we go on board. You want me to say tonight? Yeah, I think that's that's easier with them with the beverage in hand for me. I appreciate that. Okay, we'll get started, guys. All right, Dave, you don't need anything from me further? All good to go. Okay, we're good to go. Thank you, everyone. Good morning. Okay, good morning. Just a reminder today's meeting is being recorded. Working off from a virtual platform still, so I'll take a roll call vote. It is a special day. We are a full commission for our first official public meeting of five. There she goes, of five today. It is also a critically special meeting because we are welcoming new commissioner, Akisha Skinner, a friend of ours, a long time respected colleague of ours who were delighted with the treacherous appointment for her arrival. At the same time today will be Commissioner Cameron's our long standing historic 10 year termed commissioners last day. But we will right for this moment celebrate the fact that we are five and making our decisions today with all of the team as a full commission. So I'll take our roll call. Commissioner Cameron. Good morning, everyone. I am here. Commissioner Brian. I am here. Commissioner Hill. Good morning. And I'm present. Commissioner Skinner. I'm here. Good morning, everyone. Great. Thank you so much. All right. Before we get started, I want to give a huge thank you to Commissioner O'Brien as our secretary. She's navigated getting with, of course, legal and Council Grossman's good work. A slew of minutes done in order to ensure Commissioner Cameron's vote and insights on them. So you have the floor, Commissioner O'Brien. Certainly. Thank you, Madam Chair. And thank you to the legal team, Todd and Kerry in particular for helping us catch up on this. You'll notice there are five packages of minutes in the packet today. And fortunately for Commissioner Hill and Commissioner Skinner, they don't need to pour over them and give us feedback. These were minutes that were from meetings prior to their arrival where the three of us, Chair Judd Stein, Commissioner Cameron and myself, make up the quorum. One of them is actually we do not have a quorum on today, the August 19th. I was not there and Commissioner Zuniga, who would have been the quorum, he departed faster than we thought for his position at post. And so there was not a meeting to get those done prior to his departure. But they are there for any comments that may need to be made in terms of the draft so that they're accurate to your memory. But starting with the oldest, May 26th of 2021, I would move we approve those minutes subject to any necessary changes for typographical errors or other non-material matters. Any questions or edit? I'm sorry. Did you second? I was going to second and I did not have any edits on that one. But thank you for asking, but I do second. Okay. I'm sorry. I was a little bit out of sync there. I think that it's just the three of us unless Commissioner Hill or Commissioner Skinner have any questions around this? Okay. Is that correct protocol, Commissioner O'Brien? Certainly, or they could just vote to abstain and then want to make that if they wanted to make that clear in the record before we go, Siri Adam, that's fine too. Okay. Excellent. Then Commissioner Cameron. I. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Hill. Abstain. Commissioner Skinner. I vote yes. Thank you. Moving on to the next chronologically would be July 15th of 2021. And I would again move we approve those minutes subject to any necessary changes for typographical errors or other non-material matters. Second. Any concerns or edits? Commissioner Cameron. Okay. Excellent. I'm all set as well. Commissioner Cameron. I. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Hill. Abstain. Commissioner Skinner. Abstain. And I vote yes. Zero to abstentions. Thank you. And moving on to July 29th of 2021. I would move that we approve those minutes object to any needed changes for typographical errors or other non-material matters. Second. No edits or comments. Okay. Commissioner Cameron. I. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Hill. Abstain. Commissioner Skinner. Abstain. And I vote yes. Thank you. Three zero to abstentions. And now in terms of August 19th, 2021, I don't know if you, Madam Chair or Commissioner Cameron, want to make any corrections to those steps. Commissioner O'Brien, I did read them, but I did not have corrections. And I feel the same. We missed you at that meeting. That's what kids can do to you when they have no camp or school. And lastly, moving on to August 26th of 2021. It's the last in the packet for today. I would move that we approve those minutes also subject to any needed changes for typographical errors or the non-material matters. Second. Any edits or comments on this last package? I'm just taking one last note. Sorry. Okay. Commissioner Cameron. I. Commissioner O'Brien. I. Commissioner Hill. Abstain. Commissioner Skinner. Abstain. And I vote yes. Three zero to abstentions. Thank you. Excellent work. Fighting truly. Thank you for really pressing on this exercise. It's a really important part of our record. We're fortunate that our record is also recorded, but minutes will fulfill a compliance obligation. And most importantly, an important record for us to reflect on as we do our work on a weekly basis. Then we have a chance to look back at our minutes and remind us of our work that we need to do ahead. So thank you. We're getting caught up. All right. Then. Are there no other questions around minutes? All right. We'll move on. Good morning. Executive Director Wells. Good morning. Good morning. A big welcome to Nikesha. Welcome aboard, Commissioner Skinner. So the first item on the administrative update is the on-site casino updates. I'll turn that over to Assistant Director Van. Oh, you're muted first. You're on mute. Yeah. Very good. I'd get the hang of this by now. Yeah. There are no updates on the table game and slot side at this point, but there are some on the entertainment. For PPC, they start live racing on April 11th. On April 23rd, they are sponsoring Community and Grade Fit 7s. On Friday and Saturday nights, they have live bands at Revolutions Lounge. And on Saturday, May 7th, the Kentucky Derby, which will include music and race beddings. Encore continues with their sport jacket giveaway, which has been very successful. And MGM are sponsoring Attacks, their first responders for local police and fire departments, which includes free meals and bowlings at tap restaurants. Do you have any questions? Let me know. Questions or comments for Bruce? Bruce, we always like hearing these reports, and I think we have agreed to institutionalize them. So thank you. It's nice to see that the events are opening up. It's great. Thank you. Okay, Karen. The next item, we are also, aside from Commissioner Cameron, we're also saying goodbye to Scott Halloway, who is a new position. We're very proud of him, and we're proud of the new position, but we're very sorry to see him go. He's been the Gaming Technical Compliance Manager at the MGC.  Okay, Katrina. Thanks, Karen. You know, Scott's been with us almost four years as the Gaming Technical Compliance Manager, and he worked side-by-side with me in very diligently opening MGM and the Encore Boston Harbor. And he has been so instrumental in so many things, including the recent application for voluntary self-exclusion. Scott, in his spare time, which he had none, was a huge advocate and a huge resource in helping develop that application, even though it wasn't within his wheelhouse.  And I know personally, I'm going to miss Scott a huge lot, because he's been a great friend, but a great colleague, and we've grown together in the last four years. And he's taught me quite a bit. I was very new to gaming when I came into the Commission, and Scott has taught me quite a bunch about EGDs and how it all works in the back-end infrastructure. So, Scott, I thank you so much for everything you've done. You're welcome. Thank you very much for recognizing me here. So, I will miss everybody here for sure. So, yeah. Well, Scott, don't think you're going to get away with this easily. Yeah. I didn't think I would be. So, I'll start with Commissioner Skinner. You had the opportunity to work with Scott as a colleague, and now as a commissioner, and then I'll move to Commissioner Hill, Commissioner O'Brien, Commissioner Cameron. Thank you, Chair. Hi, Scott. We work together for a very brief time, but one thing that I come to appreciate is your smile and our ability to just brighten up the room with it. And so, that, for sure, I will miss.  But I wish you the best in your new endeavor, and don't be a stranger. Thank you very much. Commissioner Hill. Scott was one of the very first people that I met when I came on board six months ago. And when Nikisha talks about his smile, that is an understatement, Nikisha. His smile, his laugh, his personality was something that I was drawn to very early on. And not only has he been a great colleague and a great help whenever I've had IT issues, Katrina. He's been awesome as the whole staff. But more importantly, the conversations that we've had on the side, on personal issues, you're going to be very, very missed by me, I can tell you that. And I wish you the very, very best in your next endeavor. And I do hope that you check in with us every now and again, because that would be appreciated by all. But congratulations on your new job. And more importantly, thank you for a job well done here at the Game and Commission. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Commissioner Bryan. Thank you, Scott. Congratulations. I was happy for you, but sad to hear that you were leaving. I think it speaks not only to your ability to, you know, your personality to fit in right away, but it was really not until I read Katrina's nice email summarizing your experience that I realized that you and I were here for about the same amount of time. And I thought you'd been here far longer than me. You knew what you were doing, very comfortable with everybody. So you fooled me on that one. I thought you were here way longer than you were. And you, I think I can say from that you definitely made an impact. Commissioner Hill said to, you know, the IT team has been great everyone, you know, to a person and you were definitely a part of that experience for me. So good luck. I hope you do stay in touch and I wish you well. Thank you very much. Yeah. Hopefully I'll be able to come back and sit in front of the commission about my, with my next position. So yeah, hopefully look forward to that. Commissioner Cameron. Scott, I want to wish you well. You know, I'm not surprised that you have this opportunity. I feel fortunate to have gotten to know you a little bit personally because we were up at MGM. We had to open that casino. We had work to do the night before, the next morning.  And first of all, I remember some IT crisis. So you were, you were like hard at it, trying to solve some problems. So I saw you with your, your, you know, your work hat on. And then luckily later at night after we had all finished, we went to some nice Mexican place and had a meal together and we had a lot of fun. I remember you being, I mean, I learned a lot from you, but then you were just, just a lot of fun to spend time with. And it just always makes me think, wow, we have done such a great job hiring great people here at the commission. And, but when you hire great people, guess what, they'll have other opportunities. So I'm proud of you. And I thank you so much for the work you've done. And, you know, you'll be missed for sure, but keep in touch. Absolutely. Thank you very much. Well, Scott, I've had the chance to have a nice conversation with you. Selfishly, I took up way too much of your time. And I've missed being at the office with you. You know, everybody's touched on your warmth, which has really radiated throughout the office. And it made such an impression on all of us. So I want to stress that that is a great asset. And I also have had just such respect for your work and your expertise. Katrina's email did show the breadth of it. And so we are very thankful for you sharing all of that with us for these last several years. I think what we really are saying is that we're going to miss your character and all that you bring, both work-wise and as a human. So take that with you. And I know you will. You have a great opportunity ahead. Nothing pleases folks like me who have served in public and private sectors to see a public servant like you really be able to leverage all that you've accomplished here for a new journey. My suspicion is that you may circle back to public service at some point. It can be compelling. And you may just want to come back and give back in another way in the future. Until then, enjoy your new opportunity. And if you want to share any of it with us, you are welcome back at any time. Great. Thank you very much. You're welcome. Thank you. I appreciate all the very kind words. Yeah. And for thinking of you and your family. Karen, do you want to close out for us? Just a big thank you to Scott. I'm glad I'm going to get to see you today. I know your next last day is next week. So we'll be seeing you. But yeah, just a big thank you from myself personally and from the staff, because you've really been just such a big help and such a wonderful presence. And we love you and we want you to do well. We're excited for your new position, but we will be missed. And I think you know that. Thank you very much. Okay. So next up is an update on the pace setters program, which is basically a group of business leaders that are committing to best practices and innovation on diversity spend. So I'm going to turn it over to our Chief Administrative Officer to the chair and Special Project Manager, Crystal Howard, just to give you a little more information about what the program is and why we joined in the end the rule that we take in that program. I'll turn it over to Crystal. Thanks, Karen. It's really hard to follow that. I just want to add, I've noticed that we've been here almost, I think he was here right at Brown when I came in. He's not only helpful, dedicated and versatile, but he was really interested in people personally. And I admired that he was probably one of the first people I talked to when I got here. So I'm also going to miss him. I don't know if you're still here, Scott, but I've told you that. But on the level of pace setters, so I think we've talked about this a little bit briefly, but I'm just going to kind of give you a slight overview and then where we are as an agency. Pace setters is a program of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce. They define a pace setter as a large and mid-sized company and anchor institutions committed to using their procurement purchasing power to close the racial wealth gap by intentionally increasing spend with businesses of color. Of course, we have our own goals internally that this aligns with really well, but one in particularly would be the within their vision statement is that they want 10% of all business and government contracts to go to businesses of color in the Commonwealth within five years. So there's a natural tie there. And because of that, we did sign on to pace setters around August of 2021. Many of the businesses that are support organizations or program partners and a couple of the MBEs recognized by the pace setters themselves were already involved with the program. And so we learned about it. Encore is actually a partner as well. So we had learned about it through that. And it just seemed a natural extension of our own intentions. And actually, I can quickly show you the pace setters that there are currently. My screen just disappeared. So I hope you guys can see this over here. Here we are mass gaming and you can see a lot of really, is it showing? I've got three screens, as you know. So you can see there aren't a whole lot of state entities. We are one of the, I'd say smaller institutions. And I think that says a lot about our commitment. A few universities. UMass is one of the other state entities. And then of course, mass development is one of the significant ways. So we're among a few partners at this point, but it does continue to grow. And we're learning a lot from some of these really big entities. So some of the basic guidelines and commitments as part of our partnership as a pace setter is to commit increasing spend with MBEs in the Commonwealth over the next five years and joining the program. And in order to do that, we provide data every year to measure, report and increase spending and show that it's actually happening, but also just that that's part of our commitment. We attend quarterly meetings and there are meetings that are for the pace setter program manager, I think is how they call it. And then deceased meet level meetings as well, because intentionally they require C-suite and procurement level commitment to inclusion. So Karen and Derek attend those for us and have been really active. It's really great to see that level of commitment for our agency. We also on a more definitive level must share at least one contract opportunity per quarter or calendar year. And then we have to commit to a minimum of one new contract with an MBE every year for five years. And so far we're contract doing so. For this, both membership in both the chamber and the program are required. So we do have both memberships. And one of the big benefits is we receive access to their trusted and approved MBE referral list, which is a collaboration of proven companies across the pace setter entities that exist. And so we get a lot of information from what other organizations have found successful. A good example of that was that gave us a more breadth to put out our consultant or vendor to perform our salary review process. And while that isn't exactly where we ended up, our contract actually came from a different recommendation, some migrants in the week, which we'll hear from later actually. So this ties in really well. But aside from those great introductions, we also receive diversity training focused solely on supplier and vendor diversity, which is a lot different from what we usually hear. And in our last quarterly meeting, we had, we were able to take part in an hour long training focus on overcoming bias in vendor diversity specifically. That was from the diversity at workplace consulting groups. So they bring in external vendors. There are also other programs and workshops that we can attend and be part of if we have an example to show. I know the SEO did one in 2021. And so that's really great a partner that we already have as well. So they are showing up for the other pace setters. The biggest next step for us is we're coming toward the end of our first year. So we'll begin to prepare for the data collection and submission phase for our first round and be able to participate in the annual pace setters reporting. So that's where we're at right now. Back to you, Karen. Thank you. Any questions for Crystal? Commissioner Skinner, maybe? I wondered if you could just repeat the pace setter commitments. Again, I think you said we have to share at least one opportunity per quarter. The definitive commitments alongside from participation and data are that we share one contract opportunity per quarter. So they ask at the beginning of every quarter if we have had success with an MBE internally, and it can be one we've always used and or whether we and when we say to them, hey, we're looking for this and we would normally consider this. But if there are other opportunities or suggestions, we'd like that as well. So they kind of make a list of all the opportunities that the businesses have because they do have and work on the other end of this with MBEs, local MBEs. And then the other commitment is that we commit to a minimum of one new contract with an MBE every year for five years. So we should be able to show growth of our MBE portfolio for lack of a better term over those five years, ideally having five more by the end, but perhaps more. So is that in yours to do? And Crystal, I think I'm right. We will have at least done that already, right? Yes. But this past year, Karen, correct? Yep. And our external contracts do count for that. It's just that we share that we have committed to that and that we are growing. So they're one of many of our tools. Commissioner Skinner, I didn't mean to interrupt. Did you have a follow up? I did not. Thank you, Crystal. No problem. All right. Thank you. Anything else? Just a comment. I just, you know, I guess I'm just really proud of our commitment. And this is another example of how we really are intentional about this work and how much it means to this commission. So thank you, Crystal, for taking the lead on this. And it's a really important program. Thank you. And just to build on this, of course, Karen, you're implementing the commission's equity, diversity, inclusion statement of purpose. And one of the five action items is on procurement. So it's really, we're going to be the beneficiaries of the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce's pay setters program to help us fill that. And in turn, in turn, the MGC has has a good record to share with them. And we all can be very proud of that. You have best practices to share. And, Crystal, you've been working at the core of that. So it's all good all around. Thank you, Karen, for, for making sure that we participate in that program fully. Thank you. So the next item on the agenda is the organizational chart and major policymaking position designation. So under 23 km required as the executive director to keep an organizational chart on file with the Secretary of State, I'm just going to share my screen right now just to show what the current updated chart is. So I just want to make a couple of notes. One, Crystal's position is new, this Chief Administrative Officer to the Chair and Special Projects Manager. Also, Marianne Dulley's position of Executive Assistant has also been modified, includes now the Office Operations Manager. The other organizational move we've done is you can see here in this box on the right towards the right, we are hiring and you have a new employee starting tomorrow as our Chief People and Diversity Officer that is David Muldrew. So we're really looking forward to him. The term Chief People Officer is a well recognized term in the world of HR and you see that he'll be overseeing the folks that work in HR. He will be the lead there. So we're combining that position with our internal and external diversity work. David himself has 30 years of experience in HR in both the state and the private sector and there'll be more to come when I introduce it, but I just wanted to acknowledge he'll be leading those efforts. This is critical and we had some internal discussion about creating this position. Now we are in a new environment where there's hybrid work, we're post COVID, we're really focusing right now on the culture of our agency and making this a positive place to work. So I'm looking forward to working with David on that and his expertise in this area. So right now I want to just open up, there's any questions on that? Any questions about the work chart? And then I just wanted to go over with the commission the major policy making positions. As we all know, those of us who required to file the statement of financial interest, there has to be a designation of a major policy making position first and the general council and I have gone over these. We have the proposed list thinking it may be appropriate for the commission to vote on that to approve that I'll defer to the commission how they want to handle that. But before I go into the list of the major policy making positions, I just wanted to see if there's any comments or questions on the work chart. Anything? Okay. All right. So the major policy making positions for the commission are proposed be the commissioners, the executive director, the general council, the director of the IEB, chief enforcement council, the gaming agents division chief, the chief of the financial investigations division, the licensing division chief, information officer, the chief division of community affairs, communications division chief, chief financial and accounting officer, the director of racing, and the new employee, the chief people and diversity officer. So that's the proposed list of defer to Kathy. If you want to set up as a vote or just an approval for us to go forward because that's I think the general council makes those does the paperwork for filing that and notifying folks that they have to file a statement of financial interest. Yeah. So I like this process a lot Karen and Todd. This of course applies to our obligations under my statute under the state ethics law. And Todd has been navigating that system. The ethics commission has a very nimble automated program which has assisted everybody in this but what it really requires is of course those individuals to file statement of financial interest and Commissioner Cameron, just a reminder that you'll have to do one this year. Yes. And she has to do one next year. So the next year. Yeah. Yeah. Just a file now and then file next year. Right. It's a gift that keeps on giving Todd our deadline. Can you remind folks of that just right now when you have the chance to me first every year. Okay. Comes around quickly. We'll get some reminders. So that's my first but Commissioner O'Brien, I think that probably when in one of our meetings with the legal team and Karen, we talked about this process. I don't know if you have a better memory than I do about whether we thought we needed to vote. I think at the very least it was important for us to be informed of the those who would be designated major policy makers. Yeah. I don't remember whether we said we needed to vote on it or wanted to. I think they might have been that we could present it to the commission as a whole and see if there was a desire to vote on it. But at a minimum, we thought it was good to air in reference to the org chart, who was going to have to file an SFI. And Karen, I just want to make sure I heard clearly in terms of relation to the org chart. So is it the commissioners, the ED, head of IEB and then that line of the green directors? Yes. And then also and also the obviously state police, that separate, but then the orange boxes below that. Okay. All right. And for those of you who may not have been designated that, it's a judgment call. And it's in no way implicates really your impact on policy making. It may spear you the obligation of having to file more than anything. And the ethics commission helps in thinking about that. Quite frankly, I think most of our team and almost all of your individual roles impacts the execution of our policies. So for that, we're thankful. But this is strictly a technical and important designation. I like this process where Todd works with Karen and then presents to us. But unless Commissioner Skinner and Commissioner Hill, you think that we should vote formally and that would be fine as a matter of record. We could do that. Brad, you're familiar with this process. Keisha, you had the same role in terms of having been a general counsel. What do you think? Take your input. I am just fine relying on the counsel of Todd and our executive director. Okay. Thank you. And I think actually, Karen, this was a pretty good timing for your obligation to do sort of it together. Yeah. Excellent. Thank you. Excellent. The next item on the agenda under the administrative update, I have office lease discussion. So our office lease is up at the end of the next calendar year. So we wanted to get some discussion going because there are some policy decisions to be made regarding what we're going to do with the office lease. And given that this is the public main is the only time I can talk to you all together. I just wanted to flag a few issues to view and sort of start that discussion. Obviously, no decisions will be made today. Mary Ann Dooley is coordinating those efforts for the MGC as the office operations manager. She has been in touch with PCAM. Derek Lennon as the CFO is also in the mix on those discussions. But given that we are going to be meeting with them, it would be helpful to get a sense of what direction we're going in, what your thoughts are, particularly we're coming out of COVID, we've got the hybrid work model. So I've just got a little bit of a, you know, my notes, a little bit of a decision tree to sort of start the discussion and any input you have would be really helpful. One of the major decision points is going to be, do we want the same amount of space we have now so we have the ability to have everyone in the office at the same time? Or do we potentially want to reduce the space? And that's a critical question. If we do end up keeping the same space, do we want to talk to the landlord and see, given the market for commercial space?  And it's tough right now. So do we want to talk to the landlord about getting a potential deal on extending our lease? We may have, I think, a potentially a five-year option to renew and working out some kind of deal with them. If we want to keep the same amount of space, we also have the option of looking elsewhere. We could stay in Boston and look elsewhere, or we could look at other locations. There are certainly positives and negatives to that. There's impacts on the diversity of our workforce, parking, you know, change would be good for some, but potentially not good for others. So is there a potential for losing employees if we move offices? So that's it. That's it. We keep the same amount of space. If we reduce the space, then the question becomes, do we go to another site, whether in Boston or another location, or same building? Do we try to do something within our office space and reduce it? Some of the questions that have come up regarding the office, reduce in the office space, which I just want to highlight because it may sound good in theory, but there are some caveats. We'd have to potentially reduce the number of offices. So are people that are used to having an office, are they going to be comfortable potentially either sharing an office or working in a workstation? We'd also have to reduce the number of queues.  We would also, if we reduce the space, what does that mean for the public meeting room and for our live stream equipment and all that, and the lab as well. The other factor which I think we need to think about is the ability to be all in the office on the same days. That's something I've been thinking about. I would like at this point at a minimum to do certain days every month where people are all in the office at the same time. If we reduce the office space, that may be problematic. So I just wanted to be aware of that. The other counter to that is cost. If we reduce the office space, there may be a cost savings. And then also once we're in a lease, because we expect to sign a lease, we're committed. So once you do it, you're kind of stuck with that amount of space for a while. And then the other things I was talking with Marianne about are the cost of the move and then the disruption involved with the move. So these are all sort of factors we have to think about. And as we start the discussion with DCAM, if we are going to do some kind of RFP for office space, it can be involved. So we really do need to get going. So I'm just outlining some of the issues to start the thought process and any kind of feedback you have for me as we start these meetings with DCAM would be really helpful. Because ultimately, as you can see, the real policy decisions and they affect the culture of the agency and our ability to work. So just throwing that out there for any kind of feedback, please let me know. I'll turn it over if there's any comments for me at this point. Commissioner Hill, do you want to start? No? Commissioner Hill, Brian? Sure. Commissioner Hill, were you going no? You can hold if you want, if you want to hear. I'm all set. Okay, Commissioner Brian. I'm sure you're doing this, Karen, but I would assume this process starts with conversations with the directors in particular and yourself in terms of what is the bare minimum to your point. I mean, you were listing some of the things I was thinking of which is IT is going to need a certain amount of space for it and the lab and the investigations group is going to have to have a certain amount of space to conduct interviews, that sort of thing. And then there is sort of the wish list of, okay, ideally, how many employees are we going to have that? I mean, I'm assuming that's going on in terms of the minimum square footage. Yeah, and that was one thing Marianne and I had discussed. And part of this, with the hybrid model, it's the hoteling space, this is part of the issue. But ultimately, what we're going to need to present to DKAM, how much space do we need? And that involves those discussions as well. So that is on Marianne's list there. And is DKAM involved in a potential negotiation on the option to renew or is that just between us and the landlord? I think that is. And Derek's on. Derek can probably give you more detail on that. That is true. Yeah, so DKAM is our leasing agent being a state agency, so they would have to take the lead in that. I have reviewed the lease. It doesn't give any actual timeline for renewals, but it does say DKAM and the lease in our landlord can meet and discuss renewals, or we have to go back out to bid. And as far as space goes, we would have to give the general ideas and the number of employees and their kind of working conditions that are needed. And DKAM actually has an average square footage per type of employee that they allocate when they do this type of stuff. So that's something that fits more with their calculation than I mean. That's absolutely their calculation. Okay. And how do they deal with things like the lab? So the lab, we would tell them what we need and they would come out and give us like, we'd say we need this many slot machines and they'd say, well, what's the industry standard for space in between slot machines? And, you know, they come up with the configuration for all the electricity and how it would hang in there and work with the building on that. All the potential tenants, I mean, landlords that we've done. So they take a big lead in it. We just say, this is the type of space we need. And these are the types of employees we're going to have. And if we do the hoteling issue, they've done this a lot with the executive branch, so they'll give us what the recommendations are. And that's what we'd have to come up with. Are we going to continue to be hybrid long term? And if we are, how can managers share offices? What's the best way of becoming electronic? Or is it just hoteling space with a lot of breakout rooms? That's the type of options they'd be giving us to think about what the square footage would be. And Joan could probably help us with that because she's been doing a lot of that on the executive branch as well. Commissioner Skinner? Commissioner Hill, are you chiming in now? Yes. Thank you. I don't know if I missed this because I'm actually having a little issue with my volume here. Has there ever been any talk about leaving Boston? Or are we always going to be in Boston? Ultimately, that's a commission question. I mean, this is a major policy decision at the highest level where we're going to be. So if we keep the same space, obviously we would stay here. Well, let me rephrase. I've got looking at my decision tree. If we keep the same amount of space, we could stay here, theoretically, or we could move somewhere else if you want to keep the same amount of space. If we reduce the amount of space, we could try to do it somehow in the building, or we could move to another location. So really, the options are out there in both scenarios. And that's why I'm trying to get a little sense from the commission of the direction we're going because that's going to help facilitate the process with DCAM. But that was part of the discussion the first time around. The commission did make a conscious decision to stay to be in Boston. But they did have those discussions. Will they be outside of Boston? And commission, the camera can probably fill you in on that because she was part of those initial meetings before there were any staff. Right. Mr. Cameron? Well, yeah, I do remember all those conversations of where we should be. I was open-minded because I had never worked in Boston, even though I grew up in the state. I had never worked in Boston. But I think because of the, we were a new agency and there were a lot of issues. We had to work out with the legislature, with the Attorney General's office, and other state agencies. We thought it was prudent to stay in Boston for those reasons to have that proximity and the ability to quickly meet with the folks that we needed to meet with in order to build this agency. But that has changed. And I think everything should be on the table, right? For all of you to think what's necessary now for the new chapter of this agency. Just following up on that. I know when I was in some other agencies, we would joke that we wished we had satellite offices. You know, when I was in the AG's office, we had a presence in Springfield and New Bedford and Worcester and things. Has it all been a discussion of downsizing the base office in a way that would allow for other options? I'm also just thinking about retention of employees with hybrid, etc. Is that something you've thought about? So one of the things we thought about, and Derek, please chime in to join me on this because Derek and I have been working together, is, for example, do you put the lab somewhere else and have that at a different location? My conversations with Katrina, that can be challenging because of oversight and integration of new employees that are there. We do have obviously satellite offices in each casino with our gaming agencies, state police, licensees, folks are there at occasion as well. But part of the issues, we're not a huge agency. We've only got, what, 100 plus civilian employees. So that could be challenging. I don't know if you have any thoughts on that, Derek, or any other conversations you've had. We haven't had any conversations other than the lab about satellite offices. So that's a new concept and we would have to work through the logistics of how you would manage it, how you would keep that cohesive office environment that we're trying to do through the hybrid model. But it, I think, as Commissioner Cameron said earlier, all options are on the table. This is the time you usually get locked into a five to 10 year lease. So we should talk about all these things so we're not kicking ourselves in a year or two. I certainly would like to see us look at maybe moving out of Boston, one, cost savings, but two, a lot of us were talking and laughing this morning about the traffic situation and how difficult it is to get into Boston. Maybe it'd be easier somewhere else. Food for thought. The licensees would echo that. We've heard that in each budget meeting for the last four to five years. So that it has been a regular conversation I know across senior staff and we have brought it. It's actually been brought up in public budget discussions with the Commission in the past. So I don't think you're out of line asking for that. I think that's something that everyone would like to consider the positives and negatives of. Yeah, I understand that and I absolutely want to talk about it. I do think there's a benefit to the Boston presence. That's kind of why I broke the idea of different spaces because our need to continue to communicate with the legislature, with Partners in the HE's Office that we're communicating with, that is helpful to be here. And also, if and when we are going back to public meetings, which for some, I feel like there will be a trend that will land somewhere, you know, for closer to that than we are right now. I have concerns about making sure we pick a location, particularly to the public meeting space, that allows for public transportation in. Because I just don't want to put us out somewhere where we are now often some office complex where if you don't have a car, you can't get to us. So I would throw that out for one of the things that I would want to think about. If it helps at all, I know cannabis shows to move to Worcester for public transportation reasons, but they do have a small Boston office for those very reasons when there are meetings here. And so they have a Boston presence with a very small office, but their main headquarters are out in Worcester. I haven't heard a report of how that's going, but they did make that decision early on to have the satellite office here. Commissioner Skinner, you haven't heard from you. So I think Karen laid out some really good considerations for reviewing the direction of the lease in Boston. But I think it would behoove us to first have a meaningful conversation about sort of the future of work for the agency. I know we are on a hybrid work model, but my understanding is that as a pilot right now. So we should, is that right, Karen? Am I misunderstanding?  And then the commission did approve it as a policy. Now, like any policy, policies can be updated. So it's sort of in effect at the time, but the term pilot was the prior policy that was for a few months while we tested it out. So that's the status we're at right now. Got it. The point being that if we are really trying to map out sort of a space footprint for our colleagues, then I think we really need to understand who needs to be in the office, how many days a week, just on a longer term basis, what equipment they're going to need, what kind of space they'll need, whether it's a hotel space, whether it's office space, and really just kind of map that out. Because until we do that, I don't know that we can sort of meaningfully hunt for other space because that sort of serves as the basis. So if I had something to offer, it would be that we initiate discussions to really nail that piece of it down. And I think a couple of people intimated at this. Derek, Commissioner O'Brien, just in terms of who needs private space, who doesn't, who can be in a hotel space when the commissioners get together in a public meeting, where is that going to be held? And even I'm looking forward to having all the staff in the office at the same time. So definitely want to voice my support for a space that's large enough to accommodate that. Right. And that's a good point. That's tricky because if you do want days when everybody's in the office, you can't shrink it too much or at all because then people don't have workstations. So it's these policy decisions on people being in the office. Yeah. So I think this is a critical discussion. It is very pertinent. But we were in a pandemic for two years where significant decisions were made that were driven by public health considerations. We're now emerging from that. And folks have grown very comfortable working from home. Well, I think there's also a lot of evidence that there is something lost when you don't have a community at work. So I think, Karen, you've got all the considerations underway. I think what would be, I think Commissioner O'Brien, Commissioner Skinner, both talked about some process that could be done. I suspect that people are able to reach out to both some private sector businesses that are going through this. Perhaps the greater Chamber of Boston Commerce would be able to give some input. The one thing that might separate us from the executive branch, and I have to say, speaking with some of my colleagues, they thought that we might have just gotten it perfect to have three days of management, two days of staff. I mean, honestly, I wish it were three days across the board so that there were more opportunities for us all to see each other more frequently. But I also know that there's some real benefits in working from home and that flexibility that we've seen.  That's irreversible without a lot of good information and data. And the truth is, is we're in a really luxurious position because we still have that space and we might have some opportunity to extend. We might have some opportunity to leverage, as you mentioned, Karen. A caution about any quick decisions here, although in other words, like today or tomorrow. But the process is underway and it's a good one to get going on. Another group that might be helpful to speak with is our friends at the lottery and the treasury because they did move to, you know, Commissioner Hill, you know, quite right. We do deal with Boston traffic. I also see that as a plus that there's traffic. I hate to say it. That means all the small restaurants that are closed up might come back to life, all of the, you know, the cities, everything that makes Massachusetts special in its cities might come back to life and that comes along with traffic. But they did, they were in brain tree for quite a good time. It was quite removed from the red lines station there. So under Mike Sweeney's leadership, they did make a decision to move to the Dorchester location closer to the city so that they could access better public transportation and diversify their, their employee base. We are at a very good number. I have no idea in terms of our diversification, in terms of how that plays out for location here. But it was a consideration, I know, for the lottery. They have a much bigger group. I think they're like 400 strong or something. But they're now, I think right across the street, right, from the red line. So, you know, that is, like Gail said, Chair Hoffman really looked at that, that issue and made that move. So it's, there's a lot of considerations. But I like that you started with culture, Karen, and imagining what you want your team to feel like and what you want it to look like on a daily basis. So maybe we can put this on as a kind of a regular reporting. But I also think Todd, that if it comes down to any negotiations or strategies, I think there is, if we start talking about actual leasing, there are an executive session for us to be able to discuss that for, to preserve strategy considerations. Am I right? I think that's right. We can start taking a look at that. Yeah. So that would, so it would be kind of a culture and then if there's any strategy decisions, we could go into the second session. But I think commissioners, do you like the idea of maybe having Karen keep this on a little bit of a regular cadence as she and her team work it out? Because I do think we have to be kind of, we have to be part of the early conversation and not just a reactive decision maker. Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. So I definitely welcome any input. As you can see from the discussion, once you start talking about it, it's like, Oh, what about this? Oh, what about this? So it's really, it's not necessarily an obvious answer all the time. So we may want to, I like the idea of a recurring conversation because I really welcome the input and help on this. It's a big deal. And I do know, I do know the executive branch really did reduce its footprint over this period. I don't know the extent that they preserved common space so that full agencies could get together. I don't know the answer to that. No. If you're imagining at least once a month, everybody getting together, do we have to rent out space? You know, you'll think about that in that way and how we are efficient. So I was also thinking about the cannabis analogy. The one thing that I think does distinguish us from that is they have sort of even statewide jurisdiction. Yeah. We are more eastern mass in terms of two of the three existing casinos are here. The fourth region C would put us more geographically in terms of what we're overseeing in the eastern half of the state. So in terms of thinking about other geographic locations to base things, just something to keep in mind. I think it's, I'm curious to know how cannabis is faring with that setup of a base out in Worcester with just a satellite in Boston to sort of hopefully satisfy what we need. But I do think there is a little bit of a difference when we look at other agencies. We have to remember what's their jurisdiction, what's ours in terms of geography. Excellent. All very helpful. So to be continued and if you could keep thinking about it and any ideas. Is it one year, six months truly? One year, nine months. Yeah. More than two babies. I know, but the process does take a while if we're going to do an RFP. So we want to make sure we're on top of it. Yeah. Okay. So that's very helpful. Thank you. So keep thinking. And then the last item on the administrative update, I just wanted, because Play My Way is launching out in Springfield today as a fitting end to problem being in the awareness month. And Mark is out there for the launch. I just wanted to take a moment to recognize not only the launch of the program, but also to recognize the efforts of Mark and his team and the IT team and MGM Springfield in making that happen. And Play My Way is an innovative budgeting tool designed to allow customers to set the budget and monitor what they spend across electronic games. It's a voluntary tool and it can help them just sustain a budget and eliminating regret after going to a casino. So partnering with the casinos on things like this with respect to problem gaming prevention initiatives really helpful. And I just wanted to acknowledge that, acknowledge the end of Play My Way. I see Daniel Miller's there and he's got his t-shirt on. Love it. So how is that going out there, Daniel? It's so far very well. We actually began running the program to the slot floor Monday morning and it has continued obviously up until today as the official launch. By about three o'clock yesterday afternoon, we had about 200 members who had signed up and enrolled and about 170 of that had redeemed their $10 food credit as well. So it's definitely gathering momentum hopefully with today's events, the press events at one o'clock should expand that as well. But yeah, happy we're in a Play My Way college today. You know, I do want to recognize Springfield because they are the lead on this. They voluntarily took this on. And you mentioned the coupon. The casino itself is donating or contributing 50% of that. So they're actually contributing funds to get people into the program, which I think is really remarkable and shows their commitment to dealing with issues around responsible gaming. So thank you to MGM. I'm sure Mark is doing well out there running around getting everything ready, but just wanted to acknowledge that and say thanks again. He is on the floor as we speak. I'm getting zinged with emails as we go. And I'm almost like in operation control up in my office. It's working. Okay, great. Excellent. Take care of everybody. Take care of Daniel. If I could just chime in. I did have a chance to speak with President Kelly and to thank him for his leadership and stewardship on bringing Play My Way board. It's an exciting program today. I know that the commissioners would have loved to have been there, but we've got a lot of action going on here too today, Daniel. It's just May 31st is a big day here. But Chris Kelly, the leadership from the very top of MGM under 1st Jim Murn and now Bill Hornbuckle have embraced responsible gaming here in Massachusetts. And I'm sure Chris will at some point share the words, but he said that it is not lost on him and all of you at MGM that the legislature from the very start got this commitment right again to Commissioner Hill. You understand that. But what he I like his words called it the gold standard in the nation. So we'll let Chris share that publicly. But I also want to acknowledge that Mayor Sarno and Commissioner Helen Cauldron Harris will be there. She's the public health commissioner who also serves on the GPAC and that representation from the city. Daniel, of course, elevates exactly the import of today's launch. We love that the city of Springfield has been really a great steward of responsible gaming as well for MGM. And so I want to just say a big thank you and I know my fellow commissioners would join me and if you want to weigh in. Again, thank you, Daniel. We know it's a busy, busy day. We can't wait to hear all about it at the end of the day. Commissioners, anything you want to add? Okay, thank you and good luck. Thank you, Lady Chair. And if I may just a sidestep slightly from playing my way, just a very big welcome to Commissioner Skinner and a farewell to Lady Commissioner Cameron. Best wishes in anything that you do next. Just a real thank you. It was nice to come out and see you all in person and very much appreciated hearing about all the new developments and the t-shirt looks cool, Daniel. Thank you, Daniel. Thanks, Daniel. So that concludes the administrative update for this morning. Okay, that was I didn't realize that Daniel was going to be able to join Karen. That's excellent. And thanks, Crystal, for tipping me out. But now we're turning back to Crystal Howard. Today, Crystal, you've made several contributions and for that we're very, very appreciative. This is an interesting program. I had to be reminded on a few of the facts from Crystal last night. So I look forward to this presentation from you and the colleagues at LEAF. Thank you, Kathy. So I'm just really happy to present to you guys today Amin Finali, Managing Director for Strategy and Development at the Local Enterprise Assistance Fund, which we call LEAF internally, and you've heard that term a few times, but I've had the pleasure of working with him since day one of this grant effort back when I was an ADBD program manager for workforce university development. So I did compile a lot of the background on their work for you in the memo, but I'm not going to go too far into it because I've seen Amin's presentation and he's covering some of that in a great way. So by way of brief introduction, our contracted efforts with LEAF began in FY19 when they responded to our RFR for business technical assistance vendor. And after a competitive procurement process and grant review, they received the initial award. Now, over three years later, this just this week, actually, we executed the contract for $150,000 with the procurement team. Thank you, Derek, John Spilley, and Noel to not only continue the great efforts that Amin's team has made with the MBE, VBE, and WBE businesses, as well as our licensees. So it's a long effort, but to develop and now launch a new portal, aiding and advancing the pipeline for the business-inspired diversity built across the state. So I will let Amin take the rest of the presentation. Thank you, Crystal. Can you hear me? Right? Yes, good morning. Yes. Good morning to you, commissioners. Thank you for the opportunity to speak in front of you and to present our activities for procurement diversity. Thank you also to Mass Gaming Commissioners, the executives and the staff for your commitment to procurement diversity. Thank you to Crystal and to Derek for your continued trust and support of our work. And also special thanks to the casino staff who have assisted our work with meetings, with insight, and also with the opportunity to support their vendors. So clearly this was a team effort and continues to move forward and we're hoping to be positive contributors to this effort. In the time I have in front of you today, I'd like to use a slide deck to go over some of the points I'd like to make in the first part and then maybe take you on a tour of the tool that we've created and hope to continue to develop to support procurement diversity within the gaming establishments and institutionally, broadly in the state as well. So I will share my screen if you give me just a second to position myself. Like Crystal, I also use three screens and I hope to not lose sight of where I am. Okay, so you should be seeing the title slide at this time, I hope. So I'll start just by brief comments about who we are. Lief, we are a non-profit community development financial institution. We're certified by the US Treasury. We're established in 1983 with the goal of supporting cooperatives and disadvantaged business enterprises general. We provide, historically we have provided financing solutions, so patient flexible capital in the form of loans and we've also provided pro bono technical assistance to disadvantaged enterprises. It takes the form of advisory services on financial management, capital advisory, and any issues that the businesses face and need support with on the financial management cash flow management side of things. We're guided by our mission to improve the lives of people and households in the communities that we serve. As Crystal said, we started our partnership, though we applied late in 2019, February 2020 was sort of when we started the work to provide technical assistance and advisory services to current and potential vendors and the idea would be to provide, would have been to provide capital as needed as well. And so this was a short five weeks before the COVID-19 health emergency took hold in the state and you know, March 2020, as we know, the businesses shut down and our activities shifted to help support the local businesses and our focus remains with disadvantaged enterprises, so women and white folk owned businesses and the goal of helping them survive the economic fallout from the pandemic. So March 2020, still early on and a lot of lack of visibility into the future. In supporting the businesses, in addition to continuing to support the vendors for the gaming establishments, we provided intensive support to women and white folk owned businesses. If you remember at the time, the relief efforts, the PPP and the IDL programs, the early versions of those did not reach a lot of the disadvantaged populations in the state. And so along with a number of coalitions and initiatives, we embarked on an effort to reach out to as many enterprises as we could and inform them of their eligibility and help them with the application process. And through that, we were able to reach over a thousand businesses, over actually 1400 businesses and several million dollars were dispersed, in relief funds were dispersed to those entities that needed the most. Part of our advisory work also had been to help the relief negotiations with lenders and landlords early on that it was a very stressful time on both sides. And so we had to step in and help negotiate workouts with the different parties. All of this provided on a pro bono basis to the businesses. We are a funding member of the coalition for an equitable economy, which was birthed from the pandemic with an effort of bridging and eliminating the wealth gap in the Commonwealth. We continue to be strong supporters of the coalition efforts, which rely on providing access to advisory services and technical assistance, capital as needed to the businesses and also procurement opportunities to disadvantage populations. Through that, we established partnerships with a number of business support organizations in the state. As a nonprofit CDFI, we had several partnerships, but COVID-19 emergency brought us all together in a deeper way and our connections were stronger. Our trust was greater and we had access to each other's businesses with the warm introductions that usually are required to establish trust with the businesses. So through that period, our team alone interacted with over 170 businesses, the vast majority of which were minority business enterprises and women on enterprises, and the vast majority of which also was Massachusetts based businesses outside of Boston. And we also interacted with a number of businesses within Boston. And these statistics are for 2020 alone. So the reason I wanted to go to this background is because that work informed our work for the mass gaming commission in that our overarching objective had always been to expand the universe of local MWBE suppliers available for procurement. And so our work with several of these coalitions gave us access to over a thousand businesses, the ones we have interacted with directly and the ones we had access to through the partnerships with these business support organizations. And the message we had from both vendors and buyers had been the same, that the vendors wanted to do business. They needed access to these institutional contracts because of the visibility that it gives them into a longer term period. And the buyers as well wanted to be able to support the communities where they were situated and also to meet their own needs for services and products that they needed. And our assessment was that the tools and the information set to connect the buyers and sellers needed to be enhanced. It existed, but it was just needed to be enhanced. And we felt that this was a function that we could serve and provide relief to both sides of the market. So to that end, we set up on a screening process where there are many lists available that have information about DBEE candidates in the States. That includes the State Diversity Office databases and a few other organizations. And we also created another one based on our work on the PPP and the idea on the relief efforts, businesses that were not certified or maybe were interested in being certified, but just didn't know that the process existed or didn't want to go through it and needed help to go through that. And our process was one of identifying the information, doing as much data cleaning as possible, and to the extent that there is information that is out of date or erroneous or not helpful to eliminate that, replace it with information that would be actionable. The establishments, the casinos were kind to provide us with their product and services and commodities matrix and these are the required services that they use. And we were able to use that to make assignments to the databases so that we can match businesses with products and services that they provide. And then we wanted this to be a little bit of a high-touch process where there's a human interaction with the business, understanding that trust is important in what we do. And so we created the sort of outreach list for our team to be able to contact, to seek these business owners and contact them and have a conversation with them, enlist their buy-in and essentially make them ready to become vendors. So kind of schematically what the process looked like out of a thousand, and again this is just a pilot phase for a small team, so out of an initial outreach of 211 businesses, going through some certification validation process and establishing a fit for the products and services that are required and used by the buyers, you know, kind of that leads to identifying about 48 businesses in the first pass of doing this, that were top contenders. Brief description of what those businesses, clearly this was mostly in the hospitality space, so hotel operations, maintenance services, event services, and about a third were women-owned enterprises, about another third were minority-owned enterprises, a small slice was veteran-owned enterprises, it's notoriously difficult route to break into, but we have made some good inroads by working with some chambers in commerce and leaning on our friends at the SBA, and then there was a large contingent that either was not aware of certification or was not aware of the opportunity, but certainly would have appreciated that opportunity. And the end result of all of this outreach was to create what we call actionable information, and so this is information about the business that provides an overview of the business, their products, their capabilities, and their previous institutional buyers indicating their ability to handle institutional contracts, and we wanted to use the real estate, the report real estate in a way where information would be easily identified so that two different reports don't have to look very different, and the eye is trained to find the information it's looking for quickly and easily, and so that required a standardized format for these reports, and they would be short, they would include information that is relevant, and also information that is not so private about the business that it would have been infringed on their confidentiality, so all of this is public information, and we were able to share these capability statements with the buyers and make connections as required as they felt there was need for contracting with some of these companies, and so our kind of concept solution that evolved out of this is one that we're calling a mix of high touch and low touch, digital and human interface to create kind of that actionable set of information, you know at the center of it is the data aggregation and cleanup, so we have to be able to have information about these companies, we need to have a process to find the information and then also validate it and clean it up, and when we do that then it leads to content development, so creating that interface and that report that delivers the information for the buyers to be able to make a quick assessment of whether this is a vendor that I want to be able to consider, and in order to take us out of the equation and make this sort of an autopilot project, create intuitive access to that information so that we're not the ones pushing it out by emails, you know all the time that they have access to it at any time on demand, and also give the ability to create personalized vendor lists and vendor portfolios, and in doing that also the ability to create benchmarks internally, how much expenditures do we, what is the level of expenditures we can target and how are we doing with respect to those benchmarks, and because we are a technical assistance team, you know maybe this could become the technical assistance dispatch where when there is a challenge with a particular vendor then it would be, there would be a quick tool to assign a TA provider to that vendor and and deal with the challenge and resolve the problem and then report that has been reported, that has been dealt with in order to avoid situations where vendors are falling through the cracks and not coming back into the system, so we, so this is a quick snapshot, we created this initiative for uplift in local procurement, we're going uplift procure, the acronym is UP UP, we feel it's probably appropriate given what we've gone through over the last two years, some more uplifting is needed, and the idea is that it provides search and filter functionality that is intuitive, capability statements repository that is kept up to date that is not allowed to go stale, you know vendor portfolio design and management, some benchmarking and progress reporting to the extent it's needed internally for the buyers, and then seamless assignment of technical assistance when needed, and a few more snapshots of what we kind of come up with this is short but I'll when we go through it, it'll probably be a little bit more visible, you know where we have at this stage about 109 companies in the database, and there's the ability to filter by certification status, NBE, WBE or VBE, search by town to the extent local spending is has some layers of limitations, you know with localities and counties and regions etc, and you know the the the industry's list is currently limited to what we have access to through the matrices provided to us, very heavily tilted towards hospitality, but you know this will be expanded as we add and our goal is to take this number from 109 to over a thousand, and so the next slide just shows kind of what I went over the ability to to filter very briefly and intuitively, but also to be able to click on individual companies and add them to individuals or buyers portfolios so that they can keep track of who it is that they are interacting with or who they are researching and examining for purchasing decisions, and then they can also go to their own portfolios and be able to see their portfolio makeup, how many NBEs and WBEs are in the portfolio, and you know having some brief information about those companies in that portfolio and that information being fairly limited but still insightful and snapshot type information, and lastly that this would be a repository of these capability statements, and this would be generated on demand, the content will be updated routinely by a team of analysts that is looking at the information, and then as it is updated the content on demand here will be updated as well, so if you allow me I will shift my screen to the website. Bernali, thank you so much. Crystal, is this a good time for the commissioners to ask questions or do we? I'll just go through the website if it's all right briefly and then thank you. And then sorry about that, I'm trying to position my computer. I wanted to make sure that you didn't want to break now for some reason. I like it when somebody is having triple with the triple screen because I had to turn two of my three in. I almost mentioned that earlier, like you understand. I do understand. Crystal had text to me about a triple screen threat and I completely understood. Todd, I think you're a beneficiary of that. That's screens to share.  Thank you so much. All right, can you see my website here? Yes, we're back on the website. Thank you. Let me just zoom a little bit here. As you can see, there is a login required when you log in. It'll recognize the individual. This is likely the most impactful component of the website with the screen functionality and the listed companies. We have about five pages of companies listed here and the idea is we could search by, in this particular case, MBE status alone. It would only show the companies that are MBE companies. We can further refine that and only include women-owned businesses and it would include that as well. And we can add companies for evaluations simply by clicking on the companies and as you can see, these companies will be listed here. We can add them to the portfolio and then what the portfolio looks like at the moment and this is evolving constantly is a quick snapshot of the businesses that were selected in the portfolio. And then what we've added here is a little functionality where if there is a technical assistant request that when you click on the button, it sends an email to us with the request for support for the business and then some descriptive information about the businesses, the makeup of the businesses. And then additionally, we wanted to ensure that the businesses have, the buyers can access these capability statements easily and within each of the companies, you click on capability statements and these populate automatically and all the information is updated and we have been given some advice on what to add. For example, some of the licensees ask to have included date for when the certifications expire and some other information that we're in the process of adding as well. But all of this would continue to add functionality to this website. We haven't shared the login yet with the Gaming Subvention. We intend to do that over the next few weeks, just the process of going through some glitches and things like login, etc. that were taken longer than we expected. And the project going forward continues to be we have to continue to grow the database and grow the content once the platform and technology is in place. And the value of this is the value of what we are producing here is dependent on the content that the content is valid and is actionable. And then with respect to our own mission and the test of this qualifying for our own mission, what we're looking for in terms of inputs out of this is an increased coverage of disadvantaged enterprises in the database, improved content, having intuitive access to the data and expand the tool sets that are available to users so that they can make their decisions with ease. The impacts we'll be looking for is increased spending locally, increased revenue visibility for the companies and the disadvantaged enterprises we work with and better employment numbers in our communities. And finally, the outcomes would be a viable path to local wealth building. This is sort of what we seek when we want companies to participate in the economic benefits of the large companies here, improved individual quality of life and stable communities. So I will stop sharing here. It's the end of my presentation and I'm happy to answer your questions. Thank you, commissioners. Do you have questions for Mr. Bernal or for Crystal? Yes, you do. Commissioner Cameron, I think for you nodding your head, yes. I don't have questions, but I'm just amazed at the level of detail, the level of commitment, the how much work goes into getting this right and how important the work is. So every page you showed us, you did with enthusiasm and your commitment and your how much you care about this work is just evident. So I just was very interested in the presentation and did not realize the level of detail and it really does make a difference in people's lives. So I just wanted to thank you for the work and explaining in more detail about what you do to us. Thank you, commissioner. I appreciate your words. Thank you. Commissioner Gray, are you leaning in? I did. I just wanted to reiterate what Commissioner Cameron said that I know people think sometimes procurement is dry and, you know, it doesn't have an impact, but having had some exposure to it when I was in the IG office in terms of how cycles of, you know, almost being an incumbent vendor, you know, keep some people out of it and just the level of detail that's sometimes needed to be able to respond to RFPs, respond to requests from different companies to be able to get into this, these opportunities. I think you're doing a tremendous service for both sides involved in the interaction to do exactly what people say, which is to try to make sure that the wealth is out there and going to different communities, giving opportunities, because it is very often that first step in the door that would help WEs, VBEs, and BEs really start to get hold. So I think it's fantastic. Again, the level of detail, again, also, I know it's out there, had some exposure to it, but I was impressed with sort of the level and the depth of the detail that's gone into this. Thank you, Commissioner. Thank you. Commissioner Skinner, Commissioner Hill? Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Skinner. I'll start. There we go. I'm all set. Thank you. Thank you. So I just, you know, as my fellow commissioner said, this is such critical work. If you had to identify still the biggest challenge for really augmenting your list of businesses, systemically, institutionally, what would you say it is, Mr. Bernali? Thank you for your question, Commissioner. They, I think at the moment, we, like most institutions, realize that we need to increase our resources and staffing. When we set out to do this, we did not, we were, we understood technology had to be part of it, but we also understood that the human element had to be part of the solution, in fact, it is integral to the success of this. And it was really our work during COVID-19 that solidified that belief. I mean, that belief had permeated in our work as a nonprofit for a very long time, but it was made more visible during that time when we had to call business owners who were in crises and had to provide support for them. It was, it is that level of empathy that's needed to gain the trust of the business owners, to get their buy-in. And a lot of times, it'd be surprised how much you're convincing you have to do to explain the opportunity and that you really should trust me on this. And it's not, it's not easy. And I think that's the challenge is to communicate the necessity of this to the business owners. I think to the credit of the licensees and the staff, there is clear commitment and desire to do this. And, you know, and it's there. But when you get questions like, where can we get this information? How do we find these businesses? Well, then it puts us on us. It's our failing if they're not there. And this is what we're trying to deal with is, you know, make sure that we are working with partners that know the businesses that can create the warm introduction, the warm meeting, where you have the time and the emotional space to explain the opportunity. And to say, yeah, we should go through this process, get certified and let's put you on the system. Let's give us more information about your company, what you can do. If you need capital, we are capital providers. We are connected with other capital providers that can help you. So the technology part while I would say cool is a tool. And I wouldn't I wouldn't put the emphasis on that. I would honestly put the emphasis on the humans that are out there, pounding the pavement, going to the site of the business owner, speaking with them, get in a sense of what they can and cannot do so that we're not making these representations. And I think sometimes that what happens if you misrepresent what you're able to do and then you're not able to deliver, it kind of puts everybody back several steps and we hope to ensure that we can eliminate completely, but we minimize that. And if in fact it happens, we can mitigate it. That's a tremendous answer because you really indicated that it's that trust factor that you have to establish. And I wondered if capital was one of the big systemic blocks, but I'm delighted to hear that you see a solution for that. And who is not going to repeat? Technology is cool as the tool. That's a great saying, but it really does take that human element. Very inspired answer to a I wasn't sure what your answer would be. So thank you, Mr. Bernalé. Excellent presentation. And just a reminder, Crystal, Derek, our investment has been here a few hundred thousand dollars, right?  The first grant was a split, I think, I mean, correct me, was it 75,000 each at that point? That is correct, yes. And then it became we, I mean, you can already see the dedication and commitment that LEAF has put into this, but the communication was solely really what was really driving their success. It's hard as a third party to go between us and the licensees and then also the businesses, and they were just really successful. So in that second iteration, they received a hundred thousand, I believe. And now with this, the one that was just released this week, which these have all been put out as an RFP process, and this was a best value contract that we had out, because you can see this was not what we thought it would be. It just became that in those communications, there was something lagging. And as you can tell, this streamlines the content, those capability statements being there for our licensees and any other procurement interests. They don't have to chase this down. It's available for them. And it just opens up who the vendors may be when they're looking at something versus, you know, how quick the procurement process can be for some of these, especially in our licensee procurements. They're putting it out there and trying to get the, they need to get it complete quickly. So this really aids in that. But as LEAF puts in these extra touches, even the certification, you know, having that piece in there, if you're not certified business, kind of encourages you to look into that further and make sure you get certified because that's a hold up a little bit. And it's been a component of what LEAF's been doing for us over the time as well. And I think that was mentioned, but they have been and can be assistance to if the certification is a challenge. And I know it looked like Derek's hand was raised at one point. So I may be already addressing this, but we've had this conversation internally as well. And this is a tool for MGC and for other entities to do it. It's not, you know, we're trying to make this change over the entire state, but it's really been such an asset that the licensees would provide their input and look at this and say what they need. So the communication is just, it's phenomenal to me because I know how difficult it can be. So we've really appreciated LEAF's involvement. I hope the impalization of your launch on the website and the technological tool continues successfully. It's really, really important piece. And you made it very clear for us today. Commissioners, do you have any other questions or Derek, did you want to weigh in on? Yeah, I did just want to weigh in. I want to emphasize what I mean talked about earlier. This started off as a technical assistance program and he started developing this tool, not because we gave him money to develop it, but because it was helpful to the licensees as well as to the businesses he's representing. And I have heard, you know, I've got 22 years in state government, 20 of which have been a direct procurer. I think 18 have been a supply diversity officer and I think 10 of them were a secretariat diversity supply diversity officer. And we've heard this pitch. I can't tell you how many times about an electronic tool and where it falls down is the maintenance of it and making sure that the business capabilities, because the cost of doing that far exceeds what we are providing as a grant to Amin and his team. So that is the huge aspect that's going to be helpful to anyone using this tool, the fact that it's updated, it gives true business capabilities, it gives a quick glance.  And then when, you know, I started talking to Amin about what he's actually doing, that's a differentiator. I mean, the fact that his team is out there meeting with these people, helping with the certifications, keeping those business statements updated, keeping the certifications updated, working with the people to get the certifications updated because they don't have the staff that can do that. That's a differentiator here and it costs a lot more than 150,000. I can tell you that. So, you know, it's a great tool. I think we are very lucky with this partnership. And I hope to see it continue. I'd love to see a thousand businesses in there. Thank you. We are committed to getting there. We're ramping up our hiring. And this is a priority for us. I think it completes our offering between capital advisory services and procurement services. I think we hope to help the businesses and become a wealth. Excellent. Any further questions? Mr. Burnett, if you all set. Commissioner Hill, Commissioner Skinner. Okay. Commissioner Cameron, Commissioner Ryan. I'll set a very interesting presentation. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Thank you. Have a great day. Thank you. Good luck. Okay. Commissioners, we knew it was going to be a good, robust meeting today and I'm looking at the time. It's quarter of the cloud. We have schedule. I have Dr. Lightbound and team go next. And then a break is predicted with a lunch around one. Are we still good with that format? I see Brad shaking his head. Are you okay? Commissioner Brian right now? I think we've probably had Mr. Yeah. Yeah. Right now. I'm sorry. We were going to work until one and then take a break. Is that what? No, we're going to take a break at 1150, but we're just running a little bit late. So if you don't mind. If we're going to go till one, I would have asked for a break, but. Well, Commissioner Cameron, I'm with you 100%. We could certainly attend to the next item first. Okay. Yeah. Okay. Good. I just wanted to make sure there wasn't any urgency. Okay. Alrighty. Dr. Lightbound, good morning. Good morning. Today I have Steve O'Toole, Director of Racing for Plain Ridge with us. And the first item on is the operating and racing official approval for Plain Ridge. Everybody on that list is returning folks that have been approved by the Commission in the past, except for Charles Eaton, the third is perjading judge and James Tommaso was the clerk of course. They do have their USDA licenses in those particular fields. And even though they're new to the racing official list, they have been, they're not new to us. They have been at Plain Ridge before. And so I recommend that these, the list of these people be approved by the Commission, of course, pending licensure by our licensing folks down there and completion of the background checks by the state police. Any questions for Dr. Lightbound or Dr. O'Toole? Do we need, do you need to have a refresher on the list? Or do you have those documents in front of you? I'm happy to make a motion, Madam Chair. Thank you. I move that in accordance with 205CMR 3.18, the Commission approved the racing officials as requested and discussed here today, subject to licensure by the Commission's racing division. Second. Thank you. Any questions? Commissioner Skinner, this is new to you. Do you have any questions? I don't. I did get the opportunity to have some good prep time with Dr. Lightbound. So I am all good. Okay, then go ahead and, and Dr. O'Toole, we're excited about the upcoming season. And we'll take about that director. My goodness, Commissioner Cameron, thank you. Hi. Commissioner Bryan. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. And I vote yes, 5-0. Excellent. What do you have next for us, Dr. Lightbound? The next item is the waiver request of 205CMR 3.12, number seven. This is the qualifying time requirement. And right in the regulation, it does say that the association may request a waiver of this requirement. So since, I believe, let's see, 2018, Plain Ridge has asked for a waiver of this to move it from the 30 days to 45 days. This still will ensure that the horses are fit and sound to race and give a line for the patrons to use. But it will give the horsemen an extra 15 days leeway. And so, since this has been in effect, we haven't had any issues with it at all. So I am recommending that the commission grant this waiver. Any questions?  You're familiar with this and the welfare of the horses? I believe we make good decisions with this waiver in the past. It served us well and see no reason to change it at this time. Any questions on this? Okay. Commissioner, did I I need a motion? I would make a motion. I realize, Dr. Lightbound, you can't move. I'm done. It's my apologies. We have a recommendation. Commissioner Hill. I would move that the commission waive the requirements set out in 205 CMR 3.12 subsection seven, that all horses not showing a satisfactory racing line during the previous 30 days, go a qualifying mile and a race before the judges and change the 30 day period to 45 days for the reasons discussed here today. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Bryan. Any questions now for either Director Tull or Dr. Lightbound? Okay. Commissioner Kim. Hi. Commissioner Bryan. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. Commissioner Skinner. Hi. And I vote yes, five zero. Thank you. Okay. Next, Dr. Lightbound. Our next item is the 2021 annual report. And I have Chad work joining me today to help with this presentation. I'm not going to go through in detail on it. You all have it in the packet. But just touch on some highlights. We were able to race a full meet in 2021. As you all know, in 2020, with the COVID restrictions and all, we were shut down for many months. And that affected different things like number of races we could hold and the money that came in from the resource development fund and all. We had a great spirit of mass day with the Claire Barton pace and the perfect with the more real being brought back. And the chair and several of the commissioners came down for that day was wonderful and executive director Wells. And a couple of the, you know, our division has a number of different functions. One of the main ones is licensing. And so with the regular meet, we handled about the same number of licenses that we do. The drug testing went back to similar levels from 2019. We did have the trainers, if they have an adverse drug finding on one of their horses, they are entitled to a split sample. And we had two trainers request what's this year and both of those were combined confirmed by the split lab, which goes to show once again, you know, the credibility of the lab that we use that is accredited and all. We have the investigative unit with the state police that works very closely with us on background checks and vehicle inspections and things like that. Our judging staff was busy. There were no appeals of their decisions this past year, which saves the commission a lot of time. And on the financial end with the chats, the primary one that does the reconciling of the handle figures and things like that. And you'll get into more detail on that. We were able to distribute, let's see, over $14 million in purses this year, which was a great amount, you know, to get out to the horsemen. The sire stakes program continues to improve with increasing number of purses. And just one note, Commissioner Skinner did notice some typos. And so with the commissions, okay, I'll work with her to correct the typos in the end report before we put it on to our website as the official version. And then just before I turn it over to Chad, I just wanted to thank Steve and his crew for their cooperation and help this year, as well as the horsemen and horsewomen. It all is a collaborative effort to get all the racing done and get all the different rules and all follows. And I just want to mention again, we can't do it with the racing division as a small unit. We can't do our jobs without the help of the other divisions of the MGC, the legal department, IT, finance, HR, of course. So I want to thank them. And then also the leadership of Chair Judd Stein, the commissioners, and of course, Executive Director Wells. And with that, I'll turn it over to Chad to discuss the financial end of it. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Can everyone hear me okay? Yes. Hi, Chad. Yes, good morning. Or we had afternoon. You're still intact. It's still morning. Thank you. All right. That's good. So as Alex mentioned, I'd like to just provide you with a quick summary of the division's financials. And we can do a little comparison from pre-pandemic levels and highlight a couple items. So to get right into it, I'll start with the division's revenue tax and fee receipts. So last year, the division collected over $328,000 in association license fees. We did $64,000 in badge and license fees. Just over $23,000 in penalties and fines collected and $750,000 in assessments. In total, for 2021, it came in at, and I'll give the exact figure, it's $2,215,932, and this represents a 7% increase year over year. Obviously, this increase is attributed, or primarily attributed to the number of days the tracks were simply open compared to 2020. Association fees, licensing fees, live racing, beyond the track, simulcasting, we're all up well above 2020 levels. So that's some good news there. And we should also see that happen in 2022. And then to compare, I thought it would be interesting to compare the 2021 handles to the pre-pandemic level, which we were using 2019. So the live racing handle, we'll just take plane rate here, and 2019 was $1.4 million versus last year, which was $1.17 million. So there wasn't too much of a drop off in the live handle. And again, we should see that increase hopefully this year. The on track simulcasting, which our wagers placed at Plain Ridge, Rainham, Wonderland, and Suffolk was $90 million in 2019 versus $65 million in 2021. So again, now that everyone's getting back to the tracks, we hope to see that also increase. One of the bigger upticks was the 680W providers who in 2019 did a handle of $121 million. And this was in 2021, $212 million. So all told, the commissionable handle totaled $213 million in 2019 versus $278 million last year. So this represents a 30% increase versus 2019. So again, we hope to see these numbers continue to increase and racing in the state is still healthy and people are still wagering on the races. And then lastly, I think Alex mentioned, we distributed $16 million from the Race Horse Development Fund. This was to fund purse accounts and provide funding to the state's horsemen and horsewomen. And there was a total of $1.6 million added to promo and capital improvement trust funds. And also happy to report that we provided over $1.1 million in local aid. And just to echo Alex's sentiments, a big thank you to my colleagues at the racing division, the finance team, and also representatives from our licensees who helped put this all together. And that's the end of my report, unless there are any questions. Questions? Everyone's had the chance to go through the report. Thank you. I'm all set. Commissioner, you're all set. Thank you, Chad. Dr. Lightbaum. Madam Chair, before we move on, can I make a comment? Yes. Yes. Thank you. I just, first of all, excellent report. I think we improve upon it every year, which is nice to see. It's encouraging to see all the numbers trending in the right direction. And I just wanted to say that I really have appreciated working with the racing division over the years, Mr. O'Toole, all the horsemen and women, and to listen to this report and all the good work that's been done just brings back a lot of memories. Dr. Lightbaum mentioned the lab, the accredited lab. Lots of good work over the years. So just a big thank you to the whole team. Thank you. Thank you. Mr. Cameron, your leadership and stewardship has not been lost on any of us in terms of horse racing and the suspect it will probably be accomplished a bit later. So thank you. I know you've also just really enjoyed it. A little bit contagious. Okay. So honestly, Alex, got to get back to my agenda here. You're all set now. That's a conclusion. So we won't be voting on your area properly. Do you want to echo Gail's sentence about the quality of the report? Thank you. It's very clear to me. Thank you. Thank you. I'll be saving my comments for Commissioner Cameron until later on in the meeting. That's what I thought. We'll keep on task right now. Okay. Great. So this does conclude our item number five. And Crystal had anticipated that this would be a chance just for us to have a short break. And then we come back, Joe, to your community medication work and then our bit of our tribute before a lunch break. So we've got a lot to look forward to. Can I suggest a 15-minute break? So just around 12.15, 12.16? Does that work? Okay. David, you'll put on a screen saver and I will make sure not to leave the meeting. Thank you. Thanks, David. That was my landline. I still don't know who calls. I'm looking forward to being in the office. Let's see. Karen, are we pretty much set to start? Yep. Yeah, we've got the community affairs. So Joe is right on my top right end screen. So I don't know where he is on yours. Yeah, I see Chief Delaney. Joe, we don't have Mary, but is that okay? Or do we have Mary somewhere? There she is. I see her now. Yeah, I see her now. Okay. And Commissioners, we'll get started. We're resuming. I think today I started off the call. Well, this is the right way. Call to or my apologies, folks. You know, I don't think Commissioner Cameron, I properly introduced today's public meeting, which has some import for you, number 375. So we're resuming public meeting number 375 again on March 31st, 2022. Good number to end on. I thought so. I think I had noted that before. Yeah, 375. And that doesn't include the agenda setting meetings and all the public hearings that you've attended. But it's kind of a good number. You'll remember it, right? Yeah. I think that's right. So I'm sorry if I didn't know that, but we are reconvening this meeting and we're going to start with our community affairs division. Chief Delaney, good morning. Good afternoon. Good afternoon. Thank you, Madam Chair and Commissioners. Today we have a couple of items up for you. The first one is a Ludlow Reserve application. And then the second items are the workforce applications from the 2022 grant round. So we'll start off first with Ludlow. So Ludlow is a surrounding community to Springfield. And if you're not familiar with the area exactly, Ludlow is located about Springfield to the north and east of Springfield. And they were designated a surrounding community. So they received a $100,000 reserve grant back in 2015. And as you recall, we told our grantees that they had to come in with a proposal for their money before the end of 2021 if they were going to be able to use that. Ludlow did come in with an application on the last day of 2021. So they were timely. And I think as we mentioned, at least at the agenda setting meeting, that this somehow wound up in a junk folder. So it sat there for some period of time before we found it. So we apologize to the folks in Ludlow on not acting on this a bit more timely. But anyway, Ludlow is asking for some general traffic safety equipment for their police department that consists primarily of cameras. These are trailer mounted cameras, as well as message boards and speed boards, things of that nature. Now, in the location where Ludlow is, the original environmental impact report did indicate that about 1% of the traffic would use the local streets through Springfield to access Ludlow. And in addition, I-90 does pass through Ludlow and there's an exit right there off of I-90 into Ludlow. So there's other traffic that's going through Ludlow as well. So we felt that again, with the reserves, we have sort of said that there are impacts there, but this sort of defines that there definitely are some traffic impacts. And we think it's reasonable to expect that the police department in Ludlow will come across patrons and employees of the casino from time to time and that this type of use is appropriate. So we are recommending that staff approve this request for $100,000 as outlined in the application. And if it is approved by the commission, then we will execute the necessary grant agreement with Ludlow to make that happen. So I will open this one up for any questions from the commission? So there's questions for Joe or Mary. Yes, Commissioner Cameron. Not a question. It just, I do agree with this recommendation that the traffic safety equipment in question is really valuable and there is an impact. They've made that clear and training for their officers is another really valuable way to use this money. So I just in full agreement with the recommendation of staff on this issue. Any further questions or comments? I'm glad that we found it. It's a lesson. All of us need to be checking that junk drawer. I think over the last year, I've had this happen a few times to Mary and Joe. So I'm really glad that we were able to accommodate this now. Great, great memorandum. There's no further questions. You do need a vote. I have a motion. Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the town of Ludlow's request to use its $100,000 of reserve funds to purchase general traffic safety equipment and training for police officers in the use of the equipment, as described in the memo in the commissioner's packet, and as discussed here today, and that commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating this award in accordance with 205-CMR-153.04. Second. I think we have it. Was that from Commissioner Skinner? Is that okay, Commissioner Albright? We'll have Commissioner Skinner second and thank you. I just want to know, good work, Mary. I know that you really followed through with all of the communities to see that they could get the full use of these reserve funds. So great work and they did meet the deadline. So excellent. Okay. Any other edits on the motion or anything? All right. Commissioner Cameron. Hi. Commissioner O'Brien. Hi. Commissioner Hill. Hi. And Commissioner Skinner. I vote yes. Five-zero. Excellent. Great. Thank you. So next up we have the 2022 workforce applications for your consideration. As you may recall, when the guidelines were developed in the fall, we increased the amount of money for workforce grants from $800,000 to $1,500,000 out in the West and $500,000 in the East. So we did receive just a single application from the West and from the East. And so I guess the first one we'll take up is the Holyoke Community College, the Work Ready 2022 application. So on this one, we've been funding Holyoke Community College and their partners for the last several years. You know, essentially what we have found through the pandemic and otherwise, that the casinos still have a difficult time attracting qualified applicants for work in their facilities. And that has particularly affected the hospitality industry, finding people for restaurants, hotels, things of that nature. So there clearly is still a need from the casinos and of course, from the other industries, the other businesses in the area that hire those type of folks. So there clearly is a connection to the casino on these and there clearly is a need so we still continue to fund these. So just as a quick rundown on Holyoke Community College, so their partners are Springfield Technical Community College and Springfield Public Schools. So Springfield Technical Community College will continue their Hamden Prep project, which emphasizes job readiness and entry level skills and increasing comprehension, math skills, things of that nature. Springfield Public Schools will continue there ahead of the game, which really focuses on advancing students to adult basic education courses so that they can get their high school diploma. And as you know, all employees of MGM and Encore require at least a high school diploma to work at those facilities. So that is still a very important piece of the puzzle here, especially out in Springfield, getting people to get their GEDs or high set or other equivalency to a high school diploma. And then, of course, Hamden Prep will continue their culinary school, which has proven to be very valuable for MGM as a pipeline for people to work in their restaurants and so on, but again, always a challenge to get enough people in to get them trained and to get them through the process. So on that one, I will stop here if you have any questions around that one particularly. And also, Crystal Howard is here. She did the initial reviews for us on these applications as she has done in the last several years, working with us particularly on the workforce applications. Excellent. Thank you, Joan. Thank you, Crystal, for your work on this. Mary and Lily, questions on this particular, we would probably look at them separately for a vote, but why don't we, are there any particular questions on either program? It's okay. Well, why don't I, we can either vote on the first one or I can go through the second one and then we can do the second one. Right. So I think, well, do you want to, do we want to pause now? That was really my question. Let's hear the second one. I think that makes sense. Okay. Okay. Thank you. So the other application for the Eastern part of the state is the Metro Boston Regional Gaming Hospitality Consortium, which just rolls right off the tongue. And that is a joint venture between Mass High or Metro North and the city of Boston and a number of other partners, I might add. Again, we're recommending full funding for the $500,000 for this application. And similar to the HCC application, we have been funding this for several years now. And again, in our conversations with Encore about what their needs are for hiring, their answer was, we need everyone. But again, the culinary and hospitality and things of that nature are a little more difficult to fill. So in this, again, we're doing the same types of things providing English for speakers of other languages, occupational skills, digital literacy, career counseling. This is a little different than the one out west, which is being run by a community college. I guess the workforce development infrastructure is a little more well-developed in Eastern Mass, where these folks are trying to partner with a bunch of existing agencies that can really target some very specific things. And some of the folks that we have working on this one is the Boston Education Skills and Training, which is known as BEST. So they will continue their hospitality and housekeeping pre-apprentice program. We have, let's see, there's the Community Work Service who is a new partner in here. They're including an environmental cleaning and building and grounds training, which is something that's new to the program for this year. We also have what's known as Ready Set Serve, which is the International Institute of New England is providing that training. Also a culinary specialization program from the YMCA of Greater Boston. So they found a whole bunch of partners here to work with where people come in looking for work and they can be targeted. They can determine what their interests are and send them to the right place to get the right training for what type of job it is that they're looking for, particularly in the casino industry and the hospitality industry. So again, a great proposal, a little different from last year. A few new partners from last year, but essentially trying to provide the same training to those groups that would work in the hospitality industry. And so with that, I guess I will open that up for questions. And a reminder that we had approved for the two east and west, each up to $500,000, right? Yes, that's correct. Yeah, we're recommending each one for $500,000 for this year. Oh, and just one other thing that I meant to mention at the beginning. We have moved these up to the very beginning of our approvals. And the particular reason for that is, and it's more for, I think, Holyoke Community College, more so than in the east. But they work strictly on a state fiscal year, which starts July 1 and ends June 30. And we are trying to be responsive to that so that if we approve these right up front, we still have quite a bit of work getting documents together, getting the grant agreements together and the contracts and the ISAs and so on. And it's our goal is to not just have these things approved by the end of June, but to have all of the paperwork, all of the approvals in place before the start of the fiscal year so we can work better with their cadence on how they put these projects out. Excellent. Commissioner, is questions on these, the two proposals now? I have a quick question. Sure, Commissioner. Actually, when I was sitting down with a team to go over these a few weeks ago, it really sounds like they're doing the job that, you know, the money was intended to go to it. But my question to Joe would be, so we've given both of these entities money in the past. So have we heard where there have been workers that have been hired by the casinos? Are we seeing those employees that we're funding actually get jobs at the casinos? Oh, yeah, certainly. You know, and I think, you know, part of this is also, though, to sort of backfill jobs that might be lost to the casino. You know, some of the casino jobs are much higher paying than some of the other facilities. So if there's someone who has some experience and can go work at the casino, we're also looking at these as training some of the backfill that job that might have been lost to the casino. But yeah, Crystal, I don't know if you have any statistics particularly on that. I know they do report, you know, their statistics on how many people have been trained and hired and so on. Yeah, I would, I was going to say, I would have to pull, I mean, I can certainly for you for the future pull up some of that reporting, but they do report quarterly and extensive reporting. We ask for everything from, you know, general statistics and ethnicities and minorities supplier, you know, just every aspect of this is part of it. But even going forward this year, there was an element of that that we recommended that they make sure they do report on that pipeline. But it takes time, right? So they even report out six months from when a person placed what their salary averages so that we can see these are livable wages. But that is definitely a component of the reporting and just takes them longer to get that back. And because of the nature of the turnover, it's often difficult to tell to who stayed and whatnot. So we do have data on that. And we could, I could pull together. I have no problem with this moving forward, but it would be nice to have that information. Yeah, you know, I'd love to build on this even more. It's going to be one of my suggestions is I think Crystal giving us those reports are really important. I'm wondering, Joe, if once it makes sense from a timing perspective, if we could have these two applicants come and do a presentation for us, I'm really interested on hearing about the impact of COVID and where they are. And it would really personalize this. These two grants we've had in the past, Commissioner Hill and Commissioner Skinner, the opportunity is I have to to see these at work by going and you've gone to Commissioner Brown, so you're nodding your head that you couldn't do that in the last two years to visit the programs. But that's something we can look forward to. But I do think it would be also nice if they presented at a public meeting because it's so relevant right now, right? Commissioner Hill? Yes, actually, Mary had brought that up that the commissioners might be interested in making some of those site visits again, which would be great. We used to do that in the past as you've seen. So we certainly can program that and they have both entities have come before us in the past to give an update, but it's been quite a while. So I think that'd be really in this in the nature of today's workforce needs to be really informative. And I know they would be happy to come in. We've had some, you know, recent conversations with them and these people are really, really, really into what they do. And I think they would love to talk about it. Does that help, Commissioner Hill? Yes. And then Crystal, to add to your workload, I think that reporting would be great. We can get those stats and then bring in all the other elements to a good presentation to add to Mary's workload. Great. Thank you. Any further questions? Excellent question. Commissioner Hill? I would be more than happy to make a motion for the Holyoke Community College grant. Thank you. We're going to do them separate, correct? I think separate is the right way to go. Yep. So I would move that the commission approved the Holyoke Community College's request for $500,000 from the Community Mitigation Fund to continue the previously funded work-ready program, which is intended to upscale the local workforce and close educational gaps and that the commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating this award in accordance with 205-CMR-153.04. Second. Any questions, edits, comments? Okay. Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Hill? Aye. I think Commissioner Skinner? Aye. I vote yes. Five-zero. Thank you. Excellent work and thank you to Holyoke Community College. Do I have another motion? Madam Chair, I can move for the Eastern Region. I move that the commission approved Mass Higher Metro North and the City of Boston's request for $500,000 from the Community Mitigation Fund to continue the Metro Boston Regional Gaming and Hospitality Consortium Grant Programming, which is designed to assist local unemployed and underemployed individuals with an interconnected pipeline of services via several community partners in Greater Boston and that the commission staff be authorized to execute a grant instrument commemorating this award in accordance with 205-CMR-153.04. I have a second. Second. Thank you, Commissioner Cameron. All right. Any further questions on this one? I think it's an interesting consortium. Okay. Commissioner Cameron? Aye. Commissioner O'Brien? Aye. Commissioner Hill? Aye. And Commissioner Skinner? Aye. I vote yes. Five-zero. Thank you, Joe. Chief Delaney. Excellent work and the team. Mary and Lily and Crystal, thank you for your continuing contribution on this. So thank you. Thank you. It always feels good to start this process, Joe. Thank you. And Brad, I know you've been so involved. It's a Community Mitigation Grant. It's just a very rewarding process and fulfillment of the vision. So thank you, Joe. Well done. All right. Now we're turning to our commission updates. We're going to start with the annual report. And before I turn it over to Crystal, I want to acknowledge that in the past, this had been commission-driven and then, of course, the team was very involved and supported. I think Commissioner Zunica, who pretty much managed that for years, I got clever and decided to ask a member of our team to help us on this. It's a big process and it takes the village and all of the team made their contributions and directed them to Crystal. And Crystal worked with them. And Crystal also worked with the printer and all of us commissioners. You really made it a collaborative effort, but Crystal, your individual work should be honored and acknowledged here. And for that, we are very thankful. I like it. It's crisp. It's clear. The language is accessible. It feels modern.  So thank you. I want to have you present it now. It is not commissioners in the public packet. This gives us a chance to discuss it and then it will be launched publicly when it's in its very final form. And I welcome suggestions on that too, right, on distribution. That's something that you can even work individually with Crystal on. Ideas, Commissioner Cameron, maybe before you leave, you can think about that too because you've had the experience of seeing where it goes. I know Todd, we are required to get it out and that's acknowledged in the document itself to certain parties, but there are others who may be interested.  And why don't you talk about it now? Great. Thank you, Chair. That's very kind of you. It really did take a village and I think you guys have heard that I actually did enjoy doing it. So I mean, that makes it a lot easier, right? But as you all have seen, I did receive and release the final draft for it's our fiscal year 21 report to all of you. I've heard just some great feedback and just a couple of very minor edits, you know, come here, Esther, it's here. So I think it looks like otherwise we're with those few edits and I'm more than willing to take any other feedback as well. It looks like we might be in a great place for looking toward that approval finalization or release of the report to our officials, legislators, and the public. And of course, I am developing a list. So if you have any recommendations or suggestions, I would love to hear that as I put together an actual distribution list and I have been working and will continue to work further too with our communication team, obviously. So I welcome any additional comments and or your approval today so we can roll that out. Mr. Cameron, you've seen many interpretive tips. I can't say the word of this report. What do you think? Well, I was remembering our first one, how we were scrambling to just get something on paper because we didn't have a lot of staff and we were just, you know, we had done some work that first year but not the kind of work that is typically in an annual report. So I have seen many versions, but this was a great idea to have Crystal and her skills kind of take this as she pointed out because when we chatted about this in the office, I don't know, last week, the week before, he said, oh my god, thank you. This is a project and she said, no, no, no, I love doing this. So I was surprised and pleased obviously because the effort, it really does show that you love doing the work because it's excellent. It's, I agree with you that it is not too wordy, lots of great pictures to kind of just liven it up and make the point and demonstrate what's been done this year. You know, the picture does speak about so many good things. I loved all the racing pictures. So I thought it was an excellent report and you know, I'm just, it's again, it's progress. It's us moving forward as an organization. Everything we do, we try to do it a little better and that's something I'm very proud of and I just want to thank the whole team because I know Crystal, you spearheaded the effort, but we don't do a thing at this commission without the team, do we? It's just the way we operate. So, so thanks very much and I really love the report. Well done. Thank you. Anyone else have a comment? I love the numbers page, right? That's a really clever addition. Commissioner Hill, sorry guys. Commissioner Hill. Oh, I think it's an excellent report. I was in contact with Crystal throughout the entire process, gave her my suggestions and thank you for accepting them. You've done Yeoman's work on this and you have to be congratulated as the entire team giving you the information that you needed for this report. It looks great. So I'm more than happy to move it forward today. Thank you. Yeah, everyone was really good when, you know, going back and forth. It was definitely a team effort. Love the pictures. Yeah, those are sometimes the hardest to get because, you know, I have to work with the licensees too and it's like we want fresh stuff, but that comes from my marketing in the back. But, you know, it was a tough year for us to get photos. You know, the FY21 was through June of last year. So we were still in flux and we do have a lot of great, really great photos this year. So I was excited about that. But thank you to play my way and everybody over on the gaming floor and racing. It was just really, what do you have? Please give me anything. And Dave, I know he's not here somewhere, just really honing that we have a Dropbox for this, which I could not imagine that I'm managing. And just me, please take all these photos and put them somewhere so that the designer can later get them. So he was really fabulous for that. So it really was a team. The pictures really captured all the facilities. Like I'm looking at the horse racing pictures, which are just phenomenal. Now, great job. Well, you guys can take your own when you're out there next week, right? And make sure I get those. We're next year's reward. We luckily have great racing photographers, so we're set. Okay. So I think that we decided that it makes sense, Tont, for us to approve this because it is statutorily required, right? So I think we should move on it. Commissioner Skinner, you did point out that this did come to you rather late, but not because of Crystal. That came through the printer and she offered it for a distribution to us on Monday. And I thought that it made great sense to vote on this today because at the very least, three commissioners we knew would be able to have a quorum. And Commissioner Hill, I think you feel comfortable with your review. And so Commissioner Skinner, I don't want to put words in your mouth, but if you want to add in now. I plan to abstain from voting to approve. Yeah. I bet you'll have time to flip through this and enjoy it. And it will inform your review of the next one, which Crystal is really also working to get us back into the right cadence. And so before we know it, we'll have fiscal year 22, right, Crystal? And we're hoping for the future months away. And I let Commissioner Skinner know that we will be just digging right in with her on that. Yeah. But before she can even pause, but the great news is that you've got this experience and you'll be able to work on this. So, and that will get us because the deadline is, is it October? Or is it December? I believe it's November, actually. I didn't get it right. Right in between there. I had it up earlier. But yeah, it's right in that time frame. You might even, you might be right. Might be late October. And I think we've always kind of started it just a little bit. It takes longer. It takes longer. And also, you know, working remotely, we've remotely stopped and we're not catching up. Yeah. And in this, you know, yeah, exactly. In this year, it was, it was more of, you know, a lot of times it's, let's put a look at what happened last year and see how we can just tweak that. And it wasn't quite that type of scenario this time because COVID, the previous year's report was so focused on COVID and our, and the, the licensees having to shut down and how all of our transitions changed. So, it clearly was really, we had to be redeveloped. So, definitely. We're going to get it out. We're going to look forward going now. Commissioner O'Brien, are you on set? I am. I'm still processing that, you know, Crystal enjoyed the experience because I had to do sort of divisions in other offices that I was responsible for. And I helped Enrique a little bit on the one right before he left.  Thank you for that experience. I'm glad to hear it since you'll be doing it going forward. Thank you. Good job. Do you want to make a motion? If you have it or somebody? Madam Chair, I move that the commission approve the annual report of the commission's activities presented and discussed here today with the agreed upon any, any agreed upon amendments. I don't believe there were any, and authorized commission staff to submit the report to the officials identified in MGL Chapter 23K Section 70. Second. Okay. Commissioner Cameron. Aye. Commissioner O'Brien. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. And Commissioner Skinner. Let's see. And I vote yes. So, four yeses and an abstention. We look forward to the next report, but we look forward to the finalization of this one. And so pleased that we could conclude that annual report on Commissioner Cameron's last day. Thank you. Thank you, Crystal, for orchestrating all of that. Next year, Commissioner Cameron, you'll be in the farewell section. You don't get out of it fully. I think I set by, just because I'm following you. As long as you keep my 10-year-old picture, I'm okay. It is a nice picture, Commissioner Cameron. I don't think I've seen you take a bad one. So, I want to now shift gears. You've had some really good work done and a little bit of laughter and a lot of accolades in terms of the work that's been performed by our team. I want to thank Tom Mills, calling him Mills now, who's out in the Springfield working with Mark Vandal Linden on Play My Way. He really has been important in helping us think about how to give a proper tribute to Commissioner Cameron. So, we do have a little bit of a run-of-show, Commissioner Cameron, so there's some order. I probably will forgive me for that. But I want to say publicly, today's public meeting marks a bittersweet occasion, where we do say goodbye to and celebrate the contributions of our colleague, Commissioner Gail Cameron. Commissioner Cameron is finishing her second five-year term, a term that began at the outset of the Massachusetts Gaming Commission being established. One of the first five appointed commissioners and the first woman commissioner, Gail, has helped to shape and build the gaming industry here in Massachusetts. I recall personally when Attorney General Martha Coakley publicly announced her intent to appoint Gail to the position of commissioner. For me, it was newsworthy and noteworthy. You see, the gaming industry across the country has not always been well represented by women. Massachusetts has trended differently. We are a commission today of four women and one man, with our team led by our Executive Director, Karen Wells, and the IEB under the direction of Director Loretta Williams. That is exceptional and I'm quite convinced it is a tribute to Commissioner Cameron's trailblazing. For that, Gail, I am forever grateful. We at the MGC and the Commonwealth have been the beneficiaries of Gail's death and expertise in public safety. Her experience as Deputy Superintendent for the New Jersey State Police, the second highest rank on the force, has worked to inform her work here at the commission, particularly as we consider the impact of gambling on public safety, a record right now that I know Commissioner Cameron you're extremely proud of. All of us extend our sincere gratitude for your past service as a law enforcement officer. Commissioner Cameron also has been instrumental in critical reforms regarding horse racing and has served as a key voice in partnership with Dr. Lightbound always for the horse racing program. And since Commissioner Zuniga's departure, Gail accepted our appointment of her as treasurer, giving her an opportunity these last few months to work with CFA Derek Lennon and his finance team. A new opportunity that I thank her for embracing even at the conclusion of her long tenure here. There are many examples that I could offer that illustrate Gail's steadfast leadership and the wealth of experience she brought to her roles Commissioner, helping to build the team that I know she's terribly proud of and lend support to MGC's development. I want to make sure to give all of our colleagues the chance to share their accolades today. We're going to allow her plenty of time to do so. But in my role personally I have looked to Gail, usually right here in this public forum given restrictions of the open meeting law for insights on past practices and institutional knowledge to help me make my best judgments and informed decisions. Those contributions will continue on even after today's meeting. Gail, you have much to be proud of as to your legacy here. You have inspired many of your colleagues at all levels of the commission over the course of your 10 years. I wish you the very best as you move on to your next act and I'm confident that you will have many. And Jeff and I wish you and Judy the very best of health and much happiness well into the future. Now I'll turn to my fellow commissioners to say a few words. We're going to start with Commissioner O'Brien. Yep. I still can't believe Gail's actually leaving. I walked in her office and saw the empty walls today and it was pretty jarring to see everything there. I knew it was coming. I was in denial about it. The idea that Gail was the first person from the commission, the first commissioner to reach out to me when I was appointed and what was sort of a haphazard introduction. She really was the one who made sure I knew where I was going and what I needed to ask and where to go. She took me down to PPC. I saw the racing team and went down there. I saw the count room for the first time and how much cash was flowing through there to get an appreciation for what this job was in terms of what we were overseeing. While we had similar backgrounds, she had far more experience than I did in gaming and some of the nitty gritty in terms of the community mitigation grants and things like that. She is a force to be reckoned with not only here within the commission but on the golf course. I remember trying to play once with her and she kept trying to change the rules to make it more equitable for my lack of skills. I thought it was enough. Let's stick with best ball and call it a day because I could not keep up with how quick her mind was working to try to make it an equal task. I have very much appreciated the professional guidance and the support yo