it's very easy to just swap them out. And then to have a definitive vote rejecting anything that was not recommended. And if we agree with that, then there'd be a sort of a secondary motion for that grant topic declining the applications. So if you wanna move now on the transportation planning or have discussion to see if we're ready to move on transportation planning, we can do that. I think last time we discussed, we were going to vote on categories. For me, I think it makes sense to do it now. And then also it allows us the opportunity if we want to do an item by item vote, we could. Commissioner Cameron, remember, I mentioned this last week. Make it easier for me too, just to have all of these fresh in our mind, the ones that, you know, the committee recommends and the two that they don't. So I agree that it may be easier to just vote on this piece now. Right, and then if we don't have a clear consensus, we can do an item by item vote. You know, we're in a position to do that. Is that okay, Joe? Works for me. Right. So I just, I wanna just go back to West Springfield. I'm not sure entirely because we don't have all the information in front of us, but I might have thought differently if there could have been a breakdown of the project into smaller pieces and maybe have been persuaded for partial funding, particularly with respect to the biking piece. I don't know if any of my fellow commissioners had that, had similar feelings. I did, and that's why I asked Joe to clarify just because I asked that and he day went back and asked for that information and it was not forthcoming. So that's something for the future, perhaps even in our trainings, Joe, to say that you might wanna be prepared for the commission in case they are likely to do a partial funding for, to the extent it can be segregated. I know that not all projects are subject to segregation, but. Yeah, because I think that's, we have clearly done partial funding on many things. And those are typically ones that sort of are broken out by category where we can, it was mostly the public safety ones. It's easier to do because usually have an itemized list. Itemized list, right. Any other comments or observations commissioners before we move on a motion from commissioner Varian? Just to mention that I support the recommendations both to award and decline in the case of this category. And I think it's important that is now in the record what Joe stipulated relative to the West Springfield request to reconcile the fact that we did in fact fund a design in the past, but given the facts and circumstances since then, we are now recommending that we do not fund this request because it includes a number of other aspects, including the fact that there's a rework on planning activities that should have been anticipated if it was done properly. Thank you. I as well during a briefing had a lot of questions about this one and had the same answer as meaning they weren't able to break it up, which makes it difficult for the review team and for us to move forward when we clearly know that certain aspects are not covered. There is no nexus to the casino. So I think the review team did an excellent job in really thinking through every aspect and in coming to what can be hard decisions. We don't want to deny worthwhile projects, but then we have to follow the law as well. So I'm in agreement as well with those that the team recommended and the two that they did not. Thank you. And I'm in agreement with Commissioner Cameron's comments feel exactly the same way. But that said, commissioner Brian, do you want to take a stab at this? Certainly, Madam Chair, I moved that the commission approved the award of the following grants from the Community Mitigation Fund specifically pertaining to transportation planning, namely an application from Boston for $200,000 for Sullivan Square, Rutherford Avenue to Chickpea for $200,000 for the center streetscapes to Everett for $200,000 for the Mystic Riverwalk and to Maldon $200,000 for the Broadway improvements. These grants are for the purposes described in the memos in the commissioner's packets and submitted applications as discussed here today, as well as on May 6th, 2021, and that we further commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating the awards in accordance with 205 CMR 153.04. Can you second that motion? Thank you. Any further questions for Joe or Commissioner Seneca? Okay. And to Mary Thurl always thank you and Tanya. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Seneca. Aye. Yes, four zero, Tanya. Thank you so much. Tanya's doing double duty here. At least you're familiar with the subject matter. That's excellent. Okay. And Madam Chair to close out the category of the transportation grant applications, I would further move that the commission denied the following applications to the community mitigation fund for transportation planning, namely Lynn for the design improvements and West Springfield for the Elmstead improvements. I second that motion. Any further questions? Okay. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Seneca. Aye. Yes, thanks Tanya for zero. Thank you. Moving on. Okay, so now we are into the transportation construction grants. So the first one is the city of Boston that project title connecting the lost village. So Boston's requesting $239,000 for geometric changes to the intersection of Brighton Street and Cambridge Street in Charlestown to create safer crossings and better lines of sight for turning vehicles. Once again, I think we need to take a little trip down memory lane on this one to get a little context. So Boston requested funds for this project last year. The total project cost is $534,000 and the commission awarded a grant of $295,000 last year. So the reasons that we had for reducing the request from 534 to 295 were because the transportation construction category was fiscally constrained last year where we had about 5.5 million in requests where we had $3 million of funds available. And also the 2020 guidelines anticipated that there would be a significant local match. Now, in 2021, we changed the guidelines a little bit on transportation construction and established a maximum community mitigation fund contribution of one third of the total construction costs with the ability to obtain a waiver if the applicant can affirmatively demonstrate that the cost of the impact exceeds that one third threshold. So the city of Boston has requested that waiver. Now, the waiver itself didn't specifically bring us any new information, but the city's argument is that since 70% of encore related traffic goes through Charlestown, goes through Sullivan Square, that this traffic will increase the number of vehicles using local streets, increasing the risk of pedestrian injuries and creating a heavier traffic flow. Now, the thing that the review team struggled with a little bit on this is that absent any kind of a detailed study of these local streets, it's really difficult to affirmatively demonstrate a casino related impact on these lesser roads, although it is certainly reasonable to expect there to be some impact, due to the proximity of the casino and the number of casino related vehicles using Sullivan Square. So, we thought sort of long and hard about this. And I don't think anybody would reasonably expect that the city of Boston would have done detailed pre and post-development studies on this small neighborhood in Sullivan Square. So not having that data is sort of where we were struggling. And with that said, both MassDOT and Encore were supportive of this project. So, given these issues, the review team did not make a recommendation on this application as we considered generally just a policy decision on whether or not the applicant met the necessary threshold for a waiver. And so just, I just want you to think about a couple of things as you deliberate on this application is first, that while no hard numbers have been presented, it is certainly reasonable to conclude that there was some impact to the neighborhood, just due to the proximity to the casino. Second, the transportation construction category is not fiscally constrained this year. We have the requests are lower than our target threshold. And lastly, this project has a relatively modest cost.  And it will certainly have some great benefits for the neighborhood that it's intended to serve. So with that, I guess I will open it up for questions and for the commission's deliberations on this. So this one, we might want to treat singularly because there's not a recommendation coming out of the review team. I see Commissioner O'Brien maybe nodding her head. What do you think? So, I mean, I had that highlighted as something that obviously was not subject to a recommendation. What I thought would be is if we're done with the other items in that category and we've come to a conclusion on that, we can do it as part of that category. You can sleep. Something we're struggling with. We clearly knock it on everything else and single it out. Because it's really a request for a waiver without a potential recommendation. I guess there just wasn't a clear consensus. It's not as though you wouldn't be willing to make a recommendation on a waiver request. It's just that you didn't have a clear consensus so you're passing it on to us. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. Which we appreciate. What do you think? Commissioner Zinica, did you want to comment first? Yeah, I think Joe articulated well the aspects and let me just expound on the last one, which is the notion that this is a discrete project that can be funded and executed with the monies that we've already awarded. If we look back or zoom out of all construction, I'm sorry, transportation-related grants, planning, et cetera, projects, these kinds of projects are usually part of a much, much larger effort and the realization that our own ability to fund them either acts as a seed money or as a way to hopefully some of those planning efforts becoming a catalyst for future state and federal funding even. And the fact that we could do and make a difference with this funding alone in an area that is clearly, one of the most impacted by traffic from the casino is, in my view, compelling. And elsewhere, we have also funded a number of projects with 2% traffic, et cetera, and the proportionality, I think, again, that given the size and proximity, that this is one that is worth the finding and then realizing the full effect by seeing the construction through. Thank you. Very helpful. Commissioner Cameron, do you want to comment? Yes, I am in favor of a waiver. I believe that without hard numbers, you can reasonably assume there would be impact, again, because of the proximity. So I think this is one of those cases where a waiver would be warranted. Sure, Brian. I would agree with that for what's been stated and also for the fact that part of the reason the cap was there was to make sure that applicants were going and getting funding from other sources if it was available. So not only is it unusual to have something that can be carved out this small, and Joe, you can correct me if I'm wrong in your experience, but it would seem probably not as many options to go get outside funding for a project this small either, unless you can tie it into a bigger project. So given the nature of how everything's working in Sullivan Square and then this neighborhood that's kind of cut off by city limits in Sullivan Square, to me, it does seem that a waiver is appropriate. And I have an agreement with all everyone's statements, including of course the reasoning that you offered, Joe. So I think we have a consensus from the four of us. I must say I'm curious as to what the counterarguments are for me because I don't accept, I suppose, that maybe the notion that it wasn't as affirmatively put forth, I feel as though that's mitigated by all the points made today. Yeah, I think on sort of that other side of the argument a little bit was, and I'm gonna use the example of our friends in Chelsea last year to justify their project, they went out into traffic counts before opening of the casino and after, and really worked up a really great demonstration of that impact with real hard numbers. And that sort of seemed to be that really affirmatively demonstrating. And here it was just sort of something less than that. So we were all kind of like, does it, does it, and we've never really done a waiver before. So does this meet the threshold or not? And I think sort of it's that, I guess I know it when I see it kind of thing rather than saying it has to be this, this, this, this, and this, and that's a judgment call. That's what it comes down to is it's, some people could look at it as saying, well, I think it demonstrates another go, yeah, I don't think so much, yeah. I think I'm not as troubled by the fact that maybe particular communities didn't do a traffic count. I think the casinos did do the traffic counts and there's evidence that Sullivan Square has significantly impacted. And I think that is sufficient to make as Commissioner Cameron points out that reasonable deduction that this community, which is kind of a little bit to the side. We don't want to, I know that there's much more pedestrian traffic going through and all beneficial as the casino is hiring so many local employees. So I'm comfortable with that. I do want to point out that we just denied West Springfield and I do see contrast in their applications. And most notably, if MassDOT and the licensees had supported West Springfield in a different way, I would have probably pressed more as to why we were, you know, sometimes we're just confined by our statute. And I would have pressed more on the Springfield. I also saw the map that you offered, Joe, and that made me realize it's quite different in impact than what we're seeing with respect to the lost village here. Well, right, and you need to remember that about 5% of MGM's traffic was projected to use Route 20 and 70% of the traffic was projected to use Sullivan Square. So it is, I think it's a little bit of an apples and oranges. It really is, and I just wanted to point that out for the record, I reflected on that, especially when I'm hearing traffic counting, we just denied them the ability to count traffic. Can't turn back the clock. So I don't really want to use it as standard that they had to have done the traffic count back in 2015 or whatever for the going forward. Enrique, I think you're seeing my point. That would be a tough measure, but we do have some broad data from the early openings, right, from the casino themselves. Yes, yep. So we can do some reasonable deductions, but I do applaud, Chelsea had a great application last year. You did. It was excellent, so. And so as far as voting on this, I'm not sure, and Todd, I guess I'll defer to you on this, but I don't think you really need to vote the waiver necessarily. As long as you vote the dollar value, it's essentially tacitly approving the waiver, right? Yeah, I think that sounds right. Okay. Commissioner Bryan, are you fine with that? I'm fine with that because we've had a detailed discussion about it. I think if we hadn't, we'd probably have to specifically address it, but I think because we have discussed it in detail, I think that it would be satisfied with that. Okay, we have a full consensus. Okay. Moving on, John, thank you very much. Am I, is everybody else, okay. Yeah, thank you, John. Okay, so the next one that we have up is Revere and Saugus, Route 1 improvements. So the two communities are jointly requesting $800,000 to construct improvements to Route 1 North between the Overlook Ridge Development and Route 99. You know, just right out of the gate, you know, the review team certainly agrees that there's a connection to the casino here. You know, as it's determined, about 9% of the patrons and employees are projected to use that stretch of Route 1. So that certainly constitutes an impact on the roadway. Now, again, today there's a bit of background on a lot of these projects. So this project came out of earlier transportation planning grants that study the issues associated with Route 1. So Revere and Saugus identified two projects and have been working with MassDOT to scope them out. Now, both of these projects were submitted to MassDOT and they were both determined to be eligible for state and federal funding. In the end, MassDOT decided to take on one of the projects themselves and Revere and Saugus would be responsible for the other project, which is the one that's in front of you today. So the total estimated cost of this project is $2.4 million, with 800,000 coming from the Community Mitigation Fund. So that meets with our one-third rule. They would be providing one-third of the funding, MassDOT providing the other two-thirds. Now, the one hitch on this application is that our guidelines require construction projects to be underway by June 30th of 2022. In this case, the project will not be ready to go to bid in that timeframe since it has to go through the full MassDOT design and approval process. However, the cities felt that having the Gaming Commission commitment to one-third of the project costs would improve their chances of getting on the MassDOT funding in an earlier year, because the way the MassDOT funding works, there's a finite amount of money and there's a whole bunch of projects and projects sometimes have to get moved from year to year, and then a project that's supposed to go one year isn't ready to go and they have to shift something back and there's a lot of moving parts to get a project funded and built by the state. So their feeling is that having this commitment would improve their chances of getting it moved up as early as possible. So they have requested a waiver from the June 30th, 2022 deadline. They didn't ask for a time certain on it, but just a sort of a general waiver. Now at the same time, the city also looked at the possibility of advancing certain pieces of the project faster than the main project to try to meet that June 30th, 2022 date. It was a good effort to look at this, but this unto itself creates a whole host of other issues. They would have to hold that piece out of the bigger project and it would still need to go through some MassDOT reviews and other things. And that could even delay the main project further. And basically the review team was not comfortable with that approach. We're sort of comfortable with just follow the MassDOT process the way it's designed and go through your reviews and your design and move the project ahead as expeditiously as you can. So we are recommending an award of $800,000 to review in Saugus for the Route 1 North improvements with the stipulation that none of these funds can be expended until MassDOT awards a construction contract for that project. It further recommends granting a waiver from the June 30th, 2022 deadline and extending it out to June 30th, 2023. In essence, giving them an additional year to get the project underway. And with that, I will open that up for questions. Questions? comments. Yeah, I mean, in favor of this recommendation, I think what we placed in terms of guidelines relative to timing was well intended, but the way that the interests are converging here and as Joe explained, trying to parse out different aspects of the project in order to meet that guideline ended up complicating things further. I think one of the things that I will later recommend or talk about when we do the debriefing or the wrap up in the next commission meeting about my experience here in this community mitigation review team is how much you gain by hearing a lot of these back and forth with the communities when they articulate from their standpoint the history, the intent and whatnot that you don't really ascertain perhaps when you just read the grant request. So I think I'm in favor of this recommendation with the waiver and especially with the stipulation that would then complete the notion of making sure that these monies act as a catalyst without having to spend them first as a catalyst for the larger project which is what we want them to do. If I can add to that, that was the compelling piece to me was having this money from us upfront, one third really may help them move this whole project along. I thought that was very compelling piece of information to learn about this application. So I agree with it with the recommendation of the review team as well. Is she right? I agree. I also like not only the waiver but also the condition however that it sort of essentially escrowed until everything is ready to get off the ground that way for whatever reason it doesn't, it can be revisited. Okay. I'm in agreement with all of that. We just now noting this is the reverence audience and can we move on then? Yeah. So that's the last one. That's the last of the transportation and construction project so let me just give you the rundown of all of the ones from last time and this time. So at the last meeting, we went over the Everett Northern Strand trail lighting improvements, which we are recommending. What's the side of the community again? That was Everett. Oh yeah, that's right. The lighting improvements on the Northern Strand trail. Yep. Reverence August, which we just went over and also Springfield, which was the resurfacing of Dwight Street and also now the city of Boston with the lost village. So we are recommending approval then of all of the transportation and construction applications as noted. I have four. Yep. Commissioners, do you have any questions on any of the individual applications before perhaps Commissioner O'Brien moves? It makes sense to go forward then. Okay. Madam Chair, are you ready for the motion? Well, I guess actually we're not doing the four. It would be the three, right? Because we're not voting on the later. Well, but we still need to vote on the actual voting of the monies. That's what I thought. Okay, thank you. Madam Chair, I moved that the commission approved the award of the following grants from the Community Mitigation Fund pertaining to transportation construction, namely a grant to Boston for $239,000 for the lost village project to the city of Everett, $135,000 for the Northern Strand Trail Lights to Revere and Saugus, $800,000 for Route 1 North improvements subject to both the conditions in the waiver in the memo discussed today. And $200,000 to the city of Springfield for Dwight Street improvements. These grants are for the purposes described in the memos in the commissioner's packet and the submitted applications as discussed both here today and on May 6th, 2021. And for the commission staff be authorized to execute grant instruments commemorating these awards in accordance with 205, CMR 153.04. Second. Any further questions, edits? Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner Bryan. Aye. Commissioner Zunica. Aye. I vote yes. 4-0, Tanya, thank you. Great, Joe, moving on. So we are moving on to the community planning grant applications. So the first one is for the city of Lynn. They're requesting $100,000 to develop a marketing campaign to promote Lynn businesses and to better compete with Encore's marketing capabilities. This will include a multimedia approach, including a website, billboard advertisements, social media, visitor outreach among other means. To demonstrate a casino impact, the city referenced the loss of shows at the Lynn Auditorium and the spin-off losses associated with that at local restaurants and so on due to competition from the casino. The review team agreed that through this demonstration that they established an access to a casino related impact. The review team agrees that this approach will help the city of Lynn showcase its offerings to casino patrons and the general public and help offset the marketing advantages of Encore and recommends awarding a grant in the amount of $100,000 to the city. And with that, I will open it up for questions. Commissions. Commit. I have a question so much as a comment that I think, Joe, when you were briefing me on this, too, you commented on the level of specificity they had in terms of impact and being able to point to a specific event that I actually think is pretty compelling in terms of an access and appropriateness of award. Yeah, many of these applications struggle with that connection to the casino and they were able to identify a particular instance that where they lost business to the casino and that was for us compelling that they were able to make a real connection to an impact. Yeah, we will remember that we discussed the idea in the last agenda setting meeting to come back and look at the impact that live entertainment venues as part of a larger sort of view of this aspect, notwithstanding that I think they, this is a similar request to what other communities have requested in terms of promotion of their capabilities and their amenities in the city. To take advantage of visiting patrons or to maintain some of the patrons that they want to continue coming to their downtowns. So I agree with this recommendation and I look forward to the further larger discussion relative to impacted live entertainment venues. That may or may not inform future guidelines, by the way. Right, thank you. I fully support this recommendation. I feel it's spot on in terms of what the legislature might have imagined when they imagine mitigation, outside of course the obvious transportation issues and safety issues, I think this really, really works. And I hope that Malden, not Malden, I'm sorry, Lynn can benefit from $100,000. It's not very much money, so. And as part of this, they also do have, the city themselves are putting in $25,000 and I think the, I can't remember what organization, they're putting in another $25,000. Yes, right. Yeah, a little bit of a different budget than what I'd like to see next door. So, I'm very pleased to support this one. Commissioner Cameron? No, I was, it was a great, I agree with all of you, this is really worthy. But it was also nice to hear a little bit, learn a little bit about the outstanding talent they get to Lynn. I did not realize that maybe I'm dating myself with that because a lot of them are the older, older singers and whatnot that we know, but yeah, excellent and happy to help contribute if we can for them to continue to be strong in this area. And, you know, in leverage, the casino worked off of it. I noted the same when Joe with Tanya went through the list with me, I looked at Tanya going like, ooh. I did not know who's through with some of those groups. Great names, you know, and it would be really fun to see, but I, and Tanya, if we could, I would love to take you to those shows just to show how much fun they would be. I'll go to one of those in a fire show with you any time. Excellent. All right. So, we have a next one for Community Planning, Maldon Broadway Zoning. Yes, so Maldon is requesting $50,000 for a zoning improvement analysis of the Broadway Corridor. So the Commission funded a study known as the Broadway Corridor Framework Plan a couple of years ago, and that sort of looked at the whole Broadway Corridor at a very high level. And out of that came a couple of recommendations. One was to relook at the whole Broadway Corridor as far as traffic and, you know, multi-modal use of that, pedestrian's bikes and so on, which we just agreed to fund a transportation planning study for that. Another recommendation that came out of that was to look at the zoning along that Broadway Corridor. And, you know, making the connection to the casino was a little more difficult on this, but I think what we looked at this as is that, and when we talked with the city, you know, the current zoning down there is this kind of mishmash of light industrial and automotive uses and, you know, strip mall kind of stuff. It's really kind of, like I said, a mishmash of different uses. But, you know, the types of things that can be developed there under the underlying zoning are not th